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 LIBRARY OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 973.795 
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 ir-iCOLN ROOK
 
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 LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY
 
 NA TIO NA L SER M O N S . 
 
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS 
 
 SLAVERY AND ITS WAR: 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 PASSAGE OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL TO THE 
 ELECTION OF PRESIDENT GRANT. 
 
 BY 
 
 GILBERT HAVEN. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 LEE AND SHEPARD. 
 1869.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
 
 GILBERT HAVEN, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 Electrotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
 No. 19 Spring Lane. 
 
 Press work by John Wilson and Son.
 
 A 
 
 \\ 
 
 ro 
 
 OF 
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND CONFERENCE OF THE METHODIST 
 EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 
 The first organized body in America that accepted and proclaimed 
 
 the duty of the immediate and unconditional abolition of 
 
 slavery, after its announcement by William Lloyd 
 
 Garrison; and that adhered faithfully to 
 
 this cause, through evil report and 
 
 good report, until God 
 
 gave it the 
 
 victory : 
 
 Devoted to the consideration of this reform, in its past, present, 
 
 and future relations to the Church, the Nation, 
 
 and Mankind, 
 
 10 (JIorMalli) Inscribed, 
 
 In gratitude for their fatherly guidance, in memory of their fra- 
 ternal cooperation, and in hope of the early obliteration of the 
 unchristian prejudice, graying out of the abolished iniquity, that 
 still afflicts the American people, and for whose extirpation this 
 Conference has so long and so ardently labored and prayed. 
 
 644745
 
 
 " 5Tfjese tfjincjs came to pass 
 jFrom small beginnings because oti is just."
 
 I^TKODUCTOKY. 
 
 OSiTIHE New England ministry, like the Jewish, from 
 
 its origin, has been faithful in setting forth the 
 relations of the Gospel to the laws and customs 
 of man. From the times of John Cotton until 
 now, twice every year, and oftener if events demanded, 
 have their words proclaimed the alarm or the exultation, 
 as national sin or national virtue gave the occasion. 
 
 So great was the clerical influence in these matters, that 
 in the earliest days it was well nigh a clerical supremacy ; 
 and the election sermon was not unfrequently a more im- 
 portant document than the Governor's message. 
 
 In the exercise of this prerogative occurred the natural 
 division of the human mind on every topic submitted to 
 its consideration, and radical and conservative were devel- 
 oped, at the start, with a violence never surpassed in later 
 controversies. The" history of the Province of Massachu- 
 setts Bay, even in the days of Governor Winthrop, dis- 
 closes this furious pulpil war upon questions of civil and 
 
 social import. 
 
 (v)
 
 vi INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 But witl this natural divergence, its main drift was ever 
 toward political righteousness. It fostered the spirit of 
 independence in the colonies, long before the- people gained 
 strength to assert it. It was the supporter of Congress 
 and the army through all that war, so long, so wasting, 
 so often seemingly lost. 
 
 Rev. Jonas Clark, of Lexington, was the chief cause 
 why the untrained militia of that hamlet dared to confront 
 the armed and disciplined troops of their own government. 
 A sermon of Rev. Jonathan Mayhew of the West Church, 
 Boston, on the Higher Law, by the confession of John 
 Adams, was the opening gun of the Revolution. President 
 Langdon, of Harvard College, blessed, on that June night, 
 the troops that marched from College Green to Bunker 
 Hill. President Styles, of Yale, was a most ardent advo- 
 cate of the national cause, as was his eminent successor, 
 President Dwight, who had also served as a chaplain in 
 the Revolutionary army. 
 
 The later and greater struggle through which America 
 has passed, was equally honored and upheld by the pulpit 
 of New England. It found its earliest martyrs among this 
 class. Torrey and Lovejoy, the first two witnesses who 
 laid down their lives for the abolition of slavery, were New 
 England ministers. Channing sprang to this conflict in the 
 maturity of his powers and his fame. The New England 
 Methodist clergy very early identified themselves with this 
 cause. June 4, 1835, the New England Conference, sitting 
 in Lynn, organized an anti-slavery society on the basis of 
 the immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery, and 
 invited George Thompson to address them. He preached a 
 very powerful sermon from Ezekiel xxviii. 1416. ' Thou
 
 INTRODUCTORY. vii 
 
 art the anointed cherub that covereth ; and I have set thee 
 so ; thou walkest upon the holy mountain of God ; thou 
 hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of 
 fire. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled 
 the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned; 
 therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain 
 of God : and I will destroy thee, covering cherub, from 
 the midst of the stones of fire." North Bennett Street 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, in Boston, was opened to him 
 that year, on Fast Day, for a sermon, and received these 
 words of commendation for their courage from the pen of 
 Mr. Garrison : 
 
 In these days of slavish servility and malignant prejudices, we are 
 presented, occasionally, with some beautiful specimens of Christian 
 obedience and courage. One of these is seen in the opening of the 
 North Bennett Street Methodist Meeting-House, in Boston, to the 
 advocates for the honor of God, the salvation of our country, and the 
 freedom of enslaved millions in our midst. 
 
 He, however, declares that every other church was closed 
 to him at that time, in this strong, possibly too strong, 
 assertion : 
 
 As the pen of the historian, in after years, shall trace the rise, pro- 
 gress, and glorious triumph of the abolition cause, he will delight to 
 record, and posterity will delight to read, the fact that when all other 
 pulpits were dumb, all other churches closed, on the subject of slavery, 
 in Boston, the boasted " CRADLE OF LIBERTY," there was one pulpit 
 that would speak out, one church that would throw open its doors in 
 behalf of the down-trodden victims of American tyranny, and that was 
 the pulpit and the church above alluded to. The primitive spirit of 
 Methodism is beginning to revive, with all its holy zeal and courage, and 
 it will not falter until the Methodist churches are purged from the pol- 
 lution of slavery, and the last slave in the land stands forth a redeemed 
 and regenerated being. 
 
 When Mr. Thompson, persecuted for this righteousness' 
 sake, was compelled to hide himself from his enemies, he
 
 Till INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 took sh ,lter with Rev. S. W. "Wilson, at Andover, a member 
 of the same Conference, from whose house he went to the 
 ship that bore him from the country. Rev. Orange Scott, 
 also of this Conference, commenced writing against slavery 
 in " Zion's Herald," in 1834, and during the same year sent 
 " The Liberator " free, for six months, to all the ministers 
 of his Conference.* This faithful culture brought forth 
 early fruit, and the very next year, when the society was 
 formed, delegates were elected to the General Conference, 
 who had the honor of initiating this conflict at Cincinnati, 
 and of arousing a large church to the controversy, before 
 their associates had widely extended their growing influ- 
 ence. Two of the members from New Hampshire were 
 censured for attending an anti-slavery prayer meeting, a 
 censure which remained a blot upon the church until 1868, 
 when, on petition of members from Maryland, it was ex- 
 punged, and the church relieved from the blame which she 
 had for so many years fastened upon herself in their con- 
 demnation. 
 
 Equally zealous were other New England ministers : 
 A. A. Phelps, Joshua Leavitt, Dr. Osgood of Springfield, 
 James Porter, Dr. Ide of Medway, George Storrs, John 
 Pierpont, Nathaniel Colver, Samuel J. May, J. D. Bridge, 
 Daniel Wise, Phineas Crandall everywhere began to spring 
 up this good seed in this good soil. True, the churches and 
 clergy were not all, or instantly converted, and many severe 
 
 and just scourgings both received from those who devoted 
 
 
 
 themselves exclusively to the great reform. Yet they made 
 
 * For these facts we are indebted to Rev. R. W. Allen, of Ntwton, 
 one of the original members of this New England Conference Anti- 
 Slarery Society.
 
 INTRODUCTORY, ix 
 
 greater progress than was sometimes conceded, and before 
 twenty years had elapsed, so universal had become their 
 adhesion to this cause, that in the conflict over the repeal 
 of the Missouri Compromise, more than three thousand min- 
 isters of New England protested, "in the name of Almighty 
 God, and in His presence," against that measure, and 
 Charles Sumner, then fresh in the seat he has so long and so 
 highly honored, gave them this just and noble tribute : 
 
 From the first settlement of these shores, from those early days of 
 struggle and privation, through the trials of the Revolution, the clergy 
 have been associated, not only with the piety and the learning, but with 
 the liberties of the country. For a long time New England was governed 
 by their prayers more than by any acts of the legislature: and, at a 
 later day, their voices aided even the Declaration of Independence. 
 The clergy of our time may speak, then, not only from their own virtues, 
 but from the echoes which yet live in the pulpits of their fathers. 
 
 For myself, I desire to thank them for their generous interposition. 
 They have already done much good in moving the country. They will 
 not be idle. In the days of the Revolution, John Adams, yearning for 
 independence, said, " Let the pulpits thunder against oppression ! " 
 and the pulpits thundered. The time has come for them to thunder 
 again. 
 
 These discourses have, therefore, a natural origin. They 
 are of the root of the fathers, alike of the oldest and the 
 youngest of the churches of New England. They were 
 delivered on the days appointed by the State or National gov- 
 ernment, for the consideration of State and National duties, 
 except in a very few instances, when the occurrence of re- 
 markable events demanded the solemn consideration of the 
 will of God in respect to a sinning nation. They are upon 
 nearly all the salient events in the controversy, from the hour 
 when the nation, through her government, avowed herself 
 the propagandist of slavery, to that when she declared that 
 the last vestige of the iniquity should be swept from the land.
 
 X INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill was the beginning 
 of her active cooperation with slavery, after the revival of 
 the refoi n, Before this, she had only sought to stay the 
 progress of thai movement. In this act she cast herself 
 earnestly into tL 3 support and extension of slavery. With 
 rapid steps she plunged downward, till all the departments 
 of State, executive, judicial, and legislative, were leagued 
 together in its baleful service. She descended to the ut- 
 most possible degree of degradation. Another step would 
 have been annihilation, and even that, her executive and 
 supreme judiciary essayed to take. Only the mighty up- 
 rising of the people, under the inspiration of God, saved her 
 from being blotted out from among the nations. From the 
 hour of that return, her steps have been equally rapid in 
 the right direction. Eighteen hundred and sixty beheld 
 her President and Chief Justice prostrate at the feet of the 
 power that had seized half the land, and proclaimed its 
 independence of the United States. Eighteen hundred and 
 sixty-eight saw that power destroyed, its foundation abol- 
 ished, its rulers fugitives, its slaves rulers, and one, at the 
 hour of her downfall, unknown of men, put by the popular 
 voice at the head of the government, while all the world 
 acknowledged him the first general of his age. Great and 
 mighty are Thy works, Lord God Almighty ! 
 
 These religious orations, as they should properly be called, 
 cover this field of the long controversy. They rise and fall 
 with the tide of national feeling, and thus the more faith- 
 fully photograph their times. Being delivered at different 
 places, and upon one general theme, they may contain some 
 repetitions, though such passages have been omitted as far 
 as possible consistent with the symmetry of the discourse.
 
 INTRODUCTOKY. xi 
 
 The range < f topics is not confined to narrow, local, or mo- 
 mentary limits, but embraces nearly every field into which 
 the controversy legitimately entered. Objection may not 
 be improperly offered, in this colder period of quiet and 
 victory, to occasional expressions. But the rifle and the 
 cannon grow hot in the battle, and the cool words of careful 
 rhetoric are unsuited to the fearful crises when everlasting 
 ruin or renown wait on the decree of the moment. If 
 faithful to the hour of their utterance, they should still 
 burn, like lava, long ejected from the blazing volcano. 
 
 More than half the contents of the volume have been 
 published in other forms, in pamphlet and book, in the 
 daily and weekly newspaper, in the monthly and quarterly. 
 They are printed in the order of the national events. A 
 few speeches and letters, that have a unity of substance 
 with the discourses, are inserted in their appropriate place. 
 The work thus presents what may be a novelty in printed, 
 yet is far from being one in spoken literature, a series of 
 speeches that shows the sympathy and oneness of the pul- 
 pit with tlje events, political and military, of the mightiest 
 movements of God in this generation. 
 
 But it would be unjust to the main purpose of this vol- 
 ume to declare that it was chiefly a recollection. It looks 
 before as well as after ; before more than after. Its object 
 is not to gather up memorials of the past, but to enforce 
 the duties of the future. History, that simply describes 
 vanished events, is as purposeless and profitless as a moral- 
 less tale. All history, like the Bible, should describe the 
 past only to sanctify the present and perfect the future. 
 This would fail of its object if it left the reader indifferent
 
 Xll INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 to the evil that still possesses too largely the American 
 heart. Despite the mighty panorama of divine events that 
 has passed before this people, their hearts are hardened 
 toward those for whom God has wrought such great deliv- 
 erance. We are still cursed with a curse, even this whole 
 nation. Chattel slavery is dead. Political slavery is nearly 
 at an end. Social slavery still prevails. Trade yet shuts 
 its gates against the aspiring and competent youth of this 
 complexion. Pulpits yet bar their doors to the accredited 
 and popular ministers of Jesus Christ as their regular pas- 
 tors. Society too generally abhors their companionship. 
 Aversion thus defiles the whole national heart. 
 
 The victims of our contempt feel the yoke of bondage 
 with which we still burden their souls. The liberties they 
 have won only make these chains the more galling. Not 
 until every such fetter is broken will ISod's controversy 
 with America come to an end. To their removal these 
 pages are consecrated. The past is past ; the future beck- 
 o'ns us. The words that urged to duties done, call to the 
 discharge of duties that must be done. May this crown be 
 won and worn by the American people. They only need 
 to conquer this prejudice, to b.ecome the model and the 
 inspiration of all the nations of the earth. May Church, 
 State, and Society, in all their life, speedily reveal the per- 
 fect cleansing of the American heart from the unbrotherly 
 distinction of man from man. May the Father and Brother 
 of all men, who has created them in His image, and seeks 
 their unification in His grace and nature, hasten the ac- 
 complishment of this most desired of His earthly consum- 
 mations.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 Delivered at Amenia, New York, November, 1850, on the occasion 
 of the Passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill, Page 1 
 
 " Render unto Ccesar the things that are Ccesars's ; and unto God the 
 things that are God's." Matthew xxi. 12. 
 
 ARGUMENT. The need of examination of the principles of action, especially 
 when these principles are in. controversy. The divided duty before every citizen of 
 the Free States ; loyalty to country or to conscience. On what rests the obligation to 
 obey the State. I. Man the subject of law. 1. Distinction in the kind and authority 
 of law. Law of body and of spirit; of sensibilities, mind, and moral being. The 
 lower authoritative only, when not hostile to the higher. If man were holy, all his 
 nature would work symmetrically. Sin the disturber of this harmony. 2. The civil 
 government a creature of the social nature of man. It must therefore by virtue of 
 its origin be in subjection to conscience, or the higher nature, if any conflict arises. 
 II. How shall we know the relations of the human laws to the law of God ? By 
 Conscience, by Providence, by the Scriptures. How act if such a decree is thus de- 
 cided to be wrong ? Refuse to cooperate in its enforcement. Refuse to desist from 
 duties it forbids. Cast all our influence against it. III. Application to the Fugitive 
 Slave Bill. It comes from the State. Slavery, its nature; condemned by instincts, 
 conscience, Providence, and the Bible. Our duty, to refuse obedience; to befriend 
 these whom it outlaws, and to oppose it by voice and vote. IV. The plea of con- 
 stitutional protection. The Constitution a creature of civil government, and there- 
 fore of the social nature. It is consequently subject like that nature to the moral 
 sentiments. Its words allow liberty not slavery. Our trust in Christ not the Con- 
 sUtution. Encouragements in the conflict. No slave hunters in our borders. 
 
 (xiii)
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 II. THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 Delivered at Wilbraham, Massachusetts, May 25, 1854, on the occa- 
 sion of the Passage of the Nebraska Bill, 33 
 
 " The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places." 2 Samuel i. 19. 
 
 " And Saul was consenting unto his death." Acts viii. 1. 
 
 " There was darkness over all the land." Matthew xxviii. 45. 
 
 ARGUMENT. The nation around the corpse of Freedom. I. How was it slain ? 
 By slow poison. By allowing the Constitution to recognize slavery; passing the 
 first Fugitive Slave Bill ; enacting the Missouri Compromise ; demanding Texas ; 
 enacting the second Fugitive Slave Bill. Contrary movements. Present condition 
 of America; the propagandist of slavery. II. Our future. Signs of resurrection; 
 opposition in Congress of the party that enacted it; public sentiment; organized 
 societies ; the Church ; increased manumission. III. Need of humiliation and con- 
 fession; of political combination against it; of prayer. 
 
 III. THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 Delivered at Westfield, Massachusetts, June 11, 1856, on the oc- 
 casion of the assault upon Charles Sumner, 57 
 
 " But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; 
 come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours." Mark xii. 7. 
 
 ARGUMENT. Why Christ suffered ; how His suffering disciples participate in 
 His experience, though falling infinitely below it. The position of this sufferer as 
 compared with previous martyrs. Not himself assailed but his State, and her Ideas, 
 organized and regnant. His assailant not a man but an Idea, organized and deter- 
 mined on the supremacy I. Our guilt. History of its progress. II. Our repentance. 
 How to be established. 1. By penitence. 2. Brotherly feeling toward the slave. 
 3. Resumption of stolen Kansas. 4. The transfer of the government to the side of 
 liberty. III. Failure destroys liberty or compels civil war. 
 
 IV. THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 Delivered at Westfield, Massachusetts, November 16, 1856, on the 
 occasion of the election of James Buchanan to the Presidency, . 87 
 
 " And ^vhen I looked, behold a hand was sent unto me ; and lo, a roll 
 of a book was therein ; and he spread it before me ; and it was written 
 within and without ; and there was written therein lamentations, and 
 mourning, and u-oe." Ezekiel ii. 9, 10.
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 A IGUMENT. The right and duty of ministerial utterance on national ques- 
 tions proved from Bible history and orders. Especial obligations in view of 
 the enormity of the national transgression. I. What has triumphed ? 1. Not the 
 Democratic party. 2. Slavery. Study this victor; trace its power in a human being 
 from birth to death. Robbed of name, of parents, of education, of property, of 
 religion. What shall the end be if the victors retain their strength ? Enslave- 
 ment of Kansas; because of their purpose, their necessity, and the fact that this is 
 the center of the conflict. This won, all is. 2. Extension of slavery to Oregon. 
 3. Annexation of Cuba and Central America as slave States. 4. Reopening of the 
 Foreign Slave Trade. 5. Suppression of freedom of speech, everywhere. 0. Adjudg- 
 ing slaves as property everywhere. Slavery must make these attempts. It must 
 advance or die. III. What has caused the defeat ? 1. No real national sympathy 
 with the slave. 2. No earnest prayers for the victory of Freedom. 3. More anxious 
 to conquer a party than to abolish slavery. IV. Encouragements. None in the 
 ruling party. 1. First organized success of political anti-slavery in a single State. 
 
 2. A stimulant to friends of liberty in the slave States to organize against slavery. 
 
 3. The growth of the religious sentiment. 
 
 V. CASTE THE CORNER-STONE OF AMERICAN 
 SLAVERY. 
 
 Delivered on the occasion of the State Fast, at Wilbraham, Mas- 
 sachusetts, in 1854, and at Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1858; also 
 delivered at the Forsyth Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
 New York, ' 129 
 
 " We are verily guilty concerning our brother." Genesis xlii. 21. 
 
 ARGUMENT. Foundation for American Slavery. I. Not in man as man, but in 
 his color or origin. Scripture stolen to array an idol. This color is declared to be 
 a mark of degradation, and separation. II. This feeling, 1. General. 2. Deep- 
 rooted. 3. Unnatural. Because, (1.) Not towards any other class of men. (2). They 
 have the gifts of music, manners, the culinary art, aptness of imitation, wit and 
 humor, patience, and sunniness of temper. (3.) No repugnance to this color, as seen 
 everywhere else than in America. (4.) No disunity in spiritual nature. (5). Caused 
 by social condition. (0.) Contrary to the Scriptures. 4. The feeling is the chief 
 bulwark of American slavery. South could not resist the North were she free from 
 this prejudice. III. How shall it be cured ? 1. Cease to dwell on the distinction of 
 color. 2. Welcome those of this hue to your society. 3. Encourage them to enter 
 all branches of trade. IV. Result, intermarriage; its right and fitness. True mar- 
 riage. Shakespeare's foresight and courage. Othello and Desdemona.
 
 xvi CONTENTS. 
 
 VI. THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 
 
 Delivered at Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 6, 1859, on the 
 occasion of the capture of Captain John Brown, 152 
 
 " Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad." Eccl. vii. 7. 
 
 ." I am not mad, most noble Festus." Acts xxvi. 25. 
 
 " So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done 
 under the sun : and behold, the tears of such as were oppressed, and they 
 had no comforter ; and on the side of their oppressors there was power, 
 but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are 
 already dead, more than the living which are yet alive." Eccl. iv. 1, 2. 
 
 ARGUMENT. Opening of a new act. Its influence. Its purport and effect. The 
 beginning of the end. It has taught the slaveholder his weakness. It has strength- 
 ened the heart of the slave. His right to liberty, even through blood. It will tend 
 to unite us to our enslaved brethren ; stimulate all peaceful modes of assault on 
 slavery ; abate the haughty assumptions of the slave power. The benefit of his 
 death, if he dies. Honors the American scaffold, as Vane, Russell, and Sidney did 
 England's. His future fame. 
 
 VII. THE MAKTYK. 
 
 Address on the occasion of the execution of John Brown, December 
 2, 1859, 169 
 
 ARGUMENT. Anew date in American Annals. A national day in character and 
 Interest. The righteousness of his deed. His right to interfere to save his fellow- 
 men. Its wisdom. He wins the fight in his dying. The slayer slain. 
 
 VIII. TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 Delivered at Cambridge, November 11, 1860, on the occasion of 
 electing Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, ...... 177 
 
 " / will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously. The 
 horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." Exodus xv. 1. 
 
 " But promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor 
 from the south. But God is judge: He putteth down one, and setteth 
 up another" Ps. Ixxv. 6, 7. 
 
 " Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the Scriptures, the Stone 
 which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner ; 
 This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Matt. xxi. 42.
 
 CONTENTS. xvii 
 
 ARGUMENT. Difference between this year and last. The conflict. One ques- 
 tion, Slavery or Liberty. I. Cause. 1. The growth of conscience as to the nature 
 and effects of slavery. Begun in colonial life, developed in the Revolutionary era, 
 but postponed because of the pressure of another duty. Decline in the post-revolu- 
 tionary period. Revived under Garrison. 2. Fear of the slave power. II. Con- 
 sequences. of this victory. 1. It will suppress efforts to extend slavery. 2. Sets us 
 right before the world. 3. Insures the speedy abolition of slavery. III. Progress 
 of this work; its certain consummation. Future blessed condition of the free 
 South. 
 
 IX. LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 Written from the army at Washington, the Relay House, and Balti- 
 more, during the first three months of the war, 213 
 
 I. To ARMS. The Gathering of th States. A war night in Faneuil Hall. First 
 war Sunday. Opening the way to the Capitol. Camp in the Capitol. Camp at the 
 Relay. Smoke before the Fire. II. SLAVERY DYING. The Look of the Land. How 
 Slaves Talk. The Carrolton Manor. A Slave Pen. A Rational Beast and his Pos- 
 sibilities. Arlington when first Captured. A very Tender Conscience. III. PROFIT 
 
 AND LOSS AFTER BULL RUN. 
 
 X. THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 Delivered at Newark, New Jersey, March 9, 1862, on the occasion 
 of the first Abolition Proclamation, 269 
 
 " The year of my redeemed is come" Isaiah Ixiii. 4. 
 
 ARGUMENT. I. Effects of this proclamation at home and abroad. The begin- 
 ning of this movement at Boston. Opposition. War. II. Results of this pro- 
 clamation. 1. Erect the national mind on the nature of slavery. 2. Rob the slave 
 power of foreign support. 3. Encourage the slave. 4. Unify the Republic. 5. Sub- 
 due the earth to liberty. 
 
 XI. ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 
 
 Letter to the London Watchman, written from Paris, July 4, 1862, . 291 
 
 ARGUMENT. Interest of England in the American war. Ignorance of its origin 
 and aims. Her conflict of ideas with America. Why America did not abolish slavery 
 at the beginning of the war. The rebellion struck at the Union, and the Union 
 must be defended. England never extirpates its cause when suppressing a rebel- 
 lion. Ireland. Sepoys. The United States devoted to Freedom. Her struggle for 
 Democracy against monarchical ideas. Difficulty of European peoples to under- 
 stand this struggle. They are in a lower plane of civil life. America fighting for 
 6
 
 xviii . CONTENTS. 
 
 the liberties of the world. European kingdoms to become European states. The 
 British People versus British Government. America no quarrel with crowned 
 lu'uds as such. The advent of British democracy ; its conflicts and victory. The 
 ultimate Democratic oneness of England and America. 
 
 XII. THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 Delivered before the New England Conference of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, at the High Street Church, Charlestown, Mas- 
 sachusetts, on the occasion of the annual State Fast, April 27, 
 1863, 317 
 
 " Let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of 
 malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and 
 truth. Cor. v. 8. 
 
 "Arise; shine." Isa. Ix. 1. 
 
 " All nations shall call you blessed ; for ye shall be a delightsome land, 
 saith the Lord of Hosts." Mai. iii. 12. 
 
 ARGUMENT. Conceit of nations as to their mission. Ours. I. Universal toler- 
 ation with acknowledgment of Christianity. Difference between the first idea and 
 all previous national usage. In Israel faith and loyalty one. Christianity con- 
 quered Paganism at the Milvian bridge. How it has ruled Europe since. Nowhere 
 equality of faith except in America. French Protestants; English Dissenters. 
 Late development of it here. Colonial union of Church and State. Evils this 
 toleration breeds. 1. Irreligion of public men. 2. Forbids all pulpit utterance upon 
 national sins. Difference between this course and previous support of the govern- 
 ment by the clergy. Charles Martel ; Cromwell ; Geneva. It brought about the 
 alliance of slavery and the Southern Church. It bred infidelity. Christianity must 
 be acknowledged as the American faith. II. The second mission of America is to 
 exhibit the fraternity of man. Our detestation of this demand. Our duty, to ex- 
 punge the word " colored " from the Church; to give the man of color access to 
 every field of effort. Its obligation and real popularity. Peter's prejudice; how 
 cured. Lybica Sybilla and Sojourner Truth. The Church the redeemer of society. 
 Each must esteem the other better than himself. The Brahmin taught. 
 
 XIII. THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO, 
 
 An address delivered before the Church Anti-Slavery Society at 
 Tremont Temple, June 10, 18G3 361 
 
 AUGUJIENT. The unity of Abierican and Hebrew abolition. God's decree of 
 liberty for Israel. His like decree to them against caste. The position of the New 

 
 CONTENTS. xix 
 
 Testament against slavery. Its Gentile church, like the Mosaic, composed largely 
 of slaves. The European church abolished slavery. The mixed and weak position 
 of the American church on this sin. Its duty now to exhibit penitence, by abolish- 
 ing the root of slavery, caste. The absurdity of this feeling. 
 
 XIV. THE WAK AND THE MILLENNIUM. 
 Delivered in Boston, on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 18G3, . 373 
 
 " They shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome 
 them." Revelation xvii. 14. 
 
 ARGUMENT. What is the Millennium ? The triumph of Christ over Satan. Its 
 progress in the earlier ages, in the times of, and immediately after, Christ. It 
 has destroyed idolatry, or man's disunion with God. It must destroy man's dis- 
 union from man. The forms of that disunion here contending against Christianity. 
 Chattel slavery and servility in civil governments. Artificial social barriers must 
 be removed and Man unified. The struggle to work out these ends in our war. 
 Their happy result. The influence of our success upon the advancement of the 
 world. The victories of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. 
 
 XV. WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 
 
 Delivered in Boston, May 15, 1864, on the occasion of General 
 Grant's Advance on Richmond, 393 
 
 " And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed ; 
 take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai : see, I have 
 given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his 
 land." Joshua viii. 1. 
 
 ARGUMENT. The excitement of the hour. Propriety of dwelling upon it. God 
 in the battles going forward. Why Joshua was defeated. Why we. How he 
 repented and conquered. How we are repenting and shall therefore conquer. 
 McClellan's refusal to let the soldiers hear anti-slavery songs insured his over- 
 throw. The later failures because we would not treat all our soldiers equally. 
 Grant refuses to advance on Richmond until their pay is equalized. Congress 
 delays, and then refuses to give colored soldiers the same pay as white except they 
 had been born free. The President shoots one for mutiny who refuses to serve on 
 other conditions than those under which he had enlisted. Grant will not stir till 
 this change is effected. The nation of no consequence to God unless it obf ys His 
 will. This obedience wins His approval and insures our victory.
 
 XX CONTENTS. 
 
 XVI. THREE SUMMERS OF WAR: THE REVOLUTION AND 
 THE REBELLION. 
 
 Delivered in Boston, July 4, 1864, 407 
 
 " TiYhosc are the fathers." Romans ix. 5. 
 
 ARGUMENT. Comparing the Revolution and Rebellion at the end of three years. 
 1. Military. How the Revolution stood ; its disasters and depressions. Our posi- 
 tion; its superiority. 2. Moral. Attempt to seduce the leaders to return to the 
 British crown. Its failure. Our progress in Liberty and Union. 3. Financial. 
 The downfall of Continental paper. Extravagance of the people. 4. Other troubles. 
 Mutiny. Sectional prejudices. Feuds among the officers. Our superiority in all 
 these respects. The likeness of the causes for which we are contending. 
 
 XVII. THE CRISIS HOUR. 
 Delivered in Boston, on the National Fast, August 4, 1864, . . . 421 
 
 " Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways : for why will ye die, house 
 of Israel ? " Ezekiel xxxiii. 11. 
 
 ARGUMENT. The length and bloodiness of the war. The same number of 
 combatants as of slaves. The refusal of Congress and the President to confess the 
 national sin. 1. Our perils. "We may fail. Because we are false to Christ as a peo- 
 ple. The national impiety. Because we are false to our Democratic pretensions, in 
 despising our fellow-men. 2. Our duties. Prayer. Conformity of our acts with 
 our professions. Support the church and nation. 3. Encouragements. Slavery 
 practically dead. The despised slave wonderfully uplifted. Our future success 
 certain. 
 
 XVIII. THE WORLD WAR: ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOC- 
 RACY. 
 
 Delivered in Boston, on the occasion of the Annual State Fast, 
 April 4, 1864, 439 
 
 " Behold, this One is set for the fall and the rising again of many." 
 Lukeii. 34. 
 
 ARGUMENT. America at war with Europe from the beginning of her Revolu- 
 tion. Inconsistency in expecting sympathy and aid from England and France. 
 I. Three ideas born into human society with the American nation. 1. A successful
 
 CONTENTS. xxi 
 
 revolution in favor of human rights. All other successful revolutions only con- 
 cerned the people that accomplished them. America felt that she was fighting for 
 the world. 2. Formation of colonies into separate and semi-sovereign States. 
 3. Organizing of States into a Federal Union. II. The effect of this work on Eu- 
 rope. It brought forth the French Revolution, and awakened like spirit every- 
 where. III. Why it failed. Because of the hostility of the priesthood, the alliance 
 of kings, offensive and defensive, and our Neutrality: the last was the chief cause 
 of its failure. The error of Washington. Its results; developed slavery, caused 
 indifference to European struggles, and created foreign Neutrality against our- 
 selves. IV. The march of our Ideas. How Britain preserved her institutions 
 against them: by war with France; by suppressing freedom of speech. V. The 
 present state of the war. Alliance against America. England's leadership in 
 it. Wherefore. VI. Future of Europe. Democratic uprisings. Poland, Italy, 
 and Greece assuming the American form; equal rights for all, Free States, and 
 Federal Union. Conflicts preliminary to its success. VII. Impediments being 
 removed. European Democrats making common cause. The Church beginning to 
 cooperate. America must remove the last obstacle, and openly befriend their 
 struggling nationalities. 
 
 XIX. THE END NEAR. 
 
 Delivered in Boston, September 11, 1864, on the occasion of the 
 Capture of Atlanta, 473 
 
 " The morning cometh." Isaiah xxi. 12. 
 
 " Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the Day-spring from 
 on high hath visited vis." Luke i. 78. 
 
 ARGUMENT. The waning condition of " the Confederacy." Analogy of a like 
 prostration of the North. Our duty; to stand firmly ; to support the government in 
 the present national Presidential struggle at the polls; to preach and practice the 
 whole truth involved in this conflict. 
 
 XX. THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 Delivered in Boston, January 1, 1865, 489 
 
 " The year of the right hand of the Most High" Ps. Ixxiii. 11. 
 
 ARGUMENT. England's Annus Mirdbilis, just two hundred years ago save one. 
 The superiority of America's. I. Our military progress during the year. II. Our 
 Political Contrast of this election and that of 1804'. 1. In the circumstances under 
 which it was fought. (1.) Slavery a unit and universal in the South then; ceased 
 now. No sale of men and women. No separation. Milder treatment. (2.) Ir the 
 freedom of the election. (3.) In the advanced principles for which it fought. No
 
 xxii CONTENTS. 
 
 extension of slavery its motto then; no existence of it now. 2. It established 
 three essential ideas: Union; how mightily this sentiment has grown and pre- 
 vailed. 3. Liberty, its progress more vital and more marvellous. Democracy, or 
 the equality of the rights of all men. The Supreme Court then and now. 4. Con- 
 sequences. Liberation of Europe. Fraternization of America. 5. Duties. Aboli- 
 tion of all prejudices. Granting to all, civil equality and fraternity. The church 
 should grow in this grace. The summons aud blessing of God. 
 
 XXI. THE VIAL POURED OUT ON THE SEAT OF THE BEAST. 
 
 Delivered in Boston, March 5, 18G5, on the occasion of the Fall of 
 Charleston, 517 
 
 "And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast ; 
 and his kingdom was full of darkness ; and they gnau-ed their tongues 
 for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their sores, and 
 repented not of their deeds." Revelation xvi. 10, 11. 
 
 ARGUMENT. Extreme contrasts in the calls of the government and the war to 
 the sanctuary; sorrowful, joyful. The character of this summons. Draw near to 
 this burning and consider. I. The Sin. Why the Seat of the Beast. How far its 
 atrocities exceeded those of any other spot in Christendom. Paris, London, Rome. 
 The condition of the majority of the people of Charleston. Chief in this sin because 
 she supported it by law, society, and religion ; because she saw first and sought 
 most the destruction of Abolitionism. II. Her Punishment. The Vial poured out. 
 Compared with New Orleans, Nashville, Savannah, all other cities. Even Richmond 
 suffers less. III. The instrument by which her punishment is effected. Her own 
 hand and her own slaves. The soldiers burned her, her slaves rule her. IV. Les- 
 sons. 1. No greatness aught against God. 2. The earth to be regenerated. 
 Charleston to be renewed in righteousness. 3. God Impartial. If He spares not 
 them, not us. Unless we repent we shall all likewise perish. V. Future duties 
 beckon us. This victory but a beacon. Will we follow ? 
 
 XXII. JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 Delivered in Boston, April 9, 18G5, on the occasion of the Flight of 
 Jefferson Davis from Richmond, 529 
 
 " Livery deed forthis cause have I raised thee up, for to show in thee 
 My power ; and that My name may be declared throughout all the earth." 
 Ex. ix. 16. 
 
 ARGUMENT. Historic parallels. Plutarch's : Napoleon and Caesar. Propriety 
 of considering this analogy. The victory ours. Proper study of the war from the
 
 CONTENTS. xxiii 
 
 side of God, that is from the side of the slave. Thus we study the Hebrew eman- 
 cipation; thus will the future this. What stood in the way of emancipation? 
 1. The words and construction of the Constitution. 2. Aversion of the North to 
 Abolitionism. 3. The purpose of the South to prevent it. The first two over- 
 come by allowing- the last to become strong. This strengthened itself in the char- 
 acter of Jefferson Davis. I. Resemblance between him and Pharaoh. 1. In free- 
 dom of action. No compulsion on either. 2. In character. (1.) Clear perception 
 of the effect of any concession. (2.) Steadiness of purpose. Resistance of begin- 
 nings to submission. (3.) Power to develop like strength in others. 3. In work. 
 (1.) Pharaoh only known from his connection with emancipation, so will Davis 
 dnly be known. (2.) How each resisted in every step of the conflict. 4. In fate, 
 Pharaoh perished in power if not in life; so will Davis sink into weakness and 
 obscurity. II. Why did God raise him up ? 1. To release enslaved millions. 2. To 
 give them especial honor. 3. To unite all mankind in one. 
 
 XXIII. THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 Delivered in Boston, April 23, 1865, on the occasion of the Death of 
 Abraham Lincoln, 551 
 
 " Thy gentleness hath made me great" Ps. xviii. 35. 
 
 " He saved others, himself he cannot save." Matt, xxvii. 42. 
 
 "All nations shall call him blessed." Ps. Ixxii. 17. 
 
 ARGUMENT. National agony of sorrow. I. The character of Abraham Lincoln. 
 1. Honesty. 2. Guilelessness. 3. Impartiality of judgment. 4. No step back- 
 ward. 5. Playfulness. 6. Integrity. 7. Love. Repose of the nation in his love. 
 This causes the present anguish of heart. II. His career. Two obstacles to be 
 overcome, Disunion and Slavery. The war of the elements. His fitness for uniting 
 the North. His conciliatory nature and policy prevented Northern disruption, 
 and divided the border. His great act. His murderer not Booth, not Lee ; a 
 greater criminal than both, Slavery. How shall his death be avenged? By greater 
 faithfulness to the cause for which lie died. His growing- faithfulness. His dying 
 words and deeds. Last inaugural. Entry into Richmond. His work done. Ours 
 before us. Obedience to highest duties the only imitation of him. Will we thus 
 lament and follow him ? 
 
 XXIV. PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 Delivered in Boston, July 9, 1865, 581 
 
 " They are dead that sought the young Cliild's life" Matthew ii. 20. 
 " The Lord gave them rest round about, according to all that He sn-are
 
 xxiv CONTENTS. 
 
 unto their fathers ; and there stood not a man of all their enemies "before 
 them, ; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. There failed 
 not aught of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house 
 of Israel ; all came to pass." Joshua xxi. 43-45. 
 
 ARGUMENT. The first Fourth of July after the Revolution and this; analogy. 
 The national joy. I. Blessings of this peace. 1. Peace itself. Horrors of war; on 
 the field; to the maimed soldiers; to the bereaved. 2. It restores the supremacy 
 of the law. 3. Bestows liberty. Might have been without liberty. Contrast with 
 the last five anniversaries of Independence. II. Demands. The abolition of social 
 and political slavery. The outer fetters fallen. What those were. Extract from 
 auction bills of the Slave Mart of Charleston. Just punishment of God. Past prog- 
 ress assures the future unity of the race. All lands coming to America. All here 
 may be regenerated. 
 
 XXV. AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 Delivered on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1868, at Medford, 
 Massachusetts, on the occasion of the Election of President 
 Grant, 603 
 
 " To-morrow shall lie as this day', and much more abundant." 
 Isaiah Ivi. 12. 
 
 ABGUMENT. The conflict of Chaos and the calm of Creation. I. Antiquity of 
 Slavery. The woman the slave to her husband ; the other children to the first-born. 
 Its prevalence. Judea the only Free State when Christ came. Her fall. The 
 deliverance of Europe from it, through the Church. II. Its prevalence outside her 
 territory and faith. Rise of African slavery. How it reached and spread in America. 
 Error of Columbus, and all that followed him, of every language and religion. 
 III. God's controversy with it. Corruption of Church and State. Slow renova- 
 tion. Instruments by which it was wrought out. Culmination of the work in 
 war. IV. General Grant; his foresight of the greatness of the struggle; his ob- 
 scurity ; his military genius ; the cause he served ; saving the nation and destroy- 
 ing slavery. Advantage over all other generals in that respect. V. Meaning of the 
 election. Order; Safety; Progress, and Perfection in political and social liberty. 
 Aversion to color must change to love. Amalgamation God's work, act, and 
 decree. Signs of its advent. Happy results to all the world from the fraternity of 
 man in America. Other reforms. Temperance. Woman's ballot. The glowing 
 future. Christ over all, God blessed forever. 
 
 NOTES, 631
 
 THE HIGHER LAW.* 
 
 RENDER THEREFORE UNTO CJJSAR THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S, 
 
 AND UNTO GOD THE THINGS THAT ARE GOD'S." Matt. X\ti. 21. 
 
 T is well frequently to lay bare the springs of our 
 being, to examine their nature, and see if their 
 ' present movement is in accordance with their 
 
 original design. 
 This is especially necessary when conflicting sentiments 
 obtain respecting a course of action which we are required 
 to pursue. When we cannot remain idle spectators of a 
 contest which is raging around us, but from the orders of 
 leaders in the battle are compelled to take definite posi- 
 tions, then it is our solemn duty to examine the nature of 
 these commands, that we may see whether we must obey 
 or resist them. 
 
 Such is the condition in which every person is placed 
 throughout the Free States. The government of the 
 country has arrayed its mighty strength upon the side of 
 Slavery, and issues its mandate to all the people, to lend 
 
 * A sermon preached at Anienia, New York. November, 1850, on the 
 occasion of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill. See Note I.
 
 2 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 their aid in its defense. The conflict between the eternal 
 foes of freedom and slavery has by this act changed us 
 from unconcerned spectators, if we had chosen to assume 
 that position, into actors, and requires every one to take 
 his place under one of the hostile banners. If, therefore, 
 there were no previous claims upon our feelings of brother- 
 hood, we cannot avoid considering our duties under this 
 assertion of the will of the State. 
 
 In such circumstances it is our highest duty to examine 
 the Nature and Extent of the Authority of Human Govern- 
 ment, and to see if the late decrees of our nation are in 
 agreement or hostility with its delegated rights. 
 
 Man is created subject to law. Enactments originating 
 in the wisdom of God control every faculty of body and 
 soul. In whatever direction he seeks activity, he finds laws 
 inducing the desire and limiting its gratification. Around 
 him as well as within him ever operates the same infinite 
 energy under the guidance of the same infinite wisdom, 
 cooperating through all the lower orders of being with his 
 highest faculties, or by the same obedient officers modifying 
 or suppressing their unhealthy activity. The world with- 
 out us is our servant or our scourge, according as we are the 
 servants or enemies of God within us. 
 
 But while there is no portion of our nature free from 
 the authority of law, there is an evident distinction in the 
 degree of this authority. As a being intended for different 
 states of existence, and for different duties in each state, 
 the Divine Lawgiver must assign to each faculty authority 
 proportionate to its original design. Each is allowed full 
 powers within its own borders, with restrictions against any 
 intrusion upon the rights of adjacent faculties, and un- 
 hesitating submission to the Conscience, the governor of the 
 whole realm, and through that to the Creator and Proprietor 
 of All. 
 
 The laws that regulate our body are felt to be inferior to
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 3 
 
 those which control the soul. Though constructed with 
 measureless skill, and acting- under impulses of divine origin, 
 the body is only a servant of the soul. Its mechanism, 
 its vitality, its appetites, its instincts are all acknowledged 
 to be subordinate to other powers which inherit it for a 
 season, and which can mar its structure or even suppress 
 the instincts necessary to its self-preservation with the ap- 
 proval of the Divine Author of both natures. 
 
 Among the faculties of the soul there exists no less dis- 
 tinction of rank and authority. There are powers which 
 seem especially designed for the present life, whose action 
 is essential to its earthly preservation, happiness, and 
 progress. There are others that are evidently of a higher 
 grade and sublimer destiny, which, for the most part, are 
 kept in abeyance here, and allowed only in rare instances 
 to assume the supremacy and to reveal the latent powers 
 of their being. There are yet others that oversweep all 
 these inferior energies, and claim their obedience on penalty 
 of leaving them to the fatal anarchy of the lowest passions. 
 
 These faculties are called generically the' propensities or 
 sensibilities, the intellect and the moral nature. Most of 
 the propensities, though capable of cooperating with the 
 higher powers of the soul, in by far the greater portion of 
 their activity and the greater part of mankind, act indepen- 
 dently of all moral guidance. They are confined too, largely, 
 to this state of existence. Self-love is generally considered 
 as the basis solely of earthly pleasure ; esteem regards 
 earthly favor ; desire for existence includes mainly a pas- 
 sion for earthly life ; curiosity is limited to earthly inquisi- 
 tion ; and sociality to the divers forms of affections arising 
 from, and centering in, earthly relations. 
 
 In our devotion to this portion of our nature, the de- 
 mands of the intellect are often neglected. Passion rules 
 the hour, rules every hour, and Thought toils as its bond 
 slave. The mind is chiefly studious to obtain means for
 
 4 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 gratifying the propensities. It seeks gain, frames plans, 
 pursues studies chiefly that vanity, pride, or lower lusts may 
 have the larger indulgence. Only in occasional moments 
 does it tower before mankind, when the over-sated passion 
 reveals its own inferiority, or when some Leibnitz or New- 
 ton has mounted above the narrow skies that bound their 
 vision, and transmitted some of their discoveries to these 
 slaves of mere desire. 
 
 Above the intellect rises the moral nature, and claims the 
 service of both these classes of faculties. It asserts its 
 authority over them by allowing them, if rebellious, to run 
 into ruinous excess of riot and of skepticism, and by enabling 
 them, if obedient to its .dictates, to grow harmoniously and 
 happily, after their original design. 
 
 It was not intended that this diversity of constitution 
 should lead to discord and mutual injury. The law of 
 the body had no original hostility to that of the soul. 
 Our selfish and our social nature were made to act in 
 unison. The duties pertaining to earthly life had no es- 
 sential opposition, but rather an essential oneness with 
 those that lead out to another existence. The mind, and 
 heart, and conscience were designed to be as harmonious 
 as the nature of God himself, in whose image they are 
 created. These complex duties and interests, so marvelous- 
 ly interwoven, have no constitutional defects or variances. 
 There was no entangling of threads, no jarring of chord 
 with chord, as they came from the hand divine. It was a 
 microcosm combining in outward form and inward action 
 the same multiplicity in unity, and complexity in simpli- 
 city, that is exhibited by that infinite macrocosm, the 
 universe itself. Under their united action every institution 
 of man, domestic, social, or civil, every outgrowth of his 
 nature, could have been established and matured without pos- 
 sibility of imperfection or collision. The family would have 
 been an harmonious unit, full of life and love. The State
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 5 
 
 would have respected every right, and aided while it em- 
 braced all minor movements in its rounded fullness. The 
 Church would have been identical with the State, though su- 
 perior to it, informing it with the more subtile life of the soul, 
 hanging its humbler dome in the heaven of heavens. Art, 
 commerce, handicraft, every form and force of activity, would 
 have each moved righteously and efficiently in its own sphere, 
 while they aided, rather than impeded, the congenital voca- 
 tions. Earth and Man would have been one with Heaven 
 and God. 
 
 But a hostile element invades the soul, and anarchy 
 prevails. Satan mars the machinery of God. Excess of 
 indulgence or of abstinence becomes the mode of human 
 action, and ignorance of the true law, or inability to pursue 
 it steadily, prevents their perfect harmony and growth. This 
 disorder possesses every man, and is revealed in all the or- 
 ganizations into which his wants and nature are expanded. 
 
 "The trail of the serpent is over them all." 
 
 Under such conditions, it becomes us to study carefully 
 'our duty in every relation we sustain, whether to ourselves, 
 our fellow, or our God, remembering that all these rela- 
 tions meet and melt into Him who is their only Source and 
 everlasting Life. 
 
 Among these qualities are those feelings and ties that 
 compose the organism called the State, or civil government. 
 The last has the narrower significance. Civil government 
 means, primarily, the authority of a city. It shows that a 
 condensed population gathered around competent leaders, 
 subdued and then ruled the scattered peoples beyond their 
 walls. But the State that which stands has the calm 
 look of permanence, the solid shape of eternity. It ex- 
 presses the confidence and the restfulness of man. " Here 
 I have peace. Here I have room for the quiet growth of 
 all my being. These arms of power are around me to shield
 
 6 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 and to support. By it my weakness is made strong, my 
 littleness enlarged, my single-hand made myriad-handed, my 
 poverty is changed to unmeasured affluence, and my paltry 
 personality becomes majestic and mighty as the oneness of 
 the sea." 
 
 Well may we be careful how we assail or undermine 
 this hope of the Kace. Well may enmity to its will be 
 branded by the word second only to murder, if second to 
 that, in the abhorrence of man treason. For what is he 
 who destroys individual life, compared with him who slays 
 the State ? 
 
 But if the State has such a root in the instincts of man- 
 kind, it, too, must beware lest it pervert its office from 
 the protector to the destroyer of its people. For as high 
 as it is exalted in love and power by its willing subjects, 
 when it is an instrument of justice, so low will it plunge in 
 the execrations of its people, in weakness within and abroad, 
 if it make itself the instrument of injustice. Exalted to 
 heaven, it shall be cast down to hell. 
 
 In this hour, then, when the people are perplexed by 
 the action of the State, it is our solemn duty to examine 
 the ground of its origin, and the relations it sustains to the 
 higher law of our nature, the voice of God in the soul of 
 man, before we consider how its late enactments comport 
 with that law, and what are our individual duties under the 
 circumstances it has forced upon us. 
 
 Civil government exists by the will of God. The social 
 element in man in its development into its natural forms 
 reveals itself in that of the State. This is its last expres- 
 sion. Under it this propensity has the fullest range and 
 action. Solitary man becomes the family, the community, 
 the nation. 
 
 But since the idea of nationality springs from this pro- 
 pensity, its government must be under the supervision of 
 the faculties which govern its source ; that is, the Judgment
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 7 
 
 and Conscience. If not, then the gregarious habits and 
 laws of beasts are civil government, for their instinct is 
 identical with this propensity in its original action. 
 
 If this desire for social organization originates with our 
 Creator, and is placed under the control of our intelligent and 
 moral nature, then must it be developed only in accordance 
 with the will of the Creator, and under the direction of His 
 law written in our hearts arid in His Word. It cannot grow 
 to its due and destined height without coming into con- 
 nection, and perhaps into collision, with other faculties and 
 duties. Only the appointed ruler of the soul can decide 
 between conflicting passions, or lead them each to their 
 proper fullness, and so make the whole an harmonious 
 unit. 
 
 Since, then, the process of forming a civil government 
 must be guided by our moral nature, the duties we owe it, 
 in its right or wrong procedure, are all referred to the same 
 tribunal. Before the judgment seat of the Conscience must 
 it stand. If that condemns it, then must it plead guilty ; 
 if that forbids obedience to its wrong behests, they must 
 be disobeyed ; if that demands that it should repeal its laws 
 and make them conformable to the law of God, it must 
 hasten to obey on pain of the righteous displeasure and sure 
 judgments of God, who will sustain the authority of the 
 Conscience, His vicegerent, against all combinations and all 
 adversaries. 
 
 Two questions here arise : 
 
 1st. How shall we know when the decrees of the State 
 are inconsistent with the Will of God ? 
 
 2d. How shall we act when we are satisfied that such an 
 inconsistency exists ? 
 
 I. How shall we know when the decrees of the State 
 are inconsistent with the Will of God ? 
 
 We should include the institutions with the acts of 
 government, for the error of its customs usually precedes
 
 8 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 and produces errors in its acts. The leprosy lies deep 
 within in most cases of spiritual disease. Society is wicked 
 inwardly before it is formally. It is the corrupt tree that 
 bringeth forth corrupt fruit. 
 
 This should be the more carefully noticed, since trans- 
 gressors are always inclined to shelter their conduct under 
 the prevailing power of the evil that produces it. Intem- 
 perance exists, therefore it must be legally protected. 
 Idolatry is universal, therefore it is wrong to resist it. 
 Kings reign, therefore they rule by right divine, and dis- 
 obedience to any of their behests is treason against God. 
 
 This plea has been the strongest weapon of offense and 
 defense in our great controversy. Slavery exists in society, 
 and is recognized in the Constitution ; therefore edicts for 
 its protection are right. And all hostility to it, or them, 
 is contrary to the preservation! of the State and the Will 
 of God. 
 
 Are there any means of learning our duty, other than 
 what the laws and customs of society itself afford ? Has 
 God transferred all His authority over the human soul to the 
 State ? Has He made that the solitary receptacle of His 
 wisdom, and declared that obedience to its mandates is the 
 sole ground of acceptance with Him ? Has He delegated 
 to it power over the future destiny of the immortal beings 
 intrusted to its care, saying to its governors, "Whatsoever 
 thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what- 
 soever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven " ? 
 If this is not the case, but if, on the contrary, civil govern- 
 ment derives its strength and stability from laws originating 
 out of and above it, then is it binding upon us to seek to 
 know what these means of moral illumination are, and 
 where they are to be found. 
 
 As God is one, His moral law must be one and the same, 
 in whatever way it may be revealed to us. He has chosen 
 three ways of revelation through Conscience, Providence,
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 9 
 
 and His Word. Whatever these clearly agree in must be 
 of the highest authenticity and authority. 
 
 Our moral being, though rendered imperfect and obtuse 
 by reason of sin, is still, in some respects, true to its original 
 character. The needle may be drawn by wrong attractions, 
 for the moment, from its true direction ; but still within it 
 dwells the force that is ever pressing it against all temp- 
 tations to point to its pole. Conscience, however perverted, 
 ever possesses this instinct. In respect to some of its 
 duties, no amount of influence can destroy its attraction 
 towards the true and the excellent. No state of barbarism 
 has sunk so low as to make disobedience to parents, in- 
 gratitude, or maternal hatred of offspring appear right. No 
 matter what brutality of degradation may have obscured 
 these sentiments, they still and ever live. They cannot be 
 destroyed. They spring up spontaneously, and no edict of 
 the State, no seduction of priestcraft, no brutality of con- 
 dition, has been able to suppress them. Maternal love will 
 yearn over its helpless babe. Gratitude will gush forth 
 from the most hardened subject of unmerited kindnegs. 
 Reverence for parents will arise in the heart of every child. 
 Every eifort of the State to destroy them only proves its 
 own weakness and folly. They are above and in advance of 
 human power, and to them must it bow if it seek exten- 
 sion or permanence. 
 
 These instinctive actions of our moral nature are con- 
 firmed by its cooler, if not clearer, utterances. The Con- 
 science sits sovereign. However much beguiled from its 
 steadfastness by the force of education, custom, fear, or 
 flattery, it cannot be wholly perverted. It is still employed 
 by our Creator as His representative in the soul. It is still 
 one of His appointed guides to us in all perplexed and 
 devious ways. Though often drawn into a seeming support 
 of sin, in its depths it has remained faithful to the truth. 
 It has favored persecution, because it thought it was thus
 
 10 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 doing service both to God and its victim. It has never 
 approved of incest; adultery, blasphemy, murder, any vice 
 which could not steal some garment of virtue in which to 
 hide its hatefulness. This faculty, therefore, is a chief ally 
 in the detection of the will of God. If enlightened and 
 assisted by its Creator, it may become to us, as it is to the 
 sinless of Heaven, the oracle of God, 
 
 " A light to guide, a rod 
 To check the erring, and reprove." 
 
 Its slightest suggestion demands our most solemn atten- 
 tion. Its positive decisions cannot be opposed or evaded 
 without bringing us into condemnation with God, and sub- 
 jecting us, if unrepentant, to the full measure of His just 
 indignation. 
 
 Another mode of discovering the will of God is. by His 
 Providence. As He rules over all kingdoms and ages, a 
 faithful seeker of His will can draw many safe conclusions 
 from the rise and fall of customs and opinions. He will 
 discern two great laws. Nothing enacted by God for the 
 race of man has ever died out of society. Temporary in- 
 stitutions of His planting, like the Jewish government, may 
 disappear ; but then only to reappear in a fuller and finer 
 form. No influences, however strong, or united, or persistent, 
 have been able to extirpate or to permanently retard these 
 divine germs. On the other hand, no principle nor practice 
 in opposition to the law of God has been able to gain and 
 retain enduring sway. Though upheld by every interest 
 and fortified by every power which the god of this world 
 could summon to his aid, though fed by the passions, the 
 prejudice, the timidity, the ambition of man, they have 
 shrunk before the breath of the Almighty, and have either 
 faded slowly away before the gradual diffusion of His truth, 
 or have been suddenly consumed by the brightness of His 
 coming. Idolatry, atheism, absolutism, infanticide, witch-
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 11 
 
 craft, what evils that have ruled mankind witli a rod of iron, 
 has He not broken in pieces as a potter's vessel ? In 
 these great laws written along the ages, the will of God 
 and the duty of man can be most vividly discerned. 
 
 The last mode He has adopted to make known His 
 wishes, which are to be our law, is in His writings. In 
 them we have eternal truth. They are a lamp unto our 
 feet, and a light unto our path. Not that every difficulty 
 we meet on that path is especially noted in this chart of our 
 voyage ; but the general principles that fit these particular 
 cases are scattered over all its pages, run, a stream divine, 
 through its entire limits. If wild and wicked fantasies have 
 sought refuge under its panoply, if single passages have 
 been wrested from their connected and evident meaning to 
 the support of criminal opinions and the destruction of their 
 advocates, still these perversions of men of corrupt minds 
 do not disturb its marvelous unity and consistency. They 
 may teach us not to seek to shelter our depraved propen- 
 sities under its sacred shadow. They do teach us to seek 
 prayerfully its real and consistent meaning. They do not 
 deprive us of its counsel and support in matters of honest 
 inquiry and conscientious desire to know and do the will of 
 our Father which is in heaven. And if we find any local 
 word in seeming hostility to the sense of right, we must 
 seek to adapt that expression to its declarations of universal 
 application rather than to sacrifice these truths at the shrine 
 of permitted but condemned infirmities. 
 
 If, when thus examined, we find the whole drift of its 
 teachings, whether of precept or example, coincident with 
 the course of Providence, the declarations of Conscience, and 
 the instincts of Humanity, we have the strongest possible 
 ground for assurance. 
 
 Hence we conclude that any act which violates 'the 
 instincts of our nature, clashes with the decisions of Con- 
 science, deviates from the path of Providence, and disagrees
 
 12 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 with the Word of God, is clearly contrary to His will, and 
 must be treated as an enemy of mankind. 
 
 But, if it is possible for us to come to any positive con- 
 clusions upon the moral quality of any decree of State, and 
 if these divinely appointed arbiters upon the case have de- 
 cided that it is wrong, then the question arises : 
 
 II. How shall we act in reference to the immoral -decree? 
 
 1. We should refuse to cooperate in enforcing it. It 
 has been not unfrequently asserted in the present strife 
 of opinion, that we are bound actively to support a law, 
 however bad, so long as it remains on the statute books. 
 It is a law of the land. Obedience to its behests is the 
 first duty of a virtuous citizen. But, as we have already 
 proved, civil government is an institution founded on an 
 inferior element of our nature, and hence has no power to 
 bend the higher faculties to its will, unless it first conforms 
 to their requirements. 
 
 We know that in our private action we are compelled to 
 refuse compliance to any habit which opposes the decrees 
 of Conscience. No evil desire, however strong, however 
 habitual, however essential, seemingly, to our comfort, and 
 even to our existence, can rightfully command the cooper- 
 ation of the will. One's vicious habits may have become 
 so powerful that their indulgence is absolutely necessary 
 to the preservation of his life. Yet if he obeys them, he 
 saves his life arid loses his soul. " If thine eye offend thee, 
 pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is profitable for 
 thce that one of thy members should perish, and not that 
 thy whole body should be cast into hell." 
 
 In the family, the earliest form in which this social nature 
 reveals itself, the same law obtains. Though the obliga- 
 tions of its members to its general laws have the clearest 
 approval of the Creator, yet it has often been true that a 
 man must forsake his father and mother, wife and child, if 
 he would be Christ's disciple. Will a Christian not say that
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 13 
 
 circumstances may arise which will make it supremely 
 necessary for the child to refuse compliance with his 
 parents' commands ? that he cannot obey his Father in 
 heaven without disobeying his father on earth ? And shall 
 our personal habits arid family ties both be sundered in 
 obedience to the will of God, and we still be compelled to 
 assist in enforcing a statute of society, which is far more 
 at enmity with the law of God, and injurious to His cause, 
 than any private practice can possibly be ? If we must 
 refuse to obey ourselves or our parents when ordered into 
 sin, much more must we refuse obedience to the more sinful 
 and more dangerous demands of government. 
 
 2. But there is an additional duty imposed upon us. We 
 must not only refuse to assist in the execution of an unright- 
 eous law, we are required of God to refuse to desist from 
 those duties whose performance this law has forbidden. 
 
 Many may have moral courage enough to refuse to do a 
 wicked act, and not have sufficient to nerve them to do a 
 righteous one in opposition to the ungodly decree. Many 
 a follower of Christ has shrunk from a defense of His 
 cause, when they would have equally shrunk from a denial 
 of Him. Yet there are claims which our Maker has upon 
 us, compliance with which is essential to our growth in 
 grace, and even to the possession of His favor. " He that 
 is not for Me is against Me, arid he that gathereth not with 
 Me scattereth abroad." Were it not so, the principles of 
 the Gospel never could spread through the world. Sin has 
 gained possession of the hearts and the heads of men. It 
 has organized governments, and established itself in the high 
 places of influence and authority. It would be careless 
 respecting passive resistance to its demands, save when 
 prompted by its instinctive hatred of goodness to pour 
 upon the servant of God the fury of its malice. It is 
 only by doing what is impiously forbidden that the soul 
 gains the approval of God and extends His dominions.
 
 14 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 The history of Christianity affords innumerable examples 
 of this obligation. From the career of Christ to that of 
 His latest disciple who has thus followed his Master, come 
 to us lessons of instruction and encouragement. Those 
 who passed through great tribulation, who fought the good 
 fight, who opposed the world, the flesh, and the devil, and 
 are now surrounding the throne of God, esteem it their 
 chief honor that they trod the path of Duty, though human 
 customs, opinion, edicts, and power combined to keep them 
 motionless, or to force them upon' the broad and crowded 
 road of popular, legal, governmental sin. 
 
 3. There is still another duty, coextensive with the law 
 which it opposes. 
 
 We are required to cast our influence against it, and to 
 endeavor to create a public sentiment which shall nullify its 
 action and obtain its repeal. 
 
 There may be some unholy edicts which the majority of 
 the subjects of government can oppose only in this way. 
 But even this many shrink from doing. Feeling but little 
 their responsibility for immoral laws, they allow them to be 
 enacted and executed without their opposition, in deed or 
 word. In this they act contrary to the practice and com- 
 mands of Christ. He was bold to reprove all wrong insti- 
 tutions and edicts. He faithfully shed the light which He 
 brought into the woi'ld upon all the habitations of cruelty. 
 If we would receive His approval, we must pour the light 
 of truth upon the nefarious laws and practices that yet curse 
 mankind. In this way all can serve their God and create a 
 moral power that shall sweep all these solidified and imperi- 
 ous iniquities from the world. These fires kindled in solitary 
 breasts, spreading through their nearer circles of family, 
 church, and community, shall meet and enkindle other like 
 fires in other hearts, and other localities, until the mighty 
 flame shall blaze over all the land, and consume the evil that 
 had long enjoyed supreme possession.
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 15 
 
 When, then, we are convinced of the immorality of a 
 law, if we would render to God the things that are God's, 
 we are oath-bound of conscience to refuse compliance with 
 its demands for cooperation, to disobey its commands to 
 desist from the right which it opposes, and to throw our 
 'influence against it, so as to destroy its energy and compel 
 its repeal. 
 
 III. Let us apply these fundamental principles to the 
 subject which is so fearfully agitating the nation. 
 
 The law for the rendition of fugitives comes to us clothed 
 in the majesty of that authority which we all feel bound to 
 respect, and, if possible, to obey. Yet its form and fea- 
 tures, despite this stateliness, are repugnant to our feelings 
 and judgment. Caesar, though in set array and claiming 
 sovereign honors, is demanding clearly not the things which 
 are his own, but the things which are God's. The question 
 of obligation is therefore brought home to our hearts. It 
 is no theory merely that we have been discussing, no scho- 
 lastic bout of words, but a present and pressing duty. We 
 may feel at a loss how to proceed. We may fancy our 
 sympathy for the slave is an impulse of benevolence which 
 cooler decisions of the reason should restrain, while the 
 duty of sustaining the authority of law is confirmed by every 
 consideration of benevolence and justice, human and divine. 
 
 Amid this contest of principles, when the pulpit and press 
 are urging the decree of State as of superior claim to the 
 decree of Conscience, when we are told obedience to Caesar 
 fulminating his edicts against God is a greater duty than 
 obedience to God Himself, tittering his decrees in every 
 heart against this law of Caesar, in such a moment of wide- 
 spread and increasing conflict, we must reexamine the 
 charts divinely granted us, to see if we can track the course 
 marked out by the King of kings, the Caesar of Caesars, 
 which alone will lead us to the desired haven. 
 
 The ground of our opposition to all laws that protect
 
 16 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 slavery is the feeling against slavery itself. We may pro- 
 fess to give political or other reasons for this feeling, but 
 we fail to see, or to acknowledge, the true reason by any 
 such pretenses. It is an abhorrence to the claim of Prop- 
 erty in Man that is the inspiration and the vitality of the pas- 
 sion that now belts the North with a burning zone. Is this 
 conviction based on immutable foundations in the moral 
 nature ? or is it a transient emotion, the offspring of a per- 
 verted fancy ? or is it a fanatical indulgence of a rightful 
 emotion which we should curb within its appropriate limits ? 
 There are many who advocate the last opinion, whose influ- 
 ence greatly retards the progress of the truth. How deep 
 this cause is seated may be learned from considering the 
 nature of the crime which it is opposing. 
 
 Slavery is the most extreme and terrible violation of hu- 
 man rights. Appeal to your moral instincts. Do they not 
 revolt from a state of servitude ? Would you yield up your 
 liberty of thought, of speech, of act, and become the pos- 
 session, body and soul, of another ? History shows the 
 supreme vitality and energy of this feeling. All other 
 passions and purposes of men are weak in comparison with 
 this innermost nature. It is read in the insurrections 
 which disturb the serenity of tyrants, in the revolutions that 
 have wrought such mighty changes in society, in the 
 haughty bearing of the savage, in the elastic step of the 
 freeman. It impels every colony to proclaim its indepen- 
 dence from its parent State when its strength is sufficient 
 to sustain its desires. It is the soul of eloquence, of poetry, 
 of art, of patriotism. It feeds the sacred fires of religion. 
 Right over myself, a right given by God, and only to be 
 annulled by Him, or for reasons which He approves, this 
 is the first law of our individual being. 
 
 But it is cruelly said, these emotions are not common to 
 the enslaved people of America. They are beneath this 
 universal sentiment of humanity, because they are beneath
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 17 
 
 the grade of man. See how those who have known nothing 
 of freedom save by the undying promptings of their nature 
 are making efforts to obtain it, by as great courage and 
 sufferings as have made illustrious the annals of the world. 
 
 " Their pulses beat with floods of living fire." 
 
 They hide themselves in the perilous holds of tiny coasters ; 
 they put on disguises and thread fearfully the paths of travel. 
 A lady, soft and delicate, wears, like Imogen, the garb of 
 men, and employs as a servant her darker-favored hus- 
 band, both slaves now, both unspeakably despised because 
 slaves and of African blood, but both to be held in honor 
 abroad and at home, and to become noted persons in the 
 history of their times.* One has himself nailed in a box, 
 and in this coffin-like carriage is rudely tossed hither and 
 thither, as freight, after the rough mode of public carriers, 
 who, had they dreamed they were handling a living man, 
 and he a black slave, would have torn off the cover, not to 
 relieve, deliver, and hail such unexampled endurance, but 
 to reject him with loathing, as of a race that neither de- 
 serves nor desires its liberty, and to hurl him hotly back 
 into the hell from which they were unwittingly bearing him. 
 
 Thus does the nature of man break through every crust, 
 however thick, of oppression and degradation, and assert 
 its supreme prerogative. Thus does its immutable decree 
 declare the wrongfulness of that iniquity which most posi- 
 tively prevents its rightful exercise. 
 
 Not only do our instincts thus condemn slavery, but our 
 conscience approves their decision. Whatever palliatives 
 may be thrown around it, whatever texts of Scripture may 
 be wrested most wickedly to its support, whatever glamour 
 Church and Society may seek to throw around its horrid 
 nature, it can never seduce the Conscience to its service. 
 
 * William and Ellen Crafts. He has been employed in the Foreign 
 Service of the British Government. 
 2
 
 18 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 That tears away all these masks, pierces all these pre- 
 tensions, strips off the sacerdotal and social robes, and 
 shows the devil of devils in this livery of the court of 
 heaven. The Conscience of the North, sometimes against 
 the treachery, frequently despite the timidity, of its pro- 
 fessed exemplars and teachers, has exposed it to the exe- 
 cration of the world, and made all true souls shrink from 
 its awful presence. 
 
 The Providence of God vividly -supports the same truth. 
 Slavery was almost the first born of sin, and has settled in 
 midnight blackness on every nation. No scruples existed 
 as to the color or nationality of the victim. If he was the 
 weaker, he became the property of the stronger. Black 
 stole white, and white black. The children of Ham sold 
 and scourged the children of Japhet, and those of Japhet 
 unrighteously fulfilled prophecy by dwelling thus cruelly 
 in the tents of Shem. 
 
 What has caused, in the slow march of the world, its steady 
 disappearance ? Why have the most advanced peoples of 
 mankind outgrown this barbarism ? It is the Providence of 
 God declaring its sinfulness, by the evils He inflicts on its 
 disciples, evils in the state of anarchy, of corruption, of 
 poverty, of weakness, of dissolution ; evils in the individual 
 transgressor of ignorance and brutality. He demanded its 
 extinction as the first step in civilization. He led the 
 advancing races further and further from its black abyss, 
 until now, the mere idea of property in man is as abhorrent 
 to the Christian world as the eating of man, its twin abomina- 
 tion in birth and dominion. 
 
 The Word of God confirms these witnesses to this truth. 
 If it does not, then must this mode of revelation be in dis- 
 agreement with the other which its Author has adopted, 
 which would be equivalent to saying that God approved in 
 the Bible that which he condemns in the conscience, and 
 in His Providence, and that He is not, therefore, ever and
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 19 
 
 everywhere, One and the Same. No such fear need possess 
 our souls. The written law of God is identical with that 
 inscribed on the tables of every heart, on the annals of 
 every people, on the pages of every age. Every sentiment 
 of general application, every decree of eternal obligation, 
 is inspired with the idea of liberty. The commands" of 
 Sinai are penned on every Conscience. Had they said, 
 " Worship other gods and all gods beside or with Me, dis- 
 obey your parents, kill, commit adultery, steal, covet, bear 
 false witness against your neighbor," we should universally 
 declare the Bible the worst of books, and its Author the 
 worst of beings. 
 
 Far otherwise is the truth. Its every precept is instinct 
 with human liberty. Every line burns against human bond- 
 age. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "If a 
 man love not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he 
 love God, whom he hath not seen ?" " Love worketh no ill 
 to his neighbor." "Ye are called unto liberty." " Whom 
 the Son maketh free is free indeed." "Do unto others as ye 
 would that they should do to you." Every command, and 
 reflection, and incident of general import is a silent or vocal 
 protest against slavery. Whatever words may there be found 
 seemingly recognizing this evil, were designed to mitigate a 
 system that could not yet be extirpated. While the State 
 with its every arm protected the sin, and raged against its 
 victim, it was almost impossible to escape from its toils. Its 
 meshes covered the earth, and wherever fugitives fled, they 
 would be caught in the snare of a vigilant tyranny. Their 
 duty was, therefore, ordinarily, to abide in their oppressed 
 condition, enjoying spiritual liberty, and looking forward to 
 the hour when death should break the chain and admit 
 them to the rights and joys of the eternally free. But 
 while the apostle to slaves himself boasting, so as to get 
 nearer their estate and thus their hearts, that he, too, was 
 a slave, but of Jesus Christ, who also, he declared, had
 
 20 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 taken upon Himself the form of a slave, - carefully ad- 
 vised their patient endurance of the ills they suffered, he 
 constantly showed how wicked was the state they were 
 compelled to endure, how glorious was liberty in its highest 
 and proportionally in its lowest forms, how proper it was 
 for them to escape, if possible, from their doom, how ob- 
 ligatory it was upon Christian masters to give their slaves 
 that which was just and equal, which could be nothing less 
 than their emancipation, and how masters, if Christian, 
 must receive their own slaves no longer as slaves, but 
 above slaves, even as brethren beloved in the flesh and, 
 the Lord. 
 
 The early history of the Church proves the true character 
 and influence of the Bible. Christians were bound to 
 emancipate their slaves, and the plate was often sold from 
 the altar to deliver their brethren from this dreadful yoke. 
 Within a few centuries of her beginning, and almost 
 in the first of her political domination, she had cast out the 
 evil not only from the Church, but from the State, that ruled 
 over all the civilized earth, and had fostered this iniquity 
 till Christianity assailed it, as the most precious jewel of 
 the realm. 
 
 Such is the Word, such the work, of the Bible against 
 slavery. It is designed to enforce the law written in our 
 hearts by the light of nature, with the clearer utterances 
 of revealed will. It cannot clash with the central impulse 
 of that earlier law. It is intended for the guidance of 
 man in every stage of his human, perhaps of his heavenly 
 career, in the full glory of the millennial age, as well as 
 the full darkness of the pagan era ; and it can never approve 
 a practice which the Providence of God is clearly removing 
 to make way for the full triumph of the Gospel of Christ. 
 
 A Book of such vastness of aim and expression, bound 
 indissolubly to every attribute of God, can never be per- 
 verted to the service of Satan. Its frequent declarations
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 21 
 
 in the polity of Moses ; its pathetic descriptions of the 
 enslavement of Joseph, of the Hebrew people, and of the 
 kingdoms of Judea and Israel ; the odes of its prophets, 
 bewailing the bondage, or exulting in the salvation of 
 their people ; the sublime teachings of the Savior ; the 
 sympathizing advice of the apostle, all show that the 
 Word of God, from its every page, in one steady, change- 
 less beam of light divine, portrays and consumes this crime 
 of crimes. 
 
 Tested, therefore, by all the means given us for discerning 
 moral quality, slavery is condemned. At every tribunal to 
 which it has successively appealed, it is adjudged guilty. 
 Finding no protection at any court of divine decree, it 
 has fled to the civil power, and is now striving to find 
 under its shadow safety from the ministers of divine jus- 
 tice, and liberty to pursue unmolested its nefarious career. 
 Here it defies our assault, and profanely presumes to exe- 
 cute vengeance, spiritual no less than civil, on all who dare 
 oppose its hellish sway. 
 
 What is our duty in respect to it ? 
 
 If it did not directly put itself athwart our path, if it 
 laid no commands on us to assist in its extension or perpe- 
 tuity, if it ruled in a distant realm, and our land was 
 happily free from its baleful presence, we should still be 
 morally bound to raise our voices against it, to strive to 
 enlighten its supporters, to relieve its victims, and to seek 
 in every right way its extirpation. We acknowledge this 
 duty binding in respect to every other vice. Our Missionary 
 arid Bible Societies attest its depth and fervor. Our sym- 
 pathies for Greece, France, Hungary, and Italy, expressed 
 not only by the general press and voice, but in some cases 
 by the solemn resolves of the National Legislature, show 
 how vain and wicked it is to suppress the feelings of 
 brotherhood, and the actions by which they demand ex- 
 pression.
 
 22 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 If this be right concerning religious and political errors 
 separately, shall it be declared wrong if indulged toward 
 an institution which is evil of every kind, which annihilates 
 all civil rights, corrupts all moral sentiments, and dethrones 
 God from His sovereignty in the soul ? If it is, then, our 
 unquestionable right and most imperative duty to exert our 
 influence for its abolition, if it prevailed in another country, 
 does this duty diminish as the evil approaches our shores, 
 and disappear as it lands upon them ? Have the ignorant 
 perpetrators of this crime no claim on our superior light, 
 and their intelligent supporters on our indignation ? Have 
 its victims no demand on our tears and prayers ? 
 
 But if this duty be ours when the iniquity is united with 
 us by national jurisdiction, though not directly influencing 
 the society in which we live, it becomes, if possible, more 
 imperative when the unholy institution has seized the power 
 of the government, and is using it for its basest purposes ; 
 when it intrudes its hateful presence into the seats which, 
 till now, were free from its sway, and seeks to make us 
 abject slaves of its satanic will. Then are we compelled by 
 every consideration of the present and future, of national 
 honor, of our own life even, to labor for its removal. Not 
 with the corrupt means which itself gladly uses for its 
 diffusion, not with its own favorite weapons, the stake, 
 the knife, the bloodhound, but with the more fatal though 
 less speedy weapons, of speech, and prayer, arid vote 
 powers given us Toy the God of nations and of men for the 
 overthrow of every stronghold which sin erects in the 
 institutions of society. 
 
 A government, therefore, which indorses slavery, which 
 orders the recovery of those who have escaped from its 
 dreadful dungeon, ought to be met with one general burst 
 of execration, one united prayer and effort for the repeal 
 of its wicked enactment, and the deliverance of those so 
 unrighteously bound.
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 23 
 
 If this duty is not embraced by all, it is none the less 
 binding upon us. Our individual action should have this 
 tendency. Our prayer, our voice, our oath, our effort, 
 should be devoted to the destruction of this engine of 
 oppression, and the driving back of its director and inspirer 
 to his native hell. 
 
 More than this we may not be able to do. The foot of 
 the fugitive and his pursuer may not pass our door. But 
 if occasion should occur which should bring us into imme- 
 diate contact with it, by present or future laws, (for we 
 know not what edicts may yet issue from this perverted 
 seat of power,) other duties will arise, severe, authorita- 
 tive, unavoidable. What do they demand ? 
 
 \V(> have shown that when any human law is opposed 
 to the evident decisions of divine law, those edicts are 
 to be disobeyed both in what they command us to do, and 
 in what they command us to refrain from doing. To give 
 us a right to act in this manner, the law must be clearly 
 immoral. Laws requiring obedience to any peculiar system 
 of government are not of this class, as no form of govern- 
 ment, as such, can be proved to be hostile to the divine 
 will. But an act designed to defend a system abhorrent 
 to every virtuous faculty of our nature, stamped with in- 
 famy by the hand of God in the ruin of the, countries and 
 nations which cherish it, opposed by the Conscience of 
 every man, and the Spirit of God, such a system finds 
 no defense for its demands in any laws it may impudently 
 set up. With God as our Guide and Inspirer, we should 
 not hesitate to advance in the way that He marks out 
 against such a stronghold of Satan. 
 
 Should we be called upon to assist in the execution of 
 this law, we must refuse. Ready as we should be to aid 
 the executors of laws which we have no sound reasons to 
 consider morally wrong, we should refuse any assistance in 
 the execution of those clearly criminal. We must suffer, if
 
 24 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 need be, the penalty of disobedience, rejoicing that we are 
 counted worthy to endure such contradiction of sinners, 
 and that Christ gives us strength sufficient for the high 
 resolve. 
 
 If the minions of government should not attempt to 
 execute upon us its penalties, it will not be from want of 
 willingness on their part to engage in such work, nor from 
 the benevolence of the State which approves such decrees. 
 Those who are ready to execute a cruel law on an un- 
 offending woman as the slave-catchers of the North are, 
 and will be will delight to wreak their vengeance upon 
 those who dare to decline cooperation. Malice always 
 burns the fiercest against those who, like the Hebrew cap- 
 tives, refuse to follow their fellows into known sin at the 
 orders of popular power. This is already seen in the dia- 
 bolic hate with which disgrace and suffering are heaped 
 upon those who have allowed their philanthropic feelings 
 to cause them to assist in the escape of fugitives. Some 
 of these disciples of Christ have died under their cruel 
 mockings, bonds, and imprisonment; others have, till lately, 
 pined away in solitude and misery, within the walls of the 
 national jail ; and still others are to-day toiling under the 
 lash in a Kentucky prison-house. A like fate would befall 
 us even in tfyis section, boastful of its liberty of speech, 
 were we few and weak. But, by the grace of God, the 
 fangs of this serpent have here been drawn. It has lost 
 much of its deadly venom, and slight is the liability of 
 injury from obeying this command of our Conscience. 
 
 Yet it may be inflicted. We may be in those sections 
 where the opposing influence reigns, and where any resist- 
 ance, even so mild as declining to cooperate in the bloody 
 work of reenslaving a free man, may meet with instant 
 vengeance. There and then should we commit our ways 
 unto the Lord, and meet our appointed fate in Christian 
 heroism, in Christian hope. Never should our hands be
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 25 
 
 stained by more than the blood of the oppressed the free- 
 dom of which that grasp may deprive him. Never should 
 our ear feel the everlasting burning of that cry of despair 
 which bursts from the captured fugitive as our clutch fas- 
 tens upon his body and his soul. Never should our hearts 
 be rived with the consciousness that we have been acces- 
 sory to the reburial alive of one who had raised himself, 
 with the invisible help of the Divine Rescuer, from that 
 grave of living death. Far better that the arm wither, 
 and the ear cease forever to catch any sound of thought 
 or joy, than that such memories should curse our future 
 hours. 
 
 But we have another duty forced upon us by the State, 
 which compels us to defy the State. We are forbidden to 
 harbor the fugitive, or to assist him in his endeavors to 
 escape his pursuer. This command conflicts with the posi- 
 tive decree of God none the less than those which demand 
 our aid in catching and binding the unhappy victim. It 
 must be disregarded. If the man seeks our assistance 
 whom the government is seeking to reduce to the awful 
 bondage, from which, against great odds and amid great 
 perils, he has effected his escape, even though it forbids us 
 to oppose its vile attempt, as servants of Christ we should 
 unhesitatingly disobey it, and obey Him. We must receive 
 him to our fireside as cordially as we would receive our 
 Lord, had He sought the shelter of our roof from the wicked 
 rage of His persecutors. We must conceal him from his 
 pursuers. We must aid him to escape from his native land, 
 that is thus refusing the protection to its native-born citizens 
 under its own flag, and on its own soil, which it claims for 
 those who but partially adopt it as their own, and are under 
 the flag beneath which they were born, sacrificing these 
 primal and dearest rights of its people to the lusts of god- 
 less traffickers in human flesh. 
 
 This duty may be attended with greater peril to our
 
 26 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 property and liberty than the refusal to assist in his recap- 
 ture ; but whatever sacrifices attend such a course, we 
 should willingly make them, feeling that the release of our 
 brethren from perpetual slavery is far more than a temporary 
 loss of our own liberty, or the sacrifice of all our property. 
 It is a duty we owe to him as our brother, of our own flesh 
 and blood, made in the same image as ourselves, by the same 
 God, endowed with the same nature and rights, responsible 
 to the same justice, and heir of the same immortality. 
 
 We cannot shun this command of God and be guiltless 
 concerning our brother. We cannot obey the law of the 
 land and have a conscience void of offense toward God and 
 toward man. We have let the sufferer be stretched again 
 upon the rack, from which, torn and weary, he has broken 
 away. We have permitted him who had escaped from this 
 most horrible pit, to be again plunged into its abyss of 
 despair. We have shut our eyes to his outstretched arms 
 and imploring appeal. We have withheld our hand from 
 the guidance and support he entreated. How, then, can we 
 meet His eye, His voice, His frown, when lie shall say, 
 "Forasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these My 
 brethren, ye did it not unto Me. Depart from Me, ye that 
 work iniquity." Not doing our duty when it is thus made 
 a proof of our love for Christ, is doing iniquity. Beware 
 how this sin licth at your door. 
 
 Thus clearly does the will and Word of God mark out our 
 path in the solemn trials of the hour. 
 
 IV. But a plea is set up by some teachers, political 
 and religious, with much vociferation and pertinacity, that 
 attracts attention, bewilders the judgment, and therefore 
 merits consideration. 
 
 It is said, that although, under some circumstances, the 
 course here laid down may be our duty, yet, as we are 
 situated, under a Constitution that, it is declared, recognizes 
 this system, as a national institution, we are morally bound
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 27 
 
 to obey the laws based on this recognition, even if they 
 clash with the laws of our Creator. 
 
 We have shown that civil government is based on the 
 social faculty, an inferior propensity of our nature, which 
 cannot rightly control the faculties acknowledged to be 
 superior. If this be so, any peculiarities in the institutions 
 of that government, whether in its Constitution, or laws, or 
 their operation, are inferior in their very nature to the duties 
 arising from our higher being, and can rightfully secure the 
 weight of its approval, only by conforming to its character 
 and claims. 
 
 The Constitution is a peculiarity of our national govern- 
 ment, designed to effect the .union of many independent 
 governments under one head for certain specific and limited 
 purposes. It is not generally considered as minute in its 
 authority as an ordinary government, since it only exercises 
 its power within specified limits. If it is thus limited, the 
 obligations to obey its claims can only be coextensive with 
 its written powers to make these claims. Where is the 
 written authority for this demand ? Where does the Con- 
 stitution say, " Congress has power to compel the restora- 
 tion of a runaway slave, even to the infliction of penalties 
 upon those who aid in his escape, or refuse to aid in his 
 return ? " Is it so nominated in the bond ? Ere we give up 
 the pound of flesh, cut from the centre of the heart, bleeding 
 with the dying life of a murdered Conscience, we demand 
 the letter of the sinful law. According to the favorite argu- 
 ment of the slaveholder, on his most petted theory of State 
 rights, he is powerless to enact or execute this great crime 
 against humanity and God. No step can he go beyond the 
 expressed permissions of the Constitution. He is hoisted 
 with his own petard. 
 
 But if it be allowed, with other statesmen, that the Con- 
 stitution is of equal authority with the States, or even 
 supreme in its claims, it cannot trample on the rights which
 
 28 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 itself guarantees, nor can it justly command the violation of 
 that higher law under which its own existence alone 
 endures. If the clause on which the law is based can, or 
 ought to be construed to support slavery, then that clause 
 conflicts with the preamble of the Constitution, and hence 
 can only be of superior weight on condition that it more 
 closely conforms to the law of God. If we must choose 
 between them, we must choose that which agrees best with 
 the law written on our hearts. The preamble decrees liberty, 
 the parenthesis of an article only suggests slavery. Under 
 which king ? God and man actually come together in one 
 part of the Constitution, man and the devil are, perhaps, 
 united in another. Who is to be worshiped ? 
 
 Many other legal objections are made to the binding 
 efficiency of this clause. It contains no power to execute 
 itself, says one, and therefore must be left to the moral sense 
 of the States themselves. It was not designed, says 
 another, and no less an authority than Daniel Webster, to 
 support slavery, but only the system of apprenticeship, then 
 very popular. Thus diversity of opinion among leading and 
 legal minds teaches us to be cautious about placing the 
 instrument, and the laws which may be said to be founded 
 upon it, above the intuitions of our moral nature, and the 
 teachings of the Word of God. We should ever remember 
 that there is a Law above the Constitution, a Lawgiver more 
 exalted than Congress, obedience to whose will alone can 
 'make a people virtuous, prosperous, and happy. 
 
 It has become too much the fashion of late to center all 
 moral excellence and natural prosperity in the Constitution. 
 We acknowledge with gratitude the debt we owe our fathers, 
 and the value of the bond, which unites our great country. 
 We believe that through these ties the Maker and Redeemer 
 of the race will display His attributes more clearly to mankind 
 than has yet been seen. We believe that here the religion 
 of Christ is to have full course and be glorified. But while
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 29 
 
 such are our opinions and desires, we believe that this 
 result can be consummated only by bringing the souls of 
 men into subjection to Christ through their vital regenera- 
 tion in the principles of the gospel. Shut up the Bible 
 House, the Tract Depository, the Church ; break the presses, 
 whose frequent issues, like sacred doves, fly over all the 
 land ; put out the light of Christianity in its renewing power 
 upon some, its restraining power over all ; and this land would 
 soon present a spectacle to the eyes of men and of angels 
 more hideous than any that glares upon us from the worst 
 epochs of human history, full of activity, of enterprise, of 
 intelligence, of ambition, of culture, but without God, with- 
 out restraint of law or love, a vast menagerie of untamed, 
 cruel, and insatiable lusts, without bar, or bolt, or keeper, 
 a tropical luxuriance of civilization, full of more than 
 tropical beasts of passion and destruction. The Constitu- 
 tion would be trampled under foot by all, as it now is 
 in those States whose devotion to slavery brings them into 
 collision with its claims, and a greater than antediluvian 
 corruption would cry mightily to God for a greater than 
 antediluvian ruin. 
 
 In Christ, not in the Constitution, must we put our trust. 
 On His law should we meditate, not on that which again 
 nails Him, scourged and bleeding, to the fatal cross. His 
 Name should be our badge of honor, our stamp of manhood. 
 Then, and then only, shall we truly render not only unto 
 Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but unto God, also, the 
 tilings that are God's. 
 
 I have endeavored to explain the grounds of our relation 
 to civil government, the extent of the obligation it imposes, 
 the modes of determining its 'usurpation of rights not belong- 
 ing to it, and our duty when it assumes these unbestowed 
 prerogatives for unrighteous ends. 
 
 I entreat you, as you love the Lord your God, as you 
 love your neighbor, as you desire the approval of a good
 
 30 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 Conscience now, and the approving welcome of Christ the 
 Judge in that day, I entreat you, declare your hostility to 
 any system or edict that retards the progress of the Gospel, 
 violates the teachings of the Conscience, defrauds your 
 neighbor of rights as truly his as they are yours, and as 
 far above all price for himself, his wife, his children, as 
 they are to you and yours, and that crowns its height of 
 iniquity by blasphemously rejecting the laws most expres- 
 sive of infinite love and holiness, the foundations of the 
 universe and of God Himself. 
 
 Let these expiring struggles of one of the most fell de- 
 stroyers of human happiness meet with no sympathy from 
 you. Let not the eye melt with pity over its narrative of 
 injuries inflicted by a just God and people. Let not the 
 hand of charity relieve its most deserved distress. It 
 assumes these postures of petition from the weakness that 
 precedes dissolution. There would be no need of a Fugi- 
 tive Slave Act, had not the conscience of the North given 
 these poor victims a home at every Christian hearth-stone, 
 were not the hideous crime of slavery staggering in its 
 strongholds under the light and strength which Christ and 
 the hour are sending forth upon it mightily. 
 
 Be not deceived by its new assumption of national forms 
 and phrases, the robes of Congressional decree and presiden- 
 tial signature. How will that signature yet glare upon its 
 signer, as Faust's in the legend. It will stain his memory to 
 all generations. Give it no support in any form. It is the 
 same fiend that crucified the Master. It is ready to feast its 
 ravenous appetite upon the bodies and souls of your brethren. 
 If by your silence or connivance it regains its strength, it will 
 only use it for the transformation of the whole country into 
 one vast grave of liberty and law. It has been driven from 
 the firesides, the capitols, the churches of the North. It 
 has thrown off the cloak of hypocritical philanthropy and 
 piety, of Biblical approval, of pecuniary profit, of social
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. 31 
 
 advantage, in which, till most recently, it strove to make 
 itself divine. It has fled for shelter to the Constitution, 
 hoping to find under its folds protection and opportunity to 
 regain its lost dominion. 
 
 Be not deceived. If allowed to coil itself around that 
 symbol of national unity, it will not relax its hold until it 
 has pressed all vitality not only from the American Con- 
 stitution, but from the American people. If permitted to 
 cling to that altar of our national faith, it will defile the 
 whole temple of our liberties with its pestiferous breath. 
 Like Laocoon's will be our condition, like Laocoon's our 
 fate. 
 
 There is no permanent union between liberty and slavery. 
 God and Satan can have no compact nor compromise. One 
 or the other must be triumphant. If you wish for the cause 
 of God to prevail, you must enroll yourself among the active 
 opponents of every institution and effort designed to sup- 
 port or extend the cause of sin, and labor earnestly and 
 persistently for the righteous victory. 
 
 Let your tears flow for the oppressed rather than for the 
 oppressor, for those by this wicked decree made unjustly law- 
 less, rather than for those impiously lawful. Think upon the 
 long, long hours which the poor slave spends in pining for 
 freedom ; think of the perils and sufferings he undergoes in 
 making his escape from the house of bondage. Remember 
 his outcast and despised condition even among the free, 
 and, in some respects, Christian States to which he has fled. 
 Dwell upon the struggles, fears, toils, sufferings, loathings 
 which he has endured, and then say, if you be a Christian, 
 if you be a man, if a human soul beats in your bosom, can 
 you place the manacles again upon those bleeding hands ? 
 Can you allow him, through your vigilance in assisting in 
 hi* arrest, or your negligence in affording him the means of 
 escape, to be dragged back in chains to the lash, the block, 
 the more than death, from which God and his strong will
 
 32 THE HIGHER LAW. 
 
 have rescued him ? Can you refuse to contribute your 
 voice and vote, your purse and prayers, every means in 
 your possession, or your influence, to remove this curse 
 from the Church and the land ? Lift your hearts above the 
 thick air of cowardice and crime tjiat to-day invests this 
 whole nation, into the serene, eternal day of the truth of 
 God. Say to every one who solicits your aid in this work 
 of immeasurable crime, in the mighty words of Freedom's 
 Laureate : 
 
 " We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery's hateful hell? 
 Our voices at your bidding take up the bloodhounds' yell ? 
 We gather at your summons above our fathers' grave, 
 From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear the wretched slave ? 
 
 "Thank God, not yet so vilely can Christian freemen bow; 
 The spirit of our early times is with us even now. 
 Think not because our Pilgrim blood flows slow, and calm, and cool, 
 We thus can stoop our chainless neck, our brother's slave and tool. 
 
 "All that a brother should do, all that a free man may, 
 Heart, hand, and purse we otfer as in that early day ; 
 But that one dark, loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone, 
 And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown. 
 
 " Hold while ye may your struggling slaves, and burden God's free air 
 With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's stern despair. 
 Cling closer to the cleaving curse that writes upon your plains 
 The burden of the Almighty's wrath against a land of chains. 
 
 " We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within 
 The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin ; 
 "We leave you with your bondmen to wrestle, while ye can, 
 With the strong upward tendencies and godlike soul of man. 
 
 " But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given 
 For freedom and humanity is registered in heaven ; 
 No slave hunt in our borders, no pirates on our strand, 
 No fetters for our brethren, no slave upon our land."
 
 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM: 
 
 "THE BEAUTY OF ISRAEL is SLAIN UPON THY HIGH FLACKS." 
 
 2 Samuel i. 19. 
 
 "AND SAUL WAS CONSENTING UNTO HIS DEATH." Acts viii. 1. 
 "THERE WAS DARKNESS OVER ALL THE LAND." Matt, xxviii. 45. 
 
 E gather to-day around the corpse of Freedom. 
 Our nation has given up the ghost. Her deadly 
 sickness has met with but feeble resistance to its 
 progress ; and to-day it waves its black banner in 
 acknowledged triumph over her prostrate, corrupting form. 
 The beauty of Israel is slain upon her high places. As we 
 bend over this fallen glory and strength, I shall try to speak 
 of that vanished strength and glory, of the means and the 
 foe that murdered it : 
 
 " Show you sweet" Freedom's " wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths! 
 And bid them speak for me." 
 
 I ask you to consider your duty as Christians in this 
 dreadful hour, and to see with the eye of prophecy either 
 her resurrection in a greatness never before displayed, 
 like that of her Divine Author on His reappearance from 
 
 * A sermon preached at Wilbraham, Mass., May 28, 1854, on the oc- 
 casion of the passage of the Nebraska Bill, by the Senate of the United 
 States, on the midnight of Thursday, May 25, 1854. 
 
 3 (33)
 
 34 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 the grave a resurrection that shall send despair and ruin 
 through the ranks of her murderers, or, if we are perma- 
 nently stupefied by the dragon that has triumphed over us, 
 behold with the same clear vision the still more fearful 
 spectacle of a contending, ruined, obliterated nation. 
 
 " A curse shall light upon the limbs of men, 
 Domestic fury and fierce civil strife 
 Will cumber all the parts of this fair land." 
 
 You may say " This is a sick man's dream." " Is not 
 this a free land ? Has it not been consecrated by the pray- 
 ers and sacred sufferings of the Pilgrims, honored by the 
 patriotic valor of the revolutionary fathers, made illustrious 
 by the wisdom of Washington and Jefferson, of Hamilton 
 and Adams ? Is it not a land whose institutions are based 
 on the broadest principles of liberty a land of wealth and 
 enterprise, comfort and culture, churches and piety ? And 
 can this land be wrapped in its grave clothes, and be even 
 now an offense and a loathing among the nations of the 
 earth ? Impossible ! Does not trade rush through its 
 crowded channels ? Does not the earth bring forth abun- 
 dantly, laughing ever with its munificent harvests ? Does 
 not labor ' strike with its hundred hands at the golden gates 
 of the morning ' ? Does not steam toil in our factories, and 
 whirl its products over all the land ? Do not sweet bells 
 call to -church ? Are we not the greatest, freest, happiest 
 of nations ? " Alas ! " Gray hairs were on him, and he 
 knew it not." " When ye say peace and safety, then sud- 
 den destruction cometh upon him, and he cannot escape." 
 Material life flows on after the spiritual has gone. Chemical 
 laws keep the atoms of a dead body for a while as compact 
 as when it tented a soul. 
 
 There is no national life. What exists, exists in obstruc- 
 tion, weakness, obscurity. Last Thursday we surrendered 
 all our glorious heritage. We gave up the Declaration of
 
 THE NEBRASKA BILL. 35 
 
 Independence, the revolutionary speeches, and battles of 
 fire and blood, the Constitution of our country, the names 
 of our Pilgrim and Puritan ancestry, our hopes and pros- 
 pects, our morals and religion. We have laid them all at 
 the feet of Slavery. We confess ourselves her slaves. We 
 open our gates for her triumphal march to unquestioned, 
 universal power. 
 
 I ask no pardon for bringing this subject before you on 
 this sacred day. I have waited till the strife raging at the 
 seat of government should end, feeling that I had no need 
 to stimulate you to your duty to pray for those there and 
 then engaged in the contest, and that this word should be 
 spoken when that battle was decided. I had hoped against 
 hope that the right would triumph, and that I could have 
 congratulated you on the first national step that liberty had 
 taken towards a final victory. But that day is not yet, if 
 ever. A far different task awaits me, and by God's grace 
 I hope to discharge it. Let us, with sackcloth and ashes 
 upon our souls, sit around this corpse of American Freedom ; 
 deliver its funeral sermon, and gather, if we can, some rea- 
 sons for its resurrection, and. of our part and lot in bringing 
 about the glory of that distant hour. Let us try to an- 
 swer the question, How can these things be? 
 
 Five years ago, or fifty, any previous year since we 
 became a nation, such a deed could not have happened. 
 Southerner arid Northerner would have responded in burn- 
 ing indignation to a charge of his devotion to such a crime, 
 " Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing ? Does 
 not my belief that slavery is an evil, my sensitiveness to 
 the honor of the country through its pledge faithfully made 
 in the compromise agreement of 1820, show the injustice of 
 your imputations ? " And yet this act is a necessary 
 result of all previous acts. It is the perfect fruit of germs 
 long since planted, and constantly nurtured. It is a link 
 in an iron chain of our whole national history. In the
 
 36 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 first concession made to the slave power, this monster was 
 born. 
 
 Though the letter of the Constitution does not use the 
 word " slave," yet in its representative basis, if not in its 
 fugitive clause, there is a recognition of its existence, a 
 bowing to its behests. Two small States, by their firmness 
 and vehemence, brought the other eleven to their feet, made 
 them surrender their convictions, and obey the soft voice, 
 but mailed arm, of Belial. What though Franklin and Jay 
 organize abolition societies, and Washington and Jefferson 
 favor emancipation, and Madison gets the word " slavery " 
 excluded from the Constitution ? What though every emi- 
 nent man of the age is hostile to the iniquity ? Still they 
 let it find entrance into their Constitution. It is there, in- 
 trenched in the national fortress ; it mocks at all objections 
 and objectors, and commences its march to universal dominion. 
 
 When the sons of God came together for their sublime 
 deliberations, Satan came also ; and though, as in the days 
 of Job, he gained not every point, yet, more than with him, 
 he gained the chief, and, with the gleefulness of perdition, he 
 snatched at his success, and plotted and waited, waited and 
 plotted, year and year, for larger prizes. lie won them. 
 
 A law to execute more perfectly the Fugitive Slave clause 
 followed within six years. A law which never could have 
 passed the First Congress passed the Third. A law which 
 would have been pronounced unconstitutional by the found- 
 ers of the Constitution triumphed under the very eyes of 
 those founders. And the hand of Washington signed his 
 name as president to an edict which five years before he 
 would have, abhorred himself for approving. 
 
 New territory is sought. Louisiana is purchased. She 
 seeks erection into States. The strife commences afresh. 
 Again the slave power gains all it wants by asking for 
 more ; and Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas wheel into line 
 under its pirate flag, while the desert lands, which will
 
 THE NEBRASKA BILL. 37 
 
 not be needed for a generation, are professedly abandoned 
 to freedom, then, as of old, driven into the wilderness ; 
 thence, also as of old, to be driven out when its enemy 
 would make this desert his dwelling-plaee. In that contro- 
 versy slavery triumphed. Many then saw that when those 
 remoter regions became the seat of population, it would 
 claim them as its own, would make them its own. But 
 then it could not have been done. The spirit of the fathers 
 was not yet utterly lost. One half only of the fair acres 
 was given up to this ravenous beast. One half alone of 
 its pure soil was to be wet with the blood of God's perse- 
 cuted saints. One half of its air was to be filled with 
 shrieks under the scourge, with moans over sold and stolen 
 children, with the unutterable agony of that prison-house 
 of humanity. The anaconda rested content with its gorged 
 appetite, which two hundred thousand square miles had 
 momentarily satisfied, assured that those who had granted 
 him so much would bestow the balance when his appetite 
 returned. His assurance was well grounded. 
 
 But before that hour came, the old religious and philan- 
 thropic anti-slavery sentiment, which had glowed in the 
 souls that burned with the revolutionary fires, was kindled 
 afresh. A little, despised sect, their name a stench in the 
 nostrils of the country and the Church, cast out of men as 
 evil, lifted up their voice like a trumpet, and told the house 
 of Israel its transgressions, and the hoxise of Judah its sins. 
 They started from the only Christian, the only true basis 
 sympathy with the slave as a son of man and a son of 
 God, an heir of heaven, a joint heir with Jesus Christ. 
 This was new doctrine to our degenerate fears a doc- 
 trine no Church in this land had ever fully and faithfully 
 preached. We mocked at and reviled them. We drove 
 them from our churches, halls, and homes. We haled them 
 before our judgment-seats. We issued edicts against them 
 from State and National Congresses, and executive speeches
 
 38 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 from the chairs of governors and presidents. What the Mad- 
 isons and Jeffersons, the Hancocks and Storys, would have 
 approved was denounced and proscribed by the Van Burens 
 and Everetts of this generation. 
 
 Still they fought for the right. It may be with lack of 
 discretion, yet how shall you and I in our idleness dare to 
 take up a railing accusation against them ? How dare you 
 say that William Lloyd Garrison, George Thompson, Orange 
 Scott, and their compeers were not the wisest of their 
 generation in action, as they certainly were in their fears, 
 their prophecies, and their entreaties ? Their errors will 
 yet be lost in the splendor of their daring, sincerity, 
 and zeal. If ever freedom becomes the possession, as it is 
 the birthright, of every man in this land, he who will be 
 honored with the loftiest monument a monument built by 
 every hand that has been raised against him will be that 
 yet hated and proscribed, that somewhat error-led, but far 
 more truth-led, man, William Lloyd Garrison. 
 
 This stone, cut out of the mountain without hands, rolled 
 by few but tireless arms, grew, and grew, until, when the 
 slave power set up its claim to national domain, a new 
 voice mingled in the tumults of the hour, and made its 
 triumphs Bunker Hill victories, that betokened an ultimate 
 destruction. 
 
 Again the anaconda stirs. It demands Texas Texas 
 with a war ; and it wins. It claims that the new regions 
 acquired by w#r should be his, and they are given it. 
 Maddened with lust and success, it says, " Return to me 
 my fugitives hiding in your own Free States ; give me 
 that nurse and playmate of your children ; that industrious 
 citizen whose family looks up* to him for protection ; the 
 minister from the altar. They are mine." And all the 
 people hasten to give them up. No, not all. Among 
 the faithless, faithful stood a few. Seven thousand were 
 found who bent not the knee to this Baal of America.
 
 THE NEBRASKA BILL. 39 
 
 May they soon become seventy times seven, and deliver 
 the land from this idolatry and the Jezreel abominations 
 which so fiercely flourish under its dominion. 
 
 Even then the proposition that has just been success- 
 fully carried would have been rejected with abhorrence. 
 Great and little politicians declared that these concessions 
 were made only because the Constitution demanded .it. 
 Their sacrifice was Jephtha's, but so was their necessity, 
 and their lamentation. But any attempt to remove an 
 ancient landmark, any disturbance of ancient settlements, 
 will never be allowed. No concessions to slavery. 0, no ! 
 Only a painful fulfillment of agreements which our fathers 
 made, only a declining to exasperate our brethren of the 
 South by a useless proviso ; and so, by soft words and a 
 flattering tongue, by a heart that deceived itself, the gov- 
 ernment became the bloodhound of the slaveholder, to 
 track and catch his God-like property. So our vast pos- 
 sessions, acquired by our blood and treasiire, became an 
 Aceldama, a field of blood unto this day. And great men 
 and good men shouted loud hosannas over these peaceful 
 measures, and declared that He who holdeth the winds in 
 His fists would bind these contending breezes, and that 
 there should be a great calm. 
 
 Ah ! the anaconda was only resting from his bloody 
 feasts. Now and then he opes his ponderous jaws, and 
 swallows down, as a sweet morsel, the body and the 
 soul of a Long, or a Sims, some poor Christian free man 
 or free woman. But its fell hunger does not yet gnaw 
 within. And we only said, "It is the price of the Union, 
 this precious Union. It is the condition of our country's 
 existence. Throw the slave Daniel into the Southern den 
 of lions. Our farms, our stores, our schools, must flourish 
 even if a few negroes suffer slightly. They are half 
 brutes. They cannot feel the chains, the whip, the auction- 
 block, the breaking of heart-strings, the fiery stake of
 
 40 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 death. What are they compared with our great and 
 glorious Union ? ' Off with their heads ! ' : And on we 
 marched, and boasted, and declared ourselves the stan- 
 dard-bearers of the race, and called on Europe to witness 
 our glory, to fall at our feet, and follow our illustrious 
 leadership to universal democracy. But that great serpent 
 awoke ; nay, rather, he never slept. He bided his time ; 
 and when our boasts were loudest, and political calm the 
 deepest, he said, " Give up that useless Missouri Compro- 
 mise. It aggravates the South. It does you no good. 
 It will make no difference in the end. Slavery can never 
 flourish in those territories. Don't wound our feelings by 
 adhering to its punctilios. You very generously aban- 
 doned the Wilmot Proviso, because of our sensitiveness. 
 Do the generous thing once more." 
 
 We were struck aghast. " 'Give up the Compromise '? 
 Open the gates of the Eden of the continent to this river 
 of death, that has burned and blackened so many fair 
 fields ? Never ! The Thirteen States fought eight years 
 rather than submit to foreign tyranny. We will fight as 
 long rather than surrender a domain twice as large as 
 the Colonies embraced to a domestic tyranny immeasur- 
 ably worse." Loud rose the cry : " It is ours. It shall 
 remain ours." And behold, while we cry, our representa- 
 tives hold it out to the greedy clutch of the slaveholder. 
 It is grasped. It is swallowed, and to-day the arch 
 tempter is the sole ruler in that Paradise. Freedom, 
 intelligence, and enterprise, art, civilization, and Chris- 
 tianity, every grace and strength of humanity, have fled, 
 as the angelS that frequented the holy Eden, and Satan, 
 sin, and death revel in its desecrated forests and prairies, 
 their unquestioned possession. 
 
 Thus these things are. Not by one step, nor two, have 
 we reached this goal, but by a practical imbruting of the 
 conscience, by yielding to the demands of this awful
 
 THE NEBRASKA BILL. 41 
 
 iniquity, by violently opposing and abusing its earnest 
 enemies. Had not these members of Congress fought 
 against the anti-slavery movement with .furious passion, 
 they would not be found to-day enacting this bill. The 
 light that was in them is darkness ; and how great is that 
 darkness ! What an awful depth upon depth of dark- 
 ness ! Great men in the pulpit and the forum set the bad 
 example of mocking at the higher law, and now their 
 bayers on deride the > very law which they so idolatrously 
 worship. So comes Pandemonium, no law, but Chaos and 
 old Night. 
 
 "Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine; 
 Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine ! 
 Lo, thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored ; 
 Light dies before thy uncreating word : . 
 Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, 
 And universal darkness buries all." 
 
 Verily as we have sown, so do we reap this day. Saul 
 is consenting to the martyr of this first-born of Christianity. 
 Saul, the Pharisee of Pharisees, we, who tithe mint and 
 anise and cummin, and neglect the weightier matters 
 of the law, judgment and mercy and truth, we stand 
 by while the murderous rocks are being hurled at its 
 head ; we share in the robber's spoils its sacred lands, 
 with all their hidden but real wealth of happiness and 
 prosperity. You and I, my brethren, have too much to do 
 with this dire act. Have you not said, " Party first, lib- 
 erty afterward " ? Have you not cried, " Union, Union, 
 Union, now and forever," carefully omitting the word 
 " Liberty /' which alone makes that Union an honor or a 
 blessing ? Have you not filled your ears with the shouts, 
 " Our Nation, however bounded, and however niled," so 
 that you could not and would not hear the wail of your 
 oppressed fellow-citizens, that heart-broken entreaty from 
 the depths of that vast dungeon, covering a half million
 
 42 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 of square miles "Am I not a man and a brother?" 
 Have you not said, "The slave belongs to his master; 
 how can I interfere ? " Have you not acknowledged the 
 right of man to say to his brother, his sister, " Thou 
 art my property, to be worked, whipped, starved, sold, 
 ravished, killed, as I will ? " Have you not forgotten 
 often in your daily prayers to pray for those in bonds as 
 bound with them ? In insolence of heart have you not 
 despised " God's image cut in ebony ; " ay, cut in ivory 
 too, if that seems to you the more precious ? for the blue- 
 eyed, yellow-haired Saxon, no less than his swarthier 
 brother, groans to-day in that prison-house. Have you 
 not joined in jeers and slanders against the abolitionists, 
 and given ground for the remark of a senator from Georgia, 
 Mr. Toombs, but last Thursday, that " the government has 
 but little to fear from the abolitionists. Their greatest 
 achievements have been to raise mobs of fugitives and 
 free negroes, and to incite them to murder and other 
 crimes, and their exploits generally end in subornation of 
 perjury, to escape the criminal courts. The whole concern 
 is not worth an ounce of powder." 
 
 Have you not apologized for, defended, and even ap- 
 plauded the system of slavery, commending the graces 
 of the masters, the submission, contentment, and even 
 happiness of the slave ? Have you not cherished a pride 
 of caste, declared complexion a Heaven-appointed barrier 
 of separation between the children of Adam, a great gulf, 
 across which no white and wealthy Dives could pass to 
 mingle in perfect unity of feeling and life with a black 
 or tawny Lazarus, barbarous, beggarly, and sore-smitten, 
 as you saw and said, albeit he was even then lying in 
 Abraham's bosom, the best beloved of all his children ? 
 Have you not thus declared the diversity of the human 
 race, and given your sinful aversion the authority of a 
 divine decree ?
 
 THE NEBRASKA BILL. 43 
 
 Let him that is without sin among us cast the first stone 
 at those lofty in position and power, who but give the 
 logical and inevitable conclusion to these feelings ; who 
 say, "The negro has no identity of rights with the white," 
 as you say he has none of blood ; " the abolitionist is a 
 madman, scattering firebrands, arrows, and death. Money 
 is everything. Make money. Extend slavery. Crush out 
 abolitionism ! " And it is done. In their grand if gloomy 
 palace of hell sit these slave masters of the people, all of 
 whom are their slaves, and most of whom, if of white 
 faces, hug their chains and kiss their conquerors' feet. 
 They exult, as did the Pandemonium chiefs over their mag- 
 nificent structure. They exclaim with the Babylonian mon- 
 arch, " Is not this great Babylon that I have builded ? " 
 " Surely all the principalities and powers, all the offices and 
 honor of the American continent, shall be ours, and ours 
 forever." They heed not the footstep of the descending 
 God ; they hear not that avenging voice whispering in their 
 heart of hearts, " Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be 
 required of thee ; " then what becomes of thy stores of 
 power, pomp, and pride ? 
 
 " An answer sweeps through the troubled night 
 With a shout for the slave and a shout for the right. 
 Hear ye not, hear ye not, through your marble arch, 
 The iron tramp of the millions march? 
 The earthquake awakes in a giant start, 
 And breaks the chain which has bound his heart." 
 
 By such slow and steady approaches the citadel of liber- 
 ty has been enclosed, undermined, taken. America is no 
 longer a free nation. No longer can she boast that in 
 her borders the rights of man are inviolable. Here may 
 the oppressed find liberty, and the heavy laden rest. Not 
 in obedience to constitutional scruples, not by a sudden 
 surprise, temptation, or fall, has this destruction come upon 
 her. This act is against all constitutional statements or
 
 44 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 suggestions. She gives her hand, if not her heart, to the 
 vote. So far from being the first triumph of the Tempter, 
 it is the autumnal fruit of seeds sown by our fathers' hands, 
 and nurtured and enriched by the assiduous culture of 
 three generations. From the ordinance of 1787, which 
 admitted slavery to all our country south of the Ohio, by 
 forbidding it north of that line, and which built up the 
 enormous power of this crime in four of the largest and 
 most influential of our Slave States, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
 Alabama, and Mississippi, we have descended to the ordi- 
 nance of 1854, which prohibits freedom in all the territory 
 that had been pledged sacredly to liberty, which practically 
 aud intentionally forbids any restrictions on the march of 
 this demon over any part of the national domain. 
 
 There is no national life in us. Before the world, before 
 God, we stand to-day in a blacker infamy than rests upon 
 any other power. We have become the basest of king- 
 doms. The lowest of the nations of the earth look down 
 upon us. France has liberated its slaves in Algiers and 
 the West Indies. Russia has emancipated its serfs, Mexico 
 its citizens. Brazil discourages slavery and encourages 
 its extirpation. Turkey represses this accursed trade. 
 We alone, of all Christian, of all heathen lands, avow the 
 divine origin of slavery, and accord it unlimited life. We 
 alone tear down the wall of separation our fathers had 
 built, and say to the sea of unspeakable crime and agony, 
 " No longer shall it be said to thee, by man or God, ' Here 
 shall thy proud waves be stayed ; ' but dash, roar, roll 
 onward and onward, engulfing all those vast and blessed 
 regions with an arkless deluge of death." 
 
 If Jefferson could say, in his day, " I tremble for my 
 country when I remember that God is just," what must we 
 say, who have seen that country descend from one point of 
 baseness to another, until now African cruelty, Egyptian 
 degradation, or Roman corruption, in the heights of their
 
 THE NEBRASKA BILL. 45 
 
 excesses, were hardly more vile, were far less guilty ? There 
 should be no more Fourth of July, its celebration is a 
 mockery ; no more reading of the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence, we are independent no longer : the slave's collar 
 and manacles burden our neck and arms ; no more boast of 
 our Christianity as a nation, when our President and Con- 
 gress exceed Nero and his senate in pagan edicts and 
 crimes ; no more vaunts of our greatness among the nations 
 of the earth. They have heard of our shame, they have 
 seen it, and they rejoice in it. We, raised to heaven by 
 free institutions and all the culture that has ever yet been 
 given to man, have voluntarily cast ourselves down to hell. 
 Before God and all the world, America stands to-day the 
 propagandist of slavery, the advocate and practicer of the 
 dogma that man can, and should, and shall own his fellow- 
 man ; that we are endowed by the Creator, not with inalien- 
 able rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, 
 but of murder, bondage, and the destruction of happiness ; 
 that there is no sacredness in the marriage tie, no duty to 
 believe in or regard the affections of father or mother, hus- 
 band or wife, brother or sister; that the "peculiar" and 
 very domestic " institution " of home life and love is con- 
 fined exclusively to those who have not a drop of African 
 blood in their veins ; that the human auction-block, the 
 whipping-post, the branding-iron, the bloodhound, the gal- 
 lows-tree, and the stake in a word, every barbarism 
 are the true elements of a nation's growth and glory. 
 These are the doctrines enacted by the present Congress of 
 the United States, approved by our present President, and 
 published to the world as the consummate flower of Chris- 
 tian civilization in this land of the Puritan, Huguenot, and 
 Quaker, in the year of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, 
 the eighteen hundred and fifty-fourth. The pen that put 
 the figures of that date of our redemption upon this satanic 
 bill must have shrunk from the profanity, if the heart and
 
 46 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 hand that it served were so depraved as to be unconscious 
 of the horrible sin. 
 
 The deepest depth is reached. There may be a table- 
 land of darkness upon which future legislators and execu- 
 tives shall erect other trophies of their wickedness, the 
 abolition of all laws which now prevent the bringing or 
 keeping and trading of slaves in the Free States ; the rein- 
 statement of the African slave trade a trade far less cruel 
 than that which is regularly carried on under the protection 
 of our government between Baltimore and New Orleans ; 
 the enslaving of white laborers as well as those of the darker 
 hue, who now pine in chains ; the acquisition of Cuba by 
 robbery or by open war with Spain, as we fought with 
 Mexico, to win a new region for this crime ; and, at last, 
 and not improbably, a war with Great Britain, to prevent 
 Canada's harboring the fugitives from our oppression. 
 Then cometh the end a return to violence, ignorance, 
 idleness, and bestiality surpassed only by those in that 
 "outer darkness," the "dogs, sorcerers, whoremongers, mur- 
 derers, idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." 
 
 Is this our future ? Must our star be hurled from the 
 heavens up whose steeps it was marching with such a 
 rapid, vigorous, and lustrous step ? Shall our fine gold 
 become dim, our name, long the terror of tyrants, be- 
 come their byword, our strength for the oppressed of all 
 lands change to a rotten reed which pierceth the hand that 
 leans upon it, and snaps while it stings ? This we are ! 
 It is no shall be. The eclipse is on the sun. Darkness is 
 now over all the land. The glow is faded from the heavens, 
 and all isles and continents, even to distantmost Asia and 
 Africa, gaze with awe and sadness at the pale, cold light 
 which we shed upon their dreary realms. But yesterday 
 the nation 
 
 " Stood against the world; now lies she here, 
 And none so poor to do her reverence."
 
 THE NEBRASKA BILL. 47 
 
 But is the eclipse total ? Is there not a ring a faint 
 and little ring of light around the blackened orb, that will 
 yet re-cover all its face with glory ? Will not this dark- 
 ness pass away, and the true light again shine ? Step by 
 step has this obscuration moved on, a small segment in 
 1789, the whole face in 1854. The shadowy edge of bright- 
 ness gives token of a brighter day to-morrow. The admin- 
 istration triumphed, but its forces were divided; and had 
 not its foes come to the rescue it would have failed in its 
 attempt. Its own party threw a larger Northern vote 
 against it than for it. A hundred Democrats were found 
 to resist the crime a hundred in a body of whom almost 
 every one was elected on a pro-slavery platform. This is 
 a star in the midnight, a ray of morning lying athwart the 
 denseness of gloom. 
 
 But not upon this hundred do we rely for deliverance. 
 Behind them is a mass of millions, whose eyes are freed 
 from the scales of party obligations, whose souls thrill with 
 novel sympathies for their brother in chains, whose indig- 
 nant voices have gone up to God in petition after petition 
 against this outrage, who have seen the slave struggling 
 for freedom before their own eyes, branded and bleeding, 
 but still defying his robbers ; who have read tales, real or 
 fictitious, the latter far less than the reality, that burned 
 through their hearts like fire, filled them with an agony 
 of sensibility and sympathy, and nerved them with an ab- 
 horrence of slavery and a resolution to destroy it. This 
 mighty mass are recognizing their rights as members of the 
 great Republic. Their numbers grow rapidly ; their spirit, 
 and resolve, and consciousness of power outrun in increase 
 the additions to their adherents. They are almost stupe- 
 fied at this awful horror. They feel that it is beyond the 
 scope of dreams. But they are not unnerved by the spec- 
 tacle. They are preparing to confront it boldly, legally, 
 effectively.
 
 48 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 Behind the Congressional hundred, behind these masses, 
 rocking with prophetic throes, stands the Church of Christ, 
 too often, alas! dumb and paralyzed before great and gen- 
 eral sins, whose robes much blood of the innocents stains, 
 who in this long conflict has too frequently forgotten that 
 she was the Church of Christ, and has once and again be- 
 come the synagogue of Satan, and who is even now far from 
 representing perfectly her Author and Founder, and only 
 Life. For this crime has polluted the sanctuary, and set up 
 the abomination that maketh desolate in the most holy 
 place. Yet still, with all her faults and failures, she is by 
 far the best organization among men for the extirpation of 
 national no less than individual sins. The Church of Christ 
 abolished idolatry, gladiatorial shows, Roman and European 
 slavery. She is beating down with her gigantic arm the 
 strongholds of modern idolatry. She is moving into the van, 
 and marshaling the hosts against this evil. 
 
 Slowly but surely she is emerging from those waters of 
 pollution into which she was led by a criminal love of the 
 world, or a delusive dream that, by conforming to the lusts of 
 the flesh, she could deliver souls from those lusts. We have 
 all gone down into Egypt, holy Jacob and Joseph as well 
 as worldly-minded Simeon, cruel Levi, changeable Reuben, 
 and carnal-hearted Judah. From Egypt we are returning. 
 Here comes an individual church and pastor, there a confer- 
 ence, or association, or synod of churches and pastors, until 
 this act has shot, like a crystallizing force, through Church 
 and ministry, transforming multitudes averse to agitation 
 and abolitionism into the warmest friends of both. 
 
 It has opened the eyes of the apologists of the system, 
 and those opposed to any attempt to extirpate it, to the 
 truth long since seen by the clear-eyed friends of Freedom, 
 that Slavery cannot remain at ease, eating its bread in 
 quietness and singleness of heart. It must work. Like 
 its father, the devil, it ever goeth about seeking whom it
 
 THE NEBRASKA BILL. 40 
 
 may devour. It encroaches on the sacred territory of the 
 Church. It ascends from her obscure layman and preacher to 
 her pillars in pew and pulpit. It climbs into the high seats 
 of the bishopric, paling the fires and blackening the bright- 
 ness of the holy breastplate of the highest of the priests 
 of God. It has entered her organizations, and t disciplined 
 her discipline. Thus it stood in the Church, as it now does 
 in the State, unquestioned, uncontrolled, supreme in author- 
 ity and power. From this seat it has measurably fallen, 
 from that of the State may it fall speedily and forever. 
 
 This act will give an impetus to the work of Church puri- 
 fication such as a smaller evil might not have done. May 
 God hasten the day when every Christian Church shall say 
 to her slaveholding member, " Repent, and forsake that 
 sin. Let your oppressed go free, or release my hand from 
 the grasp of Christian fellowship. Leave the holy inclosure 
 of those who would fain live unspotted from the world. 
 Stand without until you can come in as one who shows that 
 he loves God by loving his neighbor as himself." This na- 
 tional shame, like the act of the Church forbidding colored 
 testimony, will convert thousands of the timid into the brave, 
 and incite every communion to the work of purging itself 
 and its country of the fearful sin. 
 
 In front of the sacramental hosts of God's elect appears 
 the Captain of our salvation. He has said the wickedness 
 of the wicked shall come to an end. He has declared He 
 will give deliverance to the captive, and open the prison' 
 door to the bound. He stands with the gathering multi- 
 tude, bringing their hearts into closest sympathy with His 
 purposes, and inspiring them with a zeal and energy that, 
 through their communication, descend on less lofty and holy 
 masses like a mighty rushing wind that fills every heart, 
 however ignoble in its general tendency, , however unbe- 
 lieving concerning its own salvation, with these most Christly 
 principles and resolves. 
 4
 
 50 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 Are these sufficient grounds for hope ? We see the 
 close-knitted squadrons of error. Their faces are flushed 
 with victory. Their passion for conquest is growing with 
 wonderful rapidity by its late successes. They do not 
 stand still. Far from it. Does a victorious army, in an 
 enemy's country, halt and surrender on its field of vic- 
 tory ? They march on. Ere the coming month is over, 
 your ear, if watchful, will catch the pass-word from lip to 
 lip in the presidential mansion, the Senate Chamber, the 
 Hall of Representatives, " Forcible occupation of St. Do- 
 mingo, that Hayti may be returned to its chains ; war with 
 Spain, that Cuba may be ours ; yet another slice of Mexico 
 for our slaves." Before this Congress rises, if the black 
 cloud of war does not again shut down upon the land by 
 the decree of President and Senate, all this may be done. 
 The future is full of portents dire. The wicked rule ; the 
 righteous are hidden. 
 
 But the growth of the anti-slavery sentiment has been 
 more rapid and strong than that of pro-slavery dominion. 
 So far as opinion is concerned and that is very far the 
 North is disinthralled. Opinion will soon ripen into convic- 
 tion of duty, and conviction work itself into action. \Ve 
 shall see, I hope, men of every political and religious faith 
 bound together by one feeling, one vow, one act, never to 
 rest from battle till our government is emancipated from 
 this sin. Not only may we see this feeling in the North, 
 'but the Spirit of God and the Conscience of man are bound 
 ])y no sectional limits. Over that vast region the light is 
 breaking. May it prove the light of the morning. A free 
 press, full of denunciations against slavery, lives and even 
 flourishes in Virginia. The people of Kentucky thrust a 
 slaveholding murderer from their borders.* He is pre- 
 served from a. felon's fate solely in consequence of his 
 
 * Matt. Ward, of Louisville, Kentucky, who killed Professor Butler for 
 chastising Ward's brother, who was one of his pupils.
 
 THE NEBRASKA BILL. 51 
 
 wealth and rank, even as every such murderer is through- 
 out that whole region. But he alone of them all has fled 
 before the indignation of the people. If he is not the last 
 who murders school teachers as they would vermin, he is 
 not the last, we trust, who will find a popular verdict that 
 shall override the unjust wrestings of the courts, and vindi- 
 cate, if roughly, the majesty of law, and the rights of the 
 humblest citizen. 
 
 Frequent cases of manumission, the increased dissemina- 
 tion through the South of anti-slavery books and papers, 
 their more intimate connection with a North becoming purer 
 and purer with every year and every trial, these blessed 
 signs betoken the coming of the resurrection morn to that 
 benighted region, to our now benighted land. Mighty as 
 stands this iniquity to-day, like Nebuchadnezzar's image, 
 its feet are clay. Speedily shall its power vanish away. 
 Speedily, but not this month, nor year. Perhaps the war 
 may be one of many years ; it has already been ; but it 
 shall vanish away. Not in an unexpected or unseen man- 
 ner ; not by some miraculous act in which man meddles not, 
 but by one effort, prolonged, intense, gradually successful. 
 It has grown by progressive acts. So it may die. 
 
 A few reflections will conclude our sad service. 
 
 First. This dark hour should fill us with humiliation. 
 Perhaps you have been very valiant for the truth,. now pros- 
 trate under insulting feet, and you may presume on that 
 faithfulness to reproach your neighbor for his idleness and 
 recreancy. But it is not the false so much as the faithful 
 that in such hours cast themselves penitently and with self- 
 reproaches before God. When Jerusalem lay a desolation, 
 upon which the curse of God had been executed, it was the 
 elders of the daughter of Zion, not the blasphemers and 
 idlers, who cast dust upon their heads, and bowed before 
 the Lord. It was not some worldly and timid Jew, captive 
 to his fears and lust more than to his Babylonish master,
 
 52 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 but the holy Daniel, that said, " I set my face unto the Lord 
 God to seek by prayer and supplication, with fasting, and 
 sackcloth, and ashes ; and I prayed unto the Lord my God, 
 and said, ' Lord, the great and dreadful God, we have 
 sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, 
 and have rebelled even by departing from thy precepts and 
 from thy judgments. Lord, to us belongeth confusion of 
 face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, be- 
 cause we have sinned against thee.' ' Such were the tears 
 and confessions of this man of God ; not Pharisaic in ex- 
 clusiveness, but deeply conscious of his own sins. So the 
 zealous Nehemiah, when his people had gone backward, 
 says, " I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, 
 and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven ; and 
 said, ' I pray before thee now, day and night, for the chil- 
 dren of Israel, thy servants, and confess the sins which we 
 have sinned against thee ; but I and my father's house 
 have sinned.' ' 
 
 Even so must we, my brethren, fall before our God, and 
 confess that we have sinned. Have we done our whole 
 duty always ? Have we wrestled with God as fervently as 
 we have with men ? Have we sought his aid as much as 
 that of our brother ? Have we not sometimes forgotten the 
 slave in our contest for local and temporary political tri- 
 umphs ? The judgment of Heaven is upon us. Let us 
 imitate the elders of Jerusalem, the godly Daniel, arid 
 Nehemiah, and pour out tears and prayers before their God 
 and ours, who alone casts down, who alone can build up. 
 
 Second. What works shall be added to these penitential 
 words ? The crown has fallen from the head of our coun- 
 try. She sits in the dust. The heathen have come into the 
 inheritance of our Christian fathers, and all our pleasant 
 places lie waste. The fetter is riveted the more firmly on 
 the neck of your poor brother and sister, and shouts of 
 hellish exultation over this victory go up this sacred day
 
 THE NEBRASKA BILL. 53 
 
 around the slave-pens of Richmond, Alexandria, Baltimore, 
 and the great multitude of similar prison-houses of death. 
 The saintly victim within hears their notes of blasphemous 
 glee, and, learning the cause, his faint hopes fall, and 
 
 despair 
 
 "Closes around, above him as a shroud." 
 
 Christian, what is your duty ? to contend about tariif 
 or free trade? to hold back, in Pharisaic pride, from asso- 
 ciation with publicans and sinners, as you call those of 
 the party opposite your own ? to strive about words to no 
 profit but to the subverting the utter and eternal sub- 
 verting of their hearers and speakers ? Is it to say, 
 " That party which represents freedom is bigoted, fanati- 
 cal, of one idea ? " Better have one idea than none. Do 
 you declare, " I have ridiculed and fought it. I cannot 
 now join myself to it. I have friends and kindred involved 
 in this crime. I cannot openly oppose their course or 
 wound their feelings " ? " Whosoever loveth father or moth- 
 er, husband or wife, brother or sister, more than Me, cannot 
 be My disciple." Is not the slave, too, your father and 
 mother, your brother and sister ? Does not this very tie 
 of blood bind you to the oppressed as closely as to the 
 oppressor ? In Adam, in Noah, you are of one blood ; in 
 Christ, of one redemption. 
 
 Will you see this gigantic cruelty marching northward, 
 invading your threshold, subduing your State, possessing 
 confessedly, triumphantly, our whole land and our whole 
 life ? Christian man, Christian woman, ask for the straight- 
 est path of duty, and follow it, whatever sacrifices it may 
 require of pride, of former opinions, of friendship, of kin- 
 dred, of reputation, of life itself. Let not the platform 
 of action be made narrow by intolerance. If it be of 
 one plank, and that not an inch in breadth, leap upon it, 
 labor on it, seek to widen it, never desert it until all the 
 land stands erect upon its broad base. Toil until the mus-
 
 54 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 tard seed becomes a mighty tree, the stone by rolling en- 
 larges and fills the whole earth. The stone which the 
 builders so disdainfully reject shall yet become the head of 
 the corner, the capstone of universal liberty and joy. Fear 
 not the names that are flung at you, as if of themselves 
 abominable. They are good words, and will yet be the 
 most choice and honored titles of this hour. The brave 
 Senator Wade, of Ohio, said, in that fight in the night and 
 with the night, that until this warfare was ended by the 
 triumph of the right, " I am an Abolitionist* at heart while 
 in the slave-cursed atmosphere of this capital, whatever I 
 may be at home. But here pride and self-respect compel a 
 man either to be a doughface, flunky, or an abolitionist, 
 and I choose the latter. I feel that my hatred to slavery 
 justly entitles me to wear it a name which I never "yet 
 denied, and which present, passing events are fast rendering 
 glorious." Be an abolitionist at Washington, at home, 
 everywhere. It is the highest title to-day of honor from 
 God, and will be to-morrow of like honor from men. 
 
 Finally, forget not prayer. This kind cometh not forth but 
 by prayer and fasting. f If it has fascinated the nation by its 
 wealth, its strength, its culture, and its statesmanship, if it 
 has gained possession of our greatest men, it can be expelled. 
 They can again become clothed and in their right mind the 
 mind which onej had at Chicago, when he declared himself 
 "opposed to the extension of slavery;" of another at New 
 Boston, when he said, "The Fugitive Slave Law is a great 
 evil ; " of another || at Newburyport, when he wrote letters 
 
 * This word was afterward printed in the Congressional Globe in 
 Italics, as if it was, as it was, an extraordinary expression of boldness. 
 It is possible that this was the first adoption of this title by a member 
 of Congress in his seat. 
 
 t Frequent national proclamations of prayer and fasting were made 
 during the war, beginning with that of President Buchanan, in the win- 
 ter before his administration terminated. 
 
 J Stephen A. Douglas. Edward Everett. || Caleb Cushing.
 
 THE NEBRASKA BILL. 55 
 
 full of the warmest, noblest sentiments of freedom. Who 
 knows but that this mind may return ? 
 
 Perhaps the final act by which this iniquity is consum- 
 mated may yet be stayed. Perhaps compunction may par- 
 alyze the hand that would subscribe the death-warrant of 
 the nation. Pilate's wife may perhaps successfully warn 
 her husband to have nothing to do against this most just 
 cause to sign no decree which shall consign millions of 
 sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, whom Christ has 
 declared to be his brothers, and sisters, and mothers, to 
 shames, and agonies, and welcome deaths. 
 
 If the national governor's wife should fail in duty, or in 
 success ; if Herod, and Caiaphas, and Pilate the Senate, 
 the House, and the President unite in this crucifixion of 
 Freedom ; if it lies in its sepulcher, pierced and lifeless, 
 before a mocking South, a tearful, timid North, an amazed 
 world, still let us pray. Death cannot bind it forever. 
 God will not suffer this holy one to see corruption. It will 
 rise again. It will come forth in greater glory than it ever 
 wore before. With powers then vailed, but now disclosed, 
 it shall sit in the seat of judgment. It shall be itself Con- 
 gress and President. It shall fill its votaries with praise 
 and might, and its enemies with shame and everlasting con- 
 tempt. Its foes shall be its footstool. With our great 
 Senator, at that midnight hour of its passage, may we say, 
 " Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you are about to 
 perpetrate. Joyfully I welcome all the promises of the 
 future." * 
 
 Roll away the stone from the door of the sepulcher ! 
 Be vigilant. Be tearless. Be prayerful. Be believing. 
 We shall triumph, not through disunion, not with perpetual 
 feuds, but through the help and Spirit of God. Some 
 U ashington or Jefferson will yet arise, who will lead North 
 and South to the battle and the triumph of true freedom and 
 
 * Charles Sumner.
 
 56 THE DEATH OF FREEDOM. 
 
 true democracy. The South will not forever keep back, 
 and our Jerusalem, the seat of this death, shall be the seat 
 of its revival in perfect power and glory. 
 
 While, therefore, we weep over this death and burial of 
 national righteousness, as David, when the government fell 
 into the power of apostate sons and priests, went weeping 
 up Olivet, and looked back on the sacred city left desolate, 
 let us also weep with a purpose and hope of regaining the 
 lost sovereignty. Labor in the closet, at the family altar, 
 in the community, at the polls, with prayer, and speech, 
 and purse, and vote. Labor with a largeness of soul that 
 seeks not only this grand and spacious land for freedom, 
 but freemen everywhere in a free land. Labor till every 
 yoke is broken and every family unbroken, until the feet 
 of tender women no more sow blood along the paths 
 their taskmasters drive them, until their hearts no more 
 sow richer drops of sacred blood over sundered families 
 and desolate households, soon to be reaped in what terri- 
 ble judgments upon our nation, ourselves, our posterity, 
 God only knows, and the future alone can tell. 
 
 We may go into deeper blackness, but we shall come 
 forth into brighter light.. May every soul be a worker 
 together with God in this the hour and power of darkness, 
 that he may rightfully be a partaker in the glory that shall 
 follow.
 
 THE STATE STKUCK DOWN.* 
 
 "BUT THOSE HUSBANDMEN SAID AMONG THEMSELVES, THIS IS THE 
 
 HEIR; COME, LET us KILL HIM, AND THE INHERITANCE SHALL BE 
 OURS." Mark xii. 7. 
 
 AST Sabbath many of us would it had been 
 all ate the body and drank the blood of the 
 great Martyr of Humanity, of Deity. In grateful, 
 solemn, humble devotion, we commemorated that 
 event which at the time seemed, and was, the victory of 
 hell. A band of men, eminent in station, armed with 
 swords and staves, came upon that Martyr, in the dusk 
 of a Thursday evening, in the retirement of a garden. 
 They beat Him with deadly blows, they thrust in His head 
 the cutting thorns, they mock Him, spit upon Him, murder 
 Him ! All for what ? Professedly for blasphemy. False 
 hypocrites ! Great zeal theirs for their National Religion, 
 for the Constitution of their fathers, for the quiet and 
 harmony of their nation. This was the reason : " Then 
 gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees " (President 
 and Senators), " a council, and said, What do we ? for this 
 man docth many miracles. If we let Him thus alone, all 
 
 * A sermon preached at Westfleld, Mass., June 11, 1856, on the 
 occasion of the assault on Hon. Charles Sumner. See Note II. 
 
 (5-)
 
 58 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 men will believe on Him." It was because He was an 
 eloquent orator, whom the common people heard gladly ; 
 because He was a bold and sarcastic denouncer of these 
 same official criminals ; because He strove to restore the 
 principles and practices of the fathers to their true seat 
 of authority and power ; because He pleaded for the primi- 
 tive Constitution of their Washington in its true meaning ; 
 because He was a real democrat, who loved the people 
 and sought their good, who was not ashamed to talk and 
 abide familiarly with the Samaritans, whom his countrymen 
 hated and despised, as we do the black race among us, 
 it was for these reasons that they hated, beat, and mur- 
 dered Him. Not on account of His blasphemy or uncon- 
 stitutionality ; not because He surpassed the bounds of 
 propriety in His speech, though no sharper nor severer 
 personalities are found in all oratory than those He uttered. 
 Far deeper, more malignant, more powerful, were the mo- 
 tives which impelled them. They were the central fears 
 of a wicked oligarchy, who saw their power giving way 
 under the mighty words of this Master of the Hearts, soon 
 to have been Master of the Acts of the people. They were 
 the central passions of their viperous souls, which felt that 
 if He was stricken down, all the powers of virtue, con- 
 science, ancient name, divine religion, would fall into the 
 same grave, and their tyranny be perfect and perpetual. 
 Therefore "those husbandmen said among themselves, This 
 is the Heir ; come, let us kill Him, and the inheritance 
 shall be ours." 
 
 Let it not be thought, in the suggestions of this analo- 
 gy, that we would limit the experience of our adorable 
 Savior, in that hour of grief and pain extreme, to that 
 of any follower of His, however exalted. It was not 
 Christ as God, but as man, that the Jews intended to slay. 
 For if it had been as God, then they must have been fiends, 
 not men, and He could not pray for them as we must 

 
 ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 59 
 
 for all "Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
 they do." They meant to kill Him as a man; lie laid down 
 His life as our divine Redeemer. 
 
 The feelings and actions of His persecutors come afresh 
 before us in the tragedy of to-day persecutors, then, 
 as now, blind to the divinity of the principles and pow- 
 ers they seek in the person of their advocates to utterly 
 destroy. 
 
 Every sufferer for the truth is an associate of that Infinite 
 Sufferer in His sorrows, His joys, His renown. They who 
 fell in the obscurity of ancient martyrdoms, of Italian 
 dungeons, of Hungarian gallows, of Southern swamps 
 and cells ; those who molder or are hardly yet cold under 
 the grassy plains of Kansas ; and he whose blood stains, 
 and will forever stain, the floor of the hall of our highest 
 legislation, who now lies pale and weak, with that brain 
 full of great thought and high resolve, a festering pulp of 
 dead matter struggling for the mastery, and almost sure of 
 carrying its victory to a fatal perfection, and of laying the 
 noble temple of that sovereign soul in ruins ; all these, 
 known and unknown by men, are in the eye of God, and 
 stand at the right hand of Christ, in the work and reward 
 of human redemption. 
 
 Eminent among these, when we consider the powers 
 which he represents, and which are combined against him, 
 is he who closes our catalogue. There has been no such 
 martyr, in the position and purposes of his assailants, in 
 the variety, wealth, and importance of the established and 
 prosperous Ideas thus assailed. It is not because of per- 
 sonal feeling at the keenness of his sarcasm, nor because 
 he broaches unconstitutional heresies, or disturbs the har- 
 mony of the nation, that he is smitten with the tongue of 
 Senatorial vituperation, and the bludgeon of Represen- 
 tative bloodthirstiness. It is because he is the plainest, 
 strongest, most eloquent, most single-eyed, most unschem-
 
 60 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 ing, ministerial, and prophetical of all the defenders of 
 Liberty on the floor of Congress. It is because his great 
 powers of wisdom, learning, rhetoric, and oratory, have 
 been sanctified and set apart for the Master's use. It is 
 because his appropriation of these eminent gifts to the 
 before degraded cause of Abolition has raised that from 
 the dust, and made the hooted, dreaded name of Aboli- 
 tionist like the very glory of God, in the light which 
 his protecting and illuminating genius has cast upon it. 
 It is because in him thus dwelt personally and officially 
 the desires and purposes of freedom, that these, its ene- 
 mies, have singled him out for years as the central mark 
 of their venomous hate. " It is tlie cause, it is tJie cause," 
 my friends. Therefore it was that in that hall of dignity 
 and authority, on that Thursday afternoon, but a few days 
 after the anniversary, and a few hours before the time 
 that the Divine Orator and Reformer was assailed, a band 
 of men, eminent in station, armed with swords and staves 
 (how significant the analogy! bowie knives and loaded 
 canes, the modern substitutes and striking likenesses of the 
 Roman glaive and club), instigated and supported by their 
 still more eminent leaders, set upon this unarmed disciple 
 of the mighty and hated Nazarene, and left him senseless 
 in his blood. 
 
 Many murders of the advocates of the truth are in the 
 pages of humanity. Yet no one embodies so many per- 
 fected fruits of evil on the one hand, and of goodness on 
 the other, as this. 
 
 Others were smitten down while bearing and sowing the 
 seed of life yet ungrown. So fell the first martyr, Abel. 
 So fell all the forerunners of Christ. So fell the disciples 
 in those early persecutions. So Luther freed the long- 
 imprisoned truths, and flashed them out in all their purity 
 upon the conscience of the world, and it rushed upon him 
 with swords and bludgeons. So the Puritans suffered as
 
 ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 61 
 
 seed-bearers, the Wesleys and their associates, Kossuth 
 and his people, Mazzini and his, Washington and his. I 
 know not an instance in which the principles of Civil and 
 Religious Freedom, in the very summit of their lofty power, 
 have been so murderously assailed. Roman purity and 
 honor had already fled when Caesar clove down the statue 
 of Liberty ; when the Goths replaced her effeminacy with 
 their wild, rude vigor. France had no national piety nor 
 morality when Napoleon grasped her sceptre. These were 
 Jehus, appointed to smite down anarchy, voluptuousness, 
 and intolerable vice. 
 
 But here, in the Senate House of this Christian Republic, 
 on the person of this simple man of God's desires, there 
 fell the blows of Arch-Iniquity. It was anarchy assaulting 
 order ; the deepest ignorance, the highest learning ; savage 
 habits, the finest culture. It was idleness murdering in- 
 dustry ; piracy, honorable trade ; disunion, the federation 
 of Free and Equal States ; barbarism, civilization ; grossest 
 impiety, holiest Christianity. It was progressive debase- 
 ment in every wish and want of man, cleaving down pro- 
 gressive enlightenment in every walk of the soul. It was, 
 in fine, every vice throttling every virtue ; Satan attacking 
 Christ. 
 
 Sumner is not, like the fathers of the Revolution, a 
 rebel without any authority save that which God had in- 
 wardly given. He is not like Clarkson, and Wilberforce, 
 and Garrison, at the beginning of their career, eloquent 
 rcvcalers of the yet generally unseen. He embodies the 
 awful sovereignty of a Nation, for every State is a Nation 
 in its rights and dignities. He embodies the. whole civil, 
 social, and personal character of that State. He represents 
 its wealth, its enterprise, its education, its philanthropy, 
 its religion, its perfect life. 
 
 As it was not a mere man, but the liberties and human- 
 ities of a great State and Nation that were thus felled, so
 
 62 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 the aggressor was something more than a man. Brooks, 
 much less than a man as he is, would not have dared to 
 strike Massachusetts. It was a confederacy of the aban- 
 doned men who wield the sceptre of our government, whose 
 strong hand hurled Brooks at the defenceless head of this 
 State. It was a systematic, mighty, ruling Sin, the sum 
 and essence of all villainies, that swayed that league, as 
 the will the arm, and hurled its cowardly implement at 
 the sum and essence of all virtues in the person of your 
 Representative. Hence the inspiration and the judgment 
 which made them say among themselves, " This is the heir ; 
 come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours." 
 
 Sympathy with the sufferer is, therefore, the least of your 
 duties in connection with this crime ; would be the least 
 agreeable to him in his perils and pains, and the least sat- 
 isfactory to Him whose he is and whom he serves. We 
 bleed in him ; liberty, humanity, the future of our race in 
 time, the future of unnumbered members of it in eternity, 
 religion, Christ, all are faint, and bleeding, and ready 
 to die in the feeble body and suffering soul of this repre- 
 sentative man. 
 
 Standing amid the smitten and shaking pillars of all 
 national, of all human perfection, let us ask ourselves 
 First, Are we guilty in this matter ? Second, If so, what 
 works meet for repentance shall we bring forth ? 
 
 I. Are we partakers of the sin and guilt of this Cain ? 
 We sharers of his sin ? you will say ; we, so vehement in our 
 denunciations, so valiant in our boasting, so bloody in our 
 revenge ? we, accessories before the fact to the murder of 
 the whole past and future of human attainment ? It cannot 
 be. " Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou slothful 
 servant." As this thing was not done in a corner, so it 
 was riot done in a moment. A long series of assaults and 
 martyrdoms of principles and their advocates, patiently 
 endured, often as violently applauded by us as this deed
 
 ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 63 
 
 by the South, have 1 been the necessary preamble to the civil 
 war in Kansas and the brutality in Washington. Sumner's 
 fall, the murder of Barbour, the butchery of John Brown's 
 son, the sack of Lawrence, the ravages of a guerrilla war, 
 legislative and executive falsehood and violence, these are 
 but the central scenes in the national tragedy, whose future 
 acts threaten to be so bloody, but whose first scenes were 
 performed before a nation of spectators wavering between 
 indifference and applause of the wrong doer and his deeds. 
 See where the great principles of the Declaration were 
 stricken down and slain along the path of our national 
 legislation. 
 
 In the Constitution, framed thirteen years after that 
 sublime assertion of the political equality of all men, there 
 creeps in, in the intention of its framers, though in such 
 phrase as permits us otherwise to understand it, the rec- 
 ognition of Slavery as a power in the land a coheir 
 with Liberty, of the great inheritance just won from Britain. 
 Six years later, that Slavery gets embodied in a statute, the 
 ancestor of our present accursed Fugitive Slave Bill a 
 puny father of a monstrous son, yet still the father. 
 Twenty years later, the son of this first born of Slavery 
 was born into legislation, and we still submitted our necks 
 to the yoke. Then ca-me the Missouri Compromise, by 
 which three States Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri 
 were admitted into the Union under its baleful protection, 
 while the more distant lands, being without inhabitants, 
 were graciously surrendered to liberty. And instead of 
 demanding its instant repeal, and keeping up that cry till 
 it drowned all contending voices, we said, "It is done ; 
 it can't be helped ; it is well to make the best of a bad 
 bargain. So, 'Hurrah for the Compromise, healing, uniting, 
 enduring ! ' Then came the gagging of the free speech 
 of the people in the refusal to receive petitions for free- 
 dom a gag formally revoked, yet as really the law of
 
 64 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 the Senate to-day, and of the House till this session, as 
 when its author won for himself a hapless immortality in 
 securing its pssage. Then came the orders to open the 
 mail, and rifle it of all free words, where free speech was 
 incendiary and it was done. Then comes the Texas an- 
 nexation ; then the Mexican War ; then the refusal to pro- 
 tect the new territories from the invasion of this evil ; then 
 the new atrocity of a Fugitive Slave Bill , by far the most 
 wicked thing ever done by our nation ; then the repeal of 
 that protection which had been so laboriously constructed; 
 then and now the full power of the government to deprive 
 these unprotected lands of any of the rights of freedom, 
 and to compel their submission to the foul embrace of sla- 
 very ; then and now the gagging of free speech and act in 
 Congress and Kansas, not by vote, as the people suffered 
 themselves to be, but by the red hand of war. 
 
 We are indignant to-day, and indignant, I hope, not too 
 late : but our cowardice and lack of moral principle have 
 brought all this upon us. Think you, if the South had lost 
 the Missouri Compromise, they would have been so ready to 
 declare the thing settled, and in conventions and resolutions 
 heartily, and with hurrahs, shouted over their defeat ? AVe 
 did, and do. Think you the slave power would have let 
 their numerous petitions on their favorite subject be treated 
 with the contempt which petitions for freedom receive ? 
 Would they be content with the barren form of a speechless 
 reception ? Would they not storm Congress and the coun- 
 try till their demands triumphed, if triumph were possible ? 
 Would we have allowed requests for legislation on far 
 inferior subjects to suffer such sovereign disdain ? Yet this 
 all-involving interest has been spurned from their doors, and 
 we have been quiet. We have gone into active political 
 association with those who thus choked both our liberties, 
 and those of our enslaved brethren in the South, in one 
 effectual clutch of death.
 
 ASSAULT OX CHARLES SUMNER. 65 
 
 Thus has " that great serpent, which is the Devil and 
 Satan," in the guise of slavery, swallowed our territories, 
 our constitutional principles, our judicial decisions, our 
 national legislation, our religious organizations, our whole 
 peculiar and honorable character. "The beauty of Israel 
 has been slain on her high places," and we have not even 
 kept silence. We hastened after the godless conqueror. 
 We applauded his victories. We carried the feeble repre- 
 sentative and tool of this power by an almost unanimous 
 vote into the office he now desecrates.* We cast the 
 words of righteousness so far behind us that for half a gen- 
 eration Freedom lay a breathless corpse in the midst of our 
 land. Thus fell the great moral and legal principles of true 
 government along the path of our baleful progress. 
 
 But these lie not alone. As, upon some field where Right 
 fell under the death-strokes of Might, the faithful standard- 
 bearer lies dead beside his torn and trampled flag, so these 
 principles have not been without those human souls who 
 lifted them up before the people, and who fell with them 
 into the grave of the martyr ; ascended the rather with 
 them, like Astrea, into the glory which is with the God and 
 Father of all truth and its worshipers. 
 
 A little more than twenty years ago the spirit of God 
 breathed the breath of life into a few men and women, and 
 sent them out into this great wilderness, crying, "Repent 
 ye." But so far from acknowledging them as anointed of 
 God for this work, and obeying their commands, we cried, 
 " Away with them ! Away with them ! Crucify them ! 
 Crucify them ! " The whole North is blazing with rage to- 
 day on account of the murders in Kansas, and the assaults 
 and threats in Washington. But there have been other 
 attacks upon other abolitionists which we have openly 
 approved, or easily and silently allowed. 
 
 * There were only four States that did not cast their votes for Frank- 
 lin Pierce, of New Hampshire. 
 5
 
 66 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 A few Christian women and an earnest exhorter for the 
 slave were mobbed by a crowd of gentlemen of property 
 and standing in the streets of Boston, within sight of Fan- 
 euil Hall, but a score of years ago. How many Northern 
 villages and cities, how many persons, rebuked the deed ? 
 Their number could be easily counted. Lovejoy fell a mar- 
 tyr to free speech on the shores of the Mississippi. Did 
 indignation meetings take place in all hearts and homes ? 
 Alas ! he entered an unhonored grave. Torrey sickened 
 and died in a Baltimore prison for the noblest philanthropy 
 which the present age has witnessed.* Did you weep over 
 his death ? Did pulpits and presses everywhere lift up one 
 cry of horror to Heaven at the deed ? Dray ton and Searle 
 languished in the National Jail at Washington for offering 
 their vessel to a band of oppressed Christians who had heard 
 and believed in the Declaration of Independence. Dr. Bai- 
 ley's press was thrown into the Ohio ; Dr. Cox's church 
 sacked in New York ; Pennsylvania Hall burned in Phila- 
 delphia ; Prudence Crandall mobbed in Connecticut for teach- 
 ing little children to read and write. Almost every State 
 has its stool of infamy on which it has placed itself, not 
 with shame and sorrow of heart, but with boastful pride. 
 Gallio-like, we cared for none of these things, and drove the 
 new apostles of Jesus Christ everywhere from our judgment- 
 seats. 
 
 Ay, more than this. As a people we have upheld and 
 executed the enormity of the Fugitive Slave Bill. The 
 orders of our taskmasters have been faithfully obeyed. 
 We have cast the poor slave to Moloch. We have cried 
 to all the beasts of the South, " Come and devour." Like 
 Athens of old, we sent our sons and daughters to this man- 
 ' eating Minotaur of the South ; but no Theseus went with 
 them to slay the monster, and lead them back to freedom. 
 
 * The same in which Mr. Garrison had heen previously confined for 
 publishing an anti-slavery newspaper.
 
 ASSAULT OX CHARLES SUMNER. 67 
 
 No black sails and funeral dirges are on our Acorns and 
 Revenue Cutters, 
 
 " Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark," 
 
 but with extraordinary governmental promptness and pleas- 
 ure, with military pornp, " following the flag, and keeping step 
 to the music of the Union," they marched into the crushing 
 teeth of the dreadful ^monster. Did your arm rise for their 
 rescue ? Did your hearts bleed for their agony ? Alas ! 
 no tear enriched our eyes. But a momentary sigh responded 
 in our hearts to their faintings even unto death. " They are 
 only black folks," we cried, as we recovered our breath after 
 the short spasm of conscience. " ' What do they know about 
 feelings ? ' ' Is it not so nominated in the bond ? ' ' The Con- 
 stitution, it must be preserved.' ' Our dear white brethren 
 shall have their rights.' ' So back to your rice swamps, your 
 mud huts, your coffles, your bloodhounds, your unwilling 
 pollution, your torn hearts, your slaves' graves.' ' Great 
 statesmen said, " Conquer your prejudices." Great minis- 
 ters preached, " The powers that be are ordained of God, 
 and therefore, whatever they ordain (though they frame 
 iniquity by a law) is God's decree." Great merchants and 
 manufacturers cried, " Our craft is in danger. So, 
 
 ' Hence, home ! you slavish creatures, get you home ! 
 Ye blocks, ye stones, ye worse than senseless things ! ' ' 
 
 and all the people, through the ballot-box, with a cruel una- 
 nimity, said, " Amen." 
 
 Beneath this lowest deep there is a lower deep, out of 
 which this prince of darkness has arisen to sit in power and 
 great glory in the midst of our land. 
 
 The fearful consummations of this hour have their primal 
 root in our infixed repugnance to those who suffer this 
 wrong. The least touch of their blood is as leprosy to 
 our self-important Caucasianism. Have you not, do you
 
 68 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 cherish not, this pride of caste ? Do you not declare com- 
 plexion a Heaven-appointed barrier between the children of 
 Adam ? Is there not in your feelings (I will not say judg- 
 ment, for the reason has nothing to do originally or secon- 
 darily in this matter) a loathing of your brethren ? Have you 
 not proclaimed the disunity of the race, and given to your 
 unnatural prejudices the authority of the divine will ? Let 
 him that is without sin cast the first stone at those who, 
 standing on the godless sentiment, have laid the yoke of 
 bodily chattelism, with all its horrible consequences, on 
 these our brethren, and the yoke of political chattelism, 
 with its past and present shames and sorrows, upon us who 
 sympathize, but will not fraternize with these sufferers. 
 
 Hence come the present motions of the nation. Up 
 from this deep and long enslavement of our judgment, our 
 sympathies, our conscience, attended by the obedient and 
 conspiring forms of the National Legislation, Judiciary, Ex- 
 ecutive, and Religion, like "archangels ruined," this evil 
 Power rises to its present infamous bight of oath and 
 covenant breaking ; the invasion of sovereignties ; the rob- 
 bery of our dearest rights, and the murder of our national 
 life. Judges like Loring, Kane, and Lecompte utter their 
 execrable decisions as the solemn declaration of supreme 
 law. The president uses the cunning of his brain, the 
 strength of his mailed hand, to carry into execution these 
 judicial lies, and to destroy the beautiful house which our 
 fathers builded of truth, freedom, and happiness. 
 
 Up along the bloody path of the cruelties of our enslaved 
 brethren, of the cruelties and murders of Northern freemen, 
 it has marched to the fatal victories of this hour. How 
 vividly the parable which climaxes in our text portrays our 
 national history ! .When God planted this vineyard with 
 the seeds of a holy religion and civil liberty, and left it to 
 our fathers to keep and dress it, they, with great grief of 
 heart, and, alas, with as great feebleness of will, let the
 
 ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 69 
 
 enemy sow his seed of sin, so that when His earliest ser- 
 vants came seeking the fruit of a perfect freedom, they 
 were beaten and sent away empty. And again lie sent 
 other servants, commanding in yet louder tones to let the 
 oppressed go free, and to break every yoke ; and at them we 
 " cast stones, and wounded them in the head, and sent them 
 away shamefully handled." Remember you how that aged 
 and eminent representative of the majesty of this State was 
 driven from the chief city of a sister State, whither he went 
 to ask the fruit of righteousness for the Master of us all ? 
 and did we make that a ceaseless issue with our govern- 
 ment till we righted that wrong, and those which he went 
 to remove ? If we had but put our heel on that serpent then, 
 it would not a second time have thrust its venomous fangs 
 into the sacred head of Massachusetts, and hissed in tri- 
 umph over our servility. " And again He sent another, 
 and him they killed ; and many others, beating some and 
 killing some." Growing bold by victories tamely endured, 
 or only vociferously and spasmodically resisted, when the 
 Compromise appears, converted from its original blackness 
 into an angel of light, and asks the erection of its lands 
 into free territories and free states, when the free speech of 
 an awakening North rings through the halls of legislation 
 in weighty argument, cutting sarcasm, pathetic entreaties, 
 bleeding at every vein in agony for the enslaved, these rob- 
 bers of God, and murderers of His children and His princi- 
 ples, "said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let 
 us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours." 
 
 " Strike down the Compromise," they say, " and these 
 consecrated lands are open to our defiling foot. All lands, 
 organized though they be into States, will yield to the same 
 assault ! Freedom flees the heritage, and all the grapes of 
 God are ours. Strike down Sumner, chief among his peers, 
 who, robed in the majestic sovereignty of their several States, 
 wield their delegated power with the might of Samson, the
 
 70 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 wisdom of Solomon, the eloquence of Isaiah, smite to the 
 earth this beloved son of liberty, and all mouths are dumb. 
 Quiet reigns in Warsaw. We will call the roll of our slaves 
 on Bunker Hill with no opposing voices. We will give 
 slavery the right of passage through the Free States, the 
 right of abode there, the right of way across the ocean, 
 the right of traffic through all the land ; and you ranting 
 abolitionists shall ' roar as gently as a sucking dove/ if your 
 most sweet voices do not chime with ours." 
 
 As one of the most eminent and conservative of the 
 lawyers of New York city, speaking of the Sumner outrage, 
 says, " If the Senate be destroyed, the Union is destroyed, 
 because the union of the States exists in the Senate. There 
 the States are equal. There Rhode Island measures Ohio, 
 Texas and Florida out-double New York. A blow, therefore, 
 aimed at the Senate is aimed most effectually at the very 
 heart of the Union. The refusal of this body to defend 
 itself against such aggressions of its rights has pulled 
 down to its foundations the only model ever existing of a 
 free government. It has struck a blow not only at our own 
 country, but at the existence of all government among men." 
 
 Our masters reason rightly. There is no more that they can 
 do to conquer the Constitution and the Declaration. Every 
 vine of this vineyard of God, every grape of every vine in 
 which was His blessing, is trodden down by this wild boar 
 of slavery. The Border Ruffian policy triumphs to-day as 
 completely in AVashirigton as in Kansas. Calhoun's official 
 proclamation, as the first minister of state, to all foreign 
 powers, that slavery is the corner-stone of this Republic, is 
 unquestioned law in two of the great branches of govern- 
 ment, the Judicial and Executive, and triumphant in the 
 third. If these things are borne, if they are not speedily 
 and effectually resisted, farewell, a long farewell, to all our 
 greatness ! The land must be given over to the Sodomites 
 who now possess it, and its iniquity will be speedily full.
 
 ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 71 
 
 " "\Vhat will the Lord of the vineyard do ? He will misera- 
 bly destroy those wicked husbandmen, and let out his vine- 
 yard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the 
 fruits in their season." Do we say, as did those affrighted 
 hearers, seeing themselves included in the vengeance com- 
 ing on their land and nation, " God forbid " ? Then may we 
 rightly consider the second part of our duty. 
 
 II. What works meet for repentance shall we bring forth ? 
 
 We have been consenting to this death. Perhaps, like 
 Pilate, we have washed our hands in the presence of those 
 whose arm and vote struck the blow. Perhaps, like Paul, we 
 now preach the faith we once destroyed. Yet, as a people, 
 as a State, I hope not ; but I fear too many of us, as indi- 
 viduals, have washed our hands in vain. We were indiffer- 
 ent to the perils and defeats of freedom. We eagerly 
 snatched and swallowed the few beggarly slops of office 
 and enactments which our shrewd Southern masters tossed 
 us. We selfishly let Christ be scourged and crucified in 
 many of these His dear children in chains ; in % many price- 
 less principles, the equally dear and vital offspring of His. 
 We may cry, " Thou canst not say I did it." But God 
 says, " Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of 
 these my " children, " ye did it not to Me." Look on your 
 hands. Blood ! Cry, " Out, damned spot ! out, I say ! " 
 It flees not ; it blears our eyes ; it stains our souls ; it 
 smells to heaven. Not all the perfumes of Arabia can 
 sweeten this Northern hand. 
 
 " Nor bleeding bird, nor bleeding beast, 
 Nor hyssop branch, nor sprinkling priest, 
 Nor running brook, nor flood, nor sea, 
 Can wash the dismal stain away." 
 
 What can ? 
 
 1st. Penitential abasement before a just and holy and 
 good God, whose justice, goodness, and holiness we have 
 nationally rejected. The North must bend the knee in
 
 72 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 godly sorrow before His arm brings salvation. We must 
 bewail our manifest sins toward our oppressed brethren, 
 toward an oppressed Gospel, oppressed in its preaching, in 
 its discipline, in its literature, in its whole character and 
 claim. We must have God on our side if we would dis- 
 possess the giants that' are in the land of their baleful 
 power. And He will not be with us heartily, unless, like 
 that other defender of truth who was once a persecutor and 
 injurious, we beg forgiveness for the past and strength for 
 the future. 
 
 2d. We must entertain brotherly feelings toward the slave. 
 
 You are not going to deliver yourself without delivering 
 him. This revolution has far greater objects, and will have, 
 if successful, results far greater than that of 1776. That 
 was chiefly for the political salvation of the European race. 
 It answered the question, "Is the highest of the families 
 of men capable of self-government ? " This is for the po- 
 litical and social salvation of all men. Extremes here provi- 
 dentially meet. The lowliest of your kindred has hold of 
 your hearts. Their welfare is inextricably inwrought in 
 your own. They are around your necks. You cannot 
 shake them off. You are, you must be, if a defender of 
 your own rights, a defender of theirs. " Abolitionist," 
 " Negro-worshiper," " Black Republican," whatever name 
 is attached, honorably or contemptuously, to the upholders 
 of the great sentiment of perfect human equality and 
 brotherhood, must be your title. 
 
 If this be not the basis of our present indignation, what 
 is ? Why this furor against the slaveholder, if the colored 
 race is not one with our own ? He has no objection to our 
 holding slaves and carrying them to Kansas or elsewhere. 
 " Because free labor dies beside slave labor " ? Wherefore ? 
 It does not die where horses and oxen abound ; it does not 
 where the dark free man works. Why should it where his 
 slave brother toils ? Simply because in our heart of hearts
 
 ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNEE. 73 
 
 we see our oneness. Take -away this conviction, and we 
 can trade in them as easily as in cattle or grain. The argu- 
 ment is simple and unanswerable. If essentially different 
 and inferior, then they are, and of right ought to be, ser- 
 vants, slaves, merchandise. There is but ONE race of men, 
 and God has put all things under its feet. If the negro is 
 a man, then he is the unquestioned equal in every right of 
 every other man. If not an equal, not a man. If not a 
 man, a merchantable thing. 
 
 All this prejudice of ours is peculiarly superficial. The 
 seat of the disease is in the skin, not in the vitals, much less 
 in the spirit within. Social and civil rights hang on the 
 fibers of the flesh, dwell in cellular tissues and animal pig- 
 ments. Driven from one fortress after another by the spirit 
 of human equality, caste has made its last refuge in the 
 surface of the body. 
 
 Divine right of Kings has become a mockery. Blood no 
 .longer flows an impassable gulf between men. Wealth 
 lords it not over worth with universal consent. Might is 
 not Right. The theories, if not the practices, of men recog- 
 nize the equality and fraternity of all men, save the col- 
 ored. They are outcasts. Chisel a man's features a little 
 apart from the European standard ; shade his skin a trifle 
 darker than our hue ; ay, let his features and his complexion 
 be after our most perfect models ; yet let the fact be known, 
 that in his veins flows one drop of Afric's blood, and he 
 dwells not as an equal in the presence of his brethren. No 
 church opens her pulpit to receive his regular ministrations. 
 No school employs his talents and education as its teacher. 
 No store gives him the knowledge of business life. No 
 workshop allows him to handle its tools and acquire its 
 knowledge. Exceptions may be found to the rule, but they 
 are most rare and startling. All this must be changed. 
 
 We must recognize our kindred. We must acknowledge 
 that every man, of every complexion, has in his genealogical
 
 74 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 chart, as Christ had in His, "'which was the son of Adam, 
 which was the son of God." It is their wrongs, and not 
 ours, that are shaking this land. The prostrate orator 
 closed his first great speech for Freedom with a quotation 
 that has since been more fearfully verified, and unless 
 heeded will yet rive our souls with untold agonies. " Be- 
 ware," said he, " beware of the groans of wounded souls. 
 Oppress not to the utmost a single heart ; for a solitary 
 sigh has power to overset a whole world." We shall be 
 distracted by a thousand side issues, betrayed by a thou- 
 sand false lights, unless this great truth is our inspiration 
 and our aim. 
 
 "While the truckling jurist sitting, as the slave-whip o'er him swings, 
 From the tortured truths of Freedom the lie of Slavery wrings, 
 And the solemn priest to Moloch on each God-deserted shrine 
 Breaks his bondmen's heart for hread, pours his bondmen's blood for 
 wine, 
 
 " While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Savior kneels, 
 And spurns, the while, the temple where the living Savior dwells, 
 Thou must see HIM in the task-field, in the prison shadows dim, 
 And thy mercy to the bondman, it is mercy unto Him." 
 
 3d. If we thus have a conscience void of offense in the 
 sight of God and man, the future is clear before us. We 
 know not the exact course wisdom may dictate in every 
 exigency, but we know its general bearings and its inevita- 
 ble goal. As the traveler sees the desired summit in the 
 light that overflows both it and the interjacent vales, 
 though he knows -not what forests, gorges, and ravenous 
 beasts are between him and it, so the glorious hight of a 
 Universal Freedom rises before the eye thus divinely illu- 
 mined, and the path built by Divine Providence for our ad- 
 vancing steps, however perilous and bloody, will lead there. 
 
 Two duties are laid upon the Emancipationist to-day 
 duties as imperative and as valuable as those which will be 
 given to those who shall in some future, I hope not distant,
 
 ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 75 
 
 day, complete the long and painful work, and break the last 
 yoke from the neck of the last slave. 
 
 The duties of the lover of Liberty now are, 
 
 1st. Resumption, if necessary, by force, of the millions 
 of acres stolen from us by the slave power, and defense of 
 those who, as the agents of the Free States, are struggling 
 to retain it in their possession against legalized thieves and 
 murderers. 
 
 2d. The instantaneous and complete conversion of the 
 government from Slavery to Freedom in all its ideas and 
 acts, in every branch and office of its power. 
 
 1 . How shall these be done ? The first by the stout 
 hearts and strong arms of freemen, equipped as our fathers 
 were against the less cowardly and less brutal assassin of 
 the forest, and the array of foreign tyranny. Do you cry, 
 " What ! a servant of the Prince of Peace, in His house, 
 on His day, recommend the weapons of war!" "By what 
 authority do you these things, and who gave you this au- 
 thority ?" "I will also ask you one question, and if you 
 will answer me, I will tell you by what authority I do these 
 things." 
 
 Suppose the city of Springfield and the adjacent towns 
 on the other side of the river, on account of their earnest 
 advocacy of the Maine Law, are invaded by armed bands 
 of rumsellcrs from Connecticut and remoter States. They 
 sack the city, burn and blow up its chief buildings, im- 
 prison its mayor in the center of their bloody camp, mur- 
 der some of its unarmed and unoffending citizens, and 
 overrun the neighboring territory, robbing and killing at 
 will. They strike down not only the offending law, but all 
 protections against anarchy. They declare the soil their 
 own, and will, if unopposed, inevitably turn their pestilent 
 march upon us, who are associated with the helpless suffer- 
 ers in the same reform, and in the malice of its enemies. 
 What would you do about it ? What should the minister
 
 76 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 of Jesus Christ do about it ? As brethren, as men, whither 
 would your eyes, your feet, turn ? " And this know, that 
 if the good man of the house had known what hour the 
 thief would come, he would have watched, and not have 
 suffered his house to be broken up." How could he have 
 prevented it? By soft speeches? By referring it to the 
 ballot-box as to whether it belonged to the thief or the 
 owner, knowing that the bands of the robber would outdo 
 in violence, if not in power, his own allies ? And if Christ 
 commands, in effect, the good man of the house not to 
 suffer its invasion, does He not demand him to expel the 
 invaders, especially if that house has in it all the treasures 
 of wisdom, and knowledge, and happiness gathered by the 
 Providence of God for the sustenance of his earthly chil- 
 dren ? 
 
 The shapes hot from Tartarus, that ravage those plains, 
 are unfortunately encased in bodies, and wield weapons of 
 death, and are able and willing to drive every free soul 
 from its body unless they can scare them, body and soul, 
 from their inheritance. Men, and women, and children are 
 now suffering in Kansas the pains and evils of civil war. 
 Its clouds overhang that fair land. Satan and his hosts 
 have entered that Eden, and finding that they could not 
 seduce the new Adam and Eve that God had placed there, 
 they are employing all their forces to expel them. All the 
 officers of the government join in the dreadful work. It 
 must be resisted. We must not suffer the house to be broken 
 up. Not so great an hour passed over those who lived in 
 "75. Not so great a work was committed to a Tell, a Kos- 
 suth, a Washington, as is given to this hour and people. 
 " To-day is a king in disguise/' says one of our finest brains. 
 To-day will be the emperor of the past and future days of 
 this Republic. Shall it be the Lucifer leading it from the 
 heaven to which God has exalted it, or the Messiah raising 
 it to a yet loftier heaven of grace and glory ?
 
 ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 77 
 
 Kansas is the theater where the conflict between the re- 
 bellious and the faithful angels is renewed. " Of form and 
 gesture proudly eminent," he stands who was the second 
 officer of this nation, and the head of the (officially) most 
 grave and reverend council in the globe. Beside him are 
 Governors, Senators, Representatives, Judges, Cabinet offi- 
 cers, and he who is the head of this Republic, 
 
 "Thrones and imperial powers, offspring of Heaven, 
 Ethereal virtues ; who, these titles now 
 Justly removed, are called Princes of Hell." 
 
 Shall they triumph ? Shall that land be drenched with 
 the blood of the slave ? Shall its sweet airs reek with the 
 foul breathings of the master's lust, echo and moan with 
 the groans of the poor bondmen under the tortures of their 
 tyrants, often bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, 
 "always of Christ's body, of his flesh and of his bones." 
 Shall the abomination which maketh desolate there be set 
 up the abomination which includes, as its lesser evils, idle- 
 ness, beggary, ignorance, licentiousness, murder, every form 
 and fruit of sin ? Or shall liberty, righteousness, temper- 
 ance, education, love, peace, holiness, every virtue, honor, 
 and joy, flourish and abound there ? 
 
 If the latter, those who are seeking their establishment 
 must be sustained; ten thousand armed settlers ought to 
 march there before these summer months close. Do you 
 say, " Let them hold it for a season, till we play with them 
 the great game of the Presidency ? " If so, what will you 
 do if you lose ? What can you do if they win ? Remem- 
 ber that possession is nine points in law. What will you 
 do with those who defend your rights in the presence of 
 these marauders ? The voice of our brother's blood cries 
 to us from that ground. Has he not been hacked to death 
 by more than savage mobs? lias he not been shot, "the 
 only son of his mother, and she a widow," after having
 
 78 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 given up his weapons, and while going peaceably to his 
 home ? Has not the voice of Rachel gone up to the ear of 
 the All-pitying, "weeping for her children, and would not 
 be comforted because they were not"? Is not the gray- 
 haired Jacob, going down to his grave in sorrow for his be- 
 loved son, torn to pieces by those fierce beasts in the shape 
 now, as then, of men and brethren? 
 
 " Alas ! that country sinks beneath the yoke; 
 It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day 
 A gash is added to its wounds. Each morn 
 New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows 
 Strike Heaven on the face, that it resounds 
 As if it felt with Kansas, and yelled out 
 Like syllable of dolor." 
 
 Shall we let these demons rage there, while we merely 
 get up processions and mass meetings to carry the next 
 election ? "These things ought ye to do, and not leave the 
 other undone." The land is ours : it has been solemnly 
 deeded to us by the voice of the country, and the deed is 
 recorded in the nation's registry. It is ours, for ourselves 
 and our children, for God and His Christ. And shall we 
 basely abandon it ? If patriots, fearless and firm, will but 
 go thither, and peaceably assume their rights under the 
 Compromise and the Constitution, the murderous villains 
 will flee as the thief at the approach of the sheriff; their 
 duped followers will become our ally, and peace shall be in 
 all her borders. 
 
 If this is not done, we can do nothing in the great politi- 
 cal contest at the polls and at Washington, nothing in the 
 great moral war in the South for speedy, peaceful emanci- 
 pation. 
 
 2. Doing this courageously, and in the fear of God, we 
 should, secondly, put the whole force of the government 
 instantly and thoroughly on the side of freedom. 
 
 Let not party names or men becloud your judgment, be-
 
 ASSAULT OX CHARLES SUMNER. 79 
 
 wray your steps. There are but two parties in this land, the 
 Slave and the Free. All the buffets of compromising ma- 
 chinery that have heretofore prevented these from coming 
 face to face, have been crushed to death in the violence of 
 the collision. Other names may float on other banners in 
 the field : only two combatants are there. Every issue is 
 set aside, must be set aside, but this. We have thrust Lib- 
 erty into the outer darkness as long as we can. It is put 
 directly before us by our Creator, the Creator of all prog- 
 ress in national and spiritual life. Will we again spurn it ? 
 Will we again let a name and a party lead us astray from 
 the truth ? If the present power, though under other lead- 
 ers, retains its dominion, Sumner's reeling swoon, specch- 
 lessness, and possible death, are the type and forerunner of 
 the dumbness and death of all the liberties of this people. 
 Free speech can no more be heard in Washington than in 
 Charleston. The North, with its wealth of noble principles 
 and practices, is trodden down of the Gentiles. The last 
 ounce is thrown upon the back of Issachar. The lion of the 
 tribe of Judah bends his neck to the yoke. Lucifer, the 
 light-bearer of the Nations, falls from heaven. 
 
 If the kidnapping of the wandering fugitive from under 
 the shadow of Faneuil Hall and Bunker Hill, if the drag- 
 ging back to death and despair of that more than Virginius, 
 who with her motherly arm struck the life out of her own 
 child to prevent prospective, not impending shames and 
 woes, if these, repeated again and again in increasingly 
 aggravated forms, cannot rouse our sympathies sufficiently 
 to demand, with a voice as the roar of many waters, the in- 
 stant repeal of the nefarious statute, what can bring philan- 
 thropy from dream-land into actual life ? If the robbery of 
 our land, the robbery of our franchise and our legislation, 
 the imprisonment and murder of their defenders, the extinc- 
 tion in blood of freedom of debate and of State Equality, 
 if these cannot bring us to unite against the mighty foe,
 
 80 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 what can ? Will the mere abrogation of a commercial re- 
 striction, whereby our ships cannot bring slaves from Africa, 
 set the country into convulsions, if these produce only mo- 
 mentary spasms ? Will the declaration that internal slave 
 trade is as lawful as the internal flour trade, and that no 
 State can restrict it, bring us to action? These are all 
 that are left, and these are but merchantable things. They 
 cannot thrill the heart, as the dreadful scenes have through 
 which we have passed for the last few years, and are still 
 passing. They will no more restore us to life than the last 
 faint struggles of the dying will throw off that conqueror 
 whom the fearful agonies of preceding hours had wrestled 
 with in vain. 
 
 Say not so, aged, eminent, conservative a man as he who 
 is put at the head of these hosts, will never lead us whither 
 we have been moving. As the President has just said in 
 reference to this very nomination, " Men are but instru- 
 ments." Pierce has done no more than Fillmore, Fillmore 
 than Polk, Polk than Tyler, Tyler than Van Buren. Each 
 did all that the Slave Power asked of them. Each did 
 worse than his predecessor, simply because he was the suc- 
 cessor. If the present Chief Magistrate had occupied his 
 seat four years before, he would have said, had you charged 
 him with his present deeds, " Is thy servant a dog, that he 
 should do this thing?" He would only have signed the 
 Fugitive Slave Bill, and defeated the Proviso. Four years 
 earlier he would but have carried on the war with Mexico. 
 Four years earlier merely annexed Texas. Four years earlier 
 simply purged the mails of free speech, and opposed the 
 purging of the District of Columbia of Slavery. " Men are 
 but instruments." 
 
 Who secured the nomination of this venerable man by 
 the withdrawal of his potent name from the canvass ? Who 
 dictated the platform on which this Image is set up ? Who 
 will be the chief instrument in his election, if he obtains it ?
 
 ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMXER. 81 
 
 which may God in His mercy prevent. Who will be 
 his right hand supporter in his administration ? The boldest 
 and wickedest of all the bold and wicked men that blacken 
 our history, beside whom Arnold and Burr are models of 
 decency and religion. They sought to strangle in his cradle 
 the Hercules of our political being, when as yet his divinity 
 could be seen only by the eye of faith. He assails him in 
 the height of his strength, when he stands among mankind 
 the only cleanser of its Augean stables of royal corruption, 
 the only annihilator of its hydra oppressions, the only one able 
 to conquer the guards of the pit, and bring out of its long 
 death the beautiful form of Civil and Religious Freedom. 
 
 He it is that by a previous assault, unparalleled for its 
 coarseness and threats of violence, instigated those blows, 
 whose remotest as well as immediate effects' he foresaw and 
 intended. He it is, that, having been urged to the rescue 
 of his fellow-senator, sat calmly through the beginning of 
 the attack, and climbed, as he himself says, on a high back 
 seat at its close, that he might catch a glimpse of the bleed- 
 ing victim as he was borne away ; as a little fraudulent 
 leader of bad men in an ancient time climbed to a high seat 
 that he might see Him who was to be the great Sacrifice for 
 Eternal Freedom, though unlike Zaccheus, no penitence 
 smote his conscience, no submission and conversion fol- 
 lowed the sight. He did more than begin and enjoy an 
 assault on a peaceful Senator ; he led those troops of Sin 
 against and over the prostrated landmarks of Freedom, 
 prostrated Territorial and State sovereignty, prostrated law, 
 and right, and peace, and honor, and chastity, and life. 
 This is the head and fang of that huge serpent which "in 
 many a scaly fold, voluminous and vast," coils itself around 
 the pillar of our confederacy, and from its capital " hangs 
 hissing at the nobler men below." He is the power greater 
 than the President, present or to be, who, with the crowd 
 of violent men behind him, will seek to cany the Evil, 
 6
 
 82 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 whose they are and whom they serve, to a permanent, 
 universal dominion. 
 
 Then cometh the end. One of two things follows. Un- 
 questioned prostration of the whole country under the hoof 
 of the slave power. As the unslaveholding South to-day is 
 dumb before the shearers of its power and prosperity, so 
 shall the whole land be. We shall be thrust into a seat of 
 infamy lower than any living or dead nationality can occupy, 
 beside which Roman anarchy, Greek cowardice, and Jew- 
 ish impiety are highest excellence. A nation of Slaves ! 
 One hundred thousand ignorant and brutal men the mon- 
 archs of twenty-five millions ! driving us into the Atlantic, 
 if they so list, as they now declare they can, with a lady's 
 riding whip,* filling our land with poverty, vice, and 
 murder, and making the very dust of our patriot sires beg 
 the winds of heaven to bear them from the dishonored soil ! 
 
 What a spectacle to the world ! That great nation, 
 stretching over more territory than ever saw the wing of 
 the Roman eagle, whose songs have all been set to the 
 tune of Liberty, whose Constitution and laws beat, with but 
 few discordant notes, the same inspiring measure, whose 
 name has been a terror to tyrants and a watchword to 
 patriots, that people whose God has been the Lord, under 
 the feet of the pirate of perdition ! The star-spangled ban- 
 ner torn down, and the blood-red flag with which South 
 Carolina marches through fallen Lawrence, the black flag 
 the slave ship carries across the free ocean, these shall 
 
 wave 
 
 " O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ! " 
 
 Your meadows and mountains shall be covered with slaves, 
 not necessarily black in the face, certainly white in the 
 blood, the very images of us their fathers and mothers ; 
 poorest of whites, ruled over by the desperadoes of the 
 
 * A remark made in Congress by Alexander H. Stephens.
 
 ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 83 
 
 South, and their satanic allies of the North ! disastrous 
 eclipse ! shadow worse than death ! The light gone 
 from earth, the hopes of man blotted out, the howl of 
 tyrants exultant and universal ! " The glory of kingdoms, 
 the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when 
 God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Wild beasts of the 
 desert shall lie there ; their houses shall be full of doleful 
 creatures ; owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance 
 there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their 
 desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces ; 
 and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be 
 prolonged." May God through our present faithfulness 
 prevent this fast-speeding doom. 
 
 The second alternative, if we postpone our political 
 reformation to the presidential contest of 1860, will be civil 
 war. If the North has courage enough to fight, though 
 not enough to vote for Liberty, before that not distant period 
 arrives the struggle may have been begun. This power, 
 if again triumphant, will triumph as never before. Not 
 smuggled and disguised, but openly will it start on its 
 new career. And if its insolence is so great now, if its de- 
 mands are so unendurable, what will they be when it puts 
 on the crown of authority that the People will offer it ? If 
 resisted, it must be under the smoke of battle. The bar- 
 barities of Kansas and Washington will be repeated in ag- 
 gravated forms along the whole border over the whole 
 land. Those extremes will be joined by a river of fire 
 and blood, and this great Republic expire in the ashes of 
 fraternal flames. 
 
 " A curse will light upon the limbs of men, 
 Domestic fury and fierce civil strife 
 Will cumber all the parts -of this fair land. 
 Blood and destruction shall be so in use, 
 And dreadful objects so familiar, 
 That mothers shall but smile when they behold 
 Their infants quartered with the hands of war.
 
 84 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 All pity choked with custom of fell deeds, 
 And Freedom's spirit ranging for revenge, 
 With Fury by her side, come hot from hell, 
 Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice 
 Cry ' Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war, 
 That these foul deeds shall smell above the earth 
 With carrion men, groaning for burial." 
 
 It is for the Christian and Patriot of this day to say 
 whether or no one of these dreadful fates shall not be 
 ours. It is for us to say if Sumner's seat, the site of Kansas' 
 Lexingtons, the graves of Barbour, Dow, Brown, Stewart, 
 and other martyrs, whose sbd is for the first time green 
 above them, shall be visited by a victorious, free people, ' 
 reverently gazing on that blood shed for the first time in 
 our history in defense of freedom of national debate, and 
 those ruins and graves, attesting the zeal, discretion, and 
 courage of the first banded defenders of our principles in the 
 field of fraternal strife, or if they shall be disregarded, as the 
 Greek of to-day knows not, and cares not to know, the spot 
 where the three hundred saved Greece and the world their' 
 liberties, or where the great orator patriot, Demosthenes, 
 banished, fell by a sacred and privileged altar, anticipating 
 but for a moment the tortures intended for him by his per- 
 secutors the tyrants of Athens, and the destroyers of her 
 name and power unto this day ? 
 
 Eead the great speech which excited such rage, and well 
 nigh won for its author the crown of a martyr. For before 
 he uttered a word he knew its probable effect ; he measured 
 the danger before he struck the blow. But three or four in 
 all histor} 1 - are its equals in beauty and strength of thought 
 arid language. Demosthenes against the Philipizing Doug- 
 las of Athens, the keen, ready, insolent tool of her tyrants ; 
 Cicero against the Atchison Catiline of the Roman republic ; 
 Burke against Hastings, the wholesale enslaver of India; 
 Webster against the South Carolinian traducer of freedom
 
 ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER. 85 
 
 and its fruits, with those four, this stands, and will always 
 stand, equal to the highest in all the literary qualities of an 
 oration, higher than the highest in the sweep of his theme 
 the preservation of the liberty, culture, and religion of a 
 great Christian nation. Let every man, and woman, arid 
 child frequently read it. Kead it in a spirit of humiliation 
 and prayer. Read it for our guidance in this crisis as we 
 do the Bible for our guidance in this and all. 
 
 Let us repent and forsake our slothfulness, our prejudices, 
 our cowardice. Let us surrender all minor duties to this 
 preeminent human duty, second only to the salvation of 
 .souls, and even involving their eternal weal or woe in its 
 measureless results. Let us engage in the great civil and 
 moral warfare before us with a oneness of heart and will 
 that insures the victory. The sun that shall roll over 
 this earth for the. next few months will look down on as 
 important a conflict as has ever been waged upon it. The 
 sons of God who shouted together over its creation never 
 more anxiously watched the movements of men, never more 
 heartily identified themselves with the friends of freedom, 
 than they watch over and work with us to-day. The lovers 
 of our race, wasting in exile, or rotting in European dun- 
 geons will be our heartiest allies. The poor slave will pray 
 in many a cabin that the North may win. 
 
 If we conquer, the long nightmare of our country is 
 gone, the overflowing scourge is stayed. Wisely, lovingly, 
 steadily, we shall move up out of the ghastly gloom into 
 the light of our earlier day. Shouts of joy will echo in the 
 cells of European liberty, pallor and trembling seize on 
 European t} r rants. Let us once stand forth in the full glory 
 of constitutional freedom, and the millennium morn breaks 
 full-orbed upon our land. Unspeakable gladness will over- 
 whelm the hearts of four millions of our kindred, grinding 
 in these prison-houses of the South. Unspeakable fears 
 and smitings of the knees will shake their fierce devourers.
 
 86 THE STATE STRUCK DOWN. 
 
 But if we should fail, if the cunning and vehemence of 
 our enemies, the heartlessness and blindness of the masses, 
 continue the power with its present blood-stained possess- 
 ors, the victory, though in another patli less peaceful, will 
 surely come. Though they kill the Freedom of the State, 
 the heir of all the treasures of the nation, though they exult 
 in the inheritance which they will then say is incontesta- 
 bly theirs, the heir shall rise again with twenty, ay, with 
 twenty thousand mortal murders on his crown to push them 
 from their stools. The principles of His government and 
 attributes of His nature tha,t have been given to man shall 
 not be blotted from the earth. Through the tearing asunder 
 of the national ties perhaps, through the flames of awful 
 war, through blood up to the horses' bridles, we may have to 
 wade to the peaceful glories of a Republic of universal free- 
 dom. May He preserve us from this calamity, yet give us 
 grace to meet it if it come upon us. If it shall come, and 
 after it is passed, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from 
 Labrador to Virginia, shall stretch a vast confederacy of free 
 and prosperous States, even if over those Southern valleys 
 of the plain a dead sea of tribulation shall continue to roll. 
 
 " Our bleak hills shall bud and blow, 
 Vines our rocks shall overgrow, 
 Plenty in our valleys flow ; 
 And when vengeance lights their skies, 
 Hither shall they turn their eyes, 
 As the damned on Paradise. 
 We but ask our rocky strand, 
 Freedom's true and brother band, 
 Freedom's brown and honest hand, 
 Valleys by the slave untrod, 
 And the Pilgrims' rugged sod, 
 Blessed of our Father, God."
 
 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT.* 
 
 "AND WHEN I LOOKED, BEHOLD, A HAND WAS SENT UNTO ME; AND 
 LO, A ROLL OF A BOOK WAS THEREIN; AND HE SPREAD IT BEFORE 
 ME", AND IT WAS WRITTEN WITHIN AND WITHOUT; AND THERE 
 WAS WRITTEN THEREIN LAMENTATIONS, AND MOURNING, AND WOE." 
 
 Ezekiel ii. 9, 10. 
 
 TIE great battle is over, and the Slave Power, as 
 of old, as in all our national conflicts, when its 
 dominion has been contested, remains master of 
 the field. We come, my brethren, under its per- 
 mission, to consider the results of the battle a permission 
 granted us for the present, and because we are in this 
 remote New England ; a permission forbidden our brothers 
 under the hoof of this Satan, forbidden even our own na- 
 tional representatives, who are soon to assemble at the foot 
 of its throne ; a privilege soon to be forbidden us in this 
 distant locality, and soon to be resigned by us, unless God, 
 in His infinite grace and providence, shall interpose for our 
 national salvation. 
 
 Before we unroll the book which the hand of experience 
 
 * A sermon preached at Westfleld, Mass., November 1C, 1850, on the 
 occasion of the election of James Buchanan to the Presidency of the 
 United States. See Note III. 
 
 (87)
 
 88 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 and truth has sent out to us, the roll of our fast-coming 
 history, we will seek to remove two obstacles that some 
 think should seal our lips with dumbness. They are, that 
 we are attacking an ancient and honorable political party, 
 and that we are intruding in priestly vestments upon for- 
 bidden ground. 
 
 Both of these objections are answered by an examination 
 of the battle-cries of the campaign. What were the shouts 
 that went up from every corner of the vast field ? that rung 
 out over all the land and all the world ? Not tariff and 
 free trade, not banks and sub-treasury, not retrenchment in 
 the public expenditures, not foreign aggressions or sailors' 
 rights a cry that shook the land in the days of Madison. 
 
 Three war-cries freight the air Disunion, Romanism, 
 Slavery. These three fears assailed the hearts of the 
 people. Every one of them is a moral, a religious, a 
 Christian question. Every one of them demands the earnest 
 attention of the minister of Christ. If he cannot discuss 
 these evils ; if he cannot present to your consciences that 
 among them which is the most threatening and deadly, 
 when it excels all others, and thrusts its poisoned dagger 
 into the vitals of the national honor, and even life ; if he 
 cannot descry and declare the form and the coming of Anti- 
 christ, and rally the allies of the Lord Jesus to his over- 
 throw, when can he speak ? 
 
 These censures come chiefly from those who have no 
 experimental knowledge of Christian faith and duties ; who 
 are rejecters of Christ, and especial haters of His ambassa- 
 dors. They are hardly competent to teach the preachers of 
 the Gospel the message He commissions them to bear. It 
 will be well for these self-appointed, and somewhat too 
 self-important, overseers of the ministry, to remember that 
 not one word of instruction, as recorded in this Book, for- 
 bids the discussion of every question that affects humanity. 
 Their mission is to preach a full salvation, salvation from
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 89 
 
 all sin, personal, social, national. It is to rebuke all iniquity 
 in high places or low, whether centering in the palace or 
 rioting in the multitudinous madness of the whole nation. 
 So far from being forbidden to intermeddle in national and 
 political matters, they are, by the especial orders of God 
 Himself, given to many of their predecessors, and by His 
 general orders, issued alike to all, especially commanded to 
 interfere in the affairs of men. While to all other digni- 
 taries it is said, " Touch not mine anointed, and do my 
 prophets no harm ;" to them He commands to preach before 
 all offenders the preaching He gives unto them. While David, 
 the general and the politician, for only eating the bread of 
 the priests, endangered his life ; while he was forbidden to 
 touch the ark, priest and prophet were commanded to meddle 
 with his private as well as official affairs, and to pierce his 
 soul in^the very hour of his pride and vain-glory. 
 
 While King Uzziah was smitten with leprosy for his in- 
 terference with the duties of the minister, the ministers 
 Elijah and Elisha, confronted, by God's order, the ungodly 
 king of Israel, when he was seeking, for personal ends, the 
 ruin of the nation. Paul reasoned with Governor Felix on 
 his official no less than his personal sins. Everywhere God 
 puts this peculiar honor on His servant, giving him au- 
 thority to rebuke kings and nations, and forbidding them to 
 rebuke him. 
 
 It is one of the devices of Satan by which he seeks to 
 harden your hearts against the truth, and make you deaf 
 to your duty against the greatest sin of this or of any age, 
 that the servant of Christ must not expose it, because, 
 forsooth, it has compelled a political pai'ty to become its 
 most active slave. What is this "consecrated politics " that 
 is beyond the reach of the Word of God, and too sacred* to be 
 condemned by Him ? Ah, my friends, it is not the sacred- 
 ness, nor the political relations, of the theme that causes 
 this denunciation of God's ministers, but because it is so
 
 90 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 thoroughly interwoven with the ambition, wealth, trade, and 
 fashion of the land. Therefore they seek to screen it from 
 the wrath of God, and defame His servants, who dare de- 
 nounce it, as traveling beyond their province in human affairs 
 over which God has set them. 
 
 They cry out, as did Mr. Douglas to the thousands of 
 God's ministers, "Let State affairs alone." "Attend to 
 your concerns, while we are allowed to plunder and murder 
 at our will all the interests of freedom and religion." Far 
 more properly may the highwayman, while he is knocking 
 down and plundering his victims, command them to desist 
 from preaching against theft, and confine their discourse to 
 the abstract nature of God, or sin, or holiness. 
 
 Ministers are tarred and feathered, are scourged and shot 
 by the nefarious power of slavery, and that, too, because 
 they are ministers. Aged and eminent members of the 
 church have been killed in attempting to save the lives of 
 their ministerial brethren. Clergymen are treated with foul 
 slanders, by the chiefs of the Republic, for a respectful and 
 solemn petition. But when all these persistent and organ- 
 ized acts of hostility are waged against them and their 
 cause, they must not open their lips in defense, not of them- 
 selves, but even of Christ and His children, bought and sold 
 by wicked men, because it is interfering with politics. 
 
 Away with all such blasphemous folly. We ask no par- 
 don for entering this arena. The greatest crimes that ever 
 broke away from hell, and emerged on this fair earth, are 
 being defiantly committed by the rulers of this nation 
 crimes against every virtue, every grace, every joy ; crimes 
 of which robbery of purse and murder of the body are its 
 least expressions. Robbery of the man himself, not his 
 pennies, murder of his soul, not his body merely, are its 
 daily, its hourly deeds. God forbid that I should keep 
 silence. " Son of man," says the same Voice to the same 
 listener, whose words are the motto for our discourse, says
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 91 
 
 the same Voice to every one of His ambassadors in every 
 age, " Son of man, get thee unto the house of Israel, and 
 speak My words unto them. For thou art not sent to a 
 people of a strange speech and of a hard language, but to 
 the house of Israel, son of man." 
 
 But not from these rebellious hearts do we expect a favor- 
 able ear. There are, however, a few who, though knowing 
 the power of Christ and the obligation of Christians, have 
 fallen into this error. Not because they doubt the right 
 and duty of the minister of Christ to denounce national 
 sins, but because they deny that these sins have become the 
 life and power of the party they support. Prove this to 
 them, and they will be among the most earnest supporters 
 of their brethren in these declarations. It is to these and 
 all other followers of Christ, and well-wishers of His cause, 
 that I appeal to-night. I ask your serious and prayerful 
 investigation of the subject before us. I come in no parti- 
 san spirit. The Spirit of the Lord God, I humbly trust, is 
 upon me. I come not to secure the triumph of any political 
 organization as such, but to present the truth as it exhibits 
 itself in the roll of recent history, and is rapidly unfolding 
 its fearful future lamentations, mourning, and woe. 
 
 I must speak plain words. I shall not hesitate, as have 
 not my forerunners in this sacred office, to mention by name 
 the individuals and organizations that have wrought our fall, 
 and are preparing to lead us onward and downward to yet 
 more horrible crimes, even to the spoiling of the whole peo- 
 ple of all the treasures of freedom and religion which their 
 fathers left them. I may speak to incredulous ears. So 
 did Jeremiah and Josiah, and John the Baptist, and Christ. 
 How vividly the authority that commissioned Ezekiel sounds 
 in our ears, both its orders and the reception of them and of 
 those who proclaim them by those to whom the word is sent! 
 " Son of man, I send thee unto the children of Israel, to a 
 rebellious nation, that have rebelled against me ; they and
 
 92 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 their fathers have transgressed against me. even to this day. 
 For they are impudent children and stiff-hearted. I do send 
 thee unto them, and thou shalt say unto them, ' Thus saith 
 the Lord.' And thou shalt speak My words unto them, 
 whether they will hear or whether they will forbear : for 
 they are most rebellious. But thou, son of man, hear what 
 I say unto thee. Be not thou rebellious, like that rebellious 
 house. Open thy mouth, and eat that I give unto thee. 
 And when I looked, behold, a hand was sent unto me, and 
 lo, a roll of a book was therein. And lie spread it before 
 me. And it was written within and without. And there 
 was written therein lamentations, mourning', and woe." 
 
 By God's grace, I will obey His equally painful command 
 to-night, and speak His words to a house that I hope and pray 
 will not treat them as Israel did those uttered by His servant 
 of old, but who will be earnestly sorry, and will heartily re- 
 pent of all their misdoings, and who will proceed so far as in 
 them lies to renew the land again in repentance and salvation. 
 
 We shall consider, 
 
 1. What it is that has triumphed. 
 
 2. What are its present and imminent claims and pros- 
 pects. 
 
 3. Why Freedom is defeated. 
 
 4. What are our encouragements and obligations in this 
 hour of our failure. 
 
 I. What is it that has triumphed ? 
 
 Not the Democratic party. Not any mere political organ- 
 ization working for political ends. I know the name it 
 takes. As Satan entered that creature that was above all 
 its fellows in beauty and intelligence, in order that he might 
 overthrow a still higher creature who was made in the 
 image of God, and whose destruction would be, in his judg- 
 ment, as the conquest of God himself, so has Satan en- 
 tered this creature of human wisdom and attraction, this 
 chiefest of the instruments of our political excellence, in
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 93 
 
 order to ruin that very life which makes us a people, the 
 peculiar people of God. It is not, therefore, any mere form 
 iu which this Evil is embodied that must be called the victor. 
 The serpent did not claim nor receive the honor of inducing 
 Adam to sin. This party in American politics, as that form 
 of the animal kingdom, unless it is penitent and abandons 
 speedily the evil that possesses it, will be cursed above all 
 the other instrumentalities that have been the favored ser- 
 vants of the nation, and be doomed to the basest fate. 
 Upon its belly shall it go, and dust shall it eat, till it returns 
 to dust and nothingness. 
 
 But while the Democratic party may lose its high position, 
 as it has lost its high character, the Evil that has ruined it, 
 that has already corrupted, and afterward destroyed, two 
 other great parties will still confront us. The Slave Power, 
 not any political party, exults in this victory, and rejoices 
 in hope of everlasting dominion. 
 
 To prove this, it is only necessary to revert to the scenes 
 and sounds that have filled the land in the last few months. 
 Look on the banners that have brightened or gloomed the 
 air. Hardly a topic has had any prominence in the can- 
 vass that did not concern slavery. Shall Kansas be free or 
 slave ? Shall the Ostend Manifesto prevail, which declares 
 we will steal Cuba for slavery, if its government will not 
 sell her for that purpose ? Shall all the territories be thrown 
 open to the foul foot of this monster under the wicked lie 
 of popular sovereignty ? Shall Nicaragua bring her gift of 
 trampled freedom, and lay herself at its grateful feet ? 
 These have been the warnings of the friends of liberty and 
 their country. How have they been met ? By cries of 
 reform, free trade, specie currency, and equal rights any 
 of the ancient watchwords of that party, by which it has 
 so often, and so rightfully, swept the field ? Not a syllable 
 of these. How glad would they have been to have used 
 those famous battle-cries ? Their transparencies and ban-
 
 94 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 ners, their papers and speeches, have rung no change on these 
 their favorite themes. Disunion, sectionalism, popular sov- 
 ereignty, have been their declaration of principles ; the 
 first two as bulwarks against the destructive artillery of 
 their foes ; the last, the specious form in which this demon 
 now arrays himself to tempt and slay the nation. There- 
 fore, by the forced confession of its unwilling confederates, 
 as well as by the earnest assertion of its passionate devo- 
 tees, Slavery is the actual victor. It shouts defiance over 
 prostrate liberty. Read the Southern journals ; read the 
 speeches of those who made the platform and appointed its 
 Executive attorney, and you will see that Slavery alone is 
 the crowned monarch of America for the coming reign. 
 Said Judge Johnson, of Georgia, under the shadow of Inde- 
 pendence Hall, ' ' The question of this campaign is whether 
 we can buy and sell labor as we buy and sell cattle." 
 
 And now, my friends, let us pause and gaze a moment 
 at the monster we have set over us. We are so familiar 
 with the word '' slavery" that its real scope and character 
 do not smite the eye with a true horror. If this nation stood 
 to-day perfectly free from this iniquity, and could behold it 
 approaching its shores, and demanding the sovereignty, we 
 should rise up as one man against the hellish foe. Our 
 fright at the coming of the Pope, and his enthronement 
 among us, at our possible subjection to Czar or Sultan, 
 would be a courage and a joy to that which would palsy our 
 soul when this prince of darkness rose up before us. We 
 talk about it as flippantly and thoughtlessly as we do about 
 the weather. We shudder at Mormon polygamy, at Mexi- 
 can anarchies, at British domination on the North, at the 
 surrender of a fraction of the Pacific Coast to her hands. 
 All these are angels of light in comparison with that which 
 excites but the feeblest fear. We call it patriarchal, scrip- 
 tural, domestic, respectable, Christian. We declare that it 
 has the right to enter and abide in any State or Territory, if
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 95 
 
 a majority of its white men, who care enough about the 
 matter to vote upon it, shall choose to allow it. Many 
 pleasant things are said concerning it, and, though it -has 
 some bad features, as an eminent New York divine has said, 
 " they are only such as are incident to every other human 
 relation." 
 
 AVhat is it that is so nice and honorable, and pious and 
 Biblical ? It is the taking of a human being, and selling 
 hirn like a beast. It is the working of him without recom- 
 pense ; refusing his mind the light it seeks ; refusing his 
 soul the grace it needs ; refusing his heart the affections it 
 craves ; making his conjugal, parental, and filial ties depend 
 upon his master's pleasure. This is Slavery, American Sla- 
 very, the only Ruler in the Republic of the United States. 
 
 Consider the abominations it sets up, not casual, inciden- 
 tal, perishable offshoots, but its essential and inevitable life ; 
 its blood and being. 
 
 Beg'in at its beginning. In the cot of poor parents a 
 child is born. Not in Africa, but in America, under the 
 Capitol itself, that stands so proudly in the very heart of 
 the land. Their breasts thrill with joy unspeakable, as yours, 
 parents, when God sends such an angel to your arms. They 
 feel and accept the sacred responsibility. The father lays 
 plans for his future, in all of which this babe holds a promi- 
 nent place. " He shall bear my name," he says to himself, 
 "to coming generations. Through him I will build up my 
 family in the earth." The parents talk over the name by 
 which he shall be called, his education, his profession, his 
 whole future life. They grow happy in his growth, famous 
 in his fame. In the midst of their blissful dreams, a man 
 enters, perhaps a member of the church, a minister even of 
 Jesus Christ, and, paying no attention to the outflow of the 
 parental nature, not even regarding its first wish, that of 
 a name of their choice, says, "Don't trouble yourself 
 about that. Call him Tom, or Caesar, or January," or
 
 96 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 whatever odd or fancy name comes into his mind. " Don't 
 worry about his future. Though his father, you have nothing 
 to do with that." He follows the condition of his mother. 
 She is a slave. All the freedom enjoyed by his father, if he 
 happens to have a little nominal liberty, avails him nought. 
 She is, perhaps, allowed to care for him, for a few moments a 
 day, taken from her toil in the field. But this privilege may 
 be taken away at any moment. The master's whim or necessity 
 may sell the babe from his mother's breast. Hastening to her 
 hut to feed him, she may find him gone. Put upon the block 
 with him, the piirchaser may decline the incumbrance, and the 
 child is tossed aside as a worthless bit of baggage, and his 
 mother driven away in an agony that God only knows or 
 can avenge. These cases occur by the thousands. This it is 
 to be born a slave. Thus is this wonderful gift of Heaven, 
 this soul fashioned in the similitude of God, this beautiful 
 house of clay, tented with his loving and artistic hand, de- 
 based by the wickedness of man. It is snatched from its 
 father's arms, and, after being left perhaps for a day or two 
 upon its mother's breast, is set up in the market-place, 
 knocked down to the chance bidder, and sent on the doleful 
 ~p;tth of a horrible future. 
 
 \V ho gave this crime power to thus legally tear the child 
 from its father, and declare its mother was its sole represen- 
 tative ? Whence comes that law ? Is the woman the 
 appointed head of the family ? Is she its exclusive head ? 
 Does the son never represent the father ? Is the law of 
 primogeniture so popular in all ages, and so frequently sug- 
 gested in the Scriptures, contradictory to all human ex-^ 
 perience ? Is there any such law among even the lower 
 animals, with whom their "owner" rates them ? Nay, it is 
 simply the arbitrary will of the robber who has stolen this 
 child from his parents, as he has stolen the parents from 
 themselves ; who robbed him of his freedom before he was 
 born, and now steals him from his father, to whom he is born,
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 97 
 
 and will soon steal him from his mother, from whom he is 
 born. It claims to be from Rome. It is from the Devil. 
 
 But the crime does not stop here. If the babe was actual- 
 ly given to its mother, though its father were excluded, it 
 might yet be well. She would act her own and her hus- 
 band's part, and lavish on the bereaved and beloved one a 
 double portion of her heart. But it is not hers. It follows 
 her condition, not her. She is property. So are her babes. 
 She is not her own property. They are not hers. She is 
 subject to her master's fortune. They must follow her fate. 
 Her daughter what horrors arise in her soul as she looks 
 upon that lovely infant her daughter ! What a fate 
 awaits her ! What a life of toil, of infamy, of ignorance, of 
 suffering! the more beautiful, the more awful. Naturally 
 may she be tempted to deliver, by the stroke of death, that 
 beautiful body, and more beautiful soul, from its unutterable 
 future. 
 
 Both parents are thus robbed of this darling gift of God, 
 not by the gipsy snatch, rare and lawless, not by a whirl 
 of maddening passion, but by sober and written Law, where- 
 of ministers and members of the professed Church of Christ, 
 statesmen of the highest rank, judges of most rigid legal 
 righteousness, and even philanthropists of tender hearts, are 
 the enactors, advocates, arid supporters. How horrible our 
 sin ! How more horrible will be our punishment ! 
 
 If left with its parents for a season, it is as the calf is left 
 with its dam, awaiting the owner's need or wish. Nay, it 
 has less privileges than that creature, for the animal's 
 mother may train it after her nature, to the utmost of her 
 capacity. These sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty 
 are not suffered to be developed by their affectionate parents 
 according to the nature He has given them. Though per- 
 mitted to remain in their arms, they are forbidden to receive 
 any real education. They must not be taught to read or even 
 pray. They grow up, a youth manly and self-reliant, a maiden 
 7
 
 98 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT.. 
 
 modest and comely. Are these blessings ? To your sons 
 and daughters they are. Not so with this piece of market- 
 able flesh. Their heaviest curse is their intelligence, their 
 manliness, their modesty, their beauty. For their fate 
 violates and crushes these noble instincts. They enter the 
 holy estate of matrimony. It is a cheat and a lie. They are 
 coupled like cattle subject to their owner's will. He takes 
 that wife from her husband at any impulse of passion, the 
 husband from his wife under any purpose of self-interest. 
 They are parted or united as indifferently as you would 
 separate a yoke of oxen. 
 
 And this is Biblical, patriarchal, Christian. This is what 
 Abraham practiced and Paul commanded. God forbid ! It 
 is a vile slander on the Word and the children of God. 
 The servitude of Abraham and of the Hebrew bondmen was 
 as the servitude of factory hands to their employer, or 
 feudal retainers to their m.aster. They were his proper- 
 ty only as you are the property of the man who employs 
 you. Abraham's servants could have left him at any time. 
 One he sent away with her child free, by the orders of 
 his wife a generosity no Southern Abraham is equal to. 
 Our jealous Sarahs sell their Hagars and Ishmaels ; they 
 never emancipate them. They were retainers, armed and 
 independent. One of his slaves was the head of his house. 
 Paul's advice was to you, whether in shop or store, " Ser- 
 vants, obey your masters." God in this word sets before 
 us the law of employer and employed the great rule for 
 the management of free industry ; a rule that is fitted for 
 every estate on earth, for every relation, duty, and hour of 
 eternity. 
 
 This sin of sins against God and man has no small and 
 obscure being. It rules over four millions of immortal souls. 
 It covers with its death-shade one half of the Republic. It 
 has held the reins of power under other drivers these many 
 years, and now, in its own person, it openly ascends the
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 99 
 
 chariot-seat. A weak old man, and a debauched party, pro- 
 fess to be charioteers, but this demoniac power sits on their 
 necks. He is the avowed, he the sole, owner and lessee of 
 America her imperator and tyrannus, her single sovereign 
 and lord. 
 
 Before the eyes of the world, beneath the eyes of Heaven 
 and of Christ, thus stands the American Republic to-day. 
 It has seen its threescore years and ten, and if, by reason of 
 the immense strength of the principles received from its 
 fathers, it has reached fourscore years, yet is its strength 
 labor and sorrow. It will be soon cut off and fly away, unless 
 it hastens to -repent and forsake utterly this unspeakable in- 
 iquity. Its glory is gone. " Ichabod," " Ichabod," is on all 
 its walls. Freedom, humanity, religion, are excluded from 
 the national policy, and national idea. The Declaration of 
 Independence, which inspired Jefferson, and Adams, and 
 Lafayette, and Washington, which sustained the hearts of 
 the people with its breath of life divine, amid the terrible 
 pressure of years of conflict, which received political form 
 and substance in our Constitution, that Declaration, as 
 avowed by one of the ablest advocates of this triumphant 
 power, and as adopted by all its leaders, is but glittering- 
 generalities, unworthy the regard of sober men, although 
 these glittering generalities are those very principles with- 
 out which Christianity is a lie and civilisation a dream. 
 
 Thus we stand. Clouds and darkness are round about us. 
 The air is pierced with lightning, and shaken by mutteriugs 
 of avenging thunder. 
 
 II. What shall the end be ? 
 
 Some suppose that the party retaining the power, the 
 party, rather, ascending to power, wilt be very gentle, en- 
 croaching on no one's rights, and doing nothing to advance 
 its own ends. We read in some journals great professions 
 of this character. They have thus influenced many votes, 
 and doubtless decided the contest. Are they well grounded ?
 
 100 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 I have no desire to be an alarmist. I shall strive to state 
 only what is probable, and what is logically certain to be 
 attempted. I know there are thrills of terror at the im- 
 mense vote for freedom, and that these emotions may re- 
 strain its progress along the course which its position and 
 existence compel it to march. I do not say the slave power 
 will attempt to carry out all its designs ; but it will and 
 must push forward the most advanced of them to completion, 
 and encourage the less developed in their growth. Such 
 necessity is laid upon it. It is consistent with every human, 
 with, every inhuman, principle that actuates its disciples. 
 
 Read the dreadful programme which the nation by last 
 Tuesday's action has declared shall be hers for the next 
 quadrennian. Note that in all the list there is not one 
 sentiment of true Democracy, humanity, or Christianity. 
 
 First and foremost, the administration will put forth all its 
 power to make Kansas a Slave State. Hear the reasons for 
 this opinion : 
 
 1 . They have set their heart upon it carried all the 
 preliminaries up to the last act but one ; carried them with a 
 rush, a violence, a madness, which has not hesitated at fraud, 
 robbery, arson, and murder. They will not abandon the 
 lands they have stolen from the Free States, and which they 
 have many times ravaged by bloody hordes ; where they 
 have committed such brutal murders as to give them a name 
 below every name in the annals of man ; where they now 
 (< sit, shapes hot from hell," in all the form and pomp of 
 sovereignty that obtains in Pandemonium itself. They never 
 will resign that power at the call of an administration of 
 their own right hand's making. These bull-dogs will not 
 let go their grip upon the throat of Kansas by any cry from 
 Washington, if one should be made. But it will not be 
 made. They know too well that (hey are Washington. These 
 janizaries have made the Sultan, these cardinals the Pope ; and 
 they are too wise to have made one greater than themselves.
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 101 
 
 2. But not only will they have Kansas because they have 
 steeped themselves in such iniquity to get it, they must 
 have it of political necessity. They want no Free State 
 cordon around Missouri. They will have none if their fierce 
 and tireless zeal can prevent it. It will be impossible to 
 keep this Slave State in their hands, shot through as it is 
 with free sentiments, if Kansas becomes free. And if Mis- 
 souri falls, the whole demoniac arch totters to its base, and 
 tumbles to the nethermost hell. Kansas or nothing, is their 
 clear discernment and purpose. For slavery in Kansas 
 they will fight, because they are thus battling for slavery in 
 Virginia and South Carolina.* 
 
 3. They will wage this conflict to its issue, because suc- 
 cess here is triumph everywhere. Kansas theirs, all the 
 Territories will be. They wish for no more compromises. 
 They want no barter with Freedom, whereby Slavery and 
 Liberty shall divide the Senate between them. They mean 
 to have slavery national, and freedom not even sectional. 
 Kansas theirs, and this triumph is sure. The law of the 
 nation will then decree that a slaveholder can take his 
 "property" with him into any of the Territories, and that 
 no local organization can emancipate them ! 
 
 Every other Territory thus subdued, all the new States 
 will wheel into the Union under this flag, and its- triumph 
 at the capital is assured forever. Utah is at our doors with 
 her twin institution, in its professed patriarchal and less 
 abominable nature. She unites lovingly with slavery in the 
 edict of her ruler to all the " saints " to vote for him, who 
 declares he is the platform upon which these barbarisms are 
 
 * The hero of Kansas became the martyr of Virginia. In the name and 
 strength of his Master, John Brown struck at the head of the serpent 
 after he had, in Kansas, effectually bruised its tail. That blow revealed 
 and confirmed the instincts of both contestants on this then distant field. 
 Kansas included the whole in its every part.
 
 102 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 to dwell tog-ether under their own territorial vine and fig- 
 tree, with none to molest nor make them afraid. 
 
 Oregon has slaves on her soil, and is in the hands of men 
 who have kept off a State organization for several years, 
 because they saw that the country was not ripe to receive 
 her as a Slave State, and they were determined she should 
 be nothing* else. Washington Territory is in their hands. 
 So are New Mexico and Nebraska. Every spot of our na- 
 tional domain but Minnesota. And she, in the insolence 
 of this triumph, may be refused admission, unless she will 
 put this broth of abominable things in her sacred constitu- 
 tional vessel. 
 
 Outside of our present boundaries, where sweeps not her 
 eye, greedy and devouring ? Central America is under her 
 feet. Cuba is hotly lusted after. The three-headed dog 
 of war across the seas, England, France, and Spain, guards 
 the Hesperides, and alone preserves these golden apples 
 from her clutch. 
 
 The African slave trade will be reopened practically, if 
 not by legislative act. This does not need Congressional 
 enactment or presidential signature. Let Charleston, New 
 Orleans, and Mobile offer to receive these Africans, and they 
 will be introduced, as enslaved Americans now go to these 
 ports from Baltimore and Richmond, under the protection 
 of our national flag and cannon. 
 
 Silence will be imposed on Congressional lips. Sumner's 
 still bleeding head and wasting frame will be ever before 
 the representatives of the Free States, as an index of their 
 fate, if they dare to assail this execrable shape. Not gutta 
 percha canes, but knife and pistol, will speedily end the con- 
 troversy at the Capitol. Moving northward, silence will be 
 laid upon the press, which is the mouth of the people. Xo 
 journal will be allowed to condemn the national institution. 
 The fiery "Independent," the vehement "Tribune," the 
 solid white heat of the " Liberator," the long uplifted
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 103 
 
 trumpet of " Zion's Herald," the first of all journals of the 
 Christian Church in this warfare, and not the least in energy 
 and influence, the " National Era," grand oracle of grand 
 men, the growing multitude, local, urban, and rural, that 
 have joined their voices to the swelling volume of indigna- 
 tion, upon them the administration will lay its hand, and 
 stifle their speech or their life. With them will sink into 
 dumbness every minister of Christ and Liberty, every 
 speaker who urges this great reform from any stage, every 
 book that paints the horrors of the hell of bondage, and fires 
 the hearts of the people with a burning detestation of it and 
 of its defenders ; all these will this power essay to repress, 
 for its tyranny will be everywhere, and will everywhere be 
 in peril if this liberty is allowed. Napoleon's treatment of 
 the press will be as the little finger to the thick loins of this 
 American despot. 
 
 Finally, slaves will be adjudged property anywhere, while in 
 transitu, and the transit may be months in occurring. Slave- 
 pens will, therefore, be a necessity of New York and Boston, 
 and the slaves, instead of being sent thither for shipment 
 alone, will be sold as openly in their market-places, as in those 
 of Richmond. Then comes the universal reign of the demon. 
 The nation everywhere submits her neck to the yoke. 
 
 You turn away with loathing from this cup of horrors, 
 and denounce it as the offspring of a disordered brain. My 
 friends, every one of these claims is openly made in the 
 leading administration journals of the South, and avowed by 
 its political representatives, while their Northern allies make 
 no objection, but keep a close silence upon these prepara- 
 tions, and expend their strength of argument and invective 
 in assailing the defenders of Jefferson and Washington, of 
 the Declaration and the Constitution, of humanity and Christ. 
 
 Say not, " Prophesy smooth things, pleasant things, hope- 
 ful things." When a servant of the Most Holy God was 
 requested to preach a political sermon before his king, that
 
 104 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 should conform to the general current of expression and 
 flatter the pride and prospects of his sovereign, he said, 
 "As the LoTd liveth, what my God saith, that will I speak." 
 So must I say, so far as I, anxiously seeking for the 
 light, am able to discern it. This contest is very different 
 from all this nation has previously waged. If it had not 
 been, ministers would not have engaged so earnestly in the 
 canvass. I suppose more men have addressed audiences on 
 the issue of this campaign from the pulpit than from the 
 platform. The three thousand ministers that sent up from 
 New England alone that solemn denunciation, in the name 
 o Almighty God, against the Nebraska sin, have probably, 
 in nearly every case, uttered their warning to their hearers 
 in the last few months, while thousands in other parts of the 
 land have lifted up their voices in the general appeal. 
 
 These " political," " gunpowder priests," as they are 
 called, have no desire to interfere in mere political matters. 
 They are servants of no names except the Name that is above 
 every name, whose orders they dare not and desire not to 
 disobey. I warned and entreated you before the leader of 
 the hosts of freedom was selected, indifferent as to who he 
 should be, far from confident that one of a more decided 
 anti-slavery character would not have been a better captain. 
 I have no devotion to men. It is the cause that has brought 
 these ministers from their sacred studies, wherein they de- 
 light, from the beds of the dying and the side of the penitent 
 inquirer after Jesus, into the tumult of the market-place, the 
 dust and whirl and thunder of battle. It is Christ for whom 
 they are preaching and praying and voting, in these works 
 as much as in the more regular duties of their calling. 
 
 The fact that Antichrist has secured this victory proves 
 that it will not, cannot be tamely abandoned. The Slave 
 Power is no Hannibal, to waste its victorious forces in luxury, 
 while Rome is not yet completely captured. Therefore will 
 the administration be forced to serve its baleful ends.
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 105 
 
 Two other reasons confirm this view. 1. The Slave power 
 must advance or die. It is a bankrupt swindler, who will 
 have to abandon his show of wealth, unless he can extend 
 his villainies. The late articles in the " Charleston Standard," 
 on the opening of the foreign slave trade, articles of great 
 power, which should be pondered by every thoughtful man, 
 prove conclusively that they will die unless they move 
 forward. Talk about resting in quiet on their plantations, 
 undisturbed by the North. Impossible. Their plantations 
 would soon be deserts, their homes poorhouses, and not 
 even almshouses, for no gifts would relieve their poverty. 
 They must grow. Land, land, they must have, to be rifled 
 of its virgin sweets, and then abandoned. Slaves, slaves, 
 cheap and numerous, to till these lands and multiply their 
 wealth. Thus they are driven deeper and deeper into this 
 gulf by the highest pressure on man, his necessity to live. 
 They are on the steed of destiny. They cannot escape this 
 progress in evil except by emancipation, and emancipation 
 will not immediately relieve them. They must leap into the 
 chasm before they can fill it. 
 
 2. But they, are driven on in this inevitable path by what 
 will be to them a yet higher motive the total loss of all their 
 present possessions. Two of their chief men have said that 
 the election of a Free State President would have killed 
 slavery in twenty years. They see by the mighty upris- 
 ing in the North, that a Free State President will soon be 
 elected, and under the inspiration of despair they will work 
 with startling vigor during this brief space of power for 
 their future safety.* Fifty thousand men, representing three 
 thousand millions of property, who have the national power 
 
 * How vigorously they did work, history shows. They transported all 
 our fleet into distant parts, and all our arms into Southern arsenals. 
 They appropriated our treasury, navy and war departments to their ends, 
 and left this administration, at its close, without spirit or means for de- 
 fense, much less for aggression.
 
 106 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 in their hands, know that it is surely passing over to those 
 who will make this vast property valueless.* Will they not 
 fight as no men have ever fought in this nation to preserve 
 their power and possessions ? Suppose that a system of 
 measures were already commenced, or soon to be inaugu- 
 rated, which would make every bank and factory and farm, 
 in a few years all the property of the State, but beggars' rags, 
 would not our citizens do all in their power to avert the 
 catastrophe ? f Would not fifty thousand robbers defend 
 three thousand millions of gold which they had stolen, against 
 all the bands of justice, and provide in every possible way 
 for its preservation. These thousands of robbers, from 
 whom I exclude all conscientious or indifferent slaveholders, 
 are the assumed protectors of three thousand millions of 
 stolen property God's property, made, bought, and re- 
 deemed by Him, to be His treasure and joy forever. They 
 have the government. Are they going to be easy and in- 
 dulgent, and give you, their enemies, all the victories which 
 you would have had, if you had defeated them ? I speak 
 as unto wise men. Judge ye what I say. 
 
 III. What has caused this defeat ? Why did not truth 
 and right prevail ? Why were not the horse and his rider 
 cast into the sea ? For reasons such as are seen in all the 
 struggles of liberty and Christianity for the subjugation of 
 the world to God. Huss and his people must die before 
 Luther could slay their murderer. Bunker Hill must be lost 
 before Yorktown could be gained. Why did we not win ? 
 
 * The slave property was valued from $2,000,000,000 to $4,000,000,000, 
 the slaveholders of every class about 250,000. This includes minors, 
 women, and aged men. Its controllers were far less than 50,000. 
 
 f A striking illustration of the absorption of all industry into the 
 business of slavery is shown by the statistics of Virginia for this very 
 year. She exported over $7.000,000 of her property in slaves ; more in 
 value than her tobacco, wheat, or corn. Slaves rose in that State from 
 $62 apiece in 1789, to $500 in 1856. Abolitionism financially ruined 
 her, and she knew that it would.
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 107 
 
 1. Because there was no deep repentance of the real 
 cause of these shames and crimes, and no true sympathy 
 with their chief victims. The cause is slavery ; the real 
 victim is the slave. For the crime we have sorrowed, but 
 not after a godly sort. We have not bemoaned our sins of 
 omission and commission connected with it. The nation 
 has been the abettor and supporter of the President and his 
 iniquity. Who has cried, as he saw his own cooperation in 
 this sin of sins, " God be merciful to me a sinner" ? 
 
 We have had no tears for the slave. His fate has not 
 been the battle-cry of any party. "Free Labor is in peril! " 
 "Wliite Labor, our labor!" This has been our watchword : 
 not the rights of our brethren, but our own purses. How 
 much better are you than those white and black brethren 
 that groan in that prison-house of death ? Millions on mil- 
 lions are scattered over more than half our organized terri- 
 tory, suffering the unspeakable horrors of the worst tyranny 
 outside of the pit. Bomba of Naples before whose crimes 
 all Europe, even bloody Napoleon and the Nero of Austria, 
 stand aghast, and cry aloud inflicts no such punishment 
 on his victims as our own Southland does on hers. He 
 never tears asunder those whom God has joined together, 
 so that each never knows through all their bitter life where 
 the other lives, or if they live. He never snatches the babe 
 from its mother's arms, and sells it into distant lands. 
 He does not employ the fair and pious maidens 'of his realm, 
 as the other domestic animals, for the raising of stock for 
 the market, or strip them of every protection of the law, 
 and cast them helpless into the lustful clutch of every vaga- 
 bond of the palace and the street. He does not hunt his 
 laboring people through the thick tangled ravines of his 
 lands with trained bloodhounds, nor flog them to death at 
 whipping-posts on every farm and in every market-place, 
 nor burn them at the stake, nor pour burning-fluid over 
 their head and neck, and set fire to it in order that he may
 
 108 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 enjoy the sport, as two of our noblemen did not long since 
 in Kentucky ; and no press, nor pulpit, nor public voice in all 
 their land spoke a syllable against them. This king does 
 not put his subjects into such agonies that mothers slay 
 their children rather than expose them to his cruelty. He 
 does not refuse them the offices of religion, and try to shut 
 upon them the door of the kingdom of heaven as well as 
 the kingdom of earthly knowledge and happiness. We 
 do ! Close beside us, but a few hundred miles from out- 
 doors, begins this valley of the shadow of death, this val- 
 ley of real death, not its shadow. There abound these tears, 
 and groans, and agonies. Families are being torn asunder 
 this hour. " They ravish the women in Zion, the maids in 
 the city of Judah." They are on auction-blocks knocked 
 down to vile merchantmen ; in slave-pens, awaiting the hour 
 of their march to their Southern grave ; in coffles, hand- 
 cuffed and fettered, walking wearily over those dreary paths 
 to unknown horrors. They are wading in rice swamps, 
 sweating in sugar houses, stooping in cjotton fields, scream- 
 ing under their father's lash, falling before their brother's 
 bullet. How many a mother, crouching in her desolated 
 cabin, is wailing and moaning with groanings that cannot 
 be uttered, as she thinks to-night of her tender and beauti- 
 ful daughter, your sister and mine, crucified on the awful 
 cross of slavery ! 
 
 " Gone, gone ! sold and gone 
 
 To the rice swamps dank and lone, 
 Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, 
 Where the noisome insect stings, 
 Where the fever-demon strews 
 Poison with the fallen dews, 
 Where the sickly sunbeams glare 
 Through the hot and misty air. 
 There no mother's eye is near them, 
 There no mother's ear can hear them ; 
 Never when the torturing lash 
 Seams their backs with many a gash,
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 109 
 
 Shall a mother's kindness bless them, 
 Or a mother's arms caress them. 
 Toiling through the weary day, 
 And at night the spoiler's prey. 
 O that they had early died, 
 Sleeping calmly side by side, 
 Where the tyrant's power is o'er, 
 And the fetter galls no more. 
 Gone, gone ! sold and gone 
 To the rice swamps dank and lone, 
 From Virginia's hills and waters : 
 Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! " 
 
 Poets have essayed to paint the mouth of hell. Homer, 
 Virgil, Dante, and Milton have imagined its horrors. Yet 
 the chief of them the artistic Roman, the painfully minute 
 Tuscan fail to convey, in their imaginations of the lost, a 
 true picture of the living fate of millions of Americans, 
 born under our flag and on our soil, heirs with us to every 
 right and privilege of an American citizen. Howlings and 
 writhings, and fiery streams, and caves of ice, arid black- 
 ness of 'darkness were the pigments on their palette. But 
 the power that mingled them was Sin. Here virtue lies 
 distressed ; here innocence writhes in flames ; here piety 
 is encased in thick-ribbed walls of everlasting ice ; here 
 chastity is embruted by human beasts ; here Christ is cruci- 
 fied afresh. And we, what have we done as a nation, or as 
 a political party striving to gain the reins of government ? 
 We dared not raise a cry for them, for fear of being called 
 " abolitionists." For that word is so unpopular, no party 
 assuming it can rise to power. We shouted, and planned, 
 and fought for suffering Kansas. Her woes filled our eyes 
 and lungs. Great as they are, they are nothing to those 
 suffered by other Americans in the larger part of the land. 
 And these we feared even to mention. 
 
 We did not deserve the victory. We shall not win it till 
 this sympathy possesses the heart and bursts from the lips 
 of the people. An American citizen attempted to leave
 
 110 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 Richmond lately. He was nailed in a box, and the box put 
 on board of a vessel so carelessly, that he stood upon his 
 head, and in that condition he went reeling along the bil- 
 lowy ocean to New York. When he reached that harbor, 
 half dead, thrice dead we might rather say, he made 
 himself known to the captain ; and that Northern wretch, a 
 New England wretch probably, kindly sent him back to 
 Richmond. He had suffered Peter's fate for weeks, cruci- 
 fied head downward, and yet he was treated with less 
 leniency. For had not death released the apostle, his per- 
 secutors might have had pity on such courageous endurance 
 of so long and so horrible a martyrdom. They certainly 
 would not have remanded him to severer tortures. Did we 
 make the skies ring with our indignation ? How many 
 wept because of him ? We talk of our Congressional and 
 Kansas heroes. Have they suffered like this man for free- 
 dom ? And yet he was honored by hardly a half dozen lines 
 in the journals. Not a burst of rage at the poltroon cap- 
 tain, not a cry of pity for the redeemed brave, hurled back 
 into the burning pit from which he had by such immensity 
 of endurance well nigh escaped. Indignation meetings 
 should have been held over the atrocity of that Northern 
 captain, and against the system that compels such heroism 
 to escape from its tortures. 
 
 2. We have failed because we were not, as a people, ear- 
 nest in prayer for the triumph of Freedom. " I will be 
 inquired of," saith God, " by the house of Israel to do this 
 thing for them." Politicians despise election prayer-meet- 
 ings, and too many Christians did not see their necessity. 
 Though frequently appointed in this place, they were poorly 
 attended. Men were busy at the caucus, but not at this 
 true caucus the coming together with and before the 
 Lord. Women would talk politics over their tables, but 
 declined to come up to the temple and pray it on their 
 knees. Voters thought this to be just like other contests,
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. Ill 
 
 and supposed mere party-talk and machinery would give 
 them the victory. Unless the Lord go up with us, we go 
 in vain ; we go to defeat, not triumph. He will be sought 
 unto for this great salvation. We should all have done as 
 was done in some places. Christians of all sects should 
 have met together on the morning of election, and marched 
 from the prayer-meeting to the ballot-box. If this duty had 
 been done for the preceding months, we should have re- 
 ceived the desired blessing. Christ is more deeply inter- 
 ested in this work than we can be. He is King of kings 
 and President of presidents. To Him the earth is given 
 for an inheritance. He requires His children to call for His 
 aid. His arm alone can bring us salvation. Had the whole 
 land been one atmosphere of prayerful incense, had the 
 Church alone been earnest, and instant, and universal, in 
 this cry, many a doubting heart would have turned right- 
 ward instead of wrongward ; many a hand lifted against 
 Him would have been raised for Him ; many a vote that said 
 "No" to this call of God and man, would have said " Yes." 
 
 Pennsylvania is not the keystone of this nation. It is 
 prayer. When we pray for the slave as one with him, we 
 shall speak for him, vote for him, and win for him and our- 
 selves individual, national, universal liberty. " I will be in- 
 quired of by the house of Israel to do this thing for them." 
 
 3. We have failed because we were, as a whole, more 
 anxious to beat a party than to destroy a gigantic sin. We 
 have opposed the President and his supporters as politicians, 
 not as sinners against a just and angry God. We have 
 sought their overthrow for personal and party aggrandize- 
 ment, and not for the sake of God and man. We have been 
 unwilling to see that that unfortunate Pilate in the history 
 of liberty, enshrined forever in the execrations of mankind, 
 was, in reality, no greater offender than those who went be- 
 fore him. Pierce was no worse, though a weaker instrument 
 of this sin, than his predecessors, Fillmore, and Webster,
 
 112 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 and Clay. Those who voted for him were no worse than 
 the most of those who voted for his rival. All avowed their 
 joy that agitation on this subject had ceased, shutting the 
 hatchway on our miserable brethren and sisters in the hold 
 of our Ship of State, and stifling their shrieks and moans, 
 while she sails over sunny waters of credit and renown. 
 
 We are all partakers of our Pilate's crime. The innocent 
 blood he has shed is on us and our children. It will be de- 
 manded of us, drop for drop, by the God of justice.* We 
 must look behind that poor man to the Judases and Caia- 
 phases who, for money and power, have set on this weak- 
 willed governor to his dreadful deeds and fame. We must 
 go behind even these traitors and enemies of our liberties 
 and our God, to the arch Sin which possesses them like the 
 Legion, the wanderer in the tombs, the greatest of modern, 
 nay, greater than any ancient crime American Slavery. 
 
 It is a system the smoke of whose torment blackens all 
 our sky. No such organized iniquity exists elsewhere on 
 the earth. If it prevailed in China precisely as it does 
 in Virginia, we should vent our loudest thunders against it. 
 If it possessed a European foothold, it would be expelled 
 by the united cannon of all nations. Ezekiel's denuncia- 
 tions of the Judean infamy, in all its minute and horrible 
 fullness, does not express the full deserts of this abomina- 
 tion. See all the present population of New England in the 
 condition of our kinsfolk of the South ; their number is about 
 our number. Go from city to city, from village to village, 
 and behold only the worst of huts, the most meager fare, 
 the raggedest dress. Note their condition. Not one al- 
 lowed to read ; not one permitted to go from his allotted 
 place ; no Westfield man visiting Springfield, nor Spring- 
 field man, Boston. No one riding on the railroads, except 
 in the cattle cars, and in chains ; sold on your and every 
 village green ; driven through every street as beasts for the 
 
 * See Note IV.
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 113 
 
 slaughter, only that cattle go freely in their droves ; these 
 go lashed together, the sound of the whip ever falling on 
 their quivering flesh ; the sound of agony ever rising on the 
 weary air ; and below, beyond all this, crimes against God 
 and nature, which defiled Sodom, and buried it in wrath 
 and fire, everywhere occurring. Traverse all these Puritan 
 States, and gaze on this universal horror, with not a single 
 exception, and say, Is there any sin like ours ? That is the 
 sight which spreads over our land for a thousand miles. Is 
 it not strange that God's thunders still sleep in His arrn ? that 
 the earth does not gape, and the heavens break forth in fire ? 
 
 We should demand that these horrors shall cease, or that 
 we should throw off the body of this death that makes the 
 United States a stench in the nostrils of the world, a by- 
 word and hissing among the nations. 
 
 A dislike of this evil, joined with unwillingness to extir- 
 pate it, is a characteristic of no especial party. The Demo- 
 cratic party, now in power, is as much opposed to slavery, 
 so far as most of its Northern elements are concerned, as 
 the party that opposes it. The foreign and native elements 
 of its Northern wing have no desire to see slavery estab- 
 lished in Kansas, extended into our Territories, or spread 
 over our whole land. The President- elect, and ruling, are 
 undoubtedly, in their private sentiments, opposed to its 
 extension. The fault is not in their private, abstract feel- 
 ings ; it is in their attachment to a party, because they see 
 in it the road to political success. Unprincipled men, trad- 
 ing politicians, are the Northern leaders of this party, whose 
 conscience and heart, if they have any, never interfere with 
 their plans or deeds. Their followers are believers in its 
 original creed, who fought its battles in the days when it 
 defended the cause of the people, Avhen the greatest good of 
 the greatest number was its motto and endeavor, and who 
 cannot yet believe that it is in the hands of the most haughty 
 and wicked aristocracy on the face of the earth. They still
 
 114 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 think its enemies are their ancient foes, whom they esteemed 
 the enemies of the people and of the rights of man. 
 
 The leaders know for whom they are working. The slave- 
 traders, who have stolen this Democratic livery of a popu- 
 lar name and popular rights, to serve the devil in, have 
 put the mercenaries of the North into office in order that 
 they may keep the masses on their side, and thus retain 
 the national power. We have not, as a party, sought so 
 much to convince these Democratic voters as to subdue 
 them. This party management of ours has retained them 
 in the hands of the enemy. In Pennsylvania alone multi- 
 tudes were thus kept from our ranks. It is not natural to 
 submit to the man that smites you. We may christianly 
 turn the other cheek, we are not christianly required to 
 make him our companion and guide. Not until we rise 
 above the passion for party success or the vindictive assaults 
 on men for mere partisanship, shall we win this great vic- 
 tory for God. 
 
 These are the chief reasons for our failure : bitterness of 
 party feeling and ambition for party triumph, lack of sym- 
 pathy, deep and all-pervading, for the slave, dread of the 
 reproach of Christ and of abolitionism, and neglect of prayer 
 to God, that His right arm might give us the victory. 
 
 IV. Is there any bow upon these clouds ? Have we any 
 ground for hope in the ultimate triumph of Freedom, in the 
 restoration of the Declaration and the Constitution to their 
 true seat of power ? Is the roll filled only with lamenta- 
 tions, mourning, and woe. Written it is within and without 
 with these doleful exclamations. The hosts of Pharaoh have 
 not yet sunk like lead in the mighty waters of a popular up- 
 rising. The chain yet clanks about the neck of the nation. 
 Our bondage is to be yet more grievous. But will it come 
 to an end ? I can prophesy good concerning Israel. There 
 is ground for hope. " I shall see Him, but not now. I shall 
 behold Him, but not nigh." It is the hour and the triumph
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 115 
 
 of darkness. Satan conquers in Eden and on Calvary. Yet 
 Christ hath bruised his head, and will lead him captive even 
 in the hour of his victory. Not without great toil and suf- 
 fering- and defeat and death will this deliverance come. 
 
 Two questions address us. Will the programme already 
 prepared be carried out ? Will the defeated principles be 
 inthroned by the next quadrennial in the seat of national 
 power? 1. We answer, In the prevention of the execution 
 of the dreadful catalogue of aggressions on the nation's 
 liberty and life, we have no hope from the managers of the 
 dominant party. Undoubtedly its Northern leaders are ter- 
 rified at the mighty expression of Free State sentiment ; but 
 they are not the leaders of the party ; they are but the tools 
 of the slave-drivers, whose slaves, sooner than these men, 
 will rebel against them. We have nothing to hope from a 
 President who has been for thirty years the foremost wor- 
 shiper at this Baal ; who has advocated all their measures 
 with a readiness of zeal that surpassed even John C. Cal- 
 houn himself; who alone, of all Northern senators, urged 
 the enactment of a law, making the postmaster responsible, 
 under heavy fines, for the passage through his office of any 
 document condemning slavery ; who alone, of all Northern 
 men, advocated the annexation of Texas, on the ground that 
 the South ought to have more slave territory ; who wrote 
 in favor of extending the Missouri line to the Pacific, when 
 this tyranny demanded it, in order to secure to themselves, 
 without fail, New Mexico, Arizona, and all Southern Cali- 
 fornia ; who dared to do what Mr. Pierce, with all his subser- 
 vience, and Mr. Douglas, with all his boldness, would have 
 shrunk from, and in the center of Europe, and under the eyes 
 of all Christian powers, draughted and published with his 
 name first, and two slave-drivers after him, a plan for America 
 to steal a province from a nation with whom we are at peace, 
 unless she will consent to its sale, in order that the area of this 
 crime may be extended, and its power made more secure.
 
 116 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 What should we say if Great Britain should threaten to 
 take Massachusetts unless the Kepublic sold it to her; stolen 
 with all its wealth, its history, its patriotism, its every ma- 
 terial and spiritual bond of union, stolen to make it a bond- 
 slave of her 'own, that her favorite iniquity might be the 
 more firmly planted and widely extended. But this did 
 James Buchanan on the continent of Europe, when he as- 
 serted the purpose of the Slave Power to seize Cuba, unless 
 Spain surrendered it. Such is his past career. Can any 
 change for the better be augured therefrom ? Is there any hope 
 for the amelioration of this evil drawn from his character or 
 history ? Alas, none.! While as a minister of Christ I shall 
 pray for our new President, while I shall not shut the door 
 against his penitence and return, in the fear of God, before 
 whom princes are but men, and who commands His servants 
 not to fear or favor the face of unrighteous rulers, I sol- 
 emnly declare that we have no right to, hope for any act, 
 favorable to liberty from Mr. Buchanan. The dying dynasty 
 will be forgotten, I fear, in the subtle, cruel, tireless crimi- 
 nality of the coming administration. The last woe is nearly 
 past ; the next cometh quickly, and cometh sure. The bow, 
 if it is one, is of the clouds, is not on them. The Judicial 
 Bench is the servile oracle of this Power. The Senate will 
 be no less vindictive than it has been against freedom, 
 and no less supple to slavery. It cannot be more so. The 
 House may stand against the waves of this gulf of death. 
 It may. God grant that it will. Here is our only hope, 
 so far as our national action is concerned, for the success 
 of freedom, or rather for the prevention of further suc- 
 cesses of slavery. You know how feeble it is. Men who 
 turned a deaf ear to the wail of Kansas, who have joined 
 loudest in insults upon the advocates of liberty, who have 
 worked zealously for what they knew was the cause of sin, 
 will not be apt to stand up against their leaders. Their 
 backs are stiffened to the stooping posture in which they
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 117 
 
 have so long* been bent. They have no power to walk erect. 
 Such men as John P. Hale and Hannibal Hamlin have not 
 taken seats in the House as they have in the Senate ; nor 
 can we hope, unless the people shall change their mind, and 
 then their representatives, that its immediate future will 
 differ from its past. A body which voted not to arraign the 
 murderer of Keating, because its Southern masters forbade it ; 
 which voted not to expel the murderer in intent, and probably 
 yet in fact, of Charles Sumner ; which voted that the Border 
 Ruffian sitting among them, by votes which he and they 
 confessed were fraudulent, should still hold his seat ; which 
 voted against any search into the Kansas troubles, and after 
 it had received the report, and knew of its truthfulness, 
 voted not to believe it ; which fought for weeks to give the 
 President the forces he is now employing to rob and murder 
 peaceable citizens of their own districts in their new home, 
 these are not the men to go backward, and confess and for- 
 sake their sins, and do works meet for repentance. They 
 will grow more desperate against the light and summons 
 of the hour, and strive yet more fiercely to strangle the 
 babe divine in its growing grace and greatness. 
 
 We turn away with hopeless heart from the national gov- 
 ernment. As well expect to find Judas returned to the 
 apostleship, and outstripping Paul and Peter in his devotion 
 to Christ, as well dream that Arnold would again become 
 the companion of Washington, that Francis of Austria will 
 make Kossuth his prime minister, as that the slave party 
 shall act with the disciples of Christ, the followers of Wash- 
 ington, and of Kossuth in abolishing this wrong.* 
 
 As we turn sadly away, we rejoice to see two government- 
 al barriers to this baleful progress, foreign and domestic. 
 The powers of Europe will forbid the annexation of Cuba 
 
 * The House was better than these fears. The next year, on the one 
 hundred and thirty-third ballot, by a plurality of three, but four less 
 than a majority, Mr. Banks was chosen Speaker. The " American " 
 vote and a year's discussion contributed this victory.
 
 118 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 and Central America, the powers of the Free States the 
 annexation of Kansas to the South. All these States, with 
 one exception, have governments favorable to freedom, and 
 by ways sagacity, prudence, and firmness will devise and 
 execute, will, we trust, keep Kansas unsubdued. By grants 
 of money to those citizens settling there, and by other 
 equally legal and potent methods, they will, we believe, 
 maintain our rights and her liberty, though all the powers 
 of the national army, purse, and judicial subtlety, shall be 
 employed for her destruction. 
 
 The fear of foreign invasion, which shall set their cap- 
 tives free, may keep these Southern pirates peaceable on 
 the high seas, and confine their slave trade to our own 
 afflicted citizens and our own degraded coast. The united 
 front of Northern administrations may stay its progress on 
 the land, and compel it to confine its ravages to the lines 
 that already inclose it, and over which, like fires girdled by 
 bounds which they seek to pass, it shoots its tongues of 
 flame, and leaps, in mad desire and endeavor, to lay waste 
 the whole national heritage, and whelm State and Territory, 
 old and new, east and west, north and south, in one com- 
 mon ruin. Only these powers can prevent the accomplish- 
 ment of its designs. We shall soon see whether even they 
 are able to resist its progress. 
 
 2. Looking away from the material relief which we so mucli 
 need and desire, but which is so little to be expected, let us 
 see if there are any good hopes of the overthrow of this 
 Power after the coming calamities shall have overpassed. 
 Here we have glimpses of light. Thanks be unto God who 
 giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The 
 morning cometh, though also, and previously, the night. 
 
 Our hopes are based on these foundations : 
 
 (1.) This is the first time in our national history that the 
 cause of Anti-Slavery has prevailed, openly and avowedly, 
 in a single State. Other issues have been foremost, and
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 119 
 
 this put at the end of the resolutions and the party. An 
 Anti-slavery political organization has long- been formed, 
 and is the real seed of the present harvest. But never till 
 this election did it carry a single State. Now the last 
 is made first. Though its demands are the least of the 
 claims and duties of Abolitionists, the sharp edge of the 
 wedge, yet it is an edge. More than a million of the 
 citizens of this nation have declared their hostility to this 
 sin, and their determination to resist its progress. They 
 cannot stop here. While faithfully abiding by their doc- 
 trine of the independence of the States in their own juris- 
 diction, they must say an evil which cannot go over the 
 continent cannot abide under the national flag. Washing- 
 ton must be free. The national piracy on the high seas 
 from Virginia and Charleston to the Mississippi and the 
 Gulf, must be stopped, and the government be put openly 
 and entirely on the side of Freedom. This party, being in 
 its beginning right, will in the end be successful. 
 
 (2.) Again, this vote for freedom will stimulate those who 
 dwell in the midst of slavery to shake off the terrors that 
 have kept them dumb. Said Governor Wise, one of the 
 leaders of this host of fallen spirits, ''What we have most 
 to fear is an insurrection of our white citizens." The vote 
 for Mr. Fillmore is almost entirely a vote against the exten- 
 sion of slavery. They dared not put their desires in its 
 true form ; but by voting against the candidate of the 
 secessionists and slavocrats, they voted for the cause of 
 Freedom. This large party at the South has carried one 
 State, and perhaps more, and has prevented all the rest 
 from going by large majorities for slavery propagandism. 
 It will dare to speak more freely under the countenance of 
 such a Northern vote for liberty. Had we been successful, 
 every Southern State, with perhaps one exception, would 
 have wheeled into line within four years. As it is, their 
 day of deliverance, though delayed, draweth nigh. What
 
 120 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 they have wanted was the erection of a free spirit here, - 1 - 
 sober, guarded, conservative, but earnest and mighty. 
 Having these, we shall see in those regions light springing 
 up. Western Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, who has sent 
 one Representative to Congress, Maryland, who has one 
 there now,* Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, in all 
 these the tree of Liberty will again put forth its leaves, and 
 be pouring, we trust; its ripened fruit into the successful 
 harvest of Freedom in 1861.f 
 
 (3.) Lastly and chiefly, we hope for success because of the 
 religious sentiment that has been developed. Never has a 
 great party, since the dawning of the revolution, had so 
 much of the life and power of religion flowing through its 
 veins. A hearty sympathy with our suffering kindred in 
 Kansas, a patriotic devotion to our ancient and imperiled 
 liberties, an earnest calling upon God that He would come 
 and save us, these have been the great elements of its 
 being. Never has the conscience of this nation been so 
 aroused ; never its dependence upon God so tested. That 
 feeling is not sufficiently deep yet. The horrors of the 
 coming years, whose gloomy clouds cover all the land, and 
 drop their rain of misery and death upon its political and 
 geographical centers, Washington and Kansas, these suf- 
 ferings and sins will make our cry go up yet more earnestly 
 unto God, and He will hear and answer. 
 
 It is this character in these issues that has brought the 
 Church and the ministry so actively into the canvass. They 
 have not gone out of their way. The political march of 
 events and duties has come upon their way. For years 
 
 * Henry Winter Davis, one of the truest friends of Freedom the 
 country ever possessed. 
 
 t Though the Southern allies failed to rally, except in Western Vir- 
 ginia, as soon as is here suggested, they were the loyal element, that did 
 us good service in many parts of the South, and are now the associates 
 of their emancipated brethren in securing that land to righteousness.
 
 ELECTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 121 
 
 have they striven with this sin in their churches, often too 
 feebly, always too unsuccessfully. They have not engaged 
 in it in order to make the Church, as such, the head or con- 
 troller of the State. Not till the millennial dawn, when the 
 Church and the State shall both be perfect, and become one, 
 will that position be assigned to her. They have not mar- 
 shaled their forces as the Papist bishops have theirs, and 
 ordered them to .vote so that their church organization shall 
 be recognized as one of the ruling powers, and shall be 
 represented, as such, in the offices of the nation, which 
 act, united with the marshaling of white serfs, gave the 
 Slave Power the victory. Papal priest and slaveholding 
 tyrant have entered into power as one force. It only needs, 
 what it has in heart and voice, and, as far as possible, in 
 vote, the Mormon abomination, to complete its organization. 
 
 " Devil with devil damned firm concord holds." 
 
 The true Church of Jesus Christ has engaged in this duty 
 as Christians. They have voted as they prayed, and prayed 
 as they voted for Christ and Caesar ; not for Caesar only ; 
 for eternal as well as for temporal good ; for man rather 
 than for his transient accidents. The entire North, though 
 not all, and actually but a small part Christian, has been 
 moved by the Spirit of God. 
 
 This is our surest confidence that darkness and chaos will 
 soon disappear, and light and liberty, in the beautiful order 
 of heaven, be our heritage forever. 
 
 Thus stands our cause. The bow glitters in the heavens. 
 Though the waters yet cover the earth, though the waves 
 roar with the swelling thereof, though winds howl, and 
 clouds press close and heavy, and thunders crash, and light- 
 nings slay, still there gleams the bow. Before us rises 
 tli<- pillar of fire. We must follow it. We may die in the 
 wilderness, die without the sight of the promised land ; yet 
 tlr.it fiery guide will lead this enslaved nation, with those in
 
 122 THE NATIONAL MIDNIGHT. 
 
 her deepest dungeons of bondage, all of us, black and 
 white, North and South, into the land of holy liberty. 
 
 " Oppression shall not always reign : 
 
 There comes a brighter day, 
 When Freedom, burst from every chain, 
 Shall have triumphant sway." 
 
 Let us not grow weary in our toils and prayers. Scoff 
 as the wicked may, the effectual, fervent prayer of the right- 
 eous in this great war has availed much. It will, if con- 
 tinued, in God's good time, and that seems not far off, 
 give us the glorious victory. Let us refresh our sympa- 
 thies with the agonies of our brethren and sisters in slave 
 hut and prairie cabin. May God quicken the consciences 
 of our rulers, so that they may fear Him and work right- 
 eousness. May He distract the counsels of the wicked, and 
 break their bows asunder. May you all seek the power of 
 a Christian faith and a godly life, that you may join your 
 prayers to those that are going up to the throne of God for 
 the salvation of this nation. Without this, your labors are 
 but half perfect ; with it, they will have the symmetry and 
 strength of angelic works. For Christ labor ; to Christ 
 pray ; and He will prosper His servants, and spread His 
 millennial glory over all this land. The cruel and deceitful 
 men that now govern us shall be driven into obscurity ; the 
 weak and fearful shall be made strong ; the slave arise to his 
 true estate of civil and social manhood ; the lover of liberty 
 abroad gather new inspiration from our victories ; and the 
 whole world be filled with our praises and our power. 
 
 " Down shall the shrines of Moloch sink, 
 
 And leave no traces where they stood ; 
 No longer shall its idol drink 
 
 His daily cup of human blood ; 
 Another altar standeth there, 
 
 To truth, and love, and mercy given ; 
 And Freedom's gift and Freedom's prayer 
 
 Shall call all blessings down from heaven."
 
 CASTE THE 
 
 " WE ARE VERILY GUILTY CONCERNING OUR BROTHER." 
 
 Genesis xlii. 21. 
 
 E shall not dwell especially to-day on the crime 
 that still possesses our land, after the usual man- 
 ner of its consideration. Let us turn from the 
 dreadful fruit as it ripens in that heavy Southern 
 air, and examine its seed-grain that is growing profusely in 
 every heart. The corner-stone of this system is prejudice 
 against color. Upon this almost universal feeling the slave- 
 holder builds an impregnable fortress. Slavery will never 
 be abolished until it gives way. As one that must render 
 an account to God for what I say, I shall speak. As those 
 that must give like account before the same God, I beseech 
 you, take heed how you hear. Though I assail a deep-rooted 
 but God-forbidden sentiment, as you would obey the command 
 of Christ, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," I 
 
 * A sermon preached on the occasion of the State Fast, at Wil- 
 braham, Mass., in 1854, and at Roxbury, Mass., in 1858. It was also 
 delivered at the Forsyth Street Methodist Episcopal Church, New 
 York. 
 
 (123)
 
 124 . CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 entreat you to give the subject your candid and Christian 
 attention. 
 
 I. Upon what is slavery grounded ? Is it upon the right 
 to hold in slavery the black man, or the man who has any 
 blood relation, however remote, with that portion of the sons 
 of men ? The most arrogant defender of slavery in this 
 country has never dared to advocate the enslavement of any 
 race of colored men, for all men are colored. The lighter, 
 though sometimes very dusky, shades of the Caucasian, the 
 yellow Chinese, the tawny Malay, the copper-hued Indian, are 
 all painted by the hand of their Creator another color than 
 white. No doctor of diabolic divinity has ever picked from 
 the sacred page any text for the enslavement of Indian, Mexi- 
 can, Englishman, or Greek, though every argument which 
 they wrest from the writings of Paul (as did those of old for 
 their own destruction and the destruction of the brethren of 
 Christ) must, on their principle, be applied chiefly to white 
 persons, as these were almost the only slaves of Rome in the 
 days of Paul. One text alone, in the whole Bible, can they 
 bring to the support of African slavery. Every other reference 
 to it is human, not specific the slavery of Man, not Ham. 
 And even that text supports no such theory. It was a 
 prophecy announced and completed four thousand years ago, 
 when Joshua made the Gideonites his servants, and David 
 ruled over the whole land of Canaan.* A broader view of the 
 history of these three families only confirms this position. 
 The sons of Canaan ruled in Nineveh, and were the first 
 conquerors of the world. They became subject to the pos- 
 terity of Shorn, under Cyrus, and Shem had to allow Japhet, 
 under Alexander, to abide in his tents. To-day, Shem, in 
 the person of the Turk, holds Canaan in bondage in Syria 
 and Egypt, and Japhet, in that of Russia and England, 
 dwells in many of the tents of Shem. 
 
 Scripture is stolen to deck a false idol. It is a new argu- 
 
 * See Note V.
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 125 
 
 ment for an old sin, an argument without any antitype in 
 history, or any authority in the Word of God. Abraham, 
 they say, was a slaveholder ; but the sons of Shem were 
 his slaves. Egyptians and Babylonians enslaved Hebrews, 
 Hebrews enslaved the Canaanites, not for reasons of race, 
 but for the sole reason of power. The Persian owned the 
 Greek ; the Greek, the Roman ; the Roman, the Norman ; 
 the Norman, the Saxon. No one of. them regarded color, 
 but condition only. The last of these slaves, the Saxon, 
 having gained his liberty, and following the devil's maxim, 
 " Do to others as you do not wish should be done to you," 
 goes out and binds his fellow-servants. He is an adventurer, 
 and when he conquers, enslaves. He steals men and women 
 from Africa, and sells them in America. Here he enslaves 
 every new-born child of the daughters of these captives in 
 every following generation. For two hundred years he 
 pursues this traffic, and when the conscience of the world 
 begins to rise up against his iniquity, behold, he clothes him- 
 self with these fig leaves of prophecy, which he gets pro- 
 fessed ministers of Christ to sew together, and hopes to 
 perpetuate his sin and shame with a pretension that blas- 
 phemes God and empties His Word of its sovereign power. 
 For if that Word could be proved to indorse this crime, 
 its sanctity and authority flee instantly and forever. 
 
 No other modern race but the Saxon makes this preten- 
 sion. Spanish, French, Russ, Turk, all but the English, 
 claim no Scripture text for their protection. Nor can all 
 the last people be charged with this folly. It is the child 
 of the American Saxon, not of the British. It was born on 
 our soil, of our lusts, of which it is the meanest offspring. 
 
 Away with all such mockery of God and his Gospel. 
 Stand forth, transgressor, in thy own vileness. " Lie 
 down in thy shame, and let thy sins cover thee." Pretend 
 not to shelter thyself in the Word of God. It burns with 
 intolerable flame against all such hypocrisy. No one ever
 
 126 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 before made such a cowardly excuse for his indulgence in 
 avarice, power, and lust. No sinner in all the Bible ever 
 arrayed his wicked passions in such a cloak of holiness. It 
 was left for preachers and professors of the Gospel in this 
 free and Christian America, in this nineteenth century after 
 the coming* of Christ, to weave such a garment of sanctity 
 for the body of their death. How will He whom they thus 
 mock, put them to open shame for this profanity of His name 
 and claims. Better defy Him in word, as they do in act, 
 than to thus proclaim. that in their most godless deeds they 
 are especially observing His most godly law. 
 
 Thus was it left for Satan, in his last resort, to transform 
 himself into an angel of light, and enter this Paradise, 
 which the Bible and Christian institutions were making the 
 garden of the Lord, and by the deft handling of the Word 
 of God, seduce His Church to her ruin. As he showed his 
 skill in selecting apt texts of Scripture with which to assail 
 our Lord and Savior, so has he tempted His disciples alas ! 
 in their case, with a too baleful success. 
 
 II. But another root this iniquity puts forth. It is claimed 
 that this mark of color is a badge of separation and of 
 degradation ; that, because they are black, they are without 
 equal rights, and cannot mingle indissolubly with the rest 
 of mankind. Their white neighbors shrink from them with 
 horror. A leper is not so offensive. 
 
 This sin of caste prevails here as much as where it has 
 borne its legitimate fruit the transforming of this sep- 
 arated, darker, and inferior class into the property of the 
 lighter and superior. 
 
 To its consideration we of the North are especially called. 
 It is a sin at our own doors, in our own hearts. It makes 
 us naked before our enemies. It ties our tongues before 
 their taunts. It must be extirpated ere God gives us per- 
 fect arid perpetual peace. It is the most general, deep- 
 rooted, unnatural, and destructive of all the sins of the nation.
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 127 
 
 1. Its universality none can doubt. The familiarity of 
 the South, the philanthropy of the North, have not yet 
 weakened this feeling. Now and then a Richard M. Johnson 
 publicly avows his tinged companion to be his wife. Here 
 and there, in the North, equally fervent loves are legally 
 consummated. But these are solitary stars in the midnight 
 clouds of this superstition. " Darkness is over all the land." 
 
 2. It is the most deep-rooted. I could not have men- 
 tioned a subject that would have excited such instant and 
 profound loathing as this. I rejoice that you have so patient- 
 ly listened to its uncongenial truths. I believe that it is be- 
 cause reason commands you, though your feelings yet refuse 
 obedience. Let reason have her perfect work, and see' if 
 she cannot subdue this feeling to herself, and convert it to 
 the perfect truth. 
 
 The presence of a drop of this blood excludes its pos- 
 sessor from all white society, North or South. But a few 
 years since, a wealthy man in New Orleans, in a heated con- 
 versation, was charged with having a colored ancestor, a 
 free black, some four or five generations before. The blood 
 of his antagonist was not sufficient recompense for the 
 injury he suffered. He prosecuted him, arid laid his dam- 
 ages at twenty thousand dollars. Though the defendant 
 could not prove his charge, he proved enough to throw a 
 stain of doubt on his opponent, which is said to have ex- 
 cluded him from the society where he had moved. It would 
 have excluded him from any circle in the North. A gentle- 
 man in a New England town brought an elegant and wealthy 
 bride from the West Indies, who was slightly tinged with 
 this hue. Her wealth, culture, and beauty could not secure 
 for her admittance into a society below that in which she 
 had moved at home, and she remained in seclusion till death 
 admitted her to the equal company of heaven. These in- 
 stances could be reproduced everywhere. It is not the 
 amount, it is the fact, of African blood that puts its in-
 
 128 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 heritor without the pale of those who boast that they are of 
 Caucasian origin. 
 
 A Virginia court has lately refused freedom to some per- 
 sons, three fourths white., saying such a precedent would 
 free one tenth of the slaves in the State. We grant no real 
 freedom to those who are nine hundred and ninety-nine thou- 
 sandths white, if the other thousandth be of African blood. 
 A young lady, at a Northern seminary, the slave daughter 
 of a Southern slaveholder, was the acknowledged belle of 
 the school, and so remained for many terms. On the dis- 
 covery of her being slightly affected with Afric blood, she 
 fell from her high estate, and only her affiance with an hon- 
 orable gentleman, whom she afterwards married, prevented 
 her becoming an outcast. If this prejudice works so pow- 
 erfully in these extreme cases, how must it rage in the gen- 
 eral feeling toward the great masses of our brethren, whose 
 skin is touched with a browner hue than that which bleaches 
 upon our bones ? 
 
 3. But you will say a sentiment so deep and all-pervading 
 is not prejudice ; it is nature. Is it so ? If so, our oppo- 
 sition ceases. We shall not ask you to violate the laws of 
 Nature. On the contrary, we affirm that it is unnatural. We 
 use this word not in a moral sense, but physical. It is unnat- 
 ural physically ; it is inhuman morally. It is so, because, 
 
 (1.) We have no such feelings toward any other class of 
 men. We may dislike the Indian, but some of the greatest 
 men of this nation boast of their Indian blood. Patrick 
 Henry and John Randolph were honored the more from this 
 circumstance. This blood is no bar to any society, employ- 
 ment, or dignity. No man has been refused a pastorate or 
 any office on its account. 
 
 Yet eminent physiologists affirm that the blacks are supe- 
 rior to the Indians. A grander nature, more original, more 
 divine, has God conferred on them. I heard a distinguished 
 naturalist of Baltimore say that this despised people was
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 129 
 
 far superior to the Indians in all manly qualities. Every ob- 
 server of the two must acknowledge it. The " poor In- 
 dian," with all his oppressions, has been comparatively a 
 petted protege" of the nation.* He has been the ally of war- 
 ring whites for two hundred years. Missionaries have been 
 sent him from every church. No legal bars have been 
 raised against him. Yet where is he to-day ? Kunning 
 before the white man, or abiding among us, scarcely changed 
 in dress, habits, or disposition from his barbaric ancestors. 
 Negroes were brought here as slaves ; were kept as slaves 
 everywhere for one hundred and fifty years. Most of them 
 are kept in that condition until this day. Every curse and 
 sneer that our souls could conceive, or tongues pronounce, 
 have been thrust upon them. Yet to-day they have some 
 of the most attractive orators in the, country. Through both 
 South and North are found negro preachers, without learning 
 or culture, of such natural wit, pathos, and sublimity, as make 
 the mass of their white brethren in the ministry, before their 
 brightness, pale their ineffectual fires. 
 
 They have given the nation a style of music which has 
 become more diffused and more popular than any other in 
 the world. Tasso's songs are said to be sung by Venetian 
 boatmen. A few ballads live by the genius of Burns in the 
 glens of Scotland. Such national strains are found else- 
 where, confined to the lands where they were born. But the 
 songs of our enslaved brethren have taken captive the whole 
 world. Bayard Taylor says that Arabian minstrels on the 
 Nile sing them to their tarnborines, instead of their old hum- 
 drum discords. The singers of Hindostan relieve the audi- 
 
 * This statement has been confirmed by the appointment by General 
 Grant of a half breed, Colonel Parker, as the chief of his military staff, 
 who also, since the war, has married a white lady of high position. 
 Not a paper, nor tongue, however hostile, has spoken a word against 
 either of these events. Why .should they if he should make Frederick 
 Douglass, another half breed, of far higher abilities, the chief of his 
 presidential staff his Secretary of State?
 
 130 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 tors of ennui and money by the merry or plaintive strains 
 of our favorite airs. Borne by their masters on the wings 
 of commerce, these plaints and consolations are carried to 
 all the world, and all the world repeats their strains. 
 
 They are in highest honor here. Every street corner at- 
 tests their popularity. Every city has its band of minstrels, 
 who blacken their faces, and reproduce plantation melodies 
 and manners, for the greedy delight of every class in soci- 
 ety. One of the wealthiest gentlemen of New York, of the 
 highest social rank, said to me, " I very much prefer to 
 visit the negro minstrels than the opera." The unabated 
 success of these companies a success beyond that of 
 any other class of amusements shows its deep and exten- 
 sive popularity. It has made those rich who can catch these 
 wild wails of our national captives, and fashion them into 
 songs. If these composers invent melodies, and give them 
 this dialect, they still keep close to the character they as- 
 sume, and make both words and tones sound forth the depths 
 of breaking hearts. Few more pathetic pieces are in all 
 musical literature than "Lucy Neal," "Uncle Ned," "Old 
 Folks at Home," or " Carry Me back to Old Virginny." 
 How wonderfully does this experience of our slaves agree 
 with that of their Hebrew brethren by the side of the rivers 
 of Babylon ! " They that wasted us required of us a song." 
 God grant that, like these their ancient brethren, their wail- 
 ings may soon become rejoicings over their own liberty, in 
 their own homes, free and happy forever. 
 
 Not in music alone do they attain national eminence, and 
 even preeminence. In courtesy of manners they have no 
 equals among our whiter populations. They arc oar truest 
 gentlemen, in that quiet good breeding that knows what 
 perfect courtesy requires. Not the crouching servility that 
 the slave-master requires and receives, but the unconscious 
 adaptation to the requisites of the street, or the parlor, 
 which forms the law of good society, this they instinctively
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 131 
 
 exhibit. Compare the manners of our African and Indian 
 brethren. The latter are stiff, ungainly, feeling ill at ease, 
 in house or city. The former slide instinctively into the best 
 postures, looks, and actions, putting every one at ease in 
 their own unconscious propriety. 
 
 In the culinary art they have no rivals. The French alone 
 equal them in both these graces. No Anglo-Saxon touches 
 by hard study that deft handling of the mysteries of the 
 kitchen which his negro servant and slave attains by a sort 
 of instinct. They will frequently introduce new dishes 
 a thing as rare in an ordinary housewife as the creation of 
 a new world ; and when asked where they learned these felici- 
 tous combinations, they reply, " Out of my own head." 
 No cook-book helps them ; for they cannot read. They 
 make new dishes, as a Lowell or Browning makes new rhymes, 
 or Mozart new melodies, by sheer instinct of genius.* 
 
 In other gifts they excel. In aptness of imitation, in wit 
 'and humor, in patience and sunniness of ..temper, f in fidelity 
 and integrity, they are of the highest rank. Duplicity they 
 have been trained in by the conduct of their oppressors ; 
 and this sin hangs to too large a degree around those who 
 are relieved from its immediate temptation. In their ready 
 reception of the Gospel in all its simple truth and hearti- 
 ness, they arc without an equal. 
 
 Such are the gifts and graces of those millions of our 
 brethren whose oneness with us we declare to be most un- 
 natural. Compare their character with those of other trans- 
 Atlantic races, and then compare our feeling toward each. 
 
 * " Cooking is an indigenous talent of the African race." 
 
 "Now, there's Dinah gets you a capital dinner, soup, ragout, roast 
 
 fowl, dessert, ice-creams, and all, and she creates it all out of chaos 
 
 and old night." Uncle Tom's Cabin. 
 
 t I never saw a negro angry, nor heard a word of profanity from his 
 
 lips. Undoubtedly they fall into these sins. But their indulgence in 
 
 them is most rare in comparison with that of their whiter brethren.
 
 132 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 We profess no such aversion to the Asiatic tribes, or the 
 Polynesian, or the various branches of the European family. 
 A cultivated member of any of these families of men might 
 move with perfect freedom in any of our circles.* Why 
 should we so vehemently declare a prejudice to be founded 
 in nature which puts a class far superior to many of these 
 without the pale of humanity ? 
 
 What is there, then, we solemnly ask, in view of these 
 facts, in this portion of the human family, that justifies the 
 idea so powerful in this and every American community, that 
 they are, by divine decree, set forever apart and below the 
 rest of mankind ? Are they the children of Cain, bearing his 
 mark on their foreheads ? Much rather are their haughty op- 
 pressors his offspring. Theirs is the faith and fate of Abel. 
 
 (2.) On what do we base our dogma of necessary segre- 
 gation ? On color ? What degree of color is requisite to 
 enslave or liberate a man ? Where is the Mason and Dixon's 
 line among pigments, on one side of which a man is changed 
 from a brother to a beast, and crossing which, if he can cross 
 it, as many do, transforms a beast into a brother ? Where 
 run the boundaries that put a son of Adam, of Noah, of 
 God, among another order of beings than the rest of his 
 brethren ? Will not this border line, in its course, enter 
 the families of proud-blooded Caucasians, and set husband 
 against wife, father against daughter, brother against sister? 
 Does it not to-day, in many a household in this land, make 
 one half of the family the property of the other ? f Will 
 not this law go yet further, and give the lightest complex- 
 ioried race dominion over their darker kindred ? Cannot 
 
 * This was confirmed by the visit to America of the Queen of the 
 Sandwich Islands, in 1864, as well as tlrat of Japanese and Chinese em- 
 bassadors. All of these were received freely into our best society, and 
 all of them were far less attractive in contour of face, or even complex- 
 ion, as well as in manners, than the better class of Afric-Amcricans. 
 
 t See Note VI.
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 133 
 
 England quote this plea as the conclusive argument for its 
 subjugation of Ireland, the yellow-haired Saxon being the 
 natural superior of the dark-skined Celt ? How like an 
 unsubstantial shadow, as it is, does this fantasy fade into 
 nothingness before the clear and sober light of reason ! 
 
 But say you, "Other physical features the contour of 
 face, or head, or foot, some real or fancied divergence from 
 the Caucasian model are proofs that God never designed 
 we should live as one family on the closest and most sacred 
 terms of intimacy." How do you know they are proofs ? 
 Is there a suggestion in the Word of God, is there an im- 
 pulse in the universal heart, is there an instinctive abhorrence, 
 mutual and potent, as it must be, if it is an instinct, in 
 regions where both classes abound. We all know that 
 these questions cannot be answered in the affirmative. The 
 Bible teaches no such doctrine. The conscience utters no 
 such decree. The world has recognized no such law. Ethi- 
 opia swayed the world from Memphis. Ham ruled all man- 
 kind from Nineveh and Phoenicia and Carthage.* The loves of 
 the Shemite ^Eneas and the Hamite Dido (for the Phoenicians 
 were of Ham's family) were celebrated by the daintiest scholar 
 of imperial Rome, the Japhethite Virgil. Black Ethiopians 
 held generalships in Roman armies, professorships in Greek 
 schools, and bishoprics in Christian churches. Men with 
 all their physical peculiarities founded empires, and the 
 blood of Europe's nobility and royalty, your own blood, if 
 traced far enough, may be found to possess this direful drop 
 of tainted color. 
 
 (3. ) If no physical reason can be given for this deep-rooted 
 prejudice, the argument in its favor is still more fallacious, 
 when we look at the real nature of humanity. The soul's 
 dress is the body dress like that the body itself wears, 
 of all shades, from black to white, and all shades alike 
 
 * See article in the Methodist Quarterly, for January, 1869, entitled 
 "The Negro in History; " written by Professor Blyden, of Liberia Col- 
 lege, a gentleman of pure African origin.
 
 134 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 agreeable and comely. It is a dress in which God, and 
 not our own vanity, has arrayed our spirits, and therefore, 
 so far from being a ground of repulsion, it ought not to offer 
 any barrier to the perfect communion of those it clothes. 
 Are there natural, vital, eternal distinctions in the spiritual 
 being of man ? All confess there are none. AVhen we meet 
 these outcasts at the table of the Lord, when we hear their 
 experiences of Christ in all these highest exercises of the 
 mind and heart, there is no knowledge of black or white. 
 All are one in Christ Jesus. 
 
 (4.) But again you will say, " If this is not unnatural, 
 why does it so powerfully possess the national heart ? " I 
 answer, Because of their social condition. Two things chiefly 
 create this prejudice among nations religion and social 
 condition. Religion may breed caste. You do not abhor the 
 black to-day any more than the Christian of the middle 
 ages abhorred the Jew, or than the Jew in earlier ages 
 abhorred the Christian. Neither would have treated the 
 other, when he was in the supremacy, with any more re- 
 spect than a Southern white man now treats his colored 
 brother. Each would have felt the heaviest curse resting 
 upon him, had he admitted his religious antagonist to his 
 table or his bed. Thus, too, the Mohammedan, in the days 
 of his power, and where he still holds undisputed sway, 
 treats his Christian brother. "Dog" and "infidel" are 
 his best compliments, death his best hospitality. Thus, in 
 India, religion builds its mighty walls between the same 
 blood. Men whom you cannot distinguish apart in com- 
 plexion, or any feature, are separated by a gulf winch it is 
 death, and worse, to attempt to span. 
 
 Social condition breeds the same feeling. The English 
 Norman would have felt unutterable disgust had his Saxon 
 neighbor claimed social equality and intimacy. To this day 
 the English noble, or even gentleman, would profess that he 
 had a " natural " aversion to the serf, though of one parent-
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 135 
 
 age a few generations back. So a rich, especially if an old, 
 family among us feels toward its poor neighbor, though 
 equally old and as truly honorable. The members of it may 
 meet in the same party, and attend the same church, but 
 for the rich man to invite his poorer brother to his table, for 
 his family to associate with his neighbors on perfect equality, 
 is a grace far above their attainment. 
 
 Their social status has wrought this prejudice in us. It 
 is the lowest any class can occupy toward their fellows. 
 They are slaves. And as the Egyptians loathed the Jews, 
 their whiter neighbors, because they were their slaves, as 
 Greeks arid Romans shrunk from fraternal communion with 
 their slaves, though of their own blood, so we have allowed 
 this condition to work in us its baleful power. They are 
 slaves, bought and sold. We are free. The separation is 
 immeasurable. 
 
 Of course, if those who are in slavery have a difference 
 of appearance added to their condition, we should very 
 readily defend ourselves on the plea that this appearance 
 was the cause of slavery, and that thus we were separated, 
 not by condition only, but by nature. And from this we 
 should easily conclude that they were by race necessarily 
 removed from us, and there could be no community of inter- 
 est, or friendship, or life. 
 
 Hence arises American caste. The slave is black. The 
 free are white. If the slave is black, then the black man 
 is, and of right ought to be, a slave. If the black man ought 
 to be a slave, and the white man free, then there is a vital, 
 natural and eternal distinction between them a great gulf 
 lixod by God. 
 
 Thus the diabolic argument is framed, and our consciences 
 seared as with a hot iron. Slavery alone has caused this 
 creed ; its abolition, as all history attests, will cause its 
 destruction. 
 
 (5.) Another proof that this aversion is unnatural is, that 

 
 136 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 it is largely confined to countries where the black man is a 
 slave. No strong prejudice exists in Europe. Queen Victoria, 
 at the marriage of her eldest daughter, placed in a promi- 
 nent position among her retinue a black lady, a princess 
 from Africa. A black man sits in the legislative chamber 
 of France. Students of this color are in the English univer- 
 sities, and in the society of Propaganda at Rome. Dumas, 
 the most popular of French writers, is the grandson of a 
 negro, and possesses marked African features. Fugitives 
 from our shores melt into the current of European society 
 as easily as their whiter brethren.* 
 
 'If it is a natural sentiment, it must be universal. It 
 must exist outside of the region that is cursed with a sys- 
 tem which, in its living presence, or in its almost equally 
 powerful memories, has wrought within us these convic- 
 tions. As it has no such existence, it is contrary to nature. 
 
 (6.) Finally, we declare this prejudice unnatural because 
 it is contrary to the Scriptures. The Scriptures never 
 speak disrespectfully of the black race. " I am black, but 
 comely," says Christ of Himself, in the Canticles. It says, 
 "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?" not because it is 
 desirable, but because it is impossible. If you claim that a 
 change is desired here, then it is also in the parallel passage, 
 "or the leopard his spots." But as the skin of the leopard 
 is the handsomest that clothes any animal, it may be in- 
 tended to affirm that the skin of the Ethiopian is the hand- 
 somest of all human cuticles. The parallelism of the He- 
 brew writers would approve that conclusion. 
 
 * Later events multiply these instances. The most celebrated drag- 
 oman I met in Alexandria was as black a Nubian as was ever sold in 
 Richmond, and far blacker than most of that property. Yet all rivals 
 gave way to him as being far more accomplished, as well as more 
 capable. Rev. Dr. Bellows commends, in his late Travels in the East, 
 the beauty of the blacks of Cairo. Colored gentlemen's daughters, in 
 Paris, are surd by white lovers as flatteringly and as earnestly as other 
 ladies of wealth and position.
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 137 
 
 It finds no place in all Bible history. Solomon treated 
 the Queen of Sheba, a negress of Abyssinia, with the ut- 
 most respect and cordiality ; Philip ran reverently by the 
 side of the chariot of a negro, the chief minister of the 
 court of her successor ; Moses married an Ethiopian ; a 
 negro was called of God and his brethren to be one of 
 " the prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch," 
 with Barnabas and the foster-brother of Herod, and was 
 also called by the Holy Ghost to lay his hands, ip company 
 with those of his brethren, upon the heads of Paul and Bar- 
 nabas the first Christian ordination that is upon record, and 
 one that our ministers would do well speedily to imitate. 
 
 More than this : the Bible constantly proclaims the abso- 
 lute oneness of the race of man, in Adam, Noah, and Christ. 
 Against this divine rock every wave of infidelity beats to- 
 day, and beats in vain. Let the church, let every Chris- 
 tian, beware how they aid this assault of false science by 
 a more false humanity. Cling to the central doctrine of the 
 Word of God one man, one Savior, one God. Whatever 
 opposes or rejects this truth, reject and oppose it. Pluck out 
 your right eye, if it sees, or professes to see, any separation 
 among the children of men. Cut off your right hand, if it 
 strikes down your brother because the same . blood, and of 
 the same color as your own, puts on a darker hue, but not 
 unlovelier as it appears upon his countenance, than upon 
 your own. 
 
 Thus falls the plea that this sin is according to nature. 
 It was never heard of till within less than two hundred 
 years, and then only within our territorial limits. It will 
 never be heard of two hundred years hence ; and in far less 
 time than that, if the iniquity out of which it flourishes shall 
 disappear. When slavery dies, this its child and parent, 
 whose foul breast preserves its fouler life, shall fast follow 
 it to its unholy grave. May God hasten to deliver the land 
 from Loth abominations. Already is the mingling of the
 
 138 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 diverse complexions going foi*ward. In the West Indies, so 
 general is amalgamation that men and women of a culture 
 and beauty, of a wealth and lineage, that the proudest Bos- 
 tonian or Virginian would envy, boast of their mixed blood. 
 The Chief Justice of Jamaica is of this origin. No reflection 
 on color is allowed in any fashionable circle in that island. 
 It would be a taunt at many -of the gentlemen and ladies in 
 the assembly. 
 
 In Brazil, so utterly extinct is this prejudice, if it ever 
 existed, that the black and mixed bloods are in the highest 
 national offices. When Governor Wise, of Virginia, was sent 
 as minister to Brazil, his wife was compelled to accept the ser- 
 vice of a colored physician to escort her to the shore, whom 
 she would have flogged at home for assuming such a pro- 
 fession, or if he had not bowed his head, and spoken in 
 the most cringing manner, with the enforced dialect of his 
 brethren. 
 
 4. The great objection to this feeling is, that it is almost 
 the sole bulwark 'of slavery. Other systems of slavery are 
 based on other pretensions. The slaves of India are held 
 in that estate by the combined strength of wars and creeds : 
 the ruling class having subdued the aboriginal peoples in 
 war, and then bound them in the fetters of caste. Slavery 
 in Russia is simply that of noble 'and serf. Our slavery 
 can have no such basis. Slaves are not captives of war 
 waged by present masters. They are not separated in their 
 religious life by form, or ceremony, or creed, although 
 many attempts are made to create such distinctions. The 
 glorious Gospel of the blessed God, much as it has been 
 perverted and suppressed, there and here, in its teachings 
 and inspirations as to the oneness of man, and especially of 
 all believers, has often broken through this wall of prejudice, 
 and both theoretically and practically compelled the white 
 to recognize his slave as his brother. Colored churches, 
 pews, galleries, and all the other high walls and huge that
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 139 
 
 the enemy has erected in the house of God, sometimes dis- 
 appear like walls of black cloud before the powerful beams 
 of the Sun of Righteousness and of love. 
 
 The only basis of this system is the divinely ordained 
 separation of the colored man from his whiter brother. Were 
 they white, they could not be kept in slavery a year. 
 But the South says, " They are so distinct a people that it 
 is impossible for us to ever mingle together." How the 
 complexion of their slaves gives the lie to this pretense ! 
 " If they are so distinct a people, they cannot become one 
 with us by any process. If inferior, AVO must be their nat- 
 ural protectors ; if protectors, possessors. If they were not 
 created equal, they are perpetual servants, and involuntary 
 servitude is thus entailed upon them and their children for- 
 ever. We will make this paternal, patriarchal, considerate 
 as possible, but we cannot change fate." Thus, from our 
 cruelty of soul toward our brother's face springs forth the 
 horrid form of chattel slavery. We may abhor the conclu- 
 sion. We consent to its basis. Only by denying the prem- 
 ise, earnestly, practically, constantly, shall we escape the 
 fatal snare that makes us dumb and powerless before these 
 enemies of the human race and its Divine Father. 
 
 The South could not long withstand the influence of the 
 Free North, were we not thus partakers in this sin its 
 feeders and nurturers. When they observe, with all our 
 abolitionism, no recognition of the unity of man ; when they 
 see these, our brethren, set apart in churches and schools, 
 or, if allowed to enter our churches, driven into the lowest 
 seats ; when they behold every avenue of honorable effort 
 shut against them, that no clerk of this complexion is 
 endured in our stores, no apprentice in our woi'kshops, no 
 teacher in our schools, no physician at our sick-beds, no 
 minister in our pulpits, how can we reproach them for 
 their sins, or urge them to repentance ? Where is there a 
 colored family dwelling in perfect intimacy with its neigh-
 
 140 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 bors ? Where is there a friendly party in which they appear 
 $s welcome and equal guests ? Where is the neighborhood, 
 we might almost ask, the person, who communes with this 
 brother, heart in heart, neither noticing nor thinking of the 
 difference of complexion ? How deep, how wide-spreading, 
 how exceeding bitter, are these roots of bitterness ! 
 
 Till this iniquity is done away, we are verily guilty con- 
 cerning our brother. We are speechless before Southern 
 effrontery and sophistry. We are approving and acting 
 upon the very ideas they faithfully carry out in their laws, 
 their customs, their " domestic institution." When our 
 churches are not based on the practical disunity of the race, 
 when our workshops, our stores, our juries, our halls of 
 legislation, our family relations, give no evidence of the 
 existence of this iniquity in our hearts or lives, then we 
 can say to our Southern brethren, " Go thou and do like- 
 wise." When Frederic Douglass stands in Congress, Avith 
 other members, and above them, as he will stand when he 
 arrives there ; when Charles Rcmond can move in the circle 
 to which his wealth and culture give him the passport ; when 
 Dr. Permington is settled over a congregation of faithful wor- 
 shipers of every hue and one heart ; when we see our col- 
 ored brethren moving around our conference appointments 
 with no more thought of their color than there is of those who 
 now occupy them ; when these things are witnessed among 
 us, we shall no longer need to entertain this topic as a 
 subject of humiliation, fasting, and prayer. Till then, we 
 must humble ourselves, and pray earnestly for our deliver- 
 ance from the chains of a bondage so inhuman and ungodly. 
 
 But you may say, " My prejudice has nothing to do with 
 this iniquity. Can there not be equality without fraternity ? " 
 Certainly, but not without capacity for fraternity, if the 
 necessary conditions are fulfilled. For instance : A rich 
 democrat may grant that his poor political brother is his es- 
 sential equal, and yet not fraternize with him. But if he
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 141 
 
 says that brother's hair, or eyes, or contoiy, or complexion, 
 is such, that if every other disability were removed, pov- 
 erty, ignorance, and rudeness, he could not, nor could his 
 family, for a thousand generations, be his real companion and 
 brother, such a democrat could never believe in the real 
 equality of his poorer kinsman with himself. So, if we say 
 the colored man is our equal, but we will never fraternize 
 with him ; never invite him to our houses and tables ; never 
 give him a seat in our pulpits or pews ; never have him as 
 our teacher or pupil, as our apprentice or ma % ster-workrnan, 
 all our talk about equality, without fraternity, is a mock- 
 ery and a lie. 
 
 Hence it is that the great majority of those who go 
 South, not having wrought into them this sense of his per- 
 fect equality with us in all the essentials of manhood, but 
 looking on him as of an outcast race, are powerless before 
 the sophistries of the slavocrat, and soon concede that the 
 system is necessary in order to their existence, while it is 
 necessary solely because of this wicked feeling that pervades 
 the whole land. 
 
 Thus, my friends, we have carefully and honestly exam- 
 ined this feeling of aversion to our colored brethren, as of 
 one blood and destiny with ourselves, in the light of his- 
 tory, of reason, of the general sentiment of mankind, of 
 the Scriptures, and of the strength which it gives to the 
 system of Slavery. All of them condemn it. Notwithstand- 
 ing its depth and universality with us, it is unnatural and 
 inhuman. It is the great author and sustainer of slavery, 
 its chief corner-stone, and the cement of its walls. It must 
 die before this great crime fully ends. 
 
 In the divine condemnation, are we not ourselves in- 
 cluded ? We, so active in political strife for Northern su- 
 premacy, so furious against Southern aggression "We 
 are verily guilty concerning our brother." AVe refuse 
 to call him our brother in our heart and in our life.
 
 142 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 We treat him far worse than the children of Jacob did 
 their brother, and must yet, for this conduct, meet, as did 
 they, the judgments of a just arid angry God. 
 
 III. What is the cure of Slavery ? Not Kansas ; not presi- 
 dential triumphs ; not reversals of the infamous decisions of a 
 packed and slavish court ; not the removal of wicked judges 
 from the seat they have stained with their shameful edicts ; 
 not the complete triumph of Anti-slavery in all the National 
 Councils, so that Freedom shall be national, as it now is sec- 
 tional. None of these things will completely extinguish 
 this horror of sin. Four millions of persons will yet be held 
 in profitable, in unspeakable, bondage. The wealth, and fash- 
 ion, and refinement of the slaveholder will control the whole 
 land as it does to-day ; for Charleston and Richmond give 
 tone to the fashion of the nation. Fifth Avenue and Beacon 
 Street submit to their sway as easily as the rich manufac- 
 turers and merchants of England follow the style set by their 
 nobility ; as easily as our new rich men imitate, as far as 
 possible, the style of those who have grown up amid the 
 refinements of wealth and luxury. We shall still hate and 
 despise those who have any drops of African blood in their 
 veins. We must do these first duties in politics, and in the 
 Church, but we must not leave the great duty undone. We 
 must extirpate this prejudice from our hearts. We must 
 set the reason, the conscience, against this sentiment, and 
 work all their power till it is completely obliterated. 
 
 But you may ask, How shall I begin the cure ? 
 
 1. By resolving to think no more of the color of the skin 
 than you do of the eyes, and to like its color, as you do 
 that of the eyes. Look at the heart, at the divine likeness 
 there, and let your feelings be excited only by sympathy 
 with its virtues. 
 
 2. You must be willing to welcome them to your house 
 and table, if they are worthy of such a welcome. You 
 must give them this hospitality, if they have been prevented
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 143 
 
 by the prejudices of society from attaining that style of 
 manners which you see they are capable of reaching under 
 proper encouragement. I do not say that every one pos- 
 sessing this blood should be thus treated. Our tastes differ 
 in our friendships as in our food. Only those whose native 
 traits resemble yours, or such as are agreeable to you, 
 are you under obligation to admit to this intimacy. But 
 you must not let your unnatural aversion keep you from 
 doing this social duty. You must admit them, if other- 
 wise agreeable, to aril these rights and privileges. You will 
 find them among the most charming of all the guests of your 
 family. They will prove the shining lights of your table. 
 
 But last Sabbath, I had the pleasure of introducing a 
 brother minister a fugitive slave to the table where I 
 was a guest ; and, though many others surrounded that 
 table, none surpassed or equaled him in giving animation 
 to the hour. Among the many who honor my house and 
 table with their presence, none have more refinement, orig- 
 inality of thought and language, rich and playful natures, 
 and none give more elevation to the society, in piety 
 or in talents, than some of these despised men and women 
 You lose some of the best opportunities to enliven and 
 improve your social life by refusing these kindred spirits 
 an equal place at your board. If you could have the 
 humor of an Irving, the wit of a Holmes, or the re- 
 finement of an Everett, to adorn your table, you would 
 feel that you Were exalted by their presence. I know of 
 some of these so-called repulsive men and women whose wit 
 is as brilliant as Mrs. Stowe's, whose manners are as refined 
 as Everett's, whose conversation is a perfect mine of genial 
 sportfulness and clear-headed wisdom.* 
 
 3. You must go further than this. They have a right, and 
 ought to be encouraged, to enter the various paths of indus- 
 
 * Among those visitors was one since famous in all the land Sojourn- 
 er Truth. She is an admirable guest, full of genius and of grace.
 
 144 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 try and enterprise. Where is the colored clerk, the colored 
 apprentice, the colored foreman, or physician, or preacher, 
 that practices his vocation among his whiter brethren ? True, 
 these men are found, but only among and for those of their 
 own color. You can find them in Brattle Street, and be- 
 hind the West End aristocracy of Boston, like the kitchen 
 behind and below the parlor ; but that is no better, nor as 
 good, a position as their free brothers hold in the South. 
 You must give them a chance to develop their talents. The 
 ablest salesman in a large wholesale house, in a city where 
 I once resided, was a colored man ; but he was only allowed 
 the name and salary of a porter, notwithstanding his ac- 
 knowledged capacity. We should put the smart and intel- 
 ligent colored boy or girl into just as good stations, and 
 open before them just as good opportunities, as their white 
 playmates have. In one of the outer schools of Northamp- 
 ton I saw a very handsome colored lad. He surpassed all 
 his schoolmates in every attraction, and, had he had equal 
 chances, would have surpassed them in the struggles of 
 manhood. But his superiority ended there. They could 
 go to the town, to Boston, to New York, and, by force of 
 character and favorable circumstances, could rise to wealth 
 and social power. The majority of the present rulers of 
 this region were poor back country children. Had their 
 dusky playmates had equal chances, they would hold now 
 equal, if not superior, positions. We have a poor shoe- 
 maker leading our State at Washington ; a poor mill-boy 
 and machinist leading it at home. If these men had had the 
 least drop of Afric's blood, with all their present abilities, 
 yea, with vastly greater abilities, they would never have 
 been allowed to be even a poor shoemaker or mill-boy. 
 These offices are too high for the colored man. 
 
 We curse them with a bitterer curse than any proud em- 
 pire of Europe lays on its lowest population. England's 
 nobles, in not a few instances, are children of the lowest
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 145 
 
 class. Sir Robert Peel's grandfather was a poor hireling ; 
 Napoleon's counselors and generals, and Austria's greatest 
 chieftain, Radetzky, were from the lowest class. 
 Slaves born, and still held as slaves, are among the first 
 officers of Russia ; men who pay twenty thousand dollars 
 a year to their owners as a rent for themselves, and grow 
 rich with that deduction from their income. But with us, 
 if a colored man becomes rich, it is in a low or contraband 
 way, and his riches give him no ingress to society, which 
 his talents and accomplishments merit and demand. 
 
 The South is superior to us in this matter of prejudice, 
 for the same reason that the Tories of England are more lib- 
 eral in their treatment of their ignoble associates than their 
 rivals, because, though they make a Jew their parliamentary 
 leader, there is yet a great gulf betwixt him and the nobility. 
 So the slaveholder, despising all labor, can make his slave 
 his overseer or master workman. The Northern workman, 
 living by labor, is foolishly sensitive lest the South should 
 make him one with the black, if he admitted the black to 
 be one with him. These things ought not so to be. Let 
 them enter not above, but according to their ability ; let the 
 simple take the simple's place, the able, the able's. 
 
 IV. But you will say this social, business, and political 
 equality may lead to another, the very thought of which is 
 insufferable. My friends, all I have said is, I am aware, very 
 unpalatable to you. It would be insufferable if spoken two 
 hundred miles south of us. It could not have been spoken 
 below Washington, nor there save by one protected by the 
 State whom he represents. We must not fear to declare 
 the whole counsel of God in this matter. The question that 
 has been uppermost in your hearts in all this discourse, 
 that will leap from your lips as soon as their enforced silence 
 is broken, let us briefly and calmly consider. When Gov- 
 ernor Banks, by whose authority we meet to-day,* was asked 
 
 * At Roxbury, 1856. 
 10
 
 146 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 by the Southern catechist, when he was a candidate for the 
 Speaker's chair, in order to cover him with infamy, whether 
 he believed in amalgamation, with a promptness, indepen- 
 dence, and courage, that but few ministers of the Gospel, 
 and fewer of any other class, would have exhibited, he an- 
 swered, that " the more powerful race would absorb the 
 weaker, and it was an undecided question of physiology yet, 
 which was the stronger." So, when you ask us if we believe 
 in the intermarriage of the races, we answer, True mar- 
 riage is a divine institution. Such hearts are knit together 
 by the hand that originally wove them in separate but half- 
 finished webs. God makes this unity. If He does not, 
 then it is a conventional, human thing, subject to the whims 
 of human society. As it respects such marriage, all I need 
 to say is, " It is none of our business. It is the business of 
 the two souls that are thus made one by the goodness and 
 greatness of their Creator." Parents have advisory power 
 to a certain extent. If it is not of God, but only of tran- 
 sient passion, of pride, of ambition, of desire for wealth, 
 then parents may have complete, or nearly complete, control 
 until their children have attained a legal age. But if heart 
 is one with heart, then with Shakspeare must you say, 
 
 " Let me not to the marriage of true souls 
 Admit impediment." 
 
 That greatest of poets and thinkers carries this principle to 
 its full expression in the marriage of the most womanly of 
 his women and the most manly of his men. He sets the 
 loves of Desdemona and Othello far above the range of 
 groveling criticism. The whole story of that event seems 
 to have been made for our land and hour. It is a protest 
 against this curse such as no subsequent poet in all litera- 
 ture has ever attained. Read it and see the feelings of 
 the American heart painted and denounced by this master 
 of human nature.
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 147 
 
 Desdemona's father, a rich and proud Venetian, full of the 
 spirit of caste, like many such a father in this nation to-day, 
 when he learned of his daughter's secret marriage, cries out 
 thus against her distinguished and noble husband : 
 
 " O thou foul thief, where hast thou stowed my daughter? 
 Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her ; 
 For I'll refer me to all things of sense, 
 If she in chains of magic were not bound, 
 Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy, 
 So opposite to marriage, that she shunned 
 The wealthy curled darlings of her nation, 
 Would ever have to incur the general mock, 
 Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom 
 Of such a thing as thou ! " 
 
 In his unrestrained rage he again bursts out : > 
 
 " That she, in spite of nature, 
 Of years, of country, credit, everything, 
 To fall in love with what she feared to look on ! 
 It is a judgment maimed and most imperfect 
 That will confess perfection so could err 
 Against all rules of nature, and must be driven 
 To find out practices of cunning hell 
 Why this should be." 
 
 To this storming American, Othello before the Duke 
 makes reply a reply so dignified, so manly, so majestic in 
 rhythm and in feeling, that it seems as if Shakspeare felt 
 that he was pleading for God and humanity against the 
 contemptible prejudices of this age and nation. The great 
 Duke, at the close of Othello's speech, says truly, as you 
 and every one unprejudiced would have said, 
 
 ' I think this tale would win my daughter too." 
 
 Even Brabantio, her father, softens in his prejudices, and 
 declares, 
 
 If she confess that she was half the wooer, 
 Destruction on my head, if my bad blame 
 Light on the man."
 
 148 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 4 
 
 And after Desdemona's frank acknowledgment of her 
 love, he generously gives her to him "with all his heart" 
 an example many a now wrathful father among us will 
 yet faithfully follow. 
 
 In all cases of true affection, this higher law than man's 
 must have sway. If God makes such marriages between 
 the white and the colored, who art thou that refusest to 
 bless His bands ? Such marriages, Heaven-made and blessed, 
 have occurred. In Jamaica, in Brazil, in Mexico, happy 
 souls, whose outward hue is varied, whose inward blood 
 arises from remote fountains, are made one in a perfect mar- 
 riage. In our own land it is already no uncommon thing. 
 
 The necessities of the heart demand it. The loveliest 
 maidens of the South are often of mixed blood. A pure 
 and noble man will seek a pure and noble mate, and he is 
 more apt to find her in that class than any other, for the 
 pride and bitterness of the white and slaveholding women 
 do not defile her soul. Society lays its heavy hand on his 
 affections and crushes them. It lays its hellish laws on her, 
 and despoils her of her virtue, so far as she can lose it, 
 against every remonstrance of her whole nature. Here and 
 there a rich man rises superior to society, and abides hon- 
 orably to his love and vows, though no minister will conse- 
 crate them. Said a clergyman to Mrs. Johnson, the God- 
 given wife of Vice-President Richard M. Johnson, "You 
 cannot join the Church, because you have not been married." 
 She told her husband what had been said to her. He re- 
 plied, " Tell your minister, my dear, that I am ready, and 
 always have been, to be publicly married, and ask him to 
 come and marry us this very night." The clergyman dared 
 not do his duty, even at the request of one so high in station. 
 Thus he kept a Christian woman from the Church for a sin 
 which he and his Church fastened upon her. No wonder 
 that her husband, in his official career, hurled indignant 
 epithets at the Church, and died without its pale. Many a
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 149 
 
 man, were this curse removed, would follow his honorable 
 instincts, and rejoice in the wife of his love and youth, 
 proud of the very charms her tropical blood has given her. 
 When slavery dies, this prejudice will die. There will be 
 no more objection to this blood, if its possessor is attrac- 
 tive, than the long bigoted New Englander or Englishman 
 objects to his heart's love, though every drop of her blood 
 flows from foreign fountains. The grand ladies of the South 
 will yet be the mixed bloods of that region, and many a 
 white, fastidious, and wealthy Solomon will solicit the 
 duskier, yet none the less loving and lovely daughter of 
 Pharaoh, to give his house her perpetual blessing. 
 
 I have spoken, my friends, with great plainness of speech, 
 my honest, and earnest, and long-held convictions on this 
 subject. I believe that caste is the great sin of this nation, 
 and that it is the great duty of every one to extirpate it first 
 from himself, and then from every heart which he can influ- 
 ence. The reform must begin here. I rejoice that it has 
 begun. We have abolished from the statute books laws 
 forbidding intermarriage, creating separate schools, and de- 
 priving them of the right of suffrage and office. In the eye 
 of the law they are equal ; but the Gospel must effect 
 " what the law cannot do, in that it is weak through the 
 flesh." It must work its perfect work. We must feel the 
 brotherhood of man. We must sympathize with the most 
 oppressed of the human family. 
 
 The African has been despised and rejected of men, for 
 the same reason that woman has been. Not because of lack 
 of talent, but excess of a submissive, peaceful, religious 
 spirit. Had he been as bloodthirsty as the Indian, he would 
 have been as free. His elements are needed to make the 
 perfect man. He is the John of the Apostles, milder than 
 the rest, yet superior to all of them in many of the highest 
 traits of soul. 
 
 We may justly lament the aggressions of the slave power.
 
 150 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 We may be surprised at their open robbery from the North 
 of its acquired and conceded territories. We may be horror- 
 struck at the sight of president, cabinet, and grave sena- 
 tors, hastening to break obligations as solemn and reverend 
 as oaths at the marriage altar, or on the bed of death. We 
 may lift our voice against these crimes. We may struggle 
 manfully to repel this invading abomination. But we cannot 
 expect, we shall never see, the complete removal of this curse 
 from our land until we stand boldly arid heartily upon the 
 divine foundation the perfect unity of the human race.* 
 
 In dragging up our brother from this horrible pit of mire and 
 clay, this bottomless pit of death and despair, into which 
 we have cast him, we shall find ourselves compelled to move 
 higher .and higher in our apprehension and adoption of the 
 principle and obligations of human brotherhood. We can- 
 not, by a cord coiled around our feet, raise him up so that he 
 shall stand where we stand, and no higher ; but we must 
 take him in our arms, and bear him with us, on and up into 
 all the light and liberty with which God shall crown our 
 path. Till then shall the nations hear of our shame. Till 
 then our cry shall fill all lands. Till then shall, as now, the 
 mighty man stumble against the mighty, and both fall to- 
 gether. 
 
 Let us not turn from this truth with loathing. Let us look 
 our cruelties in the face. Let us look our duties in the face. 
 Let us look stern facts in the face. Over four millions of 
 this people are here. What are you going to do with them ? 
 Send them to Africa ? If they should agree to go, and 
 great ocean steamers carried them all there, it would take 
 eight thousand such steamers, or that number of voyages, to 
 
 * The whole course of the war, and of reconstruction since, is the 
 comment on this declaration. Only as we advanced to these truths did 
 our cause prosper, and only when we " boldly and heartily" embraced 
 them did we triumph. The completion of this work and success yet await 
 the Church and society.
 
 OF AMERICAN SLAVERY. 151 
 
 transport them. They will never leave us nor forsake us. 
 A handful may go, as a few of us go to California ; but the 
 millions will stay. Even if colonization could be carried out, 
 it would not cure the evil. It would intensify it. If every 
 son arid daughter of Africa, however far removed by Anglo- 
 Saxon intermixture from their original blood, were removed 
 to those shores, it would only make the feeling more bitter. 
 The unnatural doctrine of natural distinctions would be sus- 
 tained, and Christianity would have no perfect sway in the 
 earth. They must abide with us till we acknowledge by 
 word and act that they are one with us. And when we con- 
 fess and embrace them as brothers, we shall never listen to 
 their expatriation. The idea will be as abhorrent as the 
 expulsion of your own children from your arms, or your wife 
 from your bosom. God will keep them with us till He has 
 cured us of our sins. Then shall we rejoice to abide with 
 them always, and to build up a grand nationality of one hu- 
 manity, of one language, having one Redeemer, and one 
 future on earth, and, if in Christ, forever. 
 
 Do you still ask, What shall we do ? You can do but one 
 thing your duty as Christians, as men. Be honest, be 
 honorable, feel yourselves one with these children of your 
 earthly and heavenly Father. Follow Christ, and He will 
 guide and bless you. 
 
 Thus shall you cure the sin of sins that so fearfully pos- 
 sesses our nation. Thus will love subdue hate, and the 
 slaveholder, beholding your conquest over your prejudices, 
 will approve your course, and vie with you in giving his 
 slave that which is just and equal. Then shall we stand 
 forth before the world, a nation where civil and social 
 equality and fraternity, where the humanity of man, is the 
 passport to every station. 
 
 Purge yourself of this old leaven, as Paul had to purge 
 himself of his prejudice against the Gentiles, as the Athe- 
 nians had to purge themselves of their disgust at his procla-
 
 152 CASTE THE CORNER-STONE. 
 
 mation that God made of one blood all nations of men, 
 Greek and Barbarian, Scythian and Jew, a proposition 
 offensive beyond conception to those cultivated and contract- 
 ed spirits. Let us each see that we are without sin con- 
 cerning our brother. Labor to make others equally free 
 from prejudice, and equally ready to build up on the solid 
 foundations of the Oneness of Man such a power as shall 
 strengthen every part of the army of freedom, and ^hall melt 
 the hearts of those who hold our brethren in bondage. Then 
 shall the cloud, surcharged with thunder and fire, that is set- 
 tling down over those Southern plains, be lifted, and peaceful 
 Emancipation shall be proclaimed, with its growing train of 
 unspeakable blessings, throughout all the land, to all the 
 inhabitants thereof. 
 
 Such is our duty. It is enough for us to know it. As 
 said the Iron Duke to his clerical inquirer, who asked if he 
 ought to go as a missionary to India, "How read your or- 
 ders ? " So should every soul say, What is duty ? If heart 
 and flesh revolt, if the world sneers, and frowns ; if we are 
 doomed to tread a solitary path with mocking sons of Belial 
 assailing us, God give us grace to move onward and upward 
 in the only way which will relieve our land of its curse, and 
 make all nations see and acknowledge its glory. 
 
 Thus acting, of you, and to you, a Voice from out the gol- 
 den cloud of the Divine nature will sound sweet and deep 
 through your humble, happy soul, 
 
 " Servant of God, well done ! Well hast thou fought 
 The better fight, who singly hast maintained 
 Against revolted multitudes the cause 
 Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms, 
 And for the testimony of the truth hast borne 
 Universal reproach, far worse to-bear 
 Than violence ; for this was all thy care, 
 To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds 
 Judged thee perverse."
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END/ 
 
 " SURELY OPPRESSION MAKETH A WISE MAN MAD." Eccl. vii. 7. 
 
 " I AM NOT MAD, MOST NOBLE FESTUS." Ads XXVi. 25. 
 
 " So I RETURNED, AND CONSIDERED ALL THE OPPRESSIONS THAT ARE 
 DONE UNDER THE SUN : AND BEHOLD, THE TEARS OF SUCH AS WERE 
 OPPRESSED, AND THEY HAD NO COMFORTER; AND ON THE SIDE OF 
 THEIR OPPRESSORS THERE WAS POWER, BUT THEY HAD NO COMFORT- 
 ER. WHEREFORE I PRAISED THE DEAD WHICH ARE ALREADY DEAD, 
 
 MORE THAN THE LIVING AVHICII ARE YET ALIVE." Ecd. iv. 1, 2. 
 
 NEW act opens in the great drama of the rights 
 and destiny of humanity, which is now being per- 
 formed by this nation, in the presence of an aston- 
 ished world. It opens with a sound of war, a cry 
 for blood. Is it the last act of the tragedy, when deaths 
 are. frequent ; where the innocent first fall, the wicked follow; 
 or is it but a slight interruption to the former movement, 
 and without effect on that which shall come after ? Let us 
 consider it in the sacred light that falls upon us from Heaven. 
 Let us dwell upon it in no frivolous spirit, but in deep 
 solemnity. 
 
 * A sermon preached at Harvard Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
 Cambridge, November 6, 1859, on the occasion of the capture at Har- 
 per's Ferry of Captain John Brown and his associates. See Note VII. 
 
 (153)
 
 154 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 
 
 " Things now, 
 
 That bear a weighty and a serious brow, 
 Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, 
 Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow, 
 We now present." 
 
 Let us keep before us the great fact the violent en- 
 slavement of forty hundreds of thousands of our kindred in 
 the flesh and in the Lord, in Adam and in Christ. Let us 
 not forget what this system is and does ; how it thrusts its 
 miscreated front athwart the path of all national and religious 
 progress, breaks churches to pieces, rules and ruins great 
 Christian charities ; and above, beyond all this, sets its 
 satanic foot on man, created in the image of God, crushes 
 out his freedom, his culture, his piety, his every God-given 
 right and privilege. Connect with this defiant, triumphant 
 on-marching institution of perdition this little act of a score 
 of men, and see if, and how, such a small stone can indeed 
 sink into the forehead of the mighty Goliath and smite him 
 to the dust. And may God help us to speak and hear in 
 all sincerity and godly fear. 
 
 You all know the published history of the transaction. 
 About twenty men, led by one before famous, now immortal, 
 seized a few slaveholders, and a United States arsenal, 
 delivered a few score of slaves, were taken, most of the 
 number instantly killed, a few captured, their leader tried, 
 condemned, and sentenced to be hanged. That is all. How 
 can this, you may say, be the beginning of the end of 
 American Slavery ? A glance at the excitement it has 
 created may guide you to a perception of this great fact. 
 
 Not less than three orations upon it were published in 
 the papers of last week ; every journal has abounded with 
 editorials upon it ^ every political speech has been burdened 
 with attempts to fasten it upon their opponents and ward it 
 off from themselves. Within a month, ten thousand thanks- 
 giving sermons will dwell upon its lessons. Every ear and
 
 HARPER'S FERRY. 155 
 
 tongue, from Galveston to Eastport, is on fire for every item 
 pertaining to it. Never has any single evejit in our annals 
 so enthralled the whole nation. The court of justice in- 
 stantly takes up the wondrous tale. With an astounding 
 speed it connects itself with the moans of the wounded and 
 bereaved, drags its bleeding prisoners to its bar, refuses all 
 demands for needed and brief delay, heeds no claim of judi- 
 cial impartiality, driving its deadly business at this fearful 
 rate, and only breathing freely when it has pronounced over 
 the doomed gray head the sentence of death. Nay, it does 
 not breathe freely yet. He is in prison, and the centurion 
 and his band keep watch day and night over him, lest his 
 friends come and steal him away, and the last error be worse 
 than the first. Whether released or hung, his influence has 
 but just begun. If dead, he will speak as no dead have 
 spoken in this land, since Warren fell asleep in his bloody 
 shroud. If alive and in prison, to no walls will such a mul- 
 titude of earnest eyes be aimed as to those that shut him in. 
 If at liberty, his steps will be followed by myriads of sym- 
 pathizing friends or curious foes. 
 
 What does all this mean ? What does it portend ? Is 
 it simply the excitement of politics, which periodically ebbs 
 and flows ? Politicians may seek to use and abuse it ; but 
 the feeling that produced it, and that it has produced, is 
 vastly greater than any they can create or control. Theirs 
 is but the tiny vessel, Great Eastern though it be, this 
 is of the mighty upheaval of the ocean underneath. The 
 vessel may reach its desired haven, or go down among 
 the billows it has sought to ride ; the waves sweep on, 
 under the laws of their Creator, to the goal He has set 
 for them. Is it the ordinary excitement over a murderous 
 riot ? Other riots are constantly occurring. One has tran- 
 spired since this event, by which several men were killed 
 and wounded, and a great city surrendered to a lawless 
 mob ; and yet a brief telegram satisfies the general hunger 
 for the bloody feast.
 
 156 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 
 
 Why this difference ? Because the one is exceptional, 
 transient, easily and palpably curable ; the other connects 
 itself with the great iniquity that covers half, and darkens 
 all the land. It is the first blow that gigantic power ever 
 felt. It is a blow from which it cannot recover. How is 
 this the case ? How can this brief, and apparently unsuc- 
 cessful, act be considered as the beginning of that long- 
 prayed for we can hardly say, long looked-for hour, the 
 death of Slavery ? For two reasons : 
 
 I. 1. It has taught the slaveholders their weakness. Never 
 has such trembling shaken their knees before. Never has 
 such a thrill of horror made so many great States to quake. 
 Over fifteen States, over a million of square miles, there has 
 run one feeling, one fear, one Belshazzar sense of awful 
 guilt, and awful weakness, and awful punishment. That 
 handwriting on the wall of the great Southern palace of 
 pleasure needed no slave prophet, like Daniel, to interpret it. 
 They understood its meaning ; they feared its instant accom- 
 plishment. Their action, or want of action, in this conflict, 
 has placed them before the world as totally incapable of 
 defending themselves against any moderately well-devised 
 and well-executed rising of the slaves. Had John Brown 
 been half as successful as he anticipated, had but five hun- 
 dred slaves joined him there, he could have marched to New 
 Orleans, freeing all the slaves on his way, for all the slave- 
 holders could have done to stop him. His folly appears to 
 be, not in counting on the weakness of the South, but in 
 neglecting to count on the strength of the Federal arm. 
 
 Well may they tremble. They are but men men most 
 guilty, and therefore most weak. We who are so free with 
 our gibes, would be palsied with equal horror and faintness, 
 if we stood on the same rocking and cleaving soil, over the 
 same mine which we had wickedly filled with deadly explo- 
 sives, as we saw the torch approaching it. 
 
 " Thua conscience doth make cowards of us all."
 
 HARPER'S FERRY. 157 
 
 Suppose you had stolen a man's wages from his youth, had 
 trampled out his manhood, beat him often and cruelly, robbed 
 him of his wife and children and sold them from his arms, 
 how would you feel if you saw, or dreamed you saw, that 
 man stand before you, rifle in hand, demanding his freedom? 
 This is their condition. They slept but little before, they 
 will sleep less now. The planters in the vicinity of the 
 outbreak dare not spend the night on their plantations. They 
 flee when no man pursueth. Let us not revile them. Let us 
 with larger, and so tenderer, heart lament their state, while 
 we call them, by these fears, to repentance. They may thus 
 be led thither. The terrors of the Lord have persuaded 
 multitudes of men to be holy. God surrounds all His laws 
 with great punishments, so that those who will not be led 
 by love may be driven by fear. May we not hope that this 
 sense of helplessness, and dread of the just vengeance of 
 their oppressed brethren, will persuade them to give them 
 that which is just and equal ? 
 
 Had Pharaoh hearkened to his fears, he would have eman- 
 cipated his bondmen before the great wrath of God fell so 
 awfully upon him. So, if these Pharaohs, who have so long 
 combined against the Lord and against His children, will 
 but heed these feelings of danger and powerlessness that 
 their loving Creator has given them, as warnings and incen- 
 tives to duty, they will instantly inaugurate the work of 
 emancipation. 
 
 Mr. Thackeray has said that Great Britain, in the Revo- 
 lution, never overcame the influence of Bunker's Hill. Much 
 less will the slaveholders overcome Harper's Ferry. Whether 
 bloodier outbreaks follow, or more peaceful counsels prevail, 
 be assured that the lessons of this hour will not be lost on 
 them. They may, for a season, wear the bold face they 
 have borne so long. They may still utter great swelling 
 words of vanity, and defy the armies and the truths of the 
 living God, but their hearts are moved out of their place ;
 
 158 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 
 
 there is no strength in them. The march of the cause of 
 emancipation is far from being stayed by this affair. Crazy, 
 and broken with age and grief, as everybody seems so 
 anxious to paint the leader of this band, that they may 
 defend themselves from all complicity in his plans, he has 
 taught the haughty South what she cannot, dare not forget. 
 His apparition will undoubtedly incite them' to the work 
 God will yet perform through them, or over them. 
 
 2. The second reason for considering this the begin- 
 ning of the end of this accursed crime against God and 
 man, is the confidence it will breathe into the slave. If 
 England never forgot Bunker's Hill, much more America 
 never did. The sight of the falling or fleeing forms of their 
 arrayed oppressors, on that memorable day, never lost its 
 tremendous power over their hearts. So the millions of the 
 enslaved will never forget the dismay, which turned the 
 hearts of their masters to water, at the first gleaming of 
 the rifle, the first stern demand for Freedom. Harper's 
 Ferry is the turning-point in their history. Though they 
 responded but feebly, though they have maintained a most 
 wonderful silence since, though they seem to be the only 
 cool men in the whole country, excepting their would-be 
 deliverer, still they are not feelingless, they are not thought- 
 less. We sneer at them because they did not avail them- 
 selves of this opportunity, at the same time that we brand 
 Captain Brown with insanity for offering it to them. Wiser 
 thoughts will find less fault with both parties. The slaves 
 are men. As one born to that fate said, centuries ago, 
 amid the applause of a vast theater of slaveholders, " I 
 am a man ; nothing human is foreign from me." * They are 
 but men, and, therefore, like all the white races, however 
 much they may say they prefer liberty to death, they will 
 want some well-grounded hope of obtaining that liberty 
 before they imperil their lives. See Hungary to-day, rest- 
 
 * Terence was a slave in Rome.
 
 HARPER'S FERRY. 159 
 
 less yet warless, in the talons of Austria ; Rome, under the 
 cloven hoof of the pope ; France, in the clutch of Napoleon. 
 Our slave brethren are of like passions with ourselves. They 
 have acted wisely ; they bide their time ; it will come. 
 
 This great deed, as it must and ought to appear in their 
 eyes, will be talked of in every cabin. The underground 
 telegraph will carry the tidings where no underground rail- 
 road yet runs its blessed trains of liberty. The two chief 
 features of the event the interposition of Northern white 
 men for their deliverance, the ghastly fright and feebleness 
 of their masters will leave an indelible impress on their 
 hearts. Their consciousness of their rights as men will 
 grow mightily under the influence of the fact that those of 
 the same race as their oppressors are willing to die, if need 
 be, for their redemption. The consciousness of their strength 
 will grow with equal rapidity, when they see thousands of 
 these armed masters trembling before a dozen wounded and 
 imprisoned men, and compelled, by their fears, to let a 
 handful of troops, mostly foreigners, win their battles. 
 
 You may say, Is not all this wrong ? Has the slave any 
 right to demand his freedom ? We are not now defending 
 theories, we are only stating facts. We are showing the 
 grounds for our belief that this movement is to hasten the glad 
 day of universal emancipation. Yet we do not shrink from 
 answering the question. The slave has a right to demand his 
 freedom. They have a right to unite in this demand. They 
 have a right to fight for it if it is refused them. It is not 
 their uprising that is to be condemned it is the resistance 
 to that uprising. It is the master, throttling the slave, and 
 thrusting him into a bloody grave, if he dare say,. "I will 
 be free ! " that is the great criminal before God and man ; 
 not the slave, claiming to exercise his inherent and inalien- 
 able rights, and resisting all who oppose him. 
 
 Can you find fault with this, you, whose government is 
 based on that great sentence wrought out in the fires of a
 
 160 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 
 
 fierce rebellion, " All men are created free and equal " ? 
 You, whose highest boast is, that you descend from revolu- 
 tionary fathers, whose greatest holiday is that whereon they 
 proclaimed their independence from an ancient but unjust 
 power, whose whole creed, of whatever party Democratic, 
 American, or Republican is, "All government must be 
 based on the consent of the governed " ? " Who is blind, 
 like my servant, or deaf, as the messenger I have sent ? " 
 You do not shrink from applying your formula to Italy, to 
 France, to Ireland, everywhere, save to your own coun- 
 trymen, whose fathers were as valiant as ours, in that in- 
 surrection against Britain. 
 
 But we dare not say that wicked thing, and sin against 
 God. We dare not affirm that any child of Adam, any child 
 of God, has not the same right to himself that we have ; and 
 if he can secure it without bloodshed, has a right to take it. 
 If he can obtain it only by bloodshed, it is not for us, with 
 our ceaseless praises of Kossuth, and Garibaldi, and Wash- 
 ington, to say him nay.* God help him to his rights without 
 the shedding of a drop of human blood ! God help him to 
 his rights, even if, like Israel, He shall see fit to have him 
 thrust into freedom by the terror-stricken, sorrow-stricken 
 masters; made so now, as then, by the Angel Jehovah, the 
 Lord Jesus Christ himself. 
 
 There will be no such redemption, for the slave has no 
 thirst for revenge. Vast and numerous as are the tempta- 
 tions to it, no such cry has ever leaped in his soul, much 
 less from his tongue. Some there may be, of the many 
 Legrees, that may have commended to their lips the chalice 
 of agony they have so foully forced upon their brethren. 
 But these revenges will be rare. No such design moves 
 the hearts of their sympathizers. lie who has gone furthest 
 
 * Are not our eulogies, and statues, and monuments of Washington, 
 the peculiar fashion of our time, designed by Providence to prepare 
 us to welcome that greater than Washington, who may yet arise to lead 
 the oppressed race to Freedom ?
 
 HARPER'S FERRY. 161 
 
 in this work of neighborly love and duty, expressly and 
 repeatedly denies the intention of creating or allowing a 
 bloody insurrection. " I never did intend," he says, " mur- 
 der or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite 
 or incite the slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection. I 
 never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged 
 any idea of that kind." Let us refrain from charging these 
 dead and dying men, who have sacrificed their lives for the 
 freedom of a despised people, with any such imputation. 
 Let us rejoice that other human agents are in this work 
 beside Pharaoh and his bondmen, and that their external 
 sympathies and energies will peacefully melt the iron from 
 these necks. 
 
 We have only said that, in the dread alternative of free- 
 dom through blood or perpetual slavery, we have no right, 
 as men or as Christians, to decide for the latter. For con- 
 sider, that one quarter of a million hold four millions of 
 innocent people in chains. By our American arithmetic the 
 majority rules. Apply the rule here, and let it peaceably 
 work itself out. If violence attend its working, ask your- 
 self which is the better the short but fierce conflict of 
 sixteen men, with their one pretended owner, or the violent 
 subjugation to the master of those sixteen, and their pos- 
 terity. On the one hand, some masters slain, some matrons 
 dishonored, some falsely rich made poor, and then liberty, 
 equality, fraternity in all generations ; no chains, no whips, 
 no pollution, no unconsecrated marriages of lovers, no separa- 
 tion of families, no robbery of a man's labor and its rewards, 
 of all chances of elevation, socially and mentally, of all the 
 rights which all men respect and strive after. On the other 
 hand, generations upon generations of these millions suffer- 
 ing unspeakable loss, and shames, and agonies. There may 
 be no war nor bloodshed, thanks to the great Northern, the 
 great Christian sentiment ; but if there shall be, God has 
 often blessed it, and will again. 
 11
 
 162 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 
 
 II. This event will lead to a more general recognition of 
 our oneness of blood and destiny with the despised race. 
 The past movements of this reform have made astonishing 
 changes in the Northern feeling. The colored race to-day 
 are treated with a thousand-fold more respect and fraternal 
 familiarity than they were twenty years ago. Yet there 
 remains much to be done. Our walls of prejudice still rise 
 high between us and them. We must tear them down. We 
 must cease separating them from us in our churches per- 
 petuating, under another form, the negro-pew abomination 
 of our fathers. We must open the doors of our schools and 
 colleges to them, not only as scholars, but as teachers, if 
 they show themselves capable. We must let them enter 
 our shops as apprentices, our stores as clerks, our firms as 
 partners. We must open the doors of all our varied de- 
 partments of human enterprise, and say to them, " Show 
 yourselves capable, we will show ourselves liberal." How 
 high the walls that now hem them in ! how narrow and 
 poor the soil they are permitted to cultivate ! The lightest 
 quadroon, no less than his darkest kindred, is confined within 
 the range of one or two modes of industry, and they the 
 least intelligent and remunerative. I heard a worthy lady 
 say, not long since, she might allow one of this class to 
 work in her kitchen ; she would revolt from letting her sew 
 for her. However light in hue, however neat and nimble 
 in this most womanly of accomplishments, she could not 
 avail herself of it to get a living in that family. Could she 
 in yours ? We must crucify this lust of pride and caste, 
 if we would be the friends of Christ, if we would deal truly 
 and justly with the slave and his master. 
 
 No one act in the whole movement, thus far, can contrib- 
 ute to this end what the deeds done and suffered by John 
 Brown and his associates will do. That sublime speech, 
 on receiving his sentence, so manly, so womanly, so full of 
 generosity and frankness, full of modesty and courage, has
 
 HAEPER'S FERRY. 163 
 
 a few sentences that, with the deeds that accompany them, 
 will be living forces for the cleansing of this nation from 
 the base prejudices that now infect it. Hear him, and let his 
 words work their perfect work in all your hearts : " Had I 
 interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit 
 has been fairly proved, for I admire the truthfulness and 
 candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have 
 testified in this case, had I so interfered in behalf of the 
 rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in 
 behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, 
 sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered 
 and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have 
 been all right, and every man in this court would have 
 deemed it an act worthy of reward, rather than punishment. 
 This court acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of 
 the law of God. I see a book kissed, which I suppose to 
 be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches 
 me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do 
 to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further 
 to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. 
 I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet 
 too young to understand that God is any respecter of per- 
 sons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, 
 as I have always freely admitted I have done, I have 
 done in behalf of his despised poor no wrong, but right." 
 
 III. Another benefit is the new life it will give to the varied 
 modes which have long been at work against this wrong. 
 Had it not been for their previous activity, it would have 
 been utterly powerless for good or evil. Twenty-five years 
 ago such an act would have created no general uproar. 
 The slave power was too strong, the anti-slave power too 
 weak. It is far different now. The speeches, and sermons, 
 and editorials, and votes, and prayers of a quarter of a 
 century have not been without their effect. The quickening 
 of the moral sense of the nation, the increase of sympathy
 
 164 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 
 
 and fraternity with the oppressed, the collisions of churches 
 and parties, the very fierceness of the wrath of the slave- 
 holder, have all been as fuel preparing for this spark. The 
 quenching of this spark will not cause the work to cease. 
 It will go on as never before. Not arraying the North 
 against the South, but the whole nation, North and South, 
 against this sin. The end is at hand. Let us not be weary 
 in well doing until that end is reached. However hostile to 
 this work this enterprise first appeared, new light is breaking 
 upon the general mind. The party journals that fancied 
 their party aims were ruined are gaining their better reason. 
 Let every right way of assailing the trembling fortress not 
 cease because of this diversion. They will not. The fires 
 of Freedom will burn the brighter, for that which seemed 
 to quench the flame is but fuel. The peaceful triumph must 
 be hastened by the very failure of any scheme which seems 
 to be infected with war. 
 
 IV. This will not be the least beneficial in stilling the 
 haughty and horrible assumptions of the leaders and man- 
 agers of the Slavocracy. They have preached doctrines 
 from the stump, the hall of legislation, the pulpit, the bench, 
 during the last ten years, more blasphemous, more satanic 
 than any that have been uttered in the civilized world since 
 Christianity overthrew Paganism. No bull of the Vatican 
 in the midnight point of the dark ages, no Torquemada 
 defense of the Inquisition, ever made half so ungodly apol- 
 ogies, or announced half so demoniacal decrees, as the 
 Southern press and pulpit have done in the last decade ; 
 and they were waxing worse and worse. A slave code for 
 the territories, slave trade for their harbors, slave transpor- 
 tation over the whole country, this is their avowed pro- 
 gramme. Their strides have been rapid and vast ; their 
 steps are raised for mightier paces. This infernal march 
 I speak soberly and solemnly this tramp of men, possessed 
 by him whose name is Legion, over all human and divine
 
 HARPFR'S FERRY. 165 
 
 law and life, has suddenly been made to halt. They have 
 seen the Angel of the Lord; they are pale and piteous ; they 
 cry for quarter, though His sword has not left His thigh. 
 Where, now, is your senatorial imperiousness ? Where 
 your judicial perversions of law and history ? Where your 
 executive hauteur ? Their demands, decisions, decrees, 
 suddenly cease. They will revive them again, but with 
 bated breath. Outwardly they may be more vociferous and 
 abominable, but inwardly they fear, and whisper, " See 
 there ! that strange, awful sight ; how it burns our eyeballs ! 
 Northern whites as mad for Freedom as we are for Slavery. 
 Made so by us, they are adopting our tactics and our weap- 
 ons. As we have murdered men for Slavery in Kansas, 
 as we have struck down great and high defenders of Free- 
 dom and the Constitution in the Senate House, so they are 
 murdering us in the cause of Liberty ; they are arming our 
 slaves for their freedom. We shall lose our lives, perhaps ; 
 we shall certainly lose our property and our power." They 
 see in this more than votes, more than the triumph of any 
 political party ; they see the death of Slavery. They see 
 themselves the murderers ; the favorite offspring of their lust 
 of pride, and power, and wealth dies by their own hands. 
 Well may we say to them, as our prophet bard of Freedom 
 did to their great leader, Calhoun, years ago, when a less 
 fright congealed his soul, 
 
 "Are these your tones, whose treble notes of fear 
 Wail in the wind ? And do ye shake to hear, 
 Actaeon-like, the bay of your own hounds, 
 Spurning the leash and leaping o'er their bounds ? 
 Sore baffled statesmen, when your eager hand, 
 With game afoot, unslipped the hungry pack, 
 To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land, 
 Had ye no fears that, ere long, doubling back, 
 These dogs of yours might snuff on Slavery's track ? " 
 
 Let their proud knees quake. They ought to fall before 
 their slaves with cries of forgiveness for their inhuman con-
 
 166 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 
 
 duct towards them ; before their country, asking her pardon 
 for the dishonor with -which they have stained her fair fame 
 before the world ; and, above all, before their God, implor- 
 ing His mercy for their false and cruel treatment of His 
 truth and children. This little event will be magnified by 
 them a thousand-fold ; yet, perhaps, not too highly. May 
 it lead them to instant penitence, and its all-important work. 
 If I speak aught that offends your present judgment, 
 weigh it carefully before you reject it. I declare only what 
 I have thought, and prayed, and spoken for years. I be- 
 lieve no such sin is laid at the door of any nation as is laid 
 upon us. I believe no such sufferings are seen by the all- 
 loving Omniscience in the wide earth, as He sees in the 
 breasts of multitudes of powerless victims in the Southern 
 shambles. I speak in the interest of no party. Politics are 
 tossed on this wild and mighty sea that sweeps over the 
 whole land, as fishing boats off Newfoundland, 
 
 " When descends on the Atlantic 
 The gigantic 
 Storm wind of the equinox." 
 
 So are rocking all other great interests. The Church 
 fears her dissolution ; free labor, in its grand and lesser 
 divisions, fears her destruction ; the throes of this great 
 birth of freedom and fraternity to the least among the races 
 of men, make all classes and callings to writhe. Yet there 
 shall be no death of any vital force. Government, Religion, 
 the Church, the Gospel, free and varied industry, all shall 
 live, and live a higher life for the struggles through which 
 they are now passing. I speak with no hardness to the 
 slaveholder. Some of these that I know, I esteem. All 
 God has loved, and has given His only-beloved Son, that 
 they, believing on Him, might not perish. May they re- 
 ceive the grace of God in its fullness, and let it lead them 
 to give that which is just and equal to the slave, lest "the 
 great and terrible day of the Lord come." Would to God
 
 HARPER'S FERRY. 167 
 
 they would treat their fellow-citizens in bondage as our 
 fathers treated theirs declare Slavery incompatible with 
 their Constitutions, and that it ceases henceforth to exist 
 in their midst. So easy, so peaceful is the way of duty in 
 this matter. 
 
 I speak in no love or expectation of a murderous upris- 
 ing, or of armed intervention to aid them in rising. Their 
 rights I have defended. Their duty it is not for me to 
 decide. I have striven to remember them as bound with 
 them. I see them as they are to-day, sitting under vines 
 and fig trees not their own, with everything to molest and 
 make them afraid. I see them, as they are plodding in 
 coffles, or crowded in holds, on their dreadful march to their 
 unknown fate. With bleeding feet, and backs, and hearts, 
 they are scourged from the miserable hut of their childhood, 
 to the miserable grave of their early prime, from the dun- 
 geon of ice to the dungeon of fire. " They have no rights," 
 says the solemn and supreme tribunal of the land, " no rights 
 which white men are bound to respect." The husband has 
 no right to his wife, which you are bound to respect ; the 
 maiden no right to her honor ; the mother no right to her 
 babe, the babe no right to its mother ; the mind no right to 
 culture ; the soul no right to its Savior ; no rights which 
 white men are bound to respect ! My God, what a decree ! 
 Let us obey God rather than man, and hold in higher re- 
 spect their natural and divine rights, for the very contempt 
 and loss they suffer at the hands of those now so powerful 
 and so cruel. 
 
 Let us not be discouraged. This deluge of hell has heard 
 a voice it will obey, saying, " Hitherto shalt thou come, 
 but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." 
 The very dilemma of the captors of these men is itself pro- 
 pitious. They dare not hang them ; they dare not release 
 them. If they pardon John Brown, it is saying to all the 
 world, " We are verily guilty. Any man may come among
 
 168 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 
 
 us, invite our slaves to assume their freedom, give them arms 
 to defend that freedom, and even slay those who seem to 
 oppose it, and yet we dare not hang him. Why ? Because 
 we know he is right, and we are wrong." They can never 
 defend their system again if John Brown is allowed to live. 
 
 If he dies, if he 'mounts the scaffold for Freedom, which 
 may Heaven prevent, he will slay the monster which seems 
 thus to slay him. He will make the scaffold in this land as 
 sacred and potent as it became in England when Vane, and 
 Sidney, and Eussell mounted it. Such a thrill of indigna- 
 tion and remorse will freeze the soul of every man, North 
 and South, slaveholder and abolitionist, as never struck 
 through the heart of a great Christian nation before. Let 
 John Brown's great words be fulfilled : "Now, if it is deemed 
 necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of 
 the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the 
 blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this 
 slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, 
 and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done." 
 
 Out of that death life will leap : life for those miserable 
 millions now worse than dead. To his memory honors will 
 be paid ; statues will bear his stern, mild features to pos- 
 terity ; and when Virginia is free, as free she will be, one 
 of her first acts will be to erect a monument to his memory, 
 on the very spot where disgrace, defeat, and death now over- 
 whelm him as one of the first acts of this Commonwealth, 
 after she had achieved her liberty, was to raise the lofty 
 memorial to the " monomaniac " Warren, and his slain and 
 defeated comrades, rebels, like these, against a legal but 
 tyrannical power. 
 
 May God help us all to give ourselves to Him, in the 
 consecration of a holy heart and life, and then to the great 
 moral warfare with every vice, chiefest of which, in the cry 
 of the down-trodden, and the crime of the down-treader, is 
 American Slavery.
 
 THE MAKTYE.* 
 
 NOTHER date has been added to our national his- 
 * ^ ne hi s t r y f t^ 6 world. Next to July 
 1776, is to stand in the world's chronology, 
 against the name of America, December 2, 1859. 
 None between them can be placed beside them. These 
 will stand with the two dates immediately preceding the 
 former, April 19 and June 17, 1775, and with two pre- 
 ceding that October 10, 1492, and December 22, 1620- 
 the Discovery of the Continent and the Landing of the 
 Pilgrims, as the chief days of her history unto this hour. 
 The striking of the clock of Humanity only happens when 
 events of mighty influence on the destiny of nations and 
 races occur. Solferino, as the moment when Italy came out 
 of its grave of centuries, may have such honor. Waterloo, 
 because it had no moral nor national significance, will de- 
 scend from its high place, and rank only with Philippi, Ac- 
 tium, Cannae, New Orleans, when dynasties are affected, not 
 races. 
 
 * An address prepared for a public meeting arranged to be holden at 
 Maiden, Mass., on the evening of the execution of John Brown. The 
 meeting was not held, and the address was published in " Zion's Her- 
 ald," December 8, 1859. 
 
 (169)
 
 170 THE MARTYR. 
 
 This day is not only in its events, but in in its physical 
 character, a national day. It is a Virginia winter's day, so 
 warm and sunny in this region that we have sat without fires 
 and with open windows ; a halcyon day, when the bird of 
 freedom broods in its nest ; a day, probably, almost identical 
 in character from New Brunswick to Mexico. It would seem 
 as though Providence had made the universal feeling, calm, 
 warm, unusual, infect the day. 
 
 Everybody gathered about that gallows ; everybody saw 
 that gallant man march serenely to his grave ; everybody 
 felt to say, " Let us also go, that we may die with him." 
 We knew, South and North, slave and slaveholder, we knew 
 in our inmost hearts that he was being crowned by the 
 Divine Lover of all men, the Divine Sufferer for all men, 
 with glory, honor, immortality, eternal life. 
 
 Why this interest ? Why this conviction ? Some say he 
 was mad ; some say he was bloody-minded. He took the 
 sword; it is right that he should perish with the sword. 
 Was he insane ? AVas he a monomaniac ? Did he labor under 
 a mental hallucination ? So some of his many friends rep- 
 resent ; but if so, why this mighty, instinctive, irrepressible 
 approval ? Why do our hearts belie our lips ? Why do we 
 have to put our nature unjier the hatchways when we con- 
 demn him ? Let us look at him as our children will a half a 
 century hence ay, as we shall ere a decade of years passes 
 over us. We have read the affidavits which were said to 
 prove his insanity, and though we condemn the Virginia 
 court that slew him for many of its rulings, we think it 
 showed good sense in excluding that testimony. His mad- 
 ness, according to that record, consisted in feeling that he 
 was called upon to oppose slavery. He only lived to kill 
 that murderer. If that is insanity, we shall find no mad- 
 house large enough to contain a tithe of his companions. 
 He was not mad. However erroneous his judgment, as to 
 his resources or his expectations, he was a cool, shrewd,
 
 THE SECOND OF DECEMBER. 171 
 
 sane man ; and they who now, from terror or ignorance, 
 brand him with insanity, will, ere many years have flown, ac- 
 knowledge the greatness of his wisdom. 
 
 But whether his undertaking was wise or foolish in a pol- 
 itic, worldly sense, was it right ? We as Christians can 
 defend no act which does not stand on this foundation. The 
 question is more important ; is it more difficult ? It seems 
 to be, by the utterances which have gone forth concerning 
 it. " It is destiny," says one. " It is divine sovereignty," 
 says another. " It is an inscrutable Providence," says a 
 third. They see the handwriting, but cannot interpret it 
 any more than the terrified Belshazzar. But it ought not to 
 be a hard thing to understand John Brown. It is not hard 
 to see through every other deed of that transparent life, 
 whether those by which he saved Kansas from the clutch 
 of slavery, when he from the robber rent that prey, or those 
 by \vhich he has won all hearts since his capture. His words 
 are so plain that he that runs may read them. Why is not 
 this central act apprehensible ? Simply because we have 
 not yet dared to study it. We have been as afraid of it as 
 they of him. He was too ripe for us, but not for the cause. 
 The instinct of every heart declares the latter ; the perplex- 
 ities of every head the former. . 
 
 Now, this country has not gone crazy over a madman ; it 
 has not forgotten its Christianity in the fascinations of a 
 great murderer. The men and women that love and praise 
 him are pious, humble, God-fearing, man-loving, war-hating 
 men and women. Why do they praise and love him ? Be- 
 cause he did simply this : He gave the slaves their freedom, 
 and means to defend that freedom ; that is all. Not a pike 
 nor pistol was for aggression, for murder or rapine, but for 
 defense against their otherwise murderous masters. This 
 was the only new thing about this enterprise. Hundreds 
 have been run off without arms of defense. Torrey has pre- 
 ceded Brown to martyrdom for doing, in this way, as he
 
 172 THE MAKTYR. 
 
 would be done by. Brown merely added weapons of defense. 
 His own assertion, repeated over and over again, establishes 
 this. He was not like Warren, to whom he has been com- 
 pared, in all respects, though he was in many. Warren 
 armed himself and his men with the intention of fighting. 
 Brown armed himself and his slaves with the intent to pre- 
 vent bloodshed. Was this wrong ? Our Master says, "He 
 that hath no sword, let him sell his coat and buy one." Not 
 that His disciples should engage in aggressive or vindictive 
 war, but that they should defend themselves, their families, 
 and their liberties, against the enslaving armies of their ene- 
 mies. The church has never adopted the doctrine of non- 
 resistance : it never will. As long as man feels that he has 
 a right to raise his hand to protect his head against the 
 murderer's blow, he will feel that he has a right to mail that 
 hand, to arm that hand, for this sole purpose. For this alone 
 he gave his slave brethren weapons. Can we say he had 
 no right to give them ? 
 
 But it may be said " all such interference is unjustifiable." 
 Then we are verily guilty if we aid a fugitive to escape ; 
 for the law holds him in slavery here. If we say armed in- 
 tervention on the soil puts a very different aspect on the case, 
 let us ask ourselves what we have said of Louis Napoleon's 
 armed intervention in Italy. Not like John Brown's, a war 
 of defense alone, but purely and intentionally from the be- 
 ginning a war of offense. How paeans went up to him as 
 long as he was faithful to that cause ! How he was hon- 
 ored with the title of the Liberator of Italy ! And did Italy 
 call Napoleon with half the imploring voice that Virginia 
 called Captain Brown ? Were the Italians suffering what 
 our brethren in that country are suffering ? Did the Austri- 
 an sell the Venetians into hopeless bondage far into South- 
 ern Italy ? Did he steal the Milanese peasant from his wife ? 
 Did he seize their dark-eyed daughter, and sell her to his 
 light-haired German neighbor for purposes too horrid to think
 
 THE SECOND OF DECEMBEE. 173 
 
 of? Were the Italians fettered and lashed, driven from 
 Venice to Rome, or carried in slave ships from Genoa to 
 Naples, as they are to-day from Richmond to Memphis, from 
 Baltimore to Mobile? Before we judge John Brown we 
 must judge every attempted liberator of his own or another 
 people from tyrannical servitude. Let us cast the beam out 
 of our own eye, and then shall we see clearly to take the 
 mote out of our brother's eye. We shall cast it out. We 
 shall see clearly. We shall unitedly say ere many days that 
 this man, whom all call a Christian, has violated no Christian 
 obligation in this remarkable undertaking. 
 
 If it was the work of a sane and pious man, was it that 
 of a wise one ? This seems to demand two answers. Wis- 
 dom is sometimes gauged by success, sometimes not. Kos- 
 sutli has always been called a wise man, though he failed ; 
 so Warren ; so Socrates. Did Brown fail ? The day of his 
 death was the day of his greatest victory. Two things were 
 in his heart. God gave them to him : Inspiration of the slave 
 with such a desire for freedom as will make him ready to die 
 to obtain it ; and inspiration of the pretended owner, with 
 such a conviction of his sin, and such fear to continue in it, 
 as will make him haste to escape from it. The first will 
 appear. All who know the slaves, and dare to speak, know 
 how this deed has inspired them. The last is already his. 
 Eveiy eye sees it ; every slaveholder's heart feels it. Con- 
 viction of duty, and the terrible danger of neglecting it, 
 have gone through that whole Southern land like an earth- 
 quake. They may appear very confident ; they may shout 
 over his gallows, " Abolitionism is dead ; long live Sla- 
 very ! " But the terrible Nemesis, shod with wool, suddenly 
 stands behind them, and whispers in their affrighted ears, 
 
 " If the red slayer thinks he slays, 
 Or if the slain think he is slain, 
 They know not well the subtle ways 
 I keep, and pass, and come again."
 
 174 THE MARTYR. 
 
 The slain knew he was not slain. No man ever went to 
 a martyr's death with such assurance of success ; no man 
 ever had better grounds. And that red slayer, the slave 
 power, that has driven Governor Wise to wash his unwill- 
 ing hands in this saintly blood, already beholds the dread 
 Avenger come again. They are not eating their festal feasts 
 of victory without seeing the terrible spectre, and they cry, 
 with chattering teeth, 
 
 " Hence, horrible shadow ! 
 Unreal mockery, hence ! The times have been 
 That when the brains were out the man would die, 
 And so an end. But now they rise again 
 With twenty mortal murthers in their crowns 
 To push us from our stools." 
 
 They surround the gallows with an army. Also propi- 
 tious ; for thus they bring the first citizens of Virginia from 
 every section of the Commonwealth to escort their captive 
 to his crown. And those clear-eyed, strong-minded sol- 
 diers could not have witnessed that wonderful death without 
 feeling that he and his cause were right, and would triumph. 
 They must have said, hundreds of them, in their hearts, like 
 Balaam before Israel, " May I die the death of that righteous 
 man, and may my last end be like his ! " 
 
 Then, too, the fact that this institution could only be 
 upheld by the bayonet, shows it is near its end. No cause 
 in this land can long stand which requires such support. 
 That very display, which was not for us, not to keep their 
 prisoners in their toils, but to inspire terror in the slave, 
 shows that the cause that asks its aid is dying. We hail 
 the omens ; the sacrifice is slain on the altar of Slavery ; 
 the auguries foretell the speedy destruction of that abomi- 
 nation. 
 
 Let us not murmur at this deed, or its doer. So mur- 
 mured some of our fathers at the mad enterprise of Prescott, 
 and Putnam, and Warren. " Foolhardy men," they doubt-
 
 THE SECOND OF DECEMBER. 175 
 
 less said, " to throw themselves against a force so far above 
 them in numbers, equipment, and training ! What property 
 destroyed ! What lives lost ! And he, our Commander-in- 
 Chief, has flung himself most foolishly away." Not so mur- 
 murs the sea of applause that beats around that great deed 
 to-day from the vast ocean of humanity, even as the waves 
 of every clime murmur at the base of its immortal hill. 
 The Charlestown of Virginia shall stand forever beside, and 
 yet above, the Charlestown of Massachusetts. 
 
 Let Slavery then proceed to the bloody end of her unnat- 
 ural revenge. Let her crunch her remaining captives, as 
 she has their great leader, in her dripping jaws, grin hor- 
 ribly a ghastly smile, settle down upon the burning marl, 
 and gloat over the miserable victims that daily feed her 
 hellish maw. Let her use their survivor to decoy the 
 anti-slavery leaders to her den, so that they, too, served up 
 by Judge Lynch, may tickle the delicate palate of this eater 
 of men. Will the haughty slavocracy cease the less to fear 
 her slaves ? Cowards fear the dead more than the living. 
 She fears both. She is fast rushing to her grave. Great 
 signs in the religious, the political, the social heavens, betoken 
 her overthrow. All forces are uniting against her, Church 
 and State, society and civilization, and like every tyrant, 
 she loses everything, and loses it instantly, if she loses her 
 Waterloo. Ere long she will lose Waterloo. Within this 
 first century of our national life she will disappear. Then 
 will all men unite in praising this Samson who first tore 
 down the pillars of this soul-devouring Dagon. Then will 
 Virginia set aside the judgment of her courts against these 
 brave and true men who loved her better than her rulers, 
 better than she loved herself, and will place beside her 
 \Vasliington, him whom she has just hung, and whose dead 
 body she has spewed out of her land. 
 
 Let every one measure this whole character and career 
 by the true Christian standard, and let them so far obey
 
 176 THE MAKTYR. 
 
 the voice of duty and of God in their hearts as he did 
 in his. 
 
 We shall be compelled by our conscience to utter the 
 whole truth to the master ; to withhold no word of sympa- 
 thy and rightful succor from the slave. We shall be re- 
 quired by the Father of all, the Sacrifice for all, the Illumi- 
 nator of all, to feel our oneness with this race. Almost 
 John Brown's last act was one whose fitness none can ques- 
 tion, whose large lesson all must learn. . As he left the jail, 
 he saw a slave woman and her babe near its door, and, as 
 she, with a smiling countenance, addressed him, he, stooping 
 over, kissed her babe. Who of that crowd could have done 
 that ? Who of the readers of the story ? He, face to face 
 with his coffin, face to face with his God, recognizes the 
 cause for which he was to die, and teaches us the lesson this 
 nation is set to learn, and to teach all other nations the 
 union and fraternity of Man. 
 
 Let the bells toll, then, on the return of this great day. 
 Soon will their knell be changed to merry peals of gladness 
 over the glorious consummation of Universal Emancipation, 
 for which he laid down his heroic life, and received his eter- 
 nal crown.
 
 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS.* 
 
 " I WILL SING UNTO THE LORD, FOR HE HATH TRIUMPHED GLORIOUSLY. 
 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER HATH HE THROWN INTO THE SEA." 
 
 Exodus xv. 1. 
 
 " BUT PROMOTION COMETH NEITHER FROM THE EAST, NOR FROM THE 
 WEST, NOR FROM THE SOUTH. BUT QK)D IS JUDGE : HE PUTTETH 
 DOWN ONE, AND SETTETH UP ANOTHER." Ps. IxXV. 6, 7. 
 
 " JESUS SAITH UNTO THEM, DlD YE NEVER READ IN THE SCRIPTURES, 
 
 THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THE SAME is BECOME 
 
 THE HEAD OF THE CORNER; THIS IS THE LORD'S DOING, AND IT IS 
 MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES." Matt. Xxi. 42. 
 
 NE year ago last Sabbath evening, we assembled 
 in this house to meditate on the beginning of the 
 end of American slavery. A fortnight before, a 
 score of men had made a descent on a national 
 arsenal, freed some slaves, been captured by the soldiers of 
 the Federal Government, their leader tried, condemned, and 
 sentenced to be hung. You well remember the month that 
 
 * A Thanksgiving sermon delivered in the Harvard Street Metho- 
 dist Episcopal Church, Cambridge, Sunday evening, November 11, I860, 
 on the occasion of the first election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presi- 
 dency of the United States. 
 
 The following dedication was appended to the sermon when pub- 
 lished : 
 
 " To the HONORABLE CHARLES SUMNER, 
 
 Who has spoken the bravest words for Liberty in the most perilous 
 places ; who has suffered in behalf of the Slave only less than those who 
 12 < 177 >
 
 178 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 followed far more exciting than the one through which 
 we have just passed. For thirty days, from Calais to Gal- 
 veston, only one name was on every lip, only one feeling in 
 every heart. You all remember the day of his death : 
 
 " Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
 The bridal of the earth and sky." 
 
 You remember, far more clearly, the death itself, more 
 sweet, more cool, more calm, more bright, his soul's great 
 bridal of earth and heaven. No death of greater beauty 
 adorns the pages df secular history no one sublimer is 
 in the annals of Christian martyrdom. Socrates, with the 
 hemlock at his lips, was not more charming and child-like. 
 Latimer, in the fire, was not more cheerful. Paul, among 
 the lions, was not more triumphant. It was by far the 
 greatest death-scene in American history, and will shine 
 forth purer and nobler with every passing year, and pass- 
 ing age. 
 
 We come to-night not to sorrow over Liberty enslaved 
 afresh Liberty, tried by the jury of the country, and with- 
 out cause, without consideration, found guilty Liberty un- 
 der sentence of death, arid on her way to the scaffold. No, 
 thanks be to God, the beginning of the end of slavery gives 
 us gladder scenes in the opening of this act of its fast 
 accomplishing drama. 
 
 The defeat at Bunker's Hill and the death of Warren 
 a lost day and a lost leader cast an immeasurable gloom, 
 for a season, in spite of some redeeming features, over the 
 
 wear the martyr's crown ; who has come forth from that suffering with 
 the profoundest, because experimental, sympathy with the Oppressed, 
 with a more intense hatred of the Oppression, yet without any bitterness 
 of heart against the Oppressor; who will stand forth in the future times 
 as the clearest-eyed, boldest-tongued, and purest-hearted Statesman of 
 the age, these few words of Thanksgiving and Praise for the mani- 
 festation of the Presence and Power of the Almighty Redeemer in this 
 greatest work of our^ime, are most respectfully dedicated."
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 179 
 
 American heart. But the second great act, executed, like 
 this, in but little less than a year from the first, executed, 
 like this, under the leadership of the chosen captain of their 
 hosts, by which a proud and mighty enemy, flushed with 
 long success, and backed by the gigantic strength of a pow- 
 erful nation, without the firing of a gun, evacuated their 
 most important post in the whole country, left it, never to 
 return, the great deed by which Washington purged Bos- 
 ton of its insolent and murderous foe, thrilled the whole 
 nation with unmitigated joy. So this peaceful evacuation 
 by the arrogant, wealthy, and long-ruling Slave Power of 
 the most important post it ever held or can hold, never to 
 return, has caused such a flood of ecstasy as never before 
 filled the hearts of this people since the bells rang out the 
 first declaration, and the bewildered multitudes awoke to 
 the realization of their existence as a united and free na- 
 tion. The perplexing and saddening features of the event 
 of last year do not mar this victory. No gallows tree 
 stretches its black arms athwart the golden sky ; no dying 
 groans, no stiffened forms, attend the triumphal shout and 
 march. Shall we not, then, come before His presence with 
 thanksgivings whose right hand and holy arm hath gotten 
 Him the victory ? For promotion cometh neither from the 
 east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is 
 judge : He putteth down one and setteth up another. 
 
 Not in the interest of the great party through whom He 
 has done this work do I appear, but in the interest of that 
 cause which swells far, far beyond the power of that or any 
 party to embrace the redemption of millions upon millions 
 of my fellow-men. In their behalf I raise the song of praise. 
 That redemption draweth nigh. Power is passing away 
 from the side of the oppressor. Power which belongeth 
 unto God is being employed by Him to break this infamous 
 yoke. Shall we not laud and magnify his Name, in whose 
 hand are the hearts of the children of men, that he has
 
 180 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 turned them as the rivers of water are turned, and made 
 them sweep upon, soon, we trust, to sweep away, this rooted 
 and massy iniquity in their overflowing, swift-rushing flood ? 
 
 You may ask, Is it not a profanation of the sanctuary to 
 employ it for rejoicings over mere political strifes ? This is 
 very far from an ordinary victory, and for its celebration we 
 have the unanimous voice of all ages and all religious. 
 
 Abraham praised God, in a temple not made with hands, 
 for the defeat of his enemies, and Melchizedek, the priest 
 of the Most High God, the type of Christ, poured upon his 
 head the divine benedictions. The victories of the Hebrew 
 kings were celebrated in the temple, and some of the grand- 
 est psalms were written in praise of national deliverances. 
 The heathen have followed this natural sentiment, and in all 
 ages and nations have hung the trophies of their triumphs 
 in their temples ; have made their praises to their gods rise 
 above their shouts over their fallen foe. So the Philistines 
 rejoiced before Dagon, when they had captured Samson ; 
 and, in a later day, when they gained possession of the Ark 
 of God. The history of Delphi and other templed spots is 
 but a catalogue of such thanksgivings. The Christian 
 world has, from the first, obeyed the ancestral, human law. 
 "Te Deum laudamus," " We praise thee, God," has rung 
 through the lofty arches of great cathedrals, and against 
 the dome of heaven, for more than a thousand years, when 
 the Lord had given their country deliverance in the day of 
 battle. 
 
 We have, therefore, abundant precedent in the universal 
 practice of our race for entering these courts, to-night, with 
 thanksgivings, and these walls with praise. Have we 
 abundant reason ? It may be said that these religious na- 
 tional rejoicings were because of victories won on bloody 
 fields, won over a foreign foe, and at the expense of human 
 life. Is a mere periodical strife, peaceful and bloodless, 
 between brethren of the same family, for the honors of
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 181 
 
 civil life, is this to be placed beside the overthrow of the 
 Egyptians, the destruction of the Assyrians, the redemption 
 of Europe at Waterloo, of Italy at Solferino ? Is it not 
 straining a point to thus elevate the mad whirl of quadren- 
 nial politics into a great national, a great world battle, 
 which marks an epoch in the history of the race ? 
 
 These questions are very proper. For if it be but the 
 ordinary strife of ordinary politics, although the Church has 
 the guardianship of these as she has of every other matter 
 pertaining to human duty, yet she might safely leave them 
 to the general course of her counsel and authority, without 
 making their ephemeral victories subject of especial exulta- 
 tion. 
 
 Let us then ask, as a needful preliminary to our songs of 
 gladness and of hope, What was the subject of controversy 
 in the late conflict ? 
 
 The only subject set before the people was Slavery ; its 
 extension and nationalization, or its relegation to the regions 
 now blackened with it, there to 
 
 " writhe in pain, 
 And die amid its worshipers." 
 
 Four parties were professedly in the field, but only two 
 combatants, only one question. In different parts of the 
 land, the two intermediate parties took different positions, 
 according to the sentiment ruling there. In the South they 
 contended against the domineering passion for the national 
 supremacy of Slavery. In the North they fought with 
 equal zeal against its ruling passion, the national supremacy 
 of Liberty. Their bands flew across the field, now striking 
 at the haughty Slave Power, and now at the iron legions of 
 Freedom. 
 
 Behind them advanced steadily the main hosts with their 
 banners flying, each glowing with its one word. On the 
 one " Slavery ;" on the other, "Liberty." Marching be-
 
 182 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 neath them, each party instinctively, immeasurably felt, that 
 the issue involved the most vital questions ever submitted 
 to this nation ; and that the result was sure to be disas- 
 trous to freedom, if defeated, fatal to slavery, if it should 
 go down in the battle. 
 
 No other question was debated by the leading advocates 
 of all parties. One of the candidates for the Presidency,* 
 and one of the ablest men in the country, traversed its 
 length and breadth, making many addresses ; and the bur- 
 den of every one was Slavery. He endeavored to exclude 
 it from the canvass, but he could not exclude it from his 
 own speeches. It rounded every sentence, pointed e.very 
 line. And it was not a little remarkable that so sagacious 
 a statesman should not have perceived, that what had filled 
 all his public life, good and evil, for a decade of years, was 
 not to be banished from the general mind, nor settled in the 
 national councils, except by a fair fight on the appointed 
 field. 
 
 The other party, though attempting to banish it from 
 its platform, showed the impossibility of the attempt in 
 its very phraseology. For its two chief words, " Constitu- 
 tion and Union," proved that it felt or fancied these to 
 be endangered by the struggle with slavery. Its worthy 
 appendix, "the enforcement of the laws," was aimed solely 
 at the execution of the most unchristian and inhuman act 
 that ever issued from a Christian legislature. 
 
 From the unwilling but universal confession of neutrals, 
 therefore, no less than from the declarations of real oppo- 
 nents, do we see clearly the field of conflict. The real 
 weapons of the real fighters were all drawn from one armo- 
 ry, all waged in one battle. The only speaker that advo- 
 cated the Southern party in this region made the strongest 
 defense of human slavery ever made in Massachusetts. 
 There was an honest boldness that was refreshing to wit- 
 
 * Stephen A. Douglas.
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 183 
 
 ness, in inviting Mr. Yancey to give a pro-slavery speech 
 in Faneuil Hall a boldness no party would have been 
 equal to in any previous campaign. The invitation was not 
 accepted by a timid man. No abler, no more courageous 
 speech was ever made in Boston than Mr. Yancey's, viewed 
 as a eulogy on a system abhorrent in the utmost degree to 
 almost every one of his audience. As he was here, so 
 were his associates everywhere on slave soil. As he was 
 here, so would the advocates of freedom have been, had 
 they been allowed to speak in Richmond, Charleston, Mo- 
 bile, or New Orleans. So were they on their native heather, 
 the broad, free soil of the North. 
 
 Not a syllable was breathed against the candidate of 
 Slavery, except his devotion to that system ; not a syllable 
 against the victorious leader of the hosts of Freedom, ex- 
 cept his opposition to it. "It is the cause/' then, "it is 
 the cause, my friends," that has organized, inspired, waged 
 and won this national battle. It is the cause, too, that 
 commands me to speak to-night, to speak in my official 
 capacity, as an ambassador of Jesus Christ, upon one of the 
 especial objects of His mission the freedom, equality, and 
 fraternity of the human race. 
 
 Some may yet complain that we drag the holy vestments 
 of the altar in this mire of social strife. Do you remember 
 how Phinehas, the priest of the Most High God, possibly 
 while arrayed in most sacred robes, and in his hand the 
 sacrificial knife consecrated exclusively to the service of 
 the altar, rushed in among the sinning Israelites and their 
 idolatrous associates, slaying heathen and Hebrew in the 
 midst of their profane abominations ? And do you remem- 
 ber how that Most High God said to Moses, " Phinehas, 
 the son of Eleazer, the son of Aaron, the priest, hath turned 
 my wrath away from the children of Israel, while he was 
 zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed not the 
 children of Israel in my jealousy ? Wherefore say, ' Behold,
 
 184 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 I give unto him my covenant of peace : and he shall have 
 it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlast- 
 ing priesthood : because he was zealous for his God, and 
 made an atonement for the children of Israel.' ' Was it a 
 greater deed for this minister to stay the plague of volun- 
 tary passion, than for us to seek to stay that plague which 
 makes pure and pious men and women the victims of every 
 conceivable lust that power, avarice, or passion breeds ? 
 
 If Christ showed that the zeal of the house of the Lord 
 had eaten him up, by scourging from the temple, the seat 
 of civil as well as religious authority, those that sold doves, 
 shall we say His servants are not His followers when they 
 seek to scourge from our temple of civil and religious lib- 
 erty those that sell MEN ? The temple of our national life 
 has become defiled. Woe to that priest who is dumb before 
 the defilers ! In Christ's day some of them shared in the 
 business that profaned his house. In our day some of them 
 share in the honors and profits of this far greater profana- 
 tion. Let us obey the example He has set us, not the 
 decrees of timid, time-serving, wicked men. 
 
 But this defense is unnecessary before this congregation. 
 The contest as to the rights and duties of the ministry to 
 engage in this work has long been settled in this region. 
 Here and there, the rare exceptions requisite to prove a 
 rule rise before us, denying the privileges of humanity to 
 those who are set to apply to the hearts of men all the laws 
 of the Divine Author of humanity. Not so with the multi- 
 tudes. Slavery is to them an object not only of civil, but 
 of religious detestation. Its defeat, on any field, is a cause 
 of religious thanksgiving. Its defeat on the field where it 
 has just fallen, -- the field it has ruled the longest and the 
 ablest, where its chief seat is by choice, and by necessity 
 if it retain any seat in the land, its overthrow arid its expul- 
 sion from the throne of the national government, its flight 
 to its native lair, and the soon coming fight there for bare
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 185 
 
 existence, these are subjects of the most devout, the most 
 rapturous praise. "Not unto us, Lord, not unto us, but 
 unto Thy name give giory, for Thy mercy and Thy truth's 
 sake." 
 
 Let us, then, gratefully meditate on the late victory, con- 
 sidering its cause and its consequence. 
 
 I. Its Cause. Why has Freedom triumphed ? 
 
 For two chief reasons among a multitude of lesser ones : 
 First, the growth of conscience as to the nature and effects 
 of slavery ; and, Second, the growth of fear as to its politi- 
 cal power and prospects. > 
 
 1. The first and profoundest cause is the awakening of the 
 conscience of the nation as to the dreadful character and 
 workings of slavery. 
 
 There must always be two periods, at least, of attack 
 upon any organized iniquity before the tide of moral senti- 
 ment deluges and drowns it forever. The first awakening 
 is moderately efficient, but the mighty sin is too strong for 
 complete overthrow. The besieging hosts get weary and 
 slumber on their arms. The enemy sallies forth and tri- 
 umphs over th'em. They dwell in captivity to the evil 
 which they rose up against. Again the conscience grows, 
 again the vice is attacked, and in the new assault is left 
 weaker than before, perhaps completely destroyed ; if not, 
 the victorious right yields anew to the slumber of sloth and 
 sin ; is chained and ruled afresh, again bursts its bands and 
 sweeps on irresistibly to victory. Thus, by tidal waves of 
 flux and reflux, the huge mountain of sin is finally burieTl 
 beneath the deep, abounding ocean of truth. 
 
 So the Jews moved forward, from Joshua to David, in the 
 subjugation of Canaan. So Christianity has marched, is 
 marching forward in the subjugation of the world. So 
 Grecian idolatry, in a hand-to-hand fight with early Chris- 
 tianity, fell and rose, fell and rose, weaker at each resurrec- 
 tion, till, throe hundred years after its first defeat, that form,
 
 186 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 eminent and potent for more than a thousand years, fell, 
 never to rise again. So Roman slavery staggered and tum- 
 bled before the sharp blows of the same Apostolic Chris- 
 tianity, sprang to its feet with the ferocity and strength 
 of a wounded lion, and jent its enemies in pieces ; again 
 felt the shafts, again reeled and fell, again rose and raged, 
 till, after half a millennium, the golden rule of the Savior 
 and the golden command of His apostle to Christian mas- 
 ters to give their servants that which was just and equal, 
 were finally obeyed, and throughout Christian Europe, prop- 
 erty in man passed into the execrable list, abjiired and 
 abominated by every person. 
 
 The black race, in consequence of its seclusion and deg- 
 radation, was separated almost entirely from this influence. 
 True, Africa had been honored with the earliest, and, in 
 many respects, the ablest of Christian schools. Her sons 
 had worn the consecrated mitre, and sat in equal authority 
 with the Bishops of Rome and Jerusalem in Episcopal 
 Councils. But the ravages of the Vandals nipped this bud- 
 ding civilization, and Mussulman fanaticism perpetuated the 
 work northern Paganism had achieved. 
 
 Christian Europe, hemmed in by Mohammedanism on the 
 south and south-east, and by the wildest heathenism on the 
 north and north-east, without extensive commerce and with- 
 out mechanic arts, itself the child of northern idolatry, bap- 
 tized with the childish Christianity of Rome, grew, by slow 
 and unequal steps, to a true manhood in Christ. So far had 
 she retrograded from her earliest faith in the last two cen- 
 turies, that traffic in human flesh was again found among 
 her lawful commerce. And though she never fell back so 
 far as to acknowledge the right of property in the white 
 and Christian man, she did finally recognize the idea of 
 ownership in the African race. 
 
 It was reserved for this land to inaugurate the work of 
 universal emancipation. That work began with the begin-
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 187 
 
 ning of our history, and has risen and fallen, with mingled 
 success and failure, to the victory of this hour. Massa- 
 chusetts first refused to receive a cargo of slaves at the 
 same time that Virginia first welcomed them. The princi- 
 ples involved in those two deeds have been in conflict, 
 violent or latent, throughout our whole history. 
 
 The fundamental law, on which universal personal free- 
 dom must stand, the law of perfect equality before God, 
 has long been settled here, has never yet been acknowl- 
 edged elsewhere in the world. America was settled by the 
 flower of Protestantism before it had fallen into the sear 
 and yellow leaf of formalism, or the thrice dead infidelity 
 which covered all Europe, Protestant and Papal, in the 
 last century, with thorns and briers fit only for cursing, and 
 doomed to be burned. 
 
 Our fathers, the Pilgrims and Puritans of Massachusetts, 
 the Baptists of Rhode Island, the Quakers and Lutherans 
 of Pennsylvania, the Episcopalians of Virginia, the Roman- 
 ists of Maryland, and the Huguenots of Carolina, were 
 all refugees from religious persecution. Every State was 
 settled or largely populated by sufferers for conscience' sake. 
 And after a few ineffectual struggles to employ the same 
 cramps and fetters upon others that had been visited upon 
 themselves, they arose, one after another, to the true appre- 
 hension of the rights of conscience, and Puritan and Epis- 
 copalian, Baptist and Pedobaptist, Quaker and Lutheran, 
 Huguenot and Romanist, came to that broad table-land of 
 universal freedom for the religious sentiment which is still 
 the most wonderful characteristic of this nation. 
 
 So thoroughly had this doctrine filled the air of common 
 life, long before the formation of our confederacy, that only 
 the briefest and most incidental reference to the whole sub- 
 ject is found in our Constitution. I have heard a scholarly 
 Englishman complain of it for this very defect a defect 
 like that found in the Bible, where proofs of the existence
 
 188 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS 
 
 of God and the obligations of Religion are never given, its 
 every line assuming these as accredited, universal truths. 
 
 So did our fathers settle the other great question the 
 greatest that affects our human relations the absolute 
 right of every man to himself. Advancing, not ascending, 
 on the lofty table-land of the equality of every man before 
 God, they stood upon that first of human truths the 
 equality of every man before his fellows. While Europe 
 bowed down to certain families and individuals as royal and 
 sovereign by right divine, and, as a natural consequence, 
 esteemed the other extreme of society, whether peasants or 
 slaves, as void of all rights which the crouchers were bound 
 to respect, the American people, coming together, through 
 their representatives, themselves the nominal holders of 
 slaves, unanimously, unhesitatingly, enthusiastically de- 
 clared that "all men are created equal." Such a decla- 
 ration by the founders of a nation the world had never 
 heard before. 
 
 Their first struggle was to establish their own equality 
 before King, and Nobles, and Parliament, and a haughty 
 people. They must prove the fallacy of the divine right 
 of kings on the battle-field. Only one great inspiration can 
 possess at a time a man or a people. This broad platform 
 must rest on the head of king and slaveholder, but it must 
 be planted on that of the king first, as the most imminent 
 and dangerous foe. Hence the revolutionary struggle and 
 victory. 
 
 When they had emerged from that conflict when George 
 the Third saluted George Washington, and, through him, 
 the American people, as his perfect equal, then came a 
 second duty to preserve this equality among themselves. 
 How perilous was their state you can faintly conceive, by 
 seeing how all classes have just been swept into the current 
 of an unnatural reverence for the youthful heir of that 
 throne.
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 189 
 
 These patriots were born royalists. A vast proportion 
 of the people were, in feeling and theory, royalists. Every 
 city was full of wealth and fashion thus devoted. If Eng- 
 land's royalty and nobility were expelled, might not Amer- 
 ica substitute one of her own ? Italy has just proved the 
 passion of a people for a king. Mazzini and Garibaldi had 
 to yield to Victor Emanuel, republicanism to royalty. So 
 might it have been here. Our fathers saved us by self- 
 denial. It was a greater work to deliver themselves from 
 themselves than from England. " Greater is he that ruleth 
 his spirit than he that taketh a city." 
 
 Every member of that Constitutional Convention could 
 have had an American title of nobility. Lands for the sup- 
 port of the title were far more abundant than William's 
 barons found them in England in the eleventh century. The 
 leaders of the people, Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and 
 Jefferson, would have been of the blood royal, or next the 
 throne. They saw the peril. They must meet it. They 
 did. They especially guarded against inequality of rank, 
 forbade the receipt of titles from foreign courts, and steered 
 clear of the currents that might sweep them into that chan- 
 nel a senate without pay or for life, an executive for life 
 or for a long term of years. And they consummated their 
 precautions by one of their earliest acts of legislation 
 forbidding the increase of the Society of the Cincinnati, or 
 even its continuance among the sons of the original mem- 
 bers, as this society, being composed of the officers of the 
 Revolution, might, through the fascination of the military 
 spirit, endanger their primal and most vital idea equality, 
 liberty. 
 
 As we have said, only one fever can rage at a time, only 
 one great duty be done at once. Therefore, while their 
 sympathies went out for the slave population, while their 
 conscience told them they should be equally faithful and 
 honest to these as to themselves, their exhausting labors
 
 190 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 were in another direction. They rested from their labors, 
 fondly hoping their children would take up and apply their 
 great principles to this oppressed people. 
 
 Of the chief revolutionary patriots, Franklin alone was 
 an avowed abolitionist. Jefferson wrote against slavery, 
 or rather wrote reflections upon it, but never worked vigor- 
 ously for its extinction. Franklin cast his influence on that 
 side, probably more because he dwelt among the liberty- 
 loving Quakers than from an inherent passion of his own. 
 Washington disliked it, but when urged by Lafayette to 
 make the experiment of emancipating and hiring his ne- 
 groes, he declines on account of the embarrassed state of 
 his property ; and yet he died shortly after, leaving an estate 
 estimated at half a million of dollars, which is more than a 
 million at the present valuation of money. 
 
 The fact must be stated, that, while faithful to one half of 
 their theory, they were practically indifferent to the other. 
 While abolishing all titular distinctions and equalizing all 
 the white inhabitants, they failed to abolish the title of 
 slaveholder, and to give their colored brethren that which 
 was just and equal. 
 
 The battle on this field exhausted all their energies. To 
 keep this liberty from licentiousness, this equality from 
 familiarity, to preserve an aristocracy, to sustain democracy 
 against aristocracy, to secure -state rights, to maintain the 
 federal unity and strength, on these important fields the 
 war raged, and the servant of servants was unnoticed in his 
 servitude among the great questions of social and political 
 equality that so violently agitated the governing classes. 
 
 This work was perhaps as much as one age could do. It 
 was certainly more than any one age had previously done. 
 The men who achieved it were more than thirty years in 
 accomplishing it. Thomas Jefferson wrought wondrously 
 for the rights of man, from 1776 to 1809 thirty-three 
 years of most remarkable service in a most remarkable
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 191 
 
 cause. He was then past sixty an old man, weary with 
 the cares of State not fit in vigor or vehemence for the 
 great work of emancipation. Failing to keep progressive, 
 he slid backward, and dishonored his gray hairs by apolo- 
 gizing for slavery and defending the Missouri Compromise. 
 
 The generation that succeeded them, as great men's sons 
 are apt to be, were very poor imitators of their illustrious 
 fathers. Most trees bear only biennially. Most genera- 
 tions are under a similar law. A great calm follows a great 
 storm. The children of these revolutionary parents were 
 feeble in principle, low in moral tone. They were tired of 
 great ideas and great deeds. The overstrained nature 
 sprang back to the narrower range which men naturally 
 prefer. The leading men of that age, men who have just 
 left us, were far below their fathers in greatness of nature, 
 and will be incalculably beneath them in greatness of fame. 
 Clay, Calhoun, Adams, Webster, and Jackson, its five repre- 
 sentative men, present to the historian no such lofty traits 
 of character or service as shine in the names of five repi'e- 
 sentatives of the preceding era Washington, Samuel Ad- 
 ams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Franklin. 
 
 John Quincy Adams alone of his peers held forth the 
 light that glowed in his youth. But not he till he had 
 descended from the presidential throne into the vale of age 
 and comparative political obscurity. Hardly a word of his 
 can be quoted before his seventieth year, that has the ring- 
 ing sound of liberty. How different from the young John 
 Adams in the mass meetings of Boston, the provincial Con- 
 gress, and Independence Hall. Fortunate was he that those 
 last few years and that congressional opportunity were 
 given him. 
 
 It was an era of the deadening of the conscience, 
 on the subject of freedom. Church and State alike fell 
 into the slumber. Political and religious compromises be- 
 came the order of the day. The sentiment of the fathers
 
 192 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 was against slavery. But sentiment can do nothing against 
 sin. And so the sons came to endure, to pity, to embrace 
 the unclean thing, and, from Calhoun to Webster, fell down 
 and worshiped the abominable idol their pious fathers had 
 neglected to destroy. 
 
 "New times demand new measures and new men." 
 
 The new times had arrived. New men and their new 
 measures were not wanting. The third generation appears 
 on the stage of action. The grandsires find their likeness 
 in their grandchildren, not their children. Thirty years 
 passed from the triumph of Jefferson to that of Jackson, the 
 representatives of the ideas of their generations. Thirty 
 years have passed from the triumph of Jackson to that of 
 the Anti-slavery sentiment, not in the person of its recog- 
 nized exponent, but still in the strength of its mighty feel- 
 ing and purpose. These last thirty years cover the era 
 of this agitation, cover the adult life of the agitators. You 
 will find on "The Liberator " of this year, "Volume XXX. : " 
 and this sheet has the honor of initiating the movement in 
 this nation. 
 
 The conscience was aroused very slowly. The deadly 
 slumber was pleasant. Churches, societies, parties, every 
 body disliked to be disturbed. But the young men sympa- 
 thized Avith young Mr. Garrison and his young idea. Young 
 Mr. Seward, then emerging into public life, felt the th rob- 
 bings of the new inspiration. Young Mr. Phillips and Mr. 
 Sumner, then students at Harvard or on their way thither ; 
 the youthful Tappan, and Leavitt, and Lovejoy, and Gid- 
 dings, and Gerritt Smith, caught the flame in their fresh 
 and sympathetic hearts, and commenced kindling it in the 
 breasts of others. Dr. Channing and John Quincy Adams 
 were almost the only men of accomplished fame that in- 
 dorsed the enterprise, and they did not publicly cooperate 
 with its youthful managers.
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 193 
 
 Soon bitter conflicts sprang up in the breasts of these 
 young philanthropists. The fresh-armed men began to bite 
 and devour one another, and were well nigh consumed one 
 of another. Yet still the great inspiration moved on, 
 through them, in spite of them. New measures were re- 
 quired by the progress of the sentiment. It demanded a 
 chance to express itself at the ballot-box, and began to 
 feebly, but faithfully, reveal its power on this field where it 
 stands to-day victorious. 
 
 Thus steadily have advanced the conscience and the cause. 
 The vast majority of the men of to-day have grown up un- 
 der its power ; for the mass of men are under forty-five 
 years of age. The impressible youth of fifteen, who drank 
 of this new wine when it was first pressed from the grapes 
 of a fresh experience, is to-day the governor elect of your 
 commonwealth. The poor youth of twenty, toiling in the 
 solitude of western rivers and forests, learning to abhor 
 slavery because of its contempt for honorable industry, is 
 to-day the civil leader of the cause and country. 
 
 Thus has the principle which moved our grandsires to 
 the great work of personal liberation moved us toward the 
 completion of their work, in the liberation of more persons 
 than their valor saved, from a bondage infinitely worse than 
 that which pressed them down. 
 
 2. But fears created by the rapid march of the slave 
 power have aided in this work. The growth of this power 
 has been a necessary complement of the corresponding 
 growth of the abolition sentiment. The Gospel is a savor 
 of life unto life and of death unto death. Conscience is 
 one and the same in every man. But conscience trampled 
 upon is sure to revenge itself by allowing the passions 
 that expel it from its seat to assume a diabolic sovereignty. 
 The Southern mind felt as keenly as the Northern that 
 slavery was a sin. There was but one testimony from the 
 whole land in our early history, and even as late as the 
 13
 
 194 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 beginning of this agitation. But when the spirit within 
 began to be heard, saying, clearly, "Extirpate this evil. 
 Let my oppressed go free, and break every yoke," self- 
 interest said, "Nay; I shall impoverish myself by so doing. 
 My money is invested in slaves. My habits and tastes are 
 educated in slavery. My heart inclines to it." So they 
 resisted the Spirit of God. They trampled under foot the 
 national life-principle. They counted the revolutionary blood 
 shed for them an unholy thing. They turned and rent those 
 who cast these pearls at their feet, and who called upon 
 them to adorn themselves with their luster. 
 
 They began to defend the system through the press, in 
 the forum, on the bench, from the pulpit. They sought to 
 extend it. They sought to open the accursed trade which 
 should populate their wildernesses with the barbaric merchan- 
 dise. They enthroned themselves in the national legisla- 
 ture, in the presidential chair, in the supreme court. They 
 trod out freedom of the press, freedom of speech, almost 
 freedom of thought, in all the Slave States. They were on 
 the point of nationalizing slavery in the Territories, in every 
 free State. Their children, fifty years hence, will not be- 
 lieve their fathers zealously advocated practices so abhor- 
 rent to human nature. 
 
 There was no real change in the Southern conscience. 
 That still told them, " You are verily guilty concerning your 
 brother." " Slavery is the sum of all villainies." I never 
 saw a slaveholder who did not, when he spoke his real sen- 
 timents, make this confession. 
 
 A gentleman who long lived in Alabama told me he had often 
 heard slaveholders, worth a million dollars in this property, 
 say, " The slaves have just as much right to their freedom 
 as I to, mine." It was this conscience that made the whole 
 South shake with undisguisable terror, when the}' heard that 
 hero-martyr saying to their bondmen, " You are as free as 
 I or your master. Here is a weapon to defend yourself, if
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 195 
 
 they attempt to enslave you. Here is one who will aid 
 you in using that weapon, if they dare to attack you." 
 Their audacious course consummated its malignity in the 
 murder of that man, who, every one of them knew, was in 
 the right and doing right. For they saw, however blind we 
 might be, that he was of the blood royal of mankind, most 
 of whom rule the race from the scaffold. They felt that he 
 was proving in this deed his lineal descent from the patri- 
 otic but defeated Gracchi, and Demosthenes, and Wallace, 
 and Hampden, and Vane, and Russell, and Warren.* But 
 time would fail me to mention the grand list of martyrs for 
 liberty into whose front ranks they beheld him enter, who 
 all died in the faith, not inheriting the promises. 
 
 This God-defying march of the hosts of Satan upon the 
 sacred institutions, the more sacred inspirations of the land, 
 helped to stimulate the already quickening conscience of the 
 North. The heaviest eyes began to open the dullest 
 natures to stir. Every one whose heart throbbed with any 
 of the life of their fathers, of their fathers' God, felt that 
 the evil must be rebuked, must be repressed, must be extir- 
 pated, so far as any constitutional or moral power could do 
 it. So the Church and the State have moved together, 
 here slowly and cautiously, there boldly and manfully, 
 everywhere motion, everywhere life, until the mighty 
 work is wrought which puts our government, openly and 
 entirely, on the side of Freedom. 
 
 This, then, is the cause, this alone the Spirit of God 
 moving on the hearts of the children of men. " This is the 
 Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes." "Not 
 unto us, Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give 
 glory." The Lord hath triumphed gloriously. " The horse 
 and his rider," the Northern political slave and his South- 
 ern political master, "hath He cast into the sea." 
 
 * See Note VIII.
 
 196 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 II. Consider the consequences of this victory, which is one 
 in fact, though threefold in form. 
 
 1. It will suppress all efforts to extend slavery. The 
 battle was waged at this point. Here, too, was it won. 
 For the first time in all this long conflict the hostile parties 
 agreed as to the object in dispute. Every previous Demo- 
 cratic Convention shut off the real issue from the people. 
 The Whig and American parties, when alive, were equally 
 careful. Tariff, banks, the Roman Catholic question, re- 
 trenchment and reform, all these have turned away the 
 gaze of the masses from their real danger and duty. Mr. 
 Douglas supposed that what had been would still be, and 
 therefore attempted to get up a war-cry that should mean 
 nothing, while under its delusion the people should again 
 put in power their haughty tyrant. But the honesty of the 
 slave power swept away this subterfuge. They boldly 
 placed at the head of their columns the universal su- 
 premacy of slavery. The free sentiment hailed the conflict. 
 The deadly embrace is passed, and slavery lies prone upon 
 the field. A tyrant once slain is slain forever. Error can 
 never survive its Waterloo. Freedom had often fallen, but 
 it rose ever the more beautiful and strong from its momen- 
 tary defeat. Slavery has fallen, never to rise again defiant, 
 successful. It will rule in New York and Boston before it 
 ever rules again at Washington. It ruled there first only 
 by our consent. We must rehabilitate it at home before we 
 allow it to return thither. 
 
 This absolute and unquestioned gain the point, the 
 center of the fight is almost incalculable. Some speak 
 slightingly of it, and say nothing is done. The Fugitive Slave 
 Act is recognized by President Lincoln as constitutional. 
 He will favor the admission of Slave States if they come 
 constitutionally to the door of the nation. These are not 
 agreeable sights. Yet, consider how unlikely they are to 
 occur. What Slave State will seek admission to an Ariti-
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 197 
 
 Slavery confederacy ? As for the fugitive from slavery, 
 unless vital modifications are made in the present law, the 
 people will take care that he is not returned. Can one 
 here be seized, and sentenced to bondage again, as Anthony 
 Burns was, passing down State Street in broad daylight, 
 fettered by a squad of foreign mercenaries, when more than 
 a hundred thousand of the citizens of Massachusetts have 
 put the most eloquent defender of the Personal Liberty Bill 
 in the chair of State ? 
 
 The accursed oceanic slave trade will forever cease. New 
 York will be relieved from the miserable honor of sending 
 out these vessels, Savannah and Charleston, the more 
 miserable honor of receiving their cargoes. Africa and 
 Cuba will be girdled with a moving wall of fire through 
 which but few of the dreadful craft can pass. If nothing 
 more were done than is assuredly done, it is wonderful, it 
 is worthy of unbounded thanksgivings. 
 
 2. But, secondly, we have done still more. We have set 
 ourselves right before the world. We shall cast our influ- 
 ence, as a great nation, on the side of universal liberty. 
 For years we have been a by-word and a hissing among the 
 nations. Not a word for freedom could escape the lips of 
 our representatives abroad, for they were bound, hand and 
 foot, mouth and tongue, with the grave-clothes of the body 
 of this death. Our influence has been against liberty 
 everywhere, in every man. The conscience of the slave- 
 holder, the conscience of the tyrants of France and Austria 
 and Rome, were stifled in the deadly air which our govern- 
 ment exhaled. All this is changed. America will stand 
 forth in the glory of her earlier, better days ; in a glory 
 greater than that, for we now appear as the upholder of the 
 rights of every man, of every hue and condition. Italians 
 contend for the rights of Italians, Hungarians for Hunga- 
 rians, Englishmen for Englishmen ; we, alone, for the black 
 race, the weakest and least favored of the children of
 
 198 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 Adam. Napoleon boasted that he went to war for an idea. 
 We fought for vastly more, the foundation principle of 
 humanity, the oneness of man in blood and destiny. 
 
 This influence is worth everything. It is irrepressible, 
 it is unavoidable. The acts and words of the Administra- 
 tion will be most careful and moderate, but this power it 
 cannot repress. It is an Anti-slavery Government. It was 
 created because it was anti-slavery. This word assures us 
 that a new life is breathed into the soul of the nation. It 
 will thrill with its enthusiasm every section of the land, 
 every corner of the globe. Distracted Mexico will now 
 turn entreating .eyes upon us, certain to see no wolfish leer 
 in our gaze, hungering to reduce her citizens to slaves. 
 The South American Republics will sit at our feet, and fol- 
 low our footsteps in the upward march to perfect freedom. 
 Hayti will stand at our Capitol among the great nations, its 
 representative sitting with those of England and France, in 
 the seats of ambassadorial dignity and equality.* Italy, and 
 France, and England, will, as never before, admire and imi- 
 tate the mistress of nations, sitting in the glory of univer- 
 sal liberty on the highest seat of earthly authority. 
 
 What is better than all, the sweet, summer morning air 
 of freedom will once more steal over the hot and arid plains 
 of Southern despotism. Blowing from the whole North, 
 through Washington, through the Executive mansion, it 
 will nerve with vigor many a soul now paralyzed with fear. 
 The minister of Christ, who has there, for these many years, 
 denied his Master, will weep bitterly, and speak earnestly 
 against the fearful crime that has so long cursed the Church 
 and his own soul. Literature will feel it. Southern Whit- 
 tiers will arise, who shall make her hills and glades echo 
 with their trumpet blasts of denunciation, their trumpet 
 calls to the conflict and the victor} 7 . Mrs. Stowes will 
 
 * The representative of Hayti was admitted in the first year of Pres- 
 ident Lincoln's administration.
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 199 
 
 spring from their own soil, who will portray the evils and 
 wrongs of their cherished "institution," the duty and bless- 
 edness of universal emancipation, in colors that shall out- 
 shine their marvelous prototype, because they will be drawn 
 from personal experiences, and filled with the enthusiasm 
 that only such experiences can inspire. The whole people 
 will be made alive with the mighty wind, blowing from the 
 hills of God over their fields of dry bones, and they shall 
 stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army, for freedom. 
 
 What is already seen on the northern border of the black 
 abyss will be seen everywhere. St. Louis gives almost 
 ten thousand votes for liberty, as many as Boston, and, 
 better than Boston, with these votes sends a bold and ear- 
 nest abolitionist to the national councils. Baltimore gives 
 over a thousand votes for freedom, as many as the whole 
 State of Massachusetts gave twenty years ago. That thou- 
 sand has become a hundred thousand here in a score of years. 
 It will become that there ere half that time has passed. 
 In every Southern city, even Charleston, the worst, will be 
 found representatives of an anti-slavery government. In 
 every State, papers will be advocating its principles ; in 
 every heart, the Spirit of God, which is liberty, will assert 
 its claims, be acknowledged and obeyed. Soon that Ser- 
 pent shall be bound, shall be hurled into the bottomless pit, 
 shall disappear from this first and best of lands, and, with 
 it, from the earth, forever. 
 
 3. For this glorious victory assures the speedy abolition 
 of slavery. I say speedy, not with a few months, or a 
 Presidential term, in view, but with only a few years, in 
 comparison with its long life and wide dominion. 
 
 The knell of slavery was struck last year in the heroic 
 
 deed, and more heroic death, of John Brown. He first 
 
 shook the tottering Bastile to its foundations. It had been 
 
 riddled, it had been undermined, but it had not rocked on 
 
 1 its base till he put his hand upon it. It reeled to and fro
 
 200 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 like a slave ship in a storm, and well nigh foundered, then. 
 I have frequently mentioned this event with words of ap- 
 proval such as but few, probably, in this audience will 
 reecho. It is proper, therefore, that I should pause, and 
 give a brief reason for my opinions. Our witty neighbor 
 says the millennium is near at hand, 
 
 " When preachers tell us all they think." 
 
 I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel 
 of God on the highest of our duties. I shall not play the 
 hypocrite now. Allowing the largest liberty of opinion to 
 others, I claim equal liberty for myself. I know how the 
 tide of misconception and condemnation still sets against 
 Captain Brown. I know that the " Tribune " and " Inde- 
 pendent," anti-slavery journals of deserved influence, 
 still speak of his attempt as a " raid" a term of disparage- 
 ment, if not of reproach. I know Mr. So ward said he was 
 "justly hanged." I know that many cry out with horror at 
 the bare idea of putting weapons in the hands of the slaves, 
 to maintain their freedom, and say that he that apologizes 
 for such an act defiles his sacerdotal garments, and is be- 
 come a companion with murderers. 
 
 But, on the other hand, I see how Victor Hugo and the 
 other great and pure patriots of Europe can find no words 
 to express their admiration of the deed and its doer.* 
 Struggling in chains of despotism at home, they know how 
 - to appreciate the intense humanity of one who strove not 
 to save himself, but others, from a far worse tyranny than 
 crushes them down. I see Hayti, the only really inde- 
 pendent and enterprising African State, hailing the man 
 with a spontaneous reverence and admiration, and out of 
 
 * In the winter of the execution, Victor Hugo etched and published 
 with his autograph a print of John Brown on the gallows, hanging in 
 thick darkness, with only a slight gray light falling on the head. It had 
 ji great sale in Paris.
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 201 
 
 her poverty sending to his family thousands of dollars as a 
 token of her gratitude. I see the strong arm of Massa- 
 chusetts wielding a sword, while she pronounces the sen- 
 tence first uttered by the slaughtered patriot, Algernon 
 Sydney, which might have been properly emblazoned on 
 John Brown's banners, " Ense petit placidam sub libertate 
 quietem " " She seeks, with the sword, serene quiet under 
 liberty." Virginia's motto should also shine there. That 
 stately maiden, with her foot on a prostrate and fiendish foe, 
 with "Sic semper tyrannis" "Thus always may it be to 
 tyrants," encircling her victorious brow, how happily 
 it answers to his creed and career ! Surely what Massachu- 
 setts and Virginia have put upon their seals may be put 
 into action against the worst tyrant that ever desecrated 
 American soil or trampled on American hearts. The maiden, 
 called Liberty and Humanity, is under the hoof of the fiend. 
 God will bless him who rescues her, and puts his heel on the 
 head of the destroyer. 
 
 There is nothing in human nature, human history, or the 
 Word of God, that rebukes this sentiment. The gospel of 
 Peace does not always require of its disciples non-resistance 
 to every form of revolting oppression, but sometimes de- 
 mands of them a stern resistance even " unto blood, striv- 
 ing against sin." 
 
 The Savior himself, among his last injunctions, commands 
 those of His disciples who had no sword, to sell their tunic, 
 or chief garment, and buy one ; thereby clearly teaching 
 us that the clothing needful for the protection of our bodies 
 is not to be esteemed above the means of defending our liber- 
 ties and our lives. This enterprise, as we understand it, 
 sought to put the sword in the hands of the slave, only 
 that he might defend his God-given freedom against his 
 enslavers. So deep and universal is the conviction of this 
 right, that had the people whom he strove to deliver been 
 of our own race, or even of any race but the African, that
 
 202 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 we hold in such inhuman contempt, there would have been 
 no more question as to the rightfulness of the enterprise than 
 there was to the many unsuccessful attempts of our fathers 
 to release their brethren from the far less terrible slavery in 
 which they were held by the corsairs of Algiers. 
 
 In the light of these facts and principles, I find no con- 
 demnation for this man or his deed. In the light of its 
 influence on the hideous wrong it assailed, I see much in 
 it to approve. I cannot but conclude, therefore, that the 
 words of censure so rife at present are the offspring of long- 
 indulged prejudice, or when uttered by some of our wise 
 leaders, have been prompted either by an unwise desire to 
 commend the anti-slavery chalice to the lips of slaveholders, 
 by removing some of the bitter but essential ingredients 
 that strengthen the potion, or else by the temptations of 
 
 ambition, 
 
 " That last infirmity of noble minds." 
 
 In either case they will yet be regretted more than any 
 other of their utterances. 
 
 If this be called fanaticism, I am content to bear the 
 imputation. I am not alone in this State, however it may 
 be elsewhere, if the late election truly expresses the senti- 
 ment of the people. The election to the governorship, by 
 the largest vote any candidate ever received, of the man 
 who, more than all others, labored to save him from that 
 "just" death, who publicly indorsed his character, if not 
 the abstract rightfulness of the attempt, such an elevation 
 of his best friend to our best office is a strong evidence 
 that our common sense and common humanity are getting 
 the better of our fears and prejudices. The hated Mordecai 
 already descends here, from the gallows of public con- 
 demnation on which the Haman of a subtle prb-slaveryism 
 had hung him, and rides through our streets in the royal 
 apparel of executive sovereignty, as the man whom the
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 203 
 
 people delighteth to honor. As if to show that this re- 
 markable act of the people of Massachusetts was not the 
 blind following of blind political leaders, but a silent yet 
 real voice of approval, her favorite lyric poet comes forth 
 and places a garland of exquisite beauty and perfume on 
 the grave of the hero. Under the influence of his religious 
 training, the Quaker Whittier cast upon his coffin a hastily 
 gathered wreath of bitter herbs. But true also to the fun- 
 damental principles of his faith, through the influences of 
 the events and reflections of the past year, he has discov- 
 ered the " Inner Light" of superior truth, and with charac- 
 teristic frankness, has published the revelations of that Light. 
 A late poem, written on the liberation of Italy, by its own 
 confession, covers the whole ground of the present contro- 
 versy. The laurel which he places on Garibaldi's brow, 
 he hangs alike on John Brown's tomb. Hear the sentiment 
 of almost every .Christian in these true and tender and solemn 
 words : 
 
 ' I dreamed of Freedom slowly gained 
 
 By Martyr meekness, patience, faith, 
 
 And lo, an athlete grimly stained, 
 
 With corded muscles battle-strained, 
 
 Shouting it from the field of death ! 
 * # * * * 
 
 I know the pent fire heaves the crust ; 
 That sultry skies the bolt will form 
 To smite them clear ; that nature must 
 The balance of her powers adjust, 
 Though with the earthquake and the storm. 
 
 And who am I, whose prayers would stay 
 The solemn recompense of time, 
 And lengthen Slavery's evil day 
 That outraged Justice may not lay 
 Its hand iipon the sword of crime ! 
 
 God reigns, and let the earth rejoice ! 
 I bow before His sterner plan. 
 Dumb are the organs of my choice ; 
 He speaks in battle's stormy voice, 
 His praise is in the wrath of man ! "
 
 204 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 If the violent act of one man thus paralyzed this iniquity, 
 much more will the peaceful act of two millions tend to its 
 annihilation. Our righteous and gentle course will not be 
 instantly answered in a similar spirit. It may at first, it 
 undoubtedly will, intensify the rage that already burns in the 
 Southern breast, seven-fold hotter than it did aforetime. In 
 this rage they will gnash upon us with their teeth, will seek 
 to frighten us, by financial crises and threats of secession, 
 into submission. Let us not be, alarmed. Let but Wall 
 Street look on and hold on, calm and cool, as Menelaus did 
 when Proteus sought to elude him by assuming terrifie 
 shapes and making beastly noises, and the monster now, as 
 then, will become tame and humble. Our greatest danger 
 is in the cowardice of the moneyed power. The Church is 
 getting ready to do her part. Politics is doing hers, and 
 now the third of our social forces must do hers. If she 
 fails, if she whines and grows pallid, and begs her dear slave- 
 holding brethren to desist, and promises Northern repentance 
 and its meet works, she will only encourage them in their 
 course. She can never change the course of the Republic. 
 Freedom is more than trade, liberty than wealth. Our 
 fathers have said so twice. We shall not fail to repeat the 
 word, if it must be spoken. ' 
 
 The poor slave will also burn in the hot breath of this fiery 
 furnace. The master fears his slave more than he hates the 
 North. He will feel the scourge of that fear. It is one of 
 the necessities of tyrants that they can preserve their power, 
 and even their life, only by the frequent deaths of their 
 enslaved subjects. In Sicilian prisons, Neapolitan dungeons, 
 Roman inquisitions, every-where, every-when, has triumphant 
 siri taught us that this necessity is laid upon it. So it is 
 now where this worst of sins holds completest sway. No 
 dungeon of Venice or Rome or Naples ever vied with Caro- 
 lina prisons or Alabama plantations in the excruciating 
 cruelty which the helpless victims of their fear and hate
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 205 
 
 receive at J-heir hands. When the secrets of this prison- 
 house shall be revealed, you will cease to wonder at the 
 tortures of Messina and Palermo. No woman suffered there, 
 only a few score of men. Here tenderest women suffer such 
 cruelty daily, as hard-hearted heathen Rome, the most cruel 
 of the ancient nations, would have shrunk from inflicting 1 . 
 Read Olmstead's late " Tour through the Back Country," 
 and you will find incidents of these tortures, inflicted so 
 coolly and carelessly, as show them to be a common matter 
 of daily and indifferent outrage. But he never saw the 
 slave roasting at the stake. He never saw the fierce blood- 
 hounds tearing in pieces the tender flesh of fainting women. 
 He never saw, as a friend of mine did, himself once a slave- 
 holder, a frantic mother torn from a nursing babe, less than 
 a year old, and dragged shrieking down the public street of 
 a Missouri village, by men who bore Christian names and a 
 white skin, and were, not unlikely, born in Puritan New 
 England, of pious parents. 
 
 " On horror's head horrors accumulate," 
 We emerge from the dungeon so full of 
 
 " Horrid shapes and shrieks and sights unholy," 
 
 and breathe the upper air of liberty, with the feeling of an 
 angel who had escaped from Pandemonium revelry and out- 
 rage into the pure society of the blessed. Alas ! unlike the 
 angel, we do not leave only sinners and damned spirits be- 
 hind us, rioting in their willing wickedness, but pure and 
 lovely souls, pure as the spirits of the just made perfect, 
 lovely as their angels, who do always behold the face of 
 their Father which is in heaven : these we leave behind, 
 suffering such shame, such sorrow, such anguish of body 
 and of soul, as only God can relieve, only He can avenge. 
 
 Thank God, that worse than hell shall be swept from the 
 earth. The Administration may not, will not, directly, aid
 
 206 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 it. The party in power is forbidden to do it rightfully, 
 constitutionally forbidden. It can only be done peacefully 
 and properly by themselves. It will be so done. The 
 warm air of freedom gliding over all that icy region will 
 relax, will dissolve these chains. The great example of 
 eighteen States of the Union, voluntarily emancipating 
 their slaves, or voluntarily indorsing the act by which the 
 nation rescued their domain from its polluting presence, 
 will not be lost upon them. They have lost the post of 
 master. They will soon be willing to take that of a pupil. 
 They will begin to see as they are seen. They have pom- 
 pously proclaimed to the despised North, " I am rich and 
 increased with* goods, and have need of nothing." They 
 will now see that they are " wretched, and miserable, and 
 poor, and blind, and naked." They will then come to that 
 state of humility which will incline them to buy of us "gold 
 tried in the fire," the gold of universal emancipation, " that 
 they may be rich, and white raiment," the wedding robes 
 of liberty and holiness, " that they may be clothed, and that 
 the shame of their nakedness do not appear." " They will 
 anoint their eyes with the eye-salve " of Northern pros- 
 perity, " and will see." Thus learning, thus seeing, the 
 generous spirits that now pant speechless in that prison of 
 silence arid death will give their heart a tongue. The free, 
 white, ruling South will speak everywhere, and speak one 
 voice. Tokens of such coming utterance are already given. 
 North Carolina has spoken through the lips of Mr. Helper 
 and Professor Hedrick ; South Carolina hailed this reform, 
 at its inauguration, in the persons of her Grimke's and Bris- 
 bane ; and in this very canvass, Professor Lieber, late of her 
 University, has boldly denounced her treason and its cause, 
 and cast his vote for freedom. Kentucky and Virginia 
 already pour forth consenting voices, like the volume and 
 the sound of many waters, while Missouri is upon the verge 
 of planting the standard of emancipation on the summit of 
 its Capitol 

 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 207 
 
 This revival of Jeffersonian, of Washingtonian abolitionism, 
 with more than the fervor and with more than the practical 
 purpose of those reformers, on their own soil and among 
 their own posterity, will sweep through the masses, and 
 one fire blaze in all breasts the celestial fire of universal 
 liberty. The struggles of the enslaved, their sufferings, 
 their deaths for personal freedom, not infrequent and not 
 powerless even now, will increase, and increase the zeal of 
 their generous advocates ; and ere the hundredth anniver- 
 sary of our nation's birth is reached, the Fourth of July, 
 1876, we shall have completed the work undertaken at 
 our beginning. The bell that rang out the first birthday in 
 the ears of all the nations, will ring out its first centennial 
 with the prophetic words inscribed upon it, " Proclaim 
 Liberty throughout all the land to ALL the inhabitants thereof" 
 no longer prophecy to be accomplished by a long and 
 perilous and bloody path, but blessed, unchanging history. 
 
 We have given it a long lease of power, brief as it may 
 appear to you, in allowing four presidential terms to pass 
 before it disappears. But we know that three thousand 
 millions of property are not to be destroyed in an instant, 
 except by a bloody uprising. We hope and pray that there 
 may be no such reprisals. It may go down by a bloodless 
 revolution. Garibaldi has shown how nearly bloodless an 
 insurrection may be in this age of the world. Had there 
 been no standing armies in Sicily and Naples, they would 
 have achieved their liberty without the sacrifice of a single 
 life. There are no standing armies in the Slave States. A 
 Garibaldi from the enslaved race may secure their libera- 
 tion without the shedding of a drop of blood. God grant 
 that it may be so.* 
 
 * The statement of Mr. Buchanan, in his late Message, that the slaves 
 are becoming "uneasy," is a most remarkable confession of a most im- 
 portant witness. This uneasiness exists more in the Gulf States than on 
 the border. For the latter gets rid of its dangerous element through
 
 208 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 But we look more to the liberal action of the white race 
 than to any violent action of the black. We shall see the 
 sentiment of the States gradually changing. Then their 
 policy will change. Law after law, the worst first, will 
 be repealed ; until, under one grand impulse of conscience, 
 they will pull down the whole fabric, and the slave shall 
 stand beside his master, his free and acknowledged equal. 
 
 All this will not take place without such commotion as 
 we have not yet seen nor dreamed of. Threats of disunion, 
 and probably a brief indulgence in that suicidal remedy, will 
 be made by the more insane of the maniacs. We have seen 
 some agitation at the North, in the last thirty years ; some 
 mobs and murders have desecrated the Free States in their 
 endeavors to relieve themselves from the influence alone of 
 slavery. What will not that bloody power do in a life-and- 
 death struggle which is now to arise in its own dominions, 
 where it has held unquestioned and unlimited sway for two 
 hundred years ? The war has passed from the North to the 
 South, and the thirty thousand votes just cast there for lib- 
 erty show that the war will not cease, come what may, fall 
 who may, till that twelve millions are delivered from their 
 few hundred thousand masters, and freedom of every kind, for 
 every man, shall be the glad possession of the whole people. 
 
 This must be the work of time. Yet the change is rapid 
 from daybreak to dawn ; more rapid and brief from dawn to 
 sunrise. And when the sun rises, darkness flees to its caves, 
 
 the two outlets of Southern trade and the underground railroad. These 
 Northern slaves, that have been sold South because they were unman- 
 ageable, are united with the superior native slaves of that section, who. 
 if on the border, would escape to Canada. These violent and restless 
 men, kept from liberty by a wall five hundred miles thick, will, in time, 
 in the very nature of things, rise upon their masters. These masters, 
 by their madness, are tempting the insurrection. There is the fire, 
 there the powder. If an explosion comes, it will come there first. God 
 grant the masters may escape the terrible danger by immediate prepa- 
 ration for ultimate, if not instant, emancipation.
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 209 
 
 though a few shadows may linger among the rays till the 
 midday brightness burns them up. So will it be with this 
 cause. The day is breaking. A gray light streaks across 
 the darkened heavens. The next presidential election will 
 bring the rosy dawn that will send its warm flush athwart 
 the whole horizon. The third will be the perfect sunrise. 
 The fourth the noontide glory, that shall consume every ray 
 of slavery blackness that has lain so thick and heavy across 
 the nation's sky. 
 
 Let us rejoice. Let us shout for joy. Oppression shall 
 not always reign. Oppression has ceased to reign in its 
 highest, strongest seat. It will soon abandon its lower 
 thrones of State sovereignty, cast down headlong by the 
 people whom it has so long deluded and betrayed. It will 
 then flee from those private, domestic seats of tyranny, upon 
 the multitude of which the fifteen seats of State authority 
 have been erected, upon which fifteen, faithfully knit to- 
 gether, the throne of their national power has been elevated. 
 An aroused people will extirpate it from these obscure, but 
 central seats, and the gigantic sin that swells vast to heaven, 
 will flee from the earth to its native, nethermost hell. 
 
 Let us praj r for this hour ; let us labor for it in all right- 
 eous and loving ways. Our real work is just begun. We 
 have only broken down a barrier that opposed our march. 
 That march must yet be made. We have only compelled 
 the haughty transgressors to listen. Our entreaties, our 
 warnings, our encouragements are yet to be poured into the 
 opened ear. We have only attained the outmost edge of 
 the broad table-land of free discussion. The high land must 
 yet be traveled. Remember that this deed is nothing un- 
 less it bring forth fruit better than itself. The object upon 
 which we must fix our eye, the prize that must be won, the 
 goal that must be reached, is the abolition of slavery, THE 
 
 LIBERATION OF EVERY SLAVE. 
 
 Let us discuss, in a spirit of prudence and liberality, every 
 14
 
 210 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 measure that seeks this end. Let us bring every reason 
 that worldly success, humane sentiment, or religious obliga- 
 tion can suggest to bear upon the hearts of their masters. 
 Let us aid those who are anxious to be released from this 
 relation out of the abundant wealth of the North, that they 
 may not be kept from this duty by the gaunt form of pov- 
 erty staring them in the face, and certain to be their portion, 
 if they strip themselves of all their inherited, though un- 
 righteous possessions. Let us, at least, assist them, if they 
 need, or will receive, no remuneration for the discharge of 
 their duty, by providing for these emancipated brethren a 
 home on free soil, which they cannot enjoy on the slave. We 
 must bring our money to bear upon this sin, if we would see 
 it peacefully die. Let us do it wisely, generously, speedily., 
 
 Let us especially feel for the slave. The lot, the loss 
 of the master is nothing to his. His is a hapless, horrible 
 fate. Never forget him. In your morning prayers remem- 
 ber him upon whom the morning breaks only to light him 
 to his rewardless tasks. When gathering round the family 
 altar and the family table, pity those who have no such com- 
 forts. At your evening devotions pray for those who go to 
 cheei'less couches, bowed down with dreadful memories and 
 more dreadful fears. Remember that the Lord had these 
 sufferers before Him, ho less than His chosen people, when 
 He said, " This is a people robbed and peeled ; they are all 
 of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison-houses ; 
 they are for a prey, and none delivercth ; for a spoil, and 
 none saith, fiestore!" Never, never forget them. They 
 are your brothers and sisters. They shall stand in equal 
 liberty with you, delivered by the right arm of Him who 
 saved your fathers, and who has just cast down their leagued 
 oppressors from their lofty seats. 
 
 What a day that day of deliverance will be, the great 
 and acceptable day of the Lord, a day sure to come ; a 
 day, I believe, soon to come ! Behold that vast and beauti-
 
 ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 211 
 
 ful region, from the peaceful Ohio to the sunny Gulf, from 
 the swift Mississippi to the raging Atlantic, as it now rests 
 under the gloom of this awful sin. All the refinements, all 
 the enterprises of civilized life, pause at its borders, or creep 
 feebly through it, like solitary star-rays through midnight 
 clouds. The magnificent landscape is rarely cheered with 
 the flying train, rarely adorned with the lovely hamlet, the 
 prosperous village, the mighty city. The church lifts but 
 seldom its defiled hand to heaven, and lifts that hand only 
 to point to the judgment of God on its fearful sin in compel- 
 ling the bride of Christ to commit adultery with Belial. No 
 school-house appears, full of the neighborhood's children, no 
 farms trodden by their humble, but independent, owners ; 
 no culture, prosperity, piety. The sight most frequent is 
 the miserable slave toiling with barbaric implements in the 
 rudest forms of menial service ; or the more miserable white 
 man, degraded beneath the slave he despises, idle, intemper- 
 ate, ignorant, and brutal. 
 
 Thus stands that vast land to-day. Let the hour come 
 for which we are praying and laboring, to which the great 
 deed of the past week has made the grandest stride that the 
 century has seen ; let but that hour come, when every man 
 shall be free, and how changed the spectacle. The wilder- 
 ness, that blossoms like the rose in wild fertility, shall be 
 transformed into the smiling abode of free, industrious, in- 
 telligent man. Railroads shall rush through every valley, 
 bearing the famishing of all nations to the rich treasures 
 nature has therein store for them. Beautiful roads will wind 
 beside every stream, scale every mountain, pierce every for- 
 est. Rich embowered cottages, such as no Northern sun nor 
 soil can give, will line every pathway, will cluster in frequent 
 centers, will multiply, at brief intervals, into great commu- 
 nities, with the gigantic factories, and Avarehouses, and 
 spacious stores, and crowded streets of growing cities. The 
 school-house, modest or majestic, as it stands in village or
 
 212 TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. 
 
 city, will be filled with the young of all families, white and 
 black, as with us, unconscious of difference or prejudice ; alike 
 growing in knowledge and affection. No slave-whip whis- 
 tles through the resisting air, rushing down upon the shrink- 
 ing flesh of saintly woman. No agonizing husbands and 
 wives, mothers and babes, are dragged to the market-place, 
 and there torn, husband from wife, mother from child, never 
 to meet again till they appear together as witnesses on the 
 stand at the bar of God against these murderers of their 
 liberty, their love, their life. No gangs of men and women, 
 silent and sad, move monotonously over the broad acres, to 
 the ceaseless look and lash of the cruel overseer. No 
 wretched hovel, with its earthen floor and heap of straw, filled 
 for a few short hours with the half-starved slaves, blotches 
 the lovely landscape. All these are gone, and gone forever. 
 
 The white fields shall blossom under the free and active 
 industry of every class. Comfort shall gladden every home. 
 Willing labor shall garner the soil. The free and happy, 
 busy and populous, wealthy and cultivated North, shall cover 
 the whole land, and equal freedom and happiness, energy 
 and prosperity, culture and piety, will be the possession of 
 every man. Above all, the Church of Christ, the Divine 
 Liberator, will point its sacred finger to the Infinite Lover 
 arid Redeemer of all men, to the everlasting freedom of 
 heaven. In its walls, withou|^distinction of color or con- 
 dition, without negro pews, or negro galleries, or negro 
 corners, all souls shall bow in the loving unity of " one 
 Lord, one faith, one baptism," before "the one God and 
 Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all " 
 that love Him, equally and eternally. 
 
 No dim and distant prophecy of millennial glory is this. 
 The day is nigh at hand. It has already dawned. It shall 
 speedily arise. " Surely I come quickly. Amen ! Even 
 so, come, Lord Jesus ! "
 
 LETTEES FROM CAMP/ 
 
 I. TO ARMS. 
 
 FlRST GrATHERIXG OF THE STATES. 
 
 STEAMER ARIEL, OFF ANNAPOLIS, j 
 Wednesday, 9 A. M., April 23, 1861. \ 
 
 NE always wishes to know the condition of his 
 correspondent. Let me give you a crayon sketch 
 of this one. On the after deck of a California 
 steamer, sitting on a camp-stool, with his sheet 
 of note-paper on a pocket account-book, and the book rest- 
 ing on his knees, with a military cap on his head, a 
 military beard on his face, and a military weapon peeping 
 out of his breast pocket, putting its possessor in far greater 
 peril than any real or imaginary foe, thus sitteth the 
 sketcher. His immediate surroundings are admirably adapt- 
 ed to habits of reflection and composition. Crowding around 
 him are soldiers of many uniforms, and many religions and 
 irreligions, having two bonds of unity fury against the 
 
 * The three following sections contain extracts from letters written 
 from the army at "Washington, the Relay House, and Baltimore, dur- 
 ing the first three months of the war, and published in " Zion's Her- 
 ^ald," " Christian Advocate," and " Harper's Magazine." 
 
 (213)
 
 214 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 rebels, and noisy welcomes to neighboring troops. Some 
 eight or ten vessels lie near us, with troops from Rhode 
 Island, New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, vociferating 
 their hurrahs and "tigers" across to each other in a 
 most enthusiastic manner. Outside of this trampling and 
 talking, singing and shouting, screaming of steam pipes 
 and rattling of muskets, lie the quiet Chesapeake and its 
 more quiet banks. The sun is preparing to give us a 
 warm reception, whatever the citizens may give. He 
 pours his sheets of flame on the bay, and it glitters in his 
 radiance with charming beauty. It is a beautiful field of 
 silver, about a mile wide here, but opening into an area three 
 or four miles wide a little way below. The banks are low, 
 yet very pleasant. The grass is green, and the trees are 
 clothed in that "mist of greenness," as Tennyson so hap- 
 pily describes the intermediate state between leaflessness 
 and leafage. 
 
 A WAR NIGHT IN FANEUIL HALL. 
 
 I have seen old Faneuil Hall under many excitements since 
 my first memory of it, which, by the way, was beholding 
 General Jackson shake hands with Boston dignitaries. I 
 was chiefly anxious, I recollect, then to see the famous Major 
 Jack Downing, and eagerly inquired of my Mentor which 
 of the attendants on the General was the great Major. 
 Since that childish faith was then arid there broken to pieces, 
 I have had my faith broken or confirmed many times by the 
 sights and sounds within its walls. But Faneuil 
 
 " saw another sight, 
 When the drums beat at dead of night." 
 
 My experience of many delectable Methodist camps had 
 trained me for the enjoyment of the scene. So I lay on 
 a straw mattress under the rostrum, from whence I had 
 heard Webster, Choate, Parker, Smnncr, Burlingame, and a
 
 TO ARMS. 215 
 
 host of others thunder, and saw the sights in which their 
 speeches were culminating the bodying forth of their airy 
 nothings. Troops marching and countermarching, up stairs 
 and down stairs, bands playing, men whistling or singing, 
 packing and nailing boxes, shouting orders, going through 
 drills, every conceivable noise, melting into one mighty 
 patriotic symphony. The grand old eagle seemed to enjoy 
 the scene, 
 
 " The fierce gray bird with a bending beak, 
 With an angry eye and a startling shriek, 
 Which nurses his brood where the cliff flowers blow." 
 
 How he exulted in the daring of his Northern associates ! 
 On his breast glowed the stars and stripes, and round his 
 talons waved the E Pluribus Unum, not to be changed to 
 Ex Uno Plura by the combined fraud and force of any or 
 all the leagued oppressors on our Southern shores. Below 
 the symbols of the United States stood the haughty memo- 
 rials of Massachusetts sovereignty, her Indian and his 
 weapons, and her motto, looking far from " Algerine," in 
 this hour of her quick response to the call of her country. 
 
 Opposite these, the patriotic faces of Samuel Adams, 
 Washington, Hancock, and Warren, glowed with animated 
 enthusiasm ; while, by a sort of prophetic inspiration, Cal- 
 houn had been placed on the walls, but covered with a cloud, 
 evidently nursing his wrath with difficulty, as he saw the 
 formidable array to suppress his treasonable desires and 
 efforts, and to give the final blow to his favorite Power as a 
 ruler in the nation. 
 
 Among the tunes were often heard, just as I hear them 
 here and now, the familiar songs of the camp-meeting and 
 prayer-meeting. " I am going home to die no more," "There'll 
 be no more sorrow there," " We're bound for the kingdom, 
 Will you go to glory with me ? " mingled with America and 
 Yankee Doodle, showing how great was the power of 
 these melodies over the masses.
 
 216 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 FIRST WAR SUNDAY. 
 
 That Sabbath day's journey ought to be chronicled. We 
 marched through saintly Boston in the gray twilight to the 
 tune of Yankee Doodle. All along the route, cannons and 
 bells, bands and flags, and waving handkerchiefs, soldiers 
 and crowds upon crowds, gave us a hearty hail and fare- 
 well. At Springfield the crowd was immense and enthu- 
 siastic. At Hartford we were told the women were all at 
 home driving their sewing machines, and the men busy mak- 
 ing cartridges for their troops. Not a few, however, filled 
 the depot and the track to salute us. But Meriden gave us 
 the heartiest welcome. All the town left their churches, 
 and gathered round the depot, where they had had preaching 
 and singing while waiting for us. They had also provided 
 refreshments enough for five thousand persons, and plied us 
 with sweetmeats and benedictions. 
 
 New Haven and Bridgeport were equally alive and multi- 
 tudinous in their enthusiasm. At the last place an incident 
 occurred which strikingly, not to say grotesquely and harsh- 
 ly, showed the fierce fire that glowed in every breast. A 
 man had been killed the day before while firing a salute to 
 a company going to Washington. They had his body 
 wrapped in American flags, in a hearse trimmed with flags, 
 and drawn by four white, dancing horses, also trimmed with 
 flags. The force of the fever could go no farther. It did not 
 seem to me that it ought to have gone so far. Yet the great 
 crowds, the bands, cannons, bells, soldiers, and shouts, 
 showed that the people did not seem to feel this novel ex- 
 pression to be exceptional. 
 
 OPENING THE WAY TO THE CAPITOL. 
 
 WASHINGTON, April 23, 1861. 
 
 The Massachusetts Eighth Eegiment first reached Annap- 
 olis, and would have first opened the way, solitary and
 
 TO ARMS. 217 
 
 alone, to Washington, had not an accident prevented their 
 landing. One of their officers informed me that when they 
 reached Philadelphia they heard of the Baltimore riot, and 
 the murder of their comrades. They left that city expect- 
 ing to follow their predecessors on the same route. They 
 prepared a corps of sappers and miners, selecting some forty 
 of their most brave and dashing men for this service. These 
 were to head the troops, and, upon attack, spring into the 
 houses, set them on fire, and otherwise open, if possible, a 
 path through the city. " As they marched down the streets 
 of Philadelphia," said he, " the lowest weight of any sol- 
 dier was one ton," so full of weighty matter and solid cour- 
 age were they. They found, after a while, that they were 
 going to Perryville, hoping to get possession of the steamer 
 there that is connected with the railroad. They heard 
 that the Baltimore secessionists held it, and had no doubt 
 that they would have to fight to recover it. So, as 
 they drew near the place, their guns were loaded, and their 
 names called, to see if all were present. As the roll was 
 called, one of the soldiers said, " When it is called again we 
 shall not all be here to answer." Tears rolled down many 
 cheeks at this remark, and at the thoughts which it revived 
 of home and friends left perhaps forever, of the first real 
 battle in which they were about to engage, of all the sud- 
 den, strange, and terrible experiences of war. But they did 
 not faint nor falter. They were children of their fathers, and 
 they went forward cheerfully to the expected conflict. 
 
 Leaving their cars about a quarter of a mile from the 
 depot, they formed a line, with orders to rush upon the ene- 
 my, and force their passage into the boat at the point of the 
 bayonet. They found they were as those that beat the air. 
 The terrible enemy was not. They quietly took posses- 
 sion of the steamer, and ran down to Annapolis, which they 
 reached about two o'clock on Sunday morning, and anchored 
 off the Naval Academy.
 
 218 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 Here occurred one of those puzzles which diplomacy often 
 meets with. The commandant of the Naval School had heard 
 that a secession steamer was coming from Baltimore to take 
 possession of that spot. He had not heard of the move-' 
 ments of this regiment, and supposed, of course, that this 
 steamer was the one promised and dreaded. On the other 
 hand, General Butler had heard that the secessionists were 
 already in possession of the Naval School, as well as of the 
 city. A lieutenant came to the steamer to find out who they 
 were. But as he did not like to reveal his position to par- 
 ties of whom he was in doubt, and as General Butler did 
 not choose to reveal his name and purpose, their conversa- 
 tion was brief and cipherish. Soon the lieutenant said he 
 must go, as a signal had been made for his return. They 
 learned afterward that this signal was to be given, after a 
 certain time had elapsed, so that he might escape to the 
 shore, as they should then consider them secessionists, and 
 open the guns of the fort upon them. The commandant, 
 Captain Blake, however, finding that his lieutenant knew 
 nothing, came off himself, and he and the general talked back 
 and forth in the dark for some time, till gradually they be- 
 gan to find out that they could trust each other. 
 
 He then asked for help to get the Constitution into the 
 bay, as it was exposed where it lay to guns from the shore. 
 So the church-going, and many of them church-loving, citi- 
 zens of Lynn, Marblehead, and their vicinage, worked all 
 day to cut out the famous Old Ironsides. Their steamer ran 
 aground in the effort, and stuck there till Tuesday morning. 
 They could get no help, and had no food nor water, and some 
 of them, in the fury of their thirst, drank the salt water of 
 the bay. The midshipmen, on learning of their condition, 
 brought water in boats to their relief. They lay here in groat 
 peril, for there were no means of getting ashore. The peo- 
 ple of Annapolis knew of their presence, and it was cur- 
 rently stated that a war steamer was coming from Bal-
 
 TO ARMS. 219 
 
 timore to sink them a thing that could easily have been 
 done. 
 
 An accident happened here that was a strong confession 
 of the value of religion to a man. There was only one boat 
 on the steamer, and the general was afraid that one of the 
 crew, or some traitor who might have smuggled himself on 
 board at Perryville, would take it, and give information 
 to the enemy. So he commanded two men to be put in 
 charge of the boat, with orders, if any one touched it, to 
 warn him off; if he did not leave instantly, to shoot him 
 dead. '' And," said he, "if you have any praying men in 
 your company, appoint them, for they will conscientiously 
 obey their orders." 
 
 On Monday morning the Boston arrived from Philadelphia 
 with the Seventh Regiment, and worked nearly all day to 
 get their steamer afloat, so that the Eighth Regiment, which 
 had been there more than thirty hours, might have the privi- 
 lege of landing first. But it was found impossible to start 
 her, with their own vessel so heavily laden, and they were 
 compelled to laud their men first. Then they drew the 
 Maryland from her long anchorage, and both of the regi- 
 ments found rest and refreshment in the pleasant quarters 
 of the Academy. 
 
 Annapolis was my first acquaintance with a slavehold- 
 ing city, and of persons held in slavery. The place looked 
 as if cursed by the crime it hugged to its breast. With 
 admirable opportunities for growth, with a harbor and 
 shores that would be filled with enterprise and taste were 
 it not for this crime, the capital of this freest of the Slave 
 States, is as shabby, mean, and crowded as the dirtiest 
 quarters of the North End. I had quite a long conversa- 
 tion with some of the citizens. They had evidently ex- 
 perienced a new sensation. They had learned well the 
 lesson of submission to slavocrats, and as one, who was 
 with me, a Unionist from Kentucky, boasted of the number
 
 220 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 of slaves that he owned, they seemed to revere him as 
 a superior being. But General Butler had given them a 
 new idol to fear and to worship. And they responded as 
 meekly and readily to my Massachusetts talk as they 
 did to that of the Kentucky slaveholder. They listened 
 almost reverently as I spoke of those terrible bugbears, 
 Wendell Phillips and Lloyd Garrison. Do not imagine that 
 there was any especial courage in me. I had on a sub- 
 military rig, and they knew that five to seven thousand 
 men were less than a mile off, eager to avenge so much 
 as the mere nose-pulling of a Northern soldier. They had 
 learned that there was a North, and that she had strength 
 enough to do as she pleased, even under the eaves of the 
 Maryland Capitol. 
 
 As the troops marched out to Washington, the different 
 effect of their presence on the inhabitants was noticeable. 
 The whites looked mad or scared, according to their social 
 position, chiefly scared, and the blacks looked glad out of the 
 eyes, though their lips were discreetly sealed. As we left the 
 city, they began to be more free in the expression of their 
 feelings. About two miles out, a colored family on a lonely 
 plantation waved their handkerchiefs and cheered vociferous- 
 ly. The soldiers in response cheered lustily for the Union, 
 and even kissed their hands to them in their enthusiasm. One 
 old colored woman was in the Senate Chamber a day or two 
 ago selling cakes and pies. One of the officers of the fa- 
 mous Sixth Eegiment asked her what she thought of these 
 times. "Why," she said, "you seem to us just like our 
 Lord Jesus. He came down of His own accord to suffer 
 and die to save us. And you also come to suffer and to 
 die to deliver us." The piety of the old sister was not 
 very much shocked by the analogy ; I doubt if yours will 
 be. Tears stood in the eyes of the officer as he told me 
 her remark. He thought of those who had already died for 
 this cause in Baltimore.
 
 TO ARMS. 221 
 
 CAMP ix THE CAPITOL. 
 
 What kind of a place do you imagine a camp to be ? Some- 
 thing rural and rustic, I doubt not. Shady trees, running 
 streams, green, waving fields, with tents nestling together, 
 and soldiers with their environments, adding the life of hu- 
 manity to that of nature. You can hardly take into account 
 the march of improvement in making up such an opinion. You 
 forget how we have improved our ecclesiastical camps from 
 three or four stakes, and a sheet stretched over them, to the 
 luxurious tents and dwellings of the Vineyard and Hamilton. 
 Even so have military encampments caught the spirit of the 
 age. And so we tabernacle to-day not as Aaron in the wil- 
 derness, but as his successors in the days of Solomon. Our 
 camp is in the most sumptuous edifice on the continent, 
 one of the most magnificent in the world. Our soldiers sleep 
 under the splendid paintings and bas-reliefs of the Rotun- 
 da, or between the gray marble pillars of the old Repre- 
 sentative Hall. The echoes of the voices of the heroic past, 
 from Washington to John Quincy Adams, fill their souls 
 with high inspirations. The officers lie on beautiful pave- 
 ments of many colors, none the softer though for their vel- 
 vety patterns, and lounge on crimson chairs and sofas, 
 reveling before the battle in the rewards which usually fol- 
 low only daring and danger. The fragrance of blossoming 
 trees, and the music of bands of birds, salute the senses, 
 not always unmingled with what Charles Lamb calls "the 
 only manly scent," that of tobacco, and what boys think 
 the only manly music, that of other two-legged and gay- 
 appareled bands. 
 
 The glitter of muskets, the blare of drums, and 
 
 " Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds," 
 
 the gay or sober uniforms, the even step of marching thou- 
 sands, that revivifies the celebrated Virgilian line (changing
 
 222 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 " quadrupedante " to " bipedante "), as it shakes the dusty 
 earth with its pulsing foot ; these are certainly unwonted 
 experiences for an American city. The " putrem campum" 
 of that verse is exceedingly appropriate here. A more dis- 
 integratable soil, that professed to be a soil, I never saw. 
 I can understand now how this city is able to almost con- 
 stantly kick up such a dust as fills the eyes, ears, and mouths 
 of the whole land. ,The winds here are all simooms, and the 
 political storms are adapted to the climactic ones of the 
 earth, earthy. 
 
 There are probably more soldiers to-day in Washington 
 than were ever gathered before in the same area in this 
 country. And yet it is but a handful to the Parisian armies, 
 and to what may be collected here or elsewhere ere this 
 great rebellion and its greater cause are crushed forever. 
 They are constantly coming. A thousand entered at nine 
 o'clock last evening ; another thousand at two o'clock this 
 morning, their spirit-stirring music stirring spirits, and bod- 
 ies, too, in a manner more stimulating than agreeable. 
 
 Notwithstanding the numbers of troops here, probably not 
 less than twenty thousand, including the active militia of 
 the District, the great buildings, where many of them 
 quarter, are not overcrowded. Three thousand troops oc- 
 cupy the Capitol, and yet it looks as empty as a New York 
 church of a Sunday afternoon. Many times that number 
 could easily be packed into its immense halls, passages, and 
 lobbies. 
 
 This building, where the nation's hopes and fears so anx- 
 iously and so justly center, is held by soldiers from New 
 York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. These three States 
 stand together in the Capitol to maintain our liberty to-day, 
 as they stood fourscore years ago to inaugurate it. It is 
 more than a happy coincidence that the magnificent struc- 
 ture, which embodies the sovereignty and glory of our nation, 
 should be intrusted to the watch-care of these ancient and
 
 TO ARMS. 223 
 
 constant allies. The most dangerous, and hence most hon- 
 orable, post in it is occupied by the Massachusetts Sixth, 
 who so nobly won the prize in their brave and rapid march 
 to its defense. 
 
 I escaped to the elegant Congressional Library, hoping to 
 avoid the din of arms, and throats, and drums that pervades 
 every other part of the Capitol. Vain hope ! The tremen- 
 dous rattle of innumerable drums, as it seems to the drums 
 of my ears, follows me here. From the lovely and usually 
 quiet grounds in front of the Capitol, it arises like the rat- 
 tling of hammers on the rivets of half a dozen engine boil- 
 ers. If you want to know how military sounds sound when 
 concentrated into an army, and void of fife and bugle, visit 
 the " Novelty Works," or any other locomotive factory, and 
 listen to the melody aforesaid. The poor birds, who were get- 
 ting up a fine concert of their own, succumb, and hide their 
 ears behind their wings. If my composition partakes of 
 this intense rattling and ringing, consider it all the more 
 military, and hence the more popular. 
 
 CAMP AT THE RELAY. 
 
 CAMP ESSEX, May 16, 1861. 
 We have reached it at last. 
 
 " My high blown pride 
 At length breaks under me." 
 
 A greater than Jefferson the Little, even the bowed and ach- 
 ing octogenarian of Washington has issued his edict, and 
 here we are. No more lounging on velvet chairs, no more 
 looking through plate-glass, between bronze window frames 
 and marble pillars, across the placid Potomac to Alexandria, 
 and, with the mind's eye, to Richmond. We are on a re- 
 treat. We have left for the North. 
 
 Our change from our Capitol quarters was most willingly 
 made. Like most persons in such places, we found our-
 
 224 LETTERS FKOM CAMP. 
 
 selves sorely afflicted with the rich man's disease nothing 
 to do. So, when the order came yesterday to march, the 
 soldiers gladly fled to arms and knapsacks. And well they 
 might ; for the real camp, which we have reached, is as 
 much before the vain "pomp and glory of the one we have 
 left as dear, divine nature is ahead of hard and heartless 
 art. If all pride has such a fall as this, it should not feel 
 hurt at the operation. 
 
 Leaving our marble quarters, marching down the superb 
 staircase, whose panels Leutze, or his successors, will hard- 
 ly be able to fill with a more glorious picture than that then 
 passing before them, we took the cars, and were dropped on 
 the side of the hill, about half a mile from the Relay House. 
 
 The next morning the brow of the hill was appropriated 
 to our use ; and here,, in the soft May air of Maryland, the 
 white canvas town of Camp Essex "rose like an exha- 
 lation." The camp is not arranged precisely according to 
 "regulation," yet nearly enough to give an idea of the ideal 
 law, which in the army, as elsewhere, is fully realized but 
 rarely. Close to the trees is a row of tents the depots of 
 the commissary and quartermaster, and the hospital quarters. 
 The next row is that of the colonel and his staff; next, 
 the tidy quarters of the major ; then those of the surgeon 
 and his assistants. The yellow flag of the surgeon^is fol- 
 lowed by the white one of the chaplain, with whom tents 
 the paymaster. Arms, gold, and the gospel seldom come into 
 such close conjunction as they do in this tent. At night 
 the chaplain sleeps between a box of rifles arid a box of 
 money. The third and last of the official rows is that of 
 the captains. At right angles to these are the streets of the 
 privates, more closely built, and more densely populated, 
 than those of the officers. Yet crowded into these tents 
 are many who in wealth, culture, and position are fully the 
 equals of their military superiors. The son of an ex-senator 
 of the United States, and the son of a " Bell : Everett " elec-
 
 TO ARMS. 225 
 
 toral candidate himself a Boston lawyer do duty with 
 the musket, eaqh enjoying his undivided fifteenth part of 
 the canvas ten-footer with as worthy fishermen and shoe- 
 makers, carpenters and sailors, for comrades. 
 
 Our flank companies are representatives of the flanks of 
 the State Pittsfield on the left, and Salem on the right. 
 Next to the brilliant Salem Zouaves come the Marblehead 
 fishermen. Captain Knott's Marbleheaders deserve spe- 
 cial mention, as the first in all the land to respond to the 
 call of the President. The very next morning after the sum- 
 mons left Washington, his company inarched from home 
 through a storm of driving sleet, and Faneuil fiall welcomed 
 them first of all to the service of patriotism, with which it is 
 identified. As they entered its honored walls, bound on a 
 grander mission than any to which their fathers had respond- 
 ed, the " stone must have cried out of the wall, and the 
 beam out of the timber have answered it," in honor of the 
 perpetual valor of this most patriotic of towns. In no less 
 than three of the historic pictures which cover the walls of 
 the rotunda are representatives of Marblehead. The new 
 pictures which shall reproduce this holier war will not be 
 without her heroic presence. Beverly and Gloucester 
 wonderfully given to fun, frolic, and letter-writing occupy 
 the next street. Loquacious Lynn and conservative New- 
 buryport share the last two streets. It would never have 
 done to place all the argumentative shoemakers together : 
 there would be no knowing how, with rifles and revolvers in 
 their hands, they might have concluded to carry on their 
 discussions. So Conservatism and Progress are hitched 
 together ; and the staid bearers of the name of Gushing, 
 and the lively followers of the senatorial Crispin, balanced 
 each other. Outside of the last street is Pittsfield, look- 
 ing north and west, protecting the camp on its most assail- 
 able side. So seven hundred men are housed within four 
 and twenty hours after leaving the Capitol. 
 15
 
 226 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 The view from our camp is charming. At our feet lies a 
 narrow valley, through which creeps the slumberous Patapsco, 
 covering its face with willows. It has been hard at work 
 miles above driving mills and factories, and now enjoys its 
 release from labor : only temporary, however, is this recess, 
 for it is soon caught again, driven into sluice-ways, and 
 broken upon wheels, only finding lasting peace when it 
 melts into the bosom of the placid Chesapeake. Just be- 
 neath us nestles the little village of Elk Ridge Landing 
 once a port of entry and a haven for ships. But the wash- 
 ings from the hills have choked up the channel, and choked 
 off the trade. Now it seems devoted to the imbibition of 
 
 * 
 
 whisky, of which, judging from the number of shops, enough 
 is sold to reopen navigation, were it judiciously applied to 
 that purpose. From the hill-top the village has a pleasant 
 aspect, with its two churches, one embowered in trees, and 
 the other standing in a field of blossoming clover, the white 
 tombstones casting a moonlight luster on the green mounds 
 beneath. But these are almost the only adornments of the 
 village. The main street is a collection of wood and brick 
 houses, with no sidewalks, and but few gardens and trees. 
 
 The walks around the camp are as delightful as its out- 
 look. Deep ravines, heavily shaded, cover the northern 
 and western sides. Through each of these trickles a tiny 
 brook dancing down to the river. Threading the way 
 through these glens, one enters the upland, which opens 
 into varied vistas. Above the viaduct the Patapsco runs 
 through a deep gorge, scattered along which are mills and 
 the dwellings of the workmen. The summits are crowned 
 with the dwellings of the landholders and their tenants. 
 Looking from these eminences the landscape spreads out in 
 those softly undulating lines which rich soils only can ex- 
 hibit. A hard, thin soil requires mines of imported wealth, 
 and generations of culture, to give it character. But this 
 rich earth enriches everything. It thickens and deepens the
 
 TO ARMS. 227 
 
 foliage of the trees, softens the hard edges of the hills, and 
 gives to the whole landscape a royal sweep and fullness. 
 
 SMOKE BEFORE THE FIRE. 
 
 The flames begin to shoot forth along the whole border 
 at Harper's Ferry, Western Virginia, Cairo, and St. Louis. 
 This great seam in our Ship of State, that has been stuffed 
 and stuffed with tow and pitch by ecclesiastical and political 
 calkers for a couple of generations, is on fire. The flames, 
 long pent within the vessel, have reached the surface, and, 
 naturally enough, break out in its most inflammable part. 
 Soon, perchance, they will lick the stars in their mad fury. 
 " The strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark, 
 and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench 
 them." There is no blaze here yet only intense and suffoca- 
 ting smoke, in which all things are hidden. We dwell where * 
 Dame Rumor has her seat ; but this lady has always proved 
 her close relationship to the father of lies, and never more in- 
 disputably than in the present smoke, preliminary, perhaps, to 
 that of battle. One hour she positively declares that twenty- 
 five thousand secessionists are within a day's march of the 
 capital, and intend to storm it before the next nightfall. 
 The next, she declares the troops at Alexandria are verify- 
 ing Scripture, and fleeing when no man pursueth ; that 
 others are also hasting away from Harper's Ferry. So she 
 flies up and down these streets, choking our ears as the dust 
 does our mouths, and with equally unserviceable stuff. The 
 fact is, we shall never know anything certain about the re- 
 bellious section until we march an army of observation, as 
 well as of occupation, into its midst. The seceders love 
 darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. 
 They keep up all kinds of contrary stories to delude the 
 government, and especially the North. They wisely adapt 
 their compound to the exciting of our fears and the allaying
 
 228 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 of our vigilance. So they say four hundred thousand men will, 
 before midsummer, pour on Washington ; or within a week 
 the Confederate flag will float on the Capitol, if they conde- 
 scend to allow it to stand. Then, having played the buga- 
 boo enough, they pretend it is all practical joking. They 
 have hardly any troops anywhere ; only thirty- thousand or 
 so in all the Confederacy. Richmond is unprotected, and 
 "only a miracle" can save that city from the government 
 troops. I fear the Greeks bringing these telegraphic gifts. 
 They must be watched and guarded from nearer heights than 
 those of Arlington. We must arise and go down into the 
 South country, and see for ourselves, and, if need be, feel 
 in ourselves their hostile preparations. 
 
 The letter-writers and telegraph operators are in a dubious 
 state as it respects matters in the Cabinet, as they are in 
 respect to those in the South. Paul very happily describes 
 the whole class in that keen sketch of the bustling know-noth- 
 ing wise men of his day, of all skeptical days : " Ever striv- 
 ing and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." 
 The Vailed Prophet never kept his face more closely con- 
 cealed than President Lincoln, General Scott, and Secretary 
 Cameron do the face of military affairs. It is a fine time 
 for our spiritualist friends to bring forth their mediums. 
 Enormous prices would be paid by public journals for reli- 
 able facts that are undoubtedly transpiring in Virginia and 
 the southernmost States for more important facts that 
 are as certainly settled and partially embodied in act in the 
 brains of the antagonist leaders rebels and patriots. How 
 "stale, flat, and unprofitable" that folly looks beside these 
 opportunities and urgencies for its existence ! How fortu- 
 nate it is that these silly women laden with lusts, and sillier 
 men more heavily laden that lead them captive, have no such 
 insight ! It is the glory of God to conceal a thing ; and 
 this divine glory is partially shared by those who, in the 
 exigencies of State, share also in his sovereignty.
 
 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 II. SLAVERY DYING. 
 
 THE LOOK OP THE LAND. 
 
 CAMP ESSEX, May 16. 
 
 AM sitting on the ground> in the door of my tent, 
 like Abraham ; like him, too, on a hill country, 
 from which a large and lovely prospect opens. 
 Like him, yet again, as our brethren in this vicin- 
 ity would undoubtedly suggest if they sat beside me, I am 
 surrounded by the patriarchal institution, to whose preser- 
 vation they are ready to sacrifice liberty, civilization, Chris- 
 tianity, every good and perfect gift of God. Not very near 
 is this institution, much less is it armed, as in his day, for the 
 rescue of its master or his kindred from these invaders from 
 the north country. The peaceful scenes over which his eye 
 moved in Oriental quietude are before me, though not in the 
 foreground. The peaceful sounds that crept into his ears 
 are far from filling mine. The drums rattle around me. 
 The loud orders of the officers, drilling their companies, 
 break clear and shrill over the drum-beats, while the hurrahs 
 of other troops welcoming their marching' comrades, and 
 the sharp sound of the musketry, or the reverberating roar 
 of the cannon, of yet others who are practicing themselves 
 
 (229)
 
 230 LETTERS FEOM CAMP. 
 
 and their guns, mingle with the more peaceful chattering 
 of the Gibeonites of the camp in their bustling service for 
 the wants of the body, and are all often encompassed in the 
 scream of the locomotive, and the roar of his train a wel- 
 come proof and prophecy that the victories of peace are not 
 only greater, but more lasting, than those of war. These 
 shall perish, but those shall endure. We can add without 
 irreverence, " Yea, these " signs and weeds of war " shall 
 all wax old as doth a garment ; as a vesture shalt thou " 
 Prince of Peace, " change them, and they shall be changed ; " 
 but the years and the triumphs of peace shall have no end. 
 I trust they will be made more melodious in expression. 
 Why cannot the movements of machinery be made as silent 
 as those of nature ? Why may they not sing as delightful- 
 ly to our dull ear as the stars did to the keener sense of 
 Messieurs Shakspeare and Addison ? This hurly-burly 
 of peace and war has suddenly ceased for a moment, and 
 blessed Nature, the beloved disciple of her Creator, puts her 
 arms of love and beauty around the distracted soul. 
 
 As I look out over the glittering white roofs and stacked 
 bayonets of the camp, my eyes roam over as delightful a 
 bit of scenery as ever enticed them from the drudgery of the 
 pen. A valley lies beneath them, covering some two or 
 three square miles, if its grateful irregularity could be 
 Quakerized into such rectangular abominations as a square. 
 Through it lazily strolls the river, gladly indulging its 
 Southern indisposition to work, after the involuntary servi- 
 tude into which some avaricious Yankees had forced it, just 
 above the viaduct, for the sake of running their dirty and 
 noisy nail factories. 
 
 Our Southern brethren do not believe in compelling any- 
 thing to work except the negro. With great flourishes about 
 the advantages to him of compulsory labor, and the dire 
 effects of emancipation in letting loose upon their commu- 
 nity a mass of idle men and women, they join a most hearty
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 231 
 
 indifference to the idleness of all other creatures, human, 
 animal, and vegetable. 
 
 An amusing instance of the unconscious power of this 
 feeling occurred yesterday. A friend residing here, whose 
 pleasant acquaintance I have made, speaking of a piece of 
 meadow which was being devoted to the raising of osier, or 
 basket willow, said the owner was getting twenty-five dol- 
 lars an acre per annum for the meadow, and " didn't have 
 to work it at all." That last consideration would have 
 never occurred to a Northern man. This is one of the most 
 important railroad centers in the country trains passing 
 and stopping almost every hour of the day arid night ; and 
 yet I have not seen half a dozen teams in its streets, except 
 those in the service of the troops, during my three days' 
 residence. Here are three thousand men hungry for deli- 
 cacies, and willing to pay for them, and not a farmer's cart 
 has entered the camp. A half dozen black and white loafers 
 with little baskets of cakes and pies, a wagon or two larger 
 capitalists, with beer and oranges, are the whole trading force 
 extemporized by our necessities. The exhibition day of a 
 country academy in a Northern State develops tenfold more 
 business activity than these multitudinous trains and troops 
 can bring to life here. Great masses of the fat earth slumber 
 in the sun. Many fine acres of grain and grass gladden 
 my sight, or would gladden it, did I not think that the eye 
 of the Holy Spirit was fixed on these same fields and their 
 owners and tillers. How plainly His solemn tones sounded 
 in my ear as He speaks to these transgressors, " Go to now, 
 ye rich men ; weep and howl for your miseries that shall 
 come upon you. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have 
 reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, 
 crieth ; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered 
 into the cars of the Lord of Sabaoth." That Lord of Sab- 
 aoth, the Lord of hosts, is marshaling His hosts for battle. 
 May He not be compelled to employ them in the punishment
 
 232 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 of these defrauders, but may they speedily give unto their 
 servants that which is just and equal. " Behold, the Judge 
 standeth at the door." 
 
 I must acknowledge the fields look very lovely, whatever 
 the mode by which they are cultivated, and are satisfactory 
 because they are expressive of industry, even if unpaid. On 
 some of their knolls, hidden in the already deep foliage, 
 stand the cosy farm-houses, with their slave quarters, like 
 the corn-barns and smoke-houses of Northern farmers, cud- 
 dling round the back door, near enough to bring in the corn- 
 cakes without their getting cold by the way, and far enough 
 off to keep up the idea that they are a kind of distinct order 
 of beings a notion which the white man in this region so 
 sedulously and so foolishly cultivates. The slaves are 
 housed, in location and in the style of their dwelling, about 
 half way between their master and his other cattle. They 
 have about the same position in the fancies with which he 
 feeds his brain a sort of half-way house between a white 
 man and a fine horse. 
 
 Around this lazy yet lovely valley rise hills like the one 
 where I am writing, though usually unoccupied, and either 
 covered with wild woods or scarred with brown barren 
 patches that have evidently been scratched by the slave's 
 plow till they have refused to respond to such forced en- 
 treaties, and were then abandoned by their idle owners to 
 an unnatural desolation. But the gay sunlight makes them 
 pleasant to look upon at this distance, and they agreeably 
 diversify the deep green of the rolling meadow and more 
 rolling forest, among which they lie. 
 
 If I rise up, and walk or ride through the land, I can but 
 see what Lot saw when he lifted up his eyes, that it is 
 " well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord, 
 like the land of Egypt as thou comest unto Zoar." Is it 
 not in other respects like the land Lot saw ? Does not 
 God see the weary bands that have often moved, hand-
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 233 
 
 cuffed and chained together, along these roads, marching 
 to the hotter fires of a more Southern hell ? Does He not 
 hear the voice of lustful command, of ferocious rage, of the 
 blasphemous auctioneering of sacred woman, and lovely 
 children, and Christian men, made in His image and regen- 
 erated with His grace ? Does not His ever-listening ear hear 
 these brutal sounds of tyrannic passion as they go up through 
 this soft and palpitating air ? A Maryland gentleman, once 
 a slaveholder, told me that he heard the high sheriff of one 
 of her counties, after one of these human auctions, say, 
 " Lloyd Garrison never talked half bad enough about us. 
 I am surprised that the earth does not -open and swallow us 
 up." Has not the Creator said of this and more Southern, 
 and probably even more sinful soil, " Because the cry of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very 
 grievous, I will go down now and see whether they have 
 done altogether according to the cry of it which is come 
 unto me ; and if not, I will know." He is making inquisi- 
 tion for blood. Who shall be able to stand ? 
 
 I rejoice to see tokens of the departure of this cloud of 
 darkness and death from this fair land. The rays of uni- 
 versal liberty are shooting through Maryland. They gladden 
 with their novel radiance the mountains and valleys of Vir- 
 ginia. See the vote for the Union just cast here the 
 Union with an anti-slavery North, and under an anti-slavery 
 government. See the new governor of Virginia, his asso- 
 ciates, and the whole animus of his government. Kan- 
 sas, too, stands tiptoe on those misty mountain-tops. Mis- 
 souri has dethroned Satan from his usurped seat there. 
 Here, too, is the light descending. The active complicity, 
 or, at the best, supine indifference of the wealthy, the fear 
 and feebleness of, the working classes, the cowardice of the 
 Church, and the cruelty of the State, are rapidly coining to 
 a perpetual end. One can hardly conceive the change which 
 has been already wrought here since the possession of its
 
 234 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 territories by the armies of an anlji-slavery government. Its 
 citizens begin to breathe freely, and even talk iVeely. Soon 
 will healthful agitation breezes blow, and the work of regen- 
 eration be begun, never to stop till the blessing of perfect 
 love to God and every man shall universally prevail. 
 " Behold how brightly breaks the morning." 
 
 How SLAVES TALK. 
 
 It is quiet and peaceful here now, and I will avail myself of 
 the brief interregnum to post the book of my experience and 
 observation on the great matter which has kindled this great 
 fire the merchandise of the bodies and souls of men. 
 
 I am like one who should discourse wisely on all the cur- 
 rents, storms, and other grand phenomena of the ocean, 
 when he had only stood on the rocks at Nahant, had seen 
 the waves roll in on a pleasant day, and had thrown his 
 eyes over the modest sheet that lies at his feet. I have 
 only touched the edge of the great gulf of slavery, that 
 sweeps for thousands of miles beyond me, with its terrific 
 storms of lust and ferocity, its immeasurable depths of 
 despair and dread, its awful, unutterable blackness of dark- 
 ness. I walk along the beach, gather a few of its pebbles, 
 listen to the solemn dash of its cold and cruel waves, and 
 look out with wearied eyes on the gloomy expanse, as it 
 spreads itself, southward and westward, myriads of miles, 
 in a horror of great darkness. 
 
 The first person that I ever saw in slavery was at An- 
 napolis. She was a pleasant, modest girl of ten or twelve 
 summers. Her name was Mary. I thought how appropriate 
 that the name of the mother of my Lord should be given to 
 this poor, despised girl, whom somebody pretended to own ; 
 whom they could sell in the market-place, and subject to 
 all unutterable horrors that overhang the future of these in- 
 nocent maidens. Had slavery existed in Judea, the mother
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 235 
 
 of Christ would have been a slave. For He must stand at 
 the bottom of humanity that He might embrace it. In fact, 
 he is asserted to have occupied this place. If the pro- 
 slavery divines are right, in pressing out of measure the 
 word " servant" in the letters of Paul, and if <JoOAo,~ refers 
 in all cases to slaves, then Christ was a slave ; for Paul 
 says, " He made Himself of no reputation, and took upon 
 Him the form of a slave." I trust the poor slaves find 
 comfort in that text, when they are drenched through and 
 through with the p ratings of preachers as to the duties of 
 servants. 
 
 I suppose, if I had visited Havana, I should have heard 
 my black brother called Jesus. I wish these man-ser- 
 vants, had this name. He who took their place would be 
 glad to comfort them with His human title. The nearest 
 we can come to it is Mary, and so I am glad they have the. 
 sense of kinship with Him which that name confers. But 
 yesterday I dined with a slaveholder, a member of our 
 church, who owned his cook, and a very fine cook she 
 was, too, judging from the dinner, who was also blessed 
 with this sacred name. 
 
 The name of John Brown, which so many good men of 
 New England have not yet reverenced as they will, and the 
 cause in which he is yet to be copied by this nation, and 
 for which he laid down his life, find respectful hearers in 
 the midst of this people, that have sat so long in darkness. 
 But the other night, after a pleasant prayer meeting in the 
 village church, quite a number of the members stood at the 
 cross roads, and discoursed on this subject and on this 
 hero. They knew him here. They said he traveled through 
 this section quite extensively the summer before his death. 
 One of them, a blacksmith, said that his horse was shod 
 at his shop. He called himself a Baptist preacher, and had 
 trusses for sale. As hernia, I have been told, is a very 
 common disease with the slaves, this business gave him
 
 236 LETTETS FROM CAMP. 
 
 fine opportunities for making their acquaintance. He spoke 
 freely against slavery, and was very ready with the Scrip- 
 ture in his discussions with the people. These last charac- 
 teristics were marks of the man, no less than the former, by 
 which he sought to relieve them in their physical weakness, 
 and, at the same time, to fill their ears with the glad tidings 
 that the year of jubilee had come. He died without the 
 sight, yet he saw it by faith, and was glad. 
 
 The whites, as a body, ignore the blacks altogether. A 
 good brother from Virginia told me, in Washington, he could 
 not look upon them as the same order of beings with him- 
 self. He was perfectly honest, and, I am afraid, spoke 
 frankly what yet abides powerfully in many breasts in New 
 England. They carry this sentiment a little further here 
 than in New England, though they only carry it to its logi- 
 .cal issue. They say, if of a different species of humanity, 
 radically, perpetually, then of a lower, as is apparent by 
 their history and condition. If of a lower, then they are 
 the servants of the higher. If divinely appointed for servi- 
 tude, where's the harm in slavery, per se f Now, we can- 
 not cure this brother's idea as to slavery, until we pluck 
 the tap-root of caste and prejudice from ourselves. We 
 must first cast the beam out of our own eye, and then we 
 can see clearly to cast the mote out of our brother's eye. 
 
 This is the common feeling here. Hence they talk flip- 
 pantly about the blacks not being able to take care of them- 
 selves not desiring freedom not being as well off when 
 free as when enslaved and much other white trash, 
 which goes for good common sense in this section of the 
 country. I thought I would go to the fountain head, and 
 see if the waters tasted the same there. I would apply a 
 little of Baconianism to the problem. So I asked the slaves 
 and their free kindred themselves what they thought in these 
 matters ? How easy it is for a child to confound a philoso- 
 pher, if the child has common sense and the wise man has
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 237 
 
 not ! I do not suppose all the gentlemen I have talked with 
 on this subject and they have not been a few have con- 
 versed with as many of their colored neighbors, and in some 
 cases, as I have been told by themselves, blood relations, 
 on these vital questions, in all their lives, as I have talked 
 with in the last forty days. They are regular Aristotelians 
 on this subject of inquiry. They shut themselves up in their 
 own exclusive Caucasian conceit, and theorize as to the 
 state of feeling in their neighbors, with whom they never 
 honestly converse. 
 
 Two interesting proofs of this occurred here but this 
 week. I was visiting at one of the elegant seats surround- 
 ing our camp. The subject of slavery came up. The lady 
 of the house was in great fear of insurrections in the Cotton 
 States the gentleman laughed at her fears. "Slaves 
 wouldn't take their liberty if it was offered them," he said. 
 He " tried it once." " Who will take care of the picka- 
 ninnies when they are sick?" says Juno. " Who will give 
 me a dollar and a horse to ride to town if I am free," says 
 Jupiter. So the king of gods and men, and his ox-eyed 
 queen, " soror uxorque Jovis," have their ears bored through, 
 and well hung with brass pendants, and become bond ser- 
 vants forever to a lank, brown, strutting, tobacco-chewing 
 lot of humans. (The gentleman aforesaid is not of this 
 class. He is a Unionist and a non-slaveholder, having manu- 
 mitted the "gods of Greece" in spite of their protestations.) 
 How changed from those divinities who shook the world, 
 with their nod, and who sat in calm authority over the great 
 Trojans and greater Greeks and Eomans, in their long, event- 
 ful history ! I thought I would hunt up some of these gods 
 and goddesses, and if I did not worship at their feet, I would 
 at least inquire reverently as to their feelings on the matter 
 of freedom and slavery. 
 
 The next day I sat in the woods reading, when Jupiter 
 came along disguised as an old black man, with a basket on
 
 238 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 his arm and a staff in his hand. Having been taught in 
 Grecian mythology, I detected the deity in spite of the dis- 
 guise. I addressed him respectfully. He was complacent 
 and conversible. I asked him his name. He had assumed 
 for the present that of John Diggs. 
 
 " Are you a slave ? " 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 " Have you ever been ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir till I was thirty odd years old." 
 
 " How did you get your freedom ? " 
 
 " My mistress gave it to me at her death." 
 
 " How long have you been free ? " 
 
 " Some fifteen or twenty years." 
 
 " Well, I understand you free blacks are not half as well 
 off as the slaves. That is true, isn't it ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; I live better than I ever did when a slave." 
 
 " But they say you won't work you are all lazy." 
 
 " They won't give us a chance, sir. They don't like to 
 encourage the free negro, and so they hire slaves or the 
 Irish, and let us starve. We would work as heartily as 
 anybody if they would hire us." 
 
 " But weren't you happier when a slave ? You had 
 enough to eat and drink then, and wherewithal to be 
 clothed." 
 
 " I didn't have any more than I do now ; and, then, now 
 when I sit down to my dinner and supper, I don't have 
 somebody come blustering and swearing round the door, 
 swinging his whip and flogging me away to any kind of 
 hard work, though ever so tired. Ah, sir, I'm a great deal 
 happier eating my poor supper nowadays, with my wife 
 and chil'n, than I ever was when a slave." 
 
 " Have you any relations in slavery ? " 
 
 " All my brothers and sisters." 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 "In Prince George's County, sir."
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 239 
 
 " They don't wish to be free, do they ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, every slave does." 
 
 " You must be mistaken. A good many gentlemen have 
 told me that they don't want to be free." 
 
 " I would like to have them offer the slaves their liberty." 
 
 " But what makes you want to be free ? " 
 
 " Why, sir, you know, when a boy's about thirteen years 
 old, he feels as he'd like to be his own master, and the feel- 
 ing don't grow any less as he grows older." 
 
 So ended my catechism and his replies. The twinkle of 
 his eyes, as he told of his happiness over the scanty supper 
 table, and the passion of boys for freedom, spoke far more 
 than his lips. I asked him if he went to meeting. 
 
 " 0, yes, I've been a Methodist for most forty years." 
 
 " Why don't you go to the church in the village ? " 
 
 "0, sir, 'pears as the white folks don't like to have us 
 worship with them, and so we have to have a house of our 
 own." 
 
 " Well, religion is a good thing, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, sweeter than honey, sweeter than sugar, better 
 than coffee, sir." 
 
 I could appreciate that climax after forty days' drinking of 
 camp coffee. I was glad to find that Jupiter had experienced 
 religion, and become a humble and happy Christian. This 
 war shows that Mars has met with a change also. I have 
 talked with not a few blacks, and find but one sentiment. 
 One old man, with but one leg, said he thought the war was 
 for liberty. 
 
 " Liberty for whom ? " I asked. 
 
 " For all of us, white and black." 
 
 I asked him if he would fight in the war. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, " as much as he could with his 
 one leg." 
 
 At Washington I asked a waiter similar questions. He 
 was free, had been born a slave, bought himself for six hun-
 
 240 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 dred dollars ; his wife and children were yet slaves, and 
 were sold from him to Tennessee. 
 
 I asked why he was so foolish as to work hard and raise 
 money to buy himself. Everybody here said the slaves 
 were better off than the free blacks. 
 
 "0, sir," said he, " I wanted to lie down massa and get 
 up massa ! " 
 
 " Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," as these 
 supercilious whites esteem their colored brethren, "has God 
 ordained strength, that He may still the enemy and the 
 avenger." 
 
 THE CARROLLTON MANOR. 
 
 As we leave Ellicot's Mills we enter the broad, handsome 
 turnpike from Baltimore to Frederick. This is the finest road 
 I have seen in this country ; it is the only fine one in this 
 vicinity. None handsomer, no one as handsome, goes out 
 of Boston. It is a hundred feet broad, running directly 
 west from Baltimore for nine miles, with undeviating stead- 
 fastness, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left. 
 Nine miles out it winds round to the river to accommodate 
 Ellicot's Mills, and then, going up to the high rolling lands 
 it had abandoned for a moment, it proceeds on, as wide,, 
 hard, and straight as before. We entered upon this part 
 of our journey with some misgivings. We had left pretty 
 much all the Unionism of the section behind us. The turn- 
 pike gate seemed to have over it the inscription over Dante's 
 Inferno : " All hope abandon, ye who enter here." Nev- 
 ertheless Dante did not abandon his hope, nor did success 
 abandon him. So I entered the infernal region, where scenes 
 even more horrible than those that met his eye, often meet 
 the eye of Him who rules over this, as well as the nether 
 hell, for here is crime, not punishment alone, and crime 
 against the innocent and holy children of God. 
 
 I heard some deeds worse than any which he records, but
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 241 
 
 I dare not put them in print. What they must be, you may 
 imagine, when I say that his medieval frankness, not to 
 say coarseness of speech, and his wonderful imagination 
 have not conceived of scenes of barbarism, which men coolly 
 spoke of as having been attempted by the present occupant 
 of the grandest of these estates the grandson of the signer 
 of the Declaration. Nothing very marked or different from 
 other places attracts you as you enter this Inferno. 
 
 The land lies very pleasant to the eyes great fields 
 stretch out before you. The trees gather often into clusters, 
 and expand at times in grand forests ; the corn, grass, clover, 
 and cattle, and the human crop that raise or tend these, 
 meet your eyes. A slumbering stillness is in the air. Only 
 here and there a house is seen ; not half a dozen in half a 
 dozen miles. The houses of the proprietors are generally 
 situated a mile or two from the road, in the center of their 
 farms, and reached by a wagon path across the fields. The 
 quarters of the negroes are alike hidden. The fields look 
 as if of capacity for extraordinary culture, but are poorly 
 tilled. One or two places are evidently well cared for. The 
 one that seems the most like a Northern place is Mr. Ham- 
 mond's, an ex-member of Congress, and a strong Union man, 
 almost the only one, as far as I could learn, in the region. 
 
 The Carroll estate comprises twelve thousand acres. The 
 turnpike runs for miles across it. One piece of woods is 
 three miles wide. This will give some idea of a plantation, 
 though it is but a quarter section beside some of those further 
 South. It also suggests one reason why the Southron has 
 so long ruled this country. There is nothing like land to 
 implant in others and in its owner the sense of power. 
 The possession of the treasures in the vaults of Boston 
 banks would not give its owner or his poor neighbor such 
 a realizing sense of his consequence as the calling of this 
 farm his own. Our riches have been stored in factories and 
 banks, in city houses and country seats, costly but small. 
 16
 
 242 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 Theirs have been spread out over the earth : they can ride 
 for miles on their own land ; they own to the skies and the 
 central fires. These last seem now to be breaking through 
 the crust. What is a Fifth Avenue palace or millions of 
 stocks to such possessions ? England's nobility have main- 
 tained their preeminence by maintaining the proprietorship 
 of the soil. These gentry would not sell a foot of their 
 land ; they buy, but never sell ; they will not sell a white 
 man a small farm any sooner than they would a black one 
 himself. Now, add to this the owning of the men who till 
 it, and of their wives and children, and you have an aristoc- 
 racy as much prouder than England's, as their property is 
 higher. These landed slaveholders rule this State ; but 
 sixteen thousand of them in a half million of white inhabit- 
 ants, probably less than ten thousand of this class, and own- 
 ing less than eighty thousand slaves ; yet they sit supremely 
 and quietly on the necks of their white as well as black 
 neighbors, drain the State of enterprise, and keep its poorer 
 classes in contemptuous degradation. 
 
 The manor-house is situated near the eastern edge of the 
 lot, and near the turnpike. Turn from the road, and go south 
 through a pleasant shaded roadway for about a third of a 
 mile, and you come to the mansion. Near the road oh the 
 right is a heap of slave huts. The overseer's residence, a 
 good-sized but shabby-looking brick building, stands among 
 them. Barns and sheds are close at hand ; on the right, 
 through a long vista of trees, an eighth of a mile from the 
 road, stands the revolutionary house. It is a low, spacious, 
 wooden, yellow mansion, enlarged evidently at different 
 times, one of its latter additions being a Catholic chapel. 
 It has none of the costly elegance of the new houses of 
 New York and New England, but looks much like the largest 
 of the old mansions, made a good deal larger by plain addi- 
 tions. It had the pomely, comfortable look of a grandee in 
 his lean and slippered pantaloon.
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 243 
 
 I turned from the house to the quarters of its colored 
 people, as they euphemistically call slaves here ; they shrink 
 from that word. I rode a little way beyond the house, hav- 
 ing no invitation to stop ; had I stopped, I should probably 
 have found it rather difficult to get away, as the sympathies 
 of this descendant of that patriot are all with the seces- 
 sionists. 
 
 As I rode away, I met a slave woman dragging herself 
 along to her work. As I had not the entre'e to the master, 
 I thought I would do the next best thing cultivate the 
 acquaintance of his most precious property. I asked her 
 how many colored people there were on the estate. She 
 said there was better than a hundred in these quarters, and 
 there were other quarters above. 
 " Have you a good time ? " 
 
 " Yes, Sundays. We have to work hard all the week, 
 but we get together Sundays and enjoys ourselves." 
 " Where are you going ? " 
 
 " To the field where the rest of the gang is I have been 
 to nurse my baby." 
 "How old is it?" 
 " Four months." 
 
 Fearing if I talked longer I should get her into trouble, 
 and myself too, I threw her a quarter and bid her good 
 by. She seemed amazed at the sight of the bit of money. 
 I fancy her millionnaire owner had never given her as much, 
 except at Christmas, in all his life. 
 
 The houses where these cattle are stabled are about as 
 comely and cleanly as a pig-sty. I found it hard to believe 
 that so rich and so lordly a man should put his choicest 
 creatures in such huts. I contrasted them with the hand- 
 some cottages with which the great land-owners of the 
 Hudson delight to adorn their estates, and in which they 
 require their tenants to live in a neat and sometimes elegant 
 style. But then these are compelled to treat them thus, or
 
 244 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 they will have to give them more than they wish to bestow. 
 A neat stone dairy, just behind these huts, showed that the 
 proprietor knew how to set off his estate with pretty build- 
 ings, if he only dared to do so. 
 
 Should he put his slaves in such houses, they must be 
 taught to respect themselves ; they must have beds and 
 tables, and carpets and pictures, and all the little and big 
 adornings of a real home. Could he compel the mother to 
 work behind the plow, and walk back and forth two or 
 three miles to nurse her babe, if she was living in this style ? 
 Could he drive the young, pretty girls, some of whom I 
 saw, like field oxen, from such cosy homes, with their flower 
 gardens, and inward comforts and elegances ? His culti- 
 vated taste would revolt at that, and so he treats them 
 worse than he does his horses ; he has scores of these, hand- 
 some blooded animals, and their stables, close by the negro 
 huts, far surpass them in respectability and comfort. 
 
 I drove out on the turnpike, and left the great manor of 
 Charles Carroll of Carrollton with profounder detestation 
 than ever before of the demon which possessed it, and which 
 transformed its servants into slaves and its masters into 
 tyrants. 
 
 A SLAVE PEN. 
 
 We leave the Marshall House at Alexandria, with its 
 fresh and perpetual memories of Ellsworth's daring and 
 death, follow the street west for half a mile or more, and 
 reach a good-looking brick house, with a high fence on the 
 east side, inclosing a yard, and some lower brick and 
 wooden buildings that join the main building and run back 
 from the street. Over the windows are printed, in large 
 black and white letters, like the institution it advertises, 
 the names of the enterprising proprietors of the establish- 
 ment, with "Dealers in Slaves" under-their "Christian" 
 names.
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 245 
 
 Here is one of the depots of which so much has been writ- 
 ten. We enter the rear quarters. Whitewashed and painted, 
 they have no very offensive look. No Pharisaic tomb ever 
 looked lovelier to a Jewish eye than this to a Virginian's. 
 The difference between them was in favor of the latter. 
 For the "inward parts" of this glittering tomb were 
 sweet and attractive to his corrupted sense. No vampire 
 ever delighted in the contents of a grave as much as he in 
 the living creatures that had tenanted this spot. 
 
 The inner court was about one hundred feet square, 
 paved with brick, with walls not less than twenty feet high, 
 and a rude shed projecting from one side, as a shelter from 
 the sun or rain. Here the "cattle" were permitted to run 
 at large, and probably were sorted according to age or con- 
 dition. Here the purchasers could make their selections ; 
 and hence the happy property passed away, like the pilgrims 
 from the land of Beulah, to that perfect paradise, the plan- 
 tation of the South. 
 
 My friend with me said he had often heard them sing- 
 ing as he had passed by. That shows how happy they 
 were, and how cruel it was of the fanatical North to seek 
 to prevent the spreading of this more than scriptural, even 
 Southern, holiness and blessedness over all these lands. 
 
 I thought of Paul and Silas in prison how they prayed 
 and sang praises unto God. Now, as then, not only here, 
 but over the whole region, through the vast prison of 
 slavery, there is a great earthquake, so that its foundations 
 are shaken, and many of its doors are being opened, and 
 the prisoners' bands are loosed. I would that I could add, 
 the jailers are penitent and converted. That will come in 
 due time. 
 
 In this court were spread tables for some of the soldiers 
 a great change in one short month. I went into the dun- 
 geon. A trap-door, opening in the floor of the court, let 
 me down into the cell underground, moderately spacious
 
 246 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 and immoderately dirty. As I stood there and thought of 
 the free men who had been thrust in there, and of their 
 sufferings and sorrows, my heart bled very fast. I re- 
 membered that though light had broken out here, there 
 were such courts and cells at Baltimore still occupied by 
 slaves. They were yet all over one half of our land, and 
 I could but pray that this great conflict might not cease 
 till each of them, like this, was occupied by the armies of 
 the Republic, and their former occupants were standing in 
 the fullness of their long-sought liberty.* 
 
 A RATIONAL BEAST AND His POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 A grove of handsome trees, tall grass, and a stirring 
 breeze are the accompaniments of this talk. I hope the 
 reader will find some traces of their presence lingering in 
 it, refreshing him with a vivacity not its own. 
 
 "As sunbeams stream through liberal space, 
 And nothing jostle or displace, 
 So waves the pine tree through my thought, 
 And fans the dreams it never brought." 
 
 Slaves are working just by me, and will give the letter 
 the flavor of the palmetto rather than the pine. One of 
 these "beasts" (they are as hard to name as the "t<au" 
 the Revelator saw, and which our translators did into that 
 wretched English) draws near me in his work. I bring 
 my thoughts back instantly from their wanderings, and 
 concentrate them on this central object to-day of all the 
 civilized world. 
 
 " You like slavery, don't you ? " 
 " No, sir ; who ever liked to be a slave ? " 
 " I've heard many say that you who were slaves pre- 
 ferred it to freedom." 
 
 * See Note IX.
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 247 
 
 " It isn't so ; I should like to be free. Everybody wants 
 to be." 
 
 " What do you want to be free for ? " 
 
 " What a queer question that is ! What does anybody 
 want to be free for ? " 
 
 " But you can't take care of yourself, if free, they toll me." 
 
 " Why not, sir ? We take care of ourselves now, and 
 make money for our masters. If we didn't, they would 
 wish us dead right quick." 
 
 Verily hath a " beast " discourse of reason. I was as 
 much amazed as Jacques, when, like me, he " met a fool in 
 the forest," and found before he got through with him that 
 he was himself the greater fool. 
 
 I am afraid I committed great treason by such conversation. 
 
 I, however, thus settled a very knotty question in natural 
 history that has long troubled the savans, namely, if the 
 lower orders of creation are endowed with the faculty of 
 reason. Not only was that problem solved, but a very im- 
 portant discovery was made, that they could talk readily, 
 and in as good English as the human, that is, the white, 
 race can, among whom they live. Some of them, no doubt, 
 may be taught to read and write, and acquire the more 
 recondite sciences, and even may learn to cultivate the 
 domestic feelings, filial, fraternal, parental, and conjugal, 
 and possibly, in rare cases, can be taught to pray and 
 preach, and make quite respectable Christian brutes. 
 
 I congratulate my Southern brethren on the wonderful 
 discovery they have made, that such an order of beings is 
 found among those creatures over whom God has given man 
 dominion. They have been a little too modest about pub- 
 lishing to the world their treasure. They are getting bravely 
 over this, however. Under the sacred inspirations of such 
 teachers as Dr. Smith, Professor Bledsoe, and as many other 
 prophets as gathered together once on a time at Mount 
 Carmel, they have become convinced that they should not
 
 248 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 i 
 only tell to the listening and astonished earth the wondrous 
 
 tale, but should fight with fire and sword every one who 
 will not accept their opinion for truth. 
 
 I am constrained to confirm this statement of theirs, 
 that they have a species of rational, feeling, Christian crea- 
 tures, which (I cannot say whom that pronoun belongs only 
 to the human race) they can and do treat precisely as they 
 do their horses and pigs, only the former do not have quite 
 so easy a time or quite so luxurious living as the latter. 
 I am sorry to add that they have not yet perceived the 
 capacity for development which these creatures possess, nor 
 the great variety of important uses to which they may be 
 applied. They ought to take a few lessons in Goodyear, 
 and see how he has worked his patent rubber into innumer- 
 able forms, and so work up their patent Negro to something 
 near his capacity. 
 
 Even my untutored eye discerns that it is susceptible of 
 immense improvement, and of employment in a myriad of 
 ways that will pay. Excuse that Yankee thought. I find 
 it is not totally unknown or disliked in this superior clime. 
 This " strange beast," that can think, and feel, and talk, 
 just like a human being, should not be confined to works 
 that a steam-plow and reaper, a mere ox or horse, can do 
 as well as he. lie could be trained, I am positive, to the 
 very highest of those labors by which we have to earn our 
 daily bread. Only apply the right kind of culture, arid give 
 him the right sort of feed, and he will relieve the divine 
 Caucasian of much of the drudgery which he has to under- 
 go, and which is so hard in this hot country, and so de- 
 grading to that dignified head of creation. 
 
 I have no doubt that a doctor could train this animal so 
 that he could diagnose as well as himself, and might be 
 sent on those long midnight journeys, and could be com- 
 pelled to go through those painful watchings by perilous 
 couches, which exhaust the good white physician. Sleeping
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 249 
 
 comfortably in his bed, lounging comfortably on his farm, 
 he could send this creature, after being Rareyfied in col- 
 leges literary and medical, on these laborious missions. 
 So the merchant might do his buying and selling, " shave " 
 and be " shaved " through his chattel personal, he mean- 
 while "loafing" sumptuously everyday. So the lawyer 
 could get up and get off his pleas ; the judge make up and 
 pronounce his decisions ; the sheriff execute his writs ; the 
 general drill his troops, and the troops themselves be drilled, 
 all by this admirable proxy. The editor could write those 
 splendid editorials on State-rights, and the superiority of 
 Southern statesmanship, society, religion, and civilization 
 generally, and never himself write a line or think a thought 
 on the inspiring themes. The legislator could decree and 
 the governor execute by the same medium. Even the min- 
 isters, the hardest worked of all male people, could be re- 
 lieved by using the gifts the gods provide. Wouldn't it be 
 nice to feel no nervousness creeping over you as Saturday 
 comes and finds you with no beaten oil of the sanctuary 
 wherewith to fill the pulpit lamps on the morrow ? Wouldn't 
 it be'pleasant to have the hot Sunday's sun rise upon you 
 with no premonitory sweat oozing out of your pores at the 
 thought of the work before you? All you have to do is 
 to select one of the purest blood of this breed, send him to 
 Randolph Macon, or Emory and Henry, where they know 
 how to treat and train them, and then at every conference 
 the itinerant rides away to his appointment with or on his 
 factotum (they ride on them in Dahomey), sets him to 
 studying, writing, preaching, visiting (the religious sort), 
 all for his board and clothes, just what it costs to keep 
 his horse, feed and harness. 
 
 If they wish for a specimen of the extraordinary devel- 
 opment this creature can reach, who is a full proof of the 
 feasibility of my plan, I can bring to Maryland one of this 
 " kind," that was born and trained on her soil, and under
 
 250 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 the blessed influence of this benign institution, which not 
 one of her ministers dares say is sinful, and many say is 
 right. This Maryland animal has been trained partly under 
 less favorable influences of freedom and equality, and hence 
 is not as advanced as he would have been had he staid in 
 the holy ordinance of slavery. Yet, despite this defect, he 
 can as far surpass the greatest of the human orators of this 
 State in art, pathos, reason, dramatic power, and all the 
 other qualities that sweep an audience, as the white man 
 by nature surpasses the black something. They should get 
 this fine specimen of the capacities of their slave creature, 
 and sh.ow it off in the Maryland Institute. The name of 
 this excellent proof of the possibilities of slavery and 
 Africa, is Frederic Douglass. 
 
 But I am getting enthusiastic. " The swelling theme " 
 makes the style swollen. I can only say with Hosea Big- 
 low on a like occasion, 
 
 " Forgive me, my friends, if I seem to be het; 
 But a subject like this must with vigor be met." 
 
 I reluctantly abandon the enticing topic, only request- 
 ing that if, like Archimedes, Pliny, Ledyard, and many 
 such, I perish through my too great desire to enlarge the 
 bounds of human knowledge, I shall be held for a brief 
 season in moderately grateful remembrance by my friends 
 in this region for these discoveries and suggestions. 
 
 I have talked in the " Hercles vein," not because it is 
 the only vein that bleeds to-day. Bielow the titillation of 
 the surface flow swift and strong the deep currents of 
 sympathy for those in this bounteous land who are bereft 
 of all bounties. How plainly do I hear in this quiet wood, 
 far from the noise of camp and street, 
 
 " The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power 
 To chasten and subdue."
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 251 
 
 ARLINGTON WHEN FIRST CAPTURED. 
 
 From the gateway of General Lee's grounds the road 
 soon enters a magnificent grove, as wild and massy as a 
 White Mountain forest ; though, unlike that, the ground is 
 clear of underbrush, so that one can take in at a glance 
 large spaces of the grand scenery. How cool and delight- 
 ful is the change from the hot and dusty street to this 
 charming forest ! 
 
 The soldiers of the New York Eighth dapper, small, 
 and smart as are New York City soldiers are scattered 
 here and there along the road, lying on logs or stretched 
 beside their tents. They give a novel and yet already 
 familiar aspect to the scene. Winding up through this 
 landscape and woodscape for a mile or so, we reached the 
 broad summit where the house stands. Trees filled the 
 large and level space close up to the house. In among the 
 trees stands the main body of the tents of the regiment. 
 The house is a spacious brick mansion, old-fashioned, gloomy, 
 and decidedly seedy. Great pillars, large enough for a 
 building thrice its size, support a portico. Before this the 
 lawn rolls down over a score or so of acres to the woods 
 that engirt it. Beyond lies the placid Potomac, and be- 
 yond that the more placid Capitol, glittering in the western 
 sun as brightly as though no traitor's eye had ever looked 
 on it from this spot enviously and murderously. Entering 
 the house you find the old-fashioned look of the outside 
 intensified. It seems to have none of the modern con- 
 veniences which the humblest cottages of .the North enjoy. 
 Fitted out elegantly two or three generations ago, it looks 
 as much out of place as the 'perfect "one-horse shay" 
 among the fancy turn-outs of Central Park. " 'Tis sixty 
 years since," seems written over everything. High-back 
 chairs, high-post bedsteads, antique and very ordinary pic-
 
 252 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 tures, stag antlers, and many other venerable institutions, 
 show that it is an heir-loom, and not of the living present. 
 Northern houses of this sort do riot disdain the modern 
 comforts and conveniences. Gas and water can flow be- 
 tween old timbers as well as new. Modern chairs mix in 
 with the ancient as children with old folks. But the pride 
 of the real, Simon-pure, no-mistake Tom Thumbs, who style 
 themselves F. F. V.'s, is to have everything old. Even the 
 children here are probably born a hundred years old. Either 
 pride or poverty, perhaps both, keeps the house in such a 
 moldy state. Going to the rear, you notice the inevitable 
 negro quarters, detached wings running from each end of 
 the house, and, as I have noticed in Maryland, half way 
 between the mansion and the stables. These buildings are 
 large enough to accommodate, cattle fashion, quite a num- 
 ber of head. General Lee not being at home, I leave my 
 card with his servants. 
 
 An old gray-headed negro, dressed in a neat black suit, 
 sat on one of the door-sills. I looked in, and found a cellar 
 some six feet deep, into which some broken steps descended. 
 I asked him if those were his quarters. He replied in the 
 affirmative. 
 
 " Had you no floor ? " 
 
 " Yes, I had one, but the rats troubled me so I took 
 it up." 
 
 " How long have you lived here ? " 
 
 " Several years." 
 
 " Alone ? " 
 
 " Since my wife died." 
 
 " Do you find it comfortable down there ? " 
 
 " 0, yes, pretty comfortable." 
 
 I looked down. There was an excuse for a bed in one 
 corner, an old broken bit of a stove, a little table with a 
 dish or two, candle-ends, etc., on it, a broken chair, an ax, 
 a billet or two of wood, and the common earthen floor of
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 253 
 
 a cellar ; high up out of reach was a dirty window. Here 
 was another proof of the old-fashioned notions that rule 
 this region. An old man of nearly if not more than four- 
 score years, modest, neat, courteous, living in a cellar, and 
 in as much worse condition as any pauper I ever saw as a 
 pauper's is worse than a prince's. My ears have been 
 stuffed since I came here with the superior condition of the 
 slaves to the free blacks. I have visited two of the grand- 
 est estates of this region, the Carrollton Manor and Arling- 
 ton Heights. I have entered more than one of the free 
 blacks' humble cottages, and I must say my eyes saw only 
 filth and misery in the one, in the other neatness, self-respect, 
 poverty, but pride also ; yes, good reader, pride ! Why 
 shouldn't these scions of a mighty race have some of their 
 haughty fathers' feelings ? I entered one of the hum- 
 blest of these huts near the Eelay. The floor was as 
 white as a Dutch dame's the morning after washing-day. 
 Near the door stood an old trunk, the gift, probably, of 
 some primeval mistress, perhaps Noah's wife's to Ca- 
 naan's, her granddaughter-in-law, and the first female slave. 
 ( Vide Dr. Smith and other very learned pro-slavery com- 
 mentators, passim.} I never saw a cleaner house than that 
 humble Christian's. The yard was swept as nice as the 
 floor. Yet her husband had been a slave, and was then of 
 that poor, despised company of free blacks whom so many 
 here are ready to lift up their heel against. I have seen 
 no slaves' quarters to compare with these bits of free soil. 
 
 I left the old man so tenderly cared for by those whom 
 he has served so long, after commending him to Him who 
 was as despised and rejected of men, and who had not even 
 a damp cellar wherein to lay His head. Crossing to the 
 opposite buildings, I saw a comely quadroon or octoroon 
 washing. The floor was on her room, and half a dozen 
 lively chattels on the floor. The breed is rather interesting 
 in its adolescent state. Young lambs, and pigs, and dogs,
 
 254 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 and kittens have long been favorites of the farm. I don't 
 think any of them superior to the younglings of this species 
 of property. I found myself enjoying the gambols of these 
 brown lambkins. It is really a fine-looking creature. Curly 
 locks, quite too long for a lamb's or a negro's ; large, laugh- 
 ing eyes ; brown but well-cut features, much more closely 
 resembling a Caucasian's than the ape's or gorilla's, to which 
 they are said to be allied ; fine-turned legs, and neat little 
 feet, whose hollow did not make a very great hole in the 
 ground, as they went capering about the house and the 
 yard, these are some of the characteristics of this king 
 of beasts. 
 
 I asked the mother (dam perhaps I ought to say; ma-dam 
 somebody will some time say), " Who do you belong to ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Lee." 
 
 " Are you a member of the Church ? " 
 
 " Yes, the Baptist." 
 
 " How many children have you ? " (Pardon me for using 
 the word children. She talked and acted so much like a 
 Christian mother I didn't like to say " young ones.") 
 
 " Seven." 
 
 " Do you expect to be free ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir ; in about a year our time is up." 
 ' Do you want to be free ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, I do." 
 
 " What for ? " 
 
 " Because I do." 
 
 Didn't that reason show the woman as much as the ba- 
 booness? Not being acquainted with the latter' s method of 
 reasoning, I cannot be sure, but it struck me as a very famil- 
 iar and conclusive answer. I bade her good by, a thing I 
 never did a Northern animal, and threw some parting smiles 
 at the jolly little contrabands who are to be transformed in 
 a year or so from creatures that are appointed as meat for 
 man (Genesis ix. 3) into beings made in the likeness of God.
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 255 
 
 A VERY TENDER CONSCIENCE. 
 
 A gentleman in our neighborhood supplied some of the 
 officers' tables with milk. When Sunday came no milk 
 came. Upon inquiry it was found that he had conscientious 
 scruples about sending them milk that day. As they had 
 no ice, and hence must be left destitute of this agreeable 
 addition to the liquid distillment which the cooks called 
 coffee, he finally relented and sent the milk, but would take 
 no pay for it, at least on that day. Yet this gentleman 
 was a secessionist, a slaveholder, and had secured a valuable 
 arid beautiful estate, I understood, chiefly through the sale 
 of human flesh. On one occasion it was said, thaf having 
 received some thirty-four " head " (the very word I have 
 heard used in speaking of slaves) of this stock as a marriage 
 dowry, what a gift to crown those sweet and sacred 
 bonds ! he sold thirty of them. Were the King of Daho- 
 mey's funeral sacrifices much more horrible in the sight of 
 God than the agonies which graced this Christian wedding 
 festival ? 
 
 Having coined their blood to drachmas, he moved hither 
 with his fair bride and her remaining body-guard, and in- 
 vested the drachmas, the price of innocent blood, in a beau- 
 tiful farm. Is not this the Potter's Field which these many 
 times thirty pieces of silver purchased ? 
 
 As an offset to this slave-trading, I ought to set another 
 fact in his history of late occurrence, in which he refused 
 to sell a slave. Some of our brethren hereabout, and yon- 
 about, too, for the matter of that, lay much stress on the 
 fact that our slaveholding brethren never sell their slaves. 
 Let me show how this virtue is illustrated in the life of my 
 hero. A short time since, a free- colored man from the 
 South, I think from South Carolina, whose wife and children 
 were the "property" of this gentleman, came here to see
 
 256 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 him. Whether invited, or whether a fugitive from Sccessia, 
 I know not. He is said to be a man of property, and was 
 anxious to invest this property in his family. The wife be- 
 ing old, and lame, and fleshy, and otherwise of no great pe- 
 cuniary advantage to her " owner," was graciously and 
 freely given to her liege lord ; though I understand no free 
 papers were given her, so as to make the deed of gift of any 
 real value. But her daughter, the only child left, a good- 
 looking girl of sweet sixteen, he would not sell to her own 
 father. The father offered thirteen hundred dollars for his 
 daughter, but was refused. 
 
 Will not that do for a modern illustration of the ancient 
 gnat and camel text ? A man who would not sell milk on 
 Sundays, and would not sell a father his own daughter, 
 would sell a score or two of his brothers and sisters into 
 hopeless bondage, and with their blood and bones live in 
 elegance and abundance ! Did he not strain at a gnat and 
 swallow a whole herd of camels ? What if I should cap the 
 climax of this narrative by telling you that this conscien- 
 tious soul-trader and soul-holder is a minister of our Lord 
 and Savior Jesus Christ ? It is even so. He is the elected 
 guide and guardian of the morals and piety of a very influ- 
 ential portion of this community ; and what is most aston- 
 ishing is, that not the least objection is even thought of be- 
 cause of this conduct. I heard of some ladies who refused 
 to attend on his worship because he was a secessionist. I 
 heard others complain that he was too convivial in his hab- 
 its ; but I heard nobody find any fault with him for holding, 
 selling, or refusing to sell, these children of a common Fa- 
 ther, brothers and sisters of a common Savior. 
 
 I looked often at his tasty chapel, but could not make up 
 my mind to desecrate the Sabbath by attending upon his 
 ministrations. But happening to be at a quarterly confer- 
 ence of our own spotless and wrinklelcss Church, where two 
 slaveholders were nominated by the preacher in charge for
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 257 
 
 stewards, and elected unanimously, without so much as an 
 "affectionate admonition" from the excellent presiding el- 
 der, I thought 1 was myself getting into the gnat-straining 
 condition by over-scrupulousness. So I concluded, being 
 with the Romans, to do as they did, and see how near this 
 worthy rector and I came to worshiping the same God. 
 
 Do you want to know how he looked and spoke ? De- 
 scriptions of such persons will be curiosities of literature 
 eagerly perused by future generations. This was a true 
 successor of the apostles. No broken chain of descent was 
 his, joined together by martyrial hands, and, perchance, by 
 those of laymen even, often completely sundered, or united 
 only by that unseen, and hence, for ecclesiastical purposes, 
 useless Spirit of God, that carried the Church into the wil- 
 derness and supported her there. No ; the bright links, 
 clear and defined, and often of the finest gold, as, for in- 
 stance, Alexander Borgia, Joan, Leo X., Laud, and a host 
 of others, of whom not this world nor any other was worthy, 
 glittered in the chain that bound this servant to his Master. 
 
 You expect a hard-featured, hard-voiced, hard-mannered 
 man, with tones like the snapping of a slave-whip, and the 
 manners of Haley and Legree combined. You don't under- 
 stand human nature. So many paint Nero, who was really 
 the most elegant gentleman of his age. We must remem- 
 ber that only in the other world does the inner nature body 
 forth itself in the outer form. Here the reverse is apt to 
 be true. The finest natures are hidden in the least expres- 
 sible forms, and the vilest are not unfrequently, like Burr, 
 and Goethe's Mephistophiles, witty, wise, and polished, hand- 
 some, gay, and sober, a perfect man in the worldly sense 
 of perfection. 
 
 The preacher aforesaid is a middle-aged, gray, and bald- 
 headed gentleman, of pleasant address, with a quiet, gentle, 
 soft, pathetic tone and manner. I never heard the service 
 read so beautifully. It had a melting cadence that glided 
 11
 
 258 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 into your secret heart. There was none of the hard and 
 formal style of the mere reader, none of the airs of the rhet- 
 orician ; but a subdued grace, yet full of life, that was very 
 fascinating. With the constant undertone of my whole moral 
 being conflicting with the sounds that met my car, I could 
 not but feel, as he read it, a newer and richer quality in that 
 admirable service. Yet how some of the sentences he read 
 startled me! I could but think of the medieval legend 
 of the wonderful preacher, who, arrayed in black vestments, 
 swept his audience with most pathetic and powerful appeals, 
 and after he had left them they found it was the archfiend 
 himself that had been thus lifting them to heaven. These 
 were some of the solemn phrases that thrilled me so strange- 
 ly, while he plaintively uttered them and I fervently followed 
 him: "We sinners do beseech thee to hear us, Lord God; 
 and that it may please thee to show thy pity upon all pris- 
 oners and captives ; that it may please thee to defend and 
 provide for the fatherless children and widows, and all that 
 are desolate and oppressed. God, merciful Father, that 
 despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire 
 of such as are sorrowful, mercifully assist our prayers that 
 we make before thee, in all our troubles and adversities, 
 whensoever they oppress us, and graciously hear us, that 
 those evils which the craft and subtilty of the devil gr man 
 worketh against us may be brought to naught ; that thy 
 servants, being hurt by no persecutions, may evermore give 
 thanks unto thee in thy holy Church, through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord." The psalms for the day were cxliv., cxlv., cxlvi. 
 In them he read these words : " Save me and deliver me 
 from the hand of strange children, whose mouth talketh van- 
 ity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity. . . . That 
 there be jio leading into captivity, and no complaining in 
 our streets. . . . The Lord loose th men out of prison. The 
 Lord helpeth them that are fallen. As for the way of the 
 ungodly, he turncth it upside down."
 
 SLAVERY DYING. 259 
 
 His sermon was a practical discourse on a Christian's tri- 
 als, and the comforts which, through the Spirit, he could 
 extract from them. But I was preaching a good many ser- 
 mons during this part of the service. I was asking, " Does 
 he bring his bond-servants around him for daily prayer and 
 religious instruction ? Why are they not here at church 
 with him ? Does he ever go to the poor little chapel to 
 which the wicked pride of the community exiles them and 
 their kindred, and there comfort them with such readings 
 and such discourses as these ? " Especially I was anxious 
 to preach a short sermon to him on the text that was printed 
 around the stained window in the chancel : " Repent ye ! 
 for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." I presume I should 
 have shocked the audience more than the rude Baptist did 
 his hearers if I had read that third chapter of Matthew, and 
 given its needed and divine application. I could not keep 
 my eyes off that text. I thought it is not possible for this 
 congregation to worship here and be .unmindful of its mean- 
 ing. Yet I was probably the only person that ever saw it 
 that read it in this true and solemn light. Thank God, the 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand. These troops, as those that 
 gathered round John, are unconsciously, and many of them 
 unwillingly, assisting in ushering it in. 
 
 The march of events in the political, the religious, the 
 social world, all show that He is soon to appear who will 
 unloose these heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go free, 
 and break every yoke. His fan is in his hand, and lie will 
 thoroughly purge His floor. How glorious He appears in 
 this apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength! As 
 the Liberator of His enslaved children He shines forth upon 
 foes and formalists of this land of promise. His shoe-latchet, 
 not only His most earnest advocates and forerunners, but 
 much more these proud transgressors, are unworthy to stoop 
 down and unloose. Blessed is He that cometh in the name 
 of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest !
 
 260 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 That tenderness of conscience which I have not spoken of 
 as wrong in itself, but only strange in contrast with the hard- 
 ness of the same conscience in other and infinitely more im- 
 portant matters, that evident apprehension of the spiritual 
 significance of the word of God and of prayer, I can but 
 think, show that in him yet live the germs of a divine life. 
 May these germs burst the rocky soil of the hideous sin 
 which now encases them, and blossom into beautiful and 
 fruitful life. May he soon say to that congregation, but a 
 very few of whom are partakers of that sin by actual slave- 
 holding, and some of whom I know shrink from it as imper- 
 iling their own salvation, may he say to them, "I have re- 
 pented ; I have brought forth works meet for repentance. 
 I have laid the ax at the root of the tree. I give my slaves 
 their liberty. I give them education, respectability, and, so 
 far as I can by precept and example, I give them the grace 
 which my Savior has given to me." What rejoicing will bo 
 in that Church, in that neighborhood, in this State, when 
 he, or one like him, shall thus stand up for Jesus, and shall 
 proclaim by act, as well as word, that the great and accept- 
 able day of the Lord has here come.
 
 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 III. PROFIT AND LOSS AFTER BULL RUN. 
 
 BALTIMORE, Wednesday, July 24. 
 
 # 
 
 N a straw pallet, spread on a few rough, wet boards, 
 lying loosely over the grassy ground, under leaky 
 canvas, in the generally damp and sticky atmos- 
 phere of a tent in a shower, I am writing my last 
 letter from the seat of war. A bit of candle, dimly burning, 
 stuck in a tin cup, standing on the end of a valise, acts as 
 a gas-burner. One of the private soldiers lies stretched in 
 his blanket near me asleep, dreaming of the home he is 
 hoping so soon to see. Round about are the odds and ends 
 of a camp-tent, such as everybody ought to see, for at least 
 one week in a year. But a sword hanging on the rear pole, 
 and a musket or two on the floor, with haversacks, knap- 
 sacks, fatigue-caps, huge gray blankets, and sundry other 
 military knickknacks, give the spot a little more of the Church 
 militant air than it has in those heavenly seats. 
 
 Stereoscopic pictures are popular; and a true stereoscope 
 delights in the little homely everj^-day nothings that make 
 up our every-day life. So this last look of your correspon- 
 dent may not be out of place, as he sits d la Turk, with his 
 
 (261)
 
 262 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 paper on his knee, in the only silent hours of a camp clay, 
 those that are close on to midnight, bringing to an end his 
 long discourses, to which some readers may have given, he 
 trusts, an attent ear. 
 
 The Monday when the tidings of our reverses came in 
 was dark and rainy, but the news was far darker than the 
 day. The copperheads seemed to think that the sky was 
 wonderfully clear and warm, and were sunning themselves in 
 great crowds at the corners where the secession papers, the 
 Sun, Exchange, and South, are published. The poison of asps 
 was under and upon their lips. Their mouths were full of 
 cursing and bitterness, and their feet would have been swift 
 to shed blood, had it not been for the military power, which 
 measurably awed them. 
 
 How changeable are the affairs of this world ! Sunday 
 was the happiestf, day Washington has ever known ; Monday 
 the saddest. Light was on every Union countenance here. 
 The forces of the nation were moving swiftly to the desired 
 goal. The enemy fled before them. Many prophets were 
 crying, " Within forty days and secession shall be over- 
 thrown." Suddenly the cry comes, "We are retreating; we 
 are defeated ; we are annihilated." Beauregard will be in 
 Washington by midnight. So swift treads sorrow on the 
 heels of joy. Everybody gave up everything as lost. The 
 secessionists declared, and the Unionists half believed, that 
 Lincoln would make another secret flight through Baltimore. 
 Extra guards were set around the camps, and a thoroughly 
 stormy and gloomy night set down on the homes and hearts 
 of all this region. 
 
 But the morning cometh, if also the night, and the gray 
 light of a new dawn began to glimmer around the great dis- 
 aster. We began to hear courageous words from soldiers 
 and civilians. One Baltimore man said he could march up 
 to a masked battery ; another, that he must certainly shoulder 
 his musket; another was entreating General Banks to supply
 
 PKOFIT AND LOSS AFTER BULL RUN. 263 
 
 the Union men with arms. They boldly withstood the se- 
 cessionists around their own newspaper batteries, no longer 
 masked, and defended the cause of the nation in her houj 
 of peril. The soldiers were equally cheerful. Their home- 
 sickness disappeared in a moment. They were ready to 
 march to Virginia. I saw some of the Wisconsin troops on 
 Tuesday morning. " Where are you going ? " I asked. 
 " To Richmond or to death," was the reply. This rallying 
 and strengthening of spirits was one of the gleams of light. 
 
 A great disaster has befallen the national cause. What 
 is it, and what are its consequences ? Has it left us worse 
 or better than we were when this correspondence began ? 
 Have we made any positive advance in the past three months ? 
 Shall we succeed ? If not, what then ? Much had been 
 done. When the national troops began to pour through 
 this city and State, three months ago, the capital was in the 
 greatest peril. No fortifications, no troops, no preparations 
 for defense. The enemy were at Harper's Ferry, Alexan- 
 dria, and in Baltimore. Insolent, and flushed with Sumter 
 victories, they boasted that the Capitol should be desecrated 
 with their flag before the first of May. Maryland was in 
 the hands of the mob. The bridges were burned, and the 
 secession legislature was called together. The AVest was 
 as weak and undefended as the East. 
 
 Now we have strong, well-armed, and occupied forts on 
 the heights of Arlington and Alexandria. We have driven 
 the enemy from Missouri and Western Virginia. We have 
 put down insurrection in Baltimore, and banished all armed 
 opposition from the borders of the State. We have the 
 capital safe. We have expelled the foe from Harper's 
 Ferry. We have raised and equipped an immense army, won 
 many victories, and for a time filled the rebels with fear and 
 despair. We have developed a military spirit of the grand- 
 est and deepest fervor, and, not least, have completely swept 
 from the land that silly ostrich of a non-coercionist. Why,
 
 264 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 I was up in Harford County yesterday, and heard some 
 goodish country farmers say they were not secessionists and 
 not coercionists. I looked on them as I would on pre-Adam- 
 ite fossils ; they seemed almost as historic and venerable 
 as the bits of bricks which mark the pleasant site of Cokes- 
 bury College. When I heard that same ancient doctrine 
 earnestly advocated by a gentleman of that rural district, 
 whose clever discourse has a nipping and an eager air, I 
 could not but think of Scott's Antiquary, and such Dryas- 
 dust Old Mortalities, so long has that once powerful humbug- 
 been gathered to its fathers. Yet, three months ago, no 
 April ephemeron buzzed more conceitedly and authoritatively. 
 We have to grow by degrees in any knowledge, pleasant 
 or painful. The threats of disunion it was never supposed 
 would be carried out. Our duty to God and liberty com- 
 pelled us to put those threats to the test. The secession 
 of South Carolina dissipated our dreams as to the fanciful 
 character of the long-threatened dissolution. It became a 
 political reality. "It will not be general," said we. Virginia 
 proved that an error. "It will not really assume a military 
 and aggressive form." Sumter settled that question. "But a 
 great uprising, a great military armament, a great expres- 
 sion of the determination of the government to maintain 
 itself will scatter the armed and ferocious mob." Missouri 
 and Western Virginia seemed to prove this theory true. 
 But Bull Run has made it thin air. We .see that the police 
 service is no longer to be the legitimate business of the 
 government. It will have to light, to light desperately, per- 
 chance for its very existence. We have risen to the obli- 
 gations of previous hours. Shall we to those that are now 
 being laid upon us ? The people will. The government, 
 civil and military, must. The deadly struggle is coming 
 upon us. It will slay as many reputations as men. If the 
 officers of the State and the army are not equal to the crisis, 
 they must give way to those who are.
 
 PKOFIT AND LOSS AFTER BULL RUN. 265 
 
 Be assured the people will not give over this effort to de- 
 liver themselves from an infamous thralldom without a strug- 
 gle infinitely surpassing that of the last century. And be 
 assured, too, that in this struggle the primal cause and curse 
 will be throttled to death. A feud of nearly two hundred 
 and fifty years' standing is being settled to-day. If the 
 war holds on for a twelvemonth it will have only one phase. 
 Everything else will be swept away, and one feeling fill 
 every heart. Shall the slave power on this continent be 
 supreme, orbe utterly blotted out? Two hundred and forty 
 years ago the seed was sown. At Jamestown a load of 
 negro slaves was landed, at Plymouth a band of Christian 
 pilgrims. Within a few years of that date, when the busi- 
 ness had become brisk in Virginia, the Dutch slave-traders 
 thought they would test the cupidity of the Puritans, and a 
 cargo entered Boston Harbor. It was refused a landing 
 and driven from the province. Then was the seed sown out 
 of which this bloody harvest is being reaped. 
 
 The slave power has always ruled the continent. It ruled 
 the colonies, it ruled the British cabinets as long as we were 
 colonies ; it was no small element in causing the Revolu- 
 tion, as Jefferson said in his Declaration. The Revolution 
 was fought in the interests of freedom, and against the real 
 slave power, which was intensely Tory. Hence all the Rev- 
 olutionary patriots were abolitionists. But, the battle won, 
 slavery again asserted its supremacy, and soon won it. The 
 Constitution recognized it. Washington signed a fugitive 
 slave bill, and Jefferson annexed Louisiana in its interest. 
 It caused the war of 1812, the war with Mexico, and the 
 present war. It is met to-day on its own merits. Our 
 statesmen do not yet avow it, but they feel it. We may 
 have to fight for political existence, for personal liberty even. 
 Any treaty of peace now made would leave us colonies, de- 
 spised more than their lowest slaves. We may have to hear 
 our Patrick Henrys, Otises, Adamses, and Warrens, sum-
 
 266 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 moning us to the last fight for our liberties. If so, no 
 quarter will be shown to slavery. That or we must die. 
 As to the result there can be no doubt. If our fathers, 
 weak and few, and scattered over an immense territory, 
 drove out the proudest and strongest nation in the world, 
 because of v mere political disfranchisement, we shall trample 
 under our feet the accursed system that would rob us of 
 honor, liberty, and life itself. We are face to face with 
 savages, with devils. The first-born of Satan is at our 
 throats. Shapes hot from hell rush upon our araiies. "We 
 take no prisoners " is their motto. A soldier, I was told, 
 in the late battle dragged some half dozen wounded com- 
 rades to a ravine and fountain, where he was tending them. 
 While thus engaged a company of rebels came up and he 
 escaped. But every wounded soldier was bayoneted. 
 
 Be not astonished at these things. The system they are 
 defending surpasses in iniquity any on the face of the earth. 
 What can it breed but hell-hounds ? And yet but yester- 
 day, on the blessed Sabbath, I could not make a good old 
 Baltimore conference brother confess that slavery was sin- 
 ful. Nay, he expressly and emphatically denied it. 
 
 " O wisdom, thou art fled to brutish beasts, 
 And men have lost their reason." 
 
 This event will preeminently teach us our dependence on 
 God. We had begun to have too much confidence in our- 
 selves. We thought the enemy was flying so steadily and 
 universally, that the affair was to close without any especial 
 humiliation before God ; but we are brought to our senses. 
 We shall have to call upon Him from whom alone cometh 
 salvation. Unless He goes forth with us, we march in vain. 
 Let the Church cry unto God, cry mightily, cry earnestly. 
 Thus, and thus alone, shall the nation conquer. 
 
 Again, this repulse was needed to bring about the only 
 object to which this war must tend, in which it must be
 
 PKOFIT AND LOSS AFTER BULL RUN. 267 
 
 consummated, if it be really successful. Had we marched 
 easily and triumphantly to Richmond, we should have had 
 an armistice and terms of re-union, which would have left 
 Slavery in full power ; slightly shorn of his locks, yet soon 
 to have them grow again. Repulses and defeats strengthen 
 a good, ruin a bad, cause. The object of God is to liberate 
 these children of His, who have cried day and night unto 
 Him for these many generations. Every defeat brings out 
 this purpose the more clearly. The action of Congress to- 
 day was bolder than it has ever been. It will grow in cour- 
 age as disaster grows upon us. The defeat at Bunker's Hill 
 paved the way to the Declaration. The defeat next year at 
 Long Island only invigorated the spirits and nerved the arm 
 of the people. 
 
 So will it be now. The ferocity, the inhumanity, the 
 fiendishness of our foes, will only make us say that the cause 
 that changes them to devils shall be extirpated. We shall 
 advance to Senator Trumbull's position, and declare slavery 
 abolished in the revolting States. I heard a Maryland gen- 
 tleman say but yesterday, that he wished the government 
 would issue that decree immediately. It will be issued if 
 the war is prolonged. Let it go forward. What is your 
 poverty, what, indeed, is the agony now rending a great 
 multitude of Rachels, North and South, compared with the 
 poverty and distress of the hundreds of thousands, of the 
 millions upon millions, of God's dear children, in this fail- 
 land, for these centuries of bondage ! The cup is being 
 commended to our own lips of which they have drank so 
 constantly and so deeply. They were despised and rejected 
 of men, men of sorrows, and acquainted with griefs. We 
 hid, as it were, our faces from them. They were despised, 
 and we esteemed them not. In my intercourse here I have 
 heard frequent and bitter denunciations of their brethren 
 and sisters, from the lips of elegant and excellent Christian 
 ladies. I have heard some such inhuman utterances by
 
 268 LETTERS FROM CAMP. 
 
 Massachusetts and New York ladies, but they had nothing 
 of the ferocious intensity of contempt and hatred which 
 marked these speakers. I could easily see how the seces- 
 sion feeling rages the hottest with the female part of the 
 community, from Baltimore to New Orleans, when I heard 
 the modest lips of godly matrons so full of ungodly speeches 
 concerning their colored neighbors. All the Baltimore ladies 
 are not like those above mentioned. Some of the most ten- 
 der-hearted that I have ever known are here, showing their 
 religion by their treatment of the degraded class among 
 whom their lot is cast. 
 
 Let the fact teach us that He who made us of one blood 
 is leading this nation, stuffed with pride and insolence, into 
 the fires that shall humiliate and purify. These thoughtless, 
 cruel-hearted mothers, and wives, and sisters shall bleed 
 and cry, and come down from their seats of pride, and, 
 like the desolated Egyptian haughtinesses of old, shall sit 
 down in the dust beside their despised bondwomen, and seek 
 for comfort from these long-suffering, and hence deep-expe- 
 rienced, souls. 
 
 This is some of the sweet juice the bruised reed of pride 
 and hope yields to your taste. Is it unpalatable ? Wait 
 till the sorrow is yet sharper, and you may find your taste 
 purged to apprehend its chaste and spiritual refreshment.
 
 THE DAT DAWNS: 
 
 "THE YEAR OF MY REDEEMED IS COME." Isaidh Ixiii. 4. 
 
 REAT. events are sometimes ushered into being 
 with thunders and earthquakings ; sometimes with 
 the still small voice unheard of men. It is true 
 that the kingdom of God cometh not with obser- 
 vation ; yet in some of the chief movements of that kingdom 
 to its ultimate and universal sovereignty, there is the utmost 
 observation, and its final consummation will be accompanied 
 with inconceivable pomp and glory. Both of these modes 
 of manifestation have been connected with the coming of 
 the kingdom of God in the work of emancipation in America. 
 The message which but yesterday flew through all the 
 land, and is already leaping over all seas, is one of the great 
 epochs of that divine movement. The rising waves of lib- 
 erty lap the throne of national sovereignty. He who but a 
 year ago, in most careful terms, promised the protection of 
 the national arm to the Satanic institution, now declares 
 that it must gather up its feet to die. 
 
 We may well exult over such a proclamation. It will 
 cause rejoicings in the hut of the slave, in the palaces of 
 
 * A sermon preached in the Clinton Street Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, Newark, N. J., Sunday, March 9, 18G2. See Note X. 
 
 (269)
 
 270 THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 the princes, in the courts of heaven. If one could res- 
 cue a brute creature from the pit on the Sabbath day, and 
 rejoice over its deliverance, much more can we over the fast 
 speeding salvation of these children of our common Father, 
 brothers and sisters of our common Savior, the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 I. Let us notice the prominent steps in the eventful his- 
 tory of this great reformation. 
 
 It started without observation. 
 
 Thirty years ago the whole nation lay dead and buried 
 in the grave of slavery. The long struggle of the fathers 
 had not prevailed against the evil. Jefferson had written 
 against it ; Washington had labored to abolish it ; Franklin, 
 the President of the first Abolition Society in America, and 
 in the world, and the first petitioner to Congress, the first 
 to any legislative body for the abolition of slavery, had died 
 an abolitionist, but with his desire unaccomplished. The 
 Presbyterian Church, after passing strong resolutions against 
 the sin, had gone to sleep in its arms. The Methodist 
 Church, after having labored, through such great foes of 
 slavery as Wesley, and Coke, and Asbury, to extirpate it 
 from her fold and from the land, after having emancipated 
 forty thousand bondmen in Maryland had given over the 
 effort, and was in the complete control of the slaveholding, 
 slave-trading ministers and members of the Gulf States. 
 Statesmen, having vainly struggled to keep the hydra-headed 
 Bai'barism from crossing the Mississippi, had yielded Arkan- 
 sas and Missouri to its sway, and retired, weary and dis- 
 heartened, from the great conflict, and were busy in the 
 little and forgotten rivalries of the hour. Massachusetts, 
 Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, New 
 Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island had abolished it in 
 their limits, not by selling its victims South, as some of 
 their own children ignorantly or irreverently affirm, but by 
 liberating them on the spot, and from motives of conscience
 
 FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 271 
 
 alone. But the great movement had paused in its march. 
 An imaginary line was the nominal barrier; the mighty power 
 of the Iniquity was the real barrier. The broad waves of 
 freedom that had rolled to Mason and Dixon's line had been 
 stayed, and a reflex tide of paralysis, of compromise, of 
 complicity, set back upon us from that sea of death. All 
 parties, all seats, all persons were submerged in its waves. 
 The Samson of Liberty lay bound and shorn, and sleeping 
 in the lap of the Delilah of Slavery. Then came there forth 
 from an unknown quarter, in the city of Boston, a solitary 
 beam of light, kindled from the embers of the abolitionism 
 of the fathers, deep covered though they were with the 
 cold ashes of silence and servility. 
 
 " It smote the dark with uncongenial ray." 
 
 A few souls saw the light and followed it, as the wise 
 men did the star, unseen of the worldly and the wicked. It 
 led them to a small upper room, where, among his scanty 
 types, sat a young Quaker, who had lately been driven out 
 of Baltimore, and who was weekly proclaiming through his 
 little sheet the duty of immediate and unconditional eman- 
 cipation the very duty which Asbury and Garretson, and 
 the Methodists of Baltimore, had proclaimed in that city 
 forty years before. The darkness soon felt the light, and 
 rose and raged around him. Ere many days, the men of 
 wealth and standing of that city broke into a female prayer 
 meeting, seized this brave and truth-telling young man, 
 dragged him by a rope through, the streets, with a mob 
 howling for his life. He was rescued from destruction only 
 by the strong arm of municipal authority, and the strong 
 walls of a dungeon. From that hour to this, now in ob- 
 scurity, now in the sight of all men, this Kingdom of God 
 has been advancing. It brought men one by one into its 
 service. Then single churches came, and from solitary 
 altars the pure flame of the Shekinah of God's universal,
 
 272 THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 impartial, life-giving and liberty-giving love shone forth. 
 Then it organized itself into associations and parties, had 
 internal conflicts, as Peter and Pa'ul had, and separations, as 
 Paul and Barnabas had, and errors crept into portions of it. 
 as into the Church at Corinth and Galatia. But it sloughed 
 oif the errors, and rose in increasing beauty and majesty. 
 Then it gained the mastery over States, and finally has 
 placed itself substantially in the supreme seat of authority. 
 Meantime the counter elements were none the less active. 
 They made the rulers submit to them. The organized forces, 
 religious and secular, had taken no side, directly, with the 
 oppressed, and so were swept into the grasp of the op- 
 pressor. They declared, through a President, that the 
 mails, over more than half of our territory, should bear no 
 message favorable to human freedom. They declared, 
 through a Secretary of State, that Slavery was the Corner- 
 Stone of our Republic, as Mr. Stephens says it is of the 
 horrible fiction of a government, which that system, expelled 
 from national power, has sought to extemporize. They 
 seized upon the territory of a weak neighbor, with whom 
 we were at peace, to give new outlets to their accursed 
 merchandise in the bodies and souls of men. They passed 
 laws, requiring, with threats of heavy fines and imprison- 
 ments, every person in the nation, man or woman, to aid 
 in stealing their brethren, and in reducing them to bondage. 
 A minister of the Gospel now lies in prison in Northern Ohio, 
 one of the freest sections of the land, for refusing to commit 
 that crime. They abrogated the solemn ordinance of our 
 fathers whereby this fearful sin was forbidden to march 
 northward of a parallel of latitude, and strove by every 
 means, presidential, congressional, judicial, military, and 
 mobocratic, to push the Car of Juggernaut into the Free 
 Territories, and thence into the Free States. Only by heroic 
 sacrifices, sufferings, and death, was their scheme made to 
 fail. Our future history will contain no more honorable 
 names than the martyrs of Kansas.
 
 FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 273 
 
 Those who are expected to hold the scales of justice 
 evenly, and who are especially required, by the instincts 
 of man and the Word of God, to defraud not the poor, nor 
 take money against the innocent, the very fountain and 
 origin of national justice, our Supreme Court, and its su- 
 preme head, had the blasphemous audacity to declare that 
 no person of African descent could sue in our courts, or 
 had any rights which white men were bound to respect. 
 Though but one out of a million of the drops of blood in his 
 heart traced its origin to Africa, and so to our common 
 fathers, Noah and Adam, and all the rest were of purest Cau- 
 casian, he was prevented from appealing to the human rep- 
 resentatives of divine justice, against any act of injustice, 
 no matter how flagrant. The seat of Righteousness thus 
 became the seat of Sin. How did the Divine voice ring in 
 their ears, "What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, 
 and grind the faces of the poor ? saith the Lord." 
 
 The river of death staid not here. There remained one 
 thing more for it to do. It must nationalize itself in the legis- 
 lation of the land. All seaports must be open to its cargoes, 
 all roads to its coffles, all houses to its victims. So a slave 
 code for the Territories and slave-trade in all the States, 
 were demanded, and, had it not been for the activity of the 
 counter and Christian element, they would have been en- 
 acted ; and over your railroads, and along your splendid 
 streets, would have been lashed, to-day, the miserable droves 
 of human flesh, in and out of our great commercial me- 
 tropolis. 
 
 Minor, but not unimportant, events attend this career of 
 national subjugation. Free speech and a free press were 
 suppressed in the South. Xo party can stand there on the 
 basis of Washington, Jefferson, and George Mason. All 
 sects, organizations, journals, and tongues were compelled 
 to adore the image the haughty dealers in human flesh set 
 up, and whosoever fell not down and worshiped, that same 
 18
 
 274 THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 hour was cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. 
 All prostrated themselves admiringly before this worse than 
 Babylonish idol. A little company of men, of the faith and 
 courage of the Hebrew children, not only refused to bow 
 down, but sought to snatch from the bloody jaws of the 
 Moloch the poor victims he was daily devouring; and those 
 who tenderly nursed the living idol with human flesh, caught 
 the brave successors of those brave Hebrews, and hanged 
 them on a tree. 
 
 Athens for centuries remembered, with annual festivities 
 and ceaseless gratitude, the courage of Theseus, son of her 
 king. To her children and her children's children, for many 
 generations, she told the tale, how the Cretan pirates, having 
 ravaged her coasts, would grant her existence only on con- 
 dition that she annually sent fourteen of her choicest youth, 
 seven of her finest young men, seven of her fairest maidens, 
 who should be offered to the Minotaur, a man-bull, that was 
 begotten in horrid lust, and kept alive by the more horrid 
 sustenance of human blood. And they loved to tell, how 
 once, as the vessel bearing this dreadful burden sailed out 
 of the harbor, as many vessels have since sailed from Nor- 
 folk, Charleston, Savannah, and Mobile, with black sails, 
 and full of lamentations and weeping, while parents, com- 
 panions, or children stood on the shore overwhelmed with 
 terrible distress, Theseus went with them, and with brave 
 hands slew the boy-eating and girl-eating monster, and 
 brought his kindred home. A greater than Theseus was 
 Captain Brown ; and though he felt in his effort to extricate 
 his brethren and sisters from the cruel jaws of this worse 
 than the Minotaur, begotten, as that, in lust, and kept alive, 
 as that was, by the living agonies of myriads of human souls, 
 still his soul is marching on. Two years have not yet 
 elapsed since the last two of his friends mounted the honor- 
 able scaffold, whose remains this consecrated soil of New 
 Jersey tenderly and joyfully embraces; and before that short
 
 FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 275 
 
 time had passed, scores of thousands of men, singing praises 
 for his courage and conduct, march by the spot where he 
 was captured, along the road up which he was taken, man- 
 gled and faint, for a Pilate trial, by the jail where they 
 chained him, the court-house where they mocked him, and the 
 hill where they slew him. To-day citizens of Massachusetts 
 occupy the hall where he was found guilty of insurrection, 
 and treason, and murder ; and the lawyer who acted for the 
 State, the judge who represented its injustice, the governor, 
 who, so far from washing his hands of his blood, washed 
 them in it, even the State itself, whose wicked impulses 
 these wicked men but feebly expressed, are in a condition 
 of avowed insurrection, treason, and murder. She is being 
 tried, condemned, and executed by the mighty armies of 
 freedom moving over her soil, under the inspiration of the 
 people who have sent them forth, and led by the Lord of 
 Hosts, who mustereth his hosts to battle. Surely, never was 
 a false accusation so swiftly hurled back upon those that 
 uttered it. Never did He who says " Vengeance is mine, I 
 will repay," so vividly and so rapidly commend to the lips 
 of His enemies the cup they had forced down the throat of 
 His servants. Insurrection, murder, and treason are written 
 with the blazing finger of His justice on all, from the lowest 
 servant to the State itself, who has dared to slay those who 
 only sought peacefully to execute righteousness ; who only 
 remembered those in bonds as bound with them. 
 
 The slave power has thus, in every minor, major, and 
 maximum form of iniquity, sought to throttle Democracy, 
 Liberty, and Religion, in our land ; and, finally, infuriated 
 by the human blood it had di-ank, as such draughts are said 
 to enrage those who physically drain them, it sprang at 
 the government itself, and expected to have sat long ere 
 this on the throne of national and undisputed sovereignty. 
 Then comes a winter of discontent, a time of darkness, of 
 helplessness, of despair ; then the open revolt of States, and
 
 276 THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 of officials of every grade ; then the seizure of forts and 
 munitions of war ; then the assault on a helpless and starv- 
 ing garrison ; then the marshaling of arms, and battle's 
 magnificently stern array. Defeats rapidly multiply, and an 
 hour of thick gloom rests down upon the people, and the 
 war seems long, dubious, and almost hopeless ; when, lo ! 
 one Sunday morning, Mill Springs is wet with the sacred 
 blood of martyrs in this holy cause of nationality and liberty ; 
 but the blood of traitors flows more profusely, and the tide 
 of defeat is turned. Fort Henry falls ; Fort Donelson, the 
 Western Thermopylae, yields to the advancing forces of no 
 Asiatic tyrant, but of democratic equality and liberty, and 
 Bowling Green, Columbus, and Nashville are bloodlessly 
 ours. The West seemed to be securing all the glories of 
 the conflict, when a word from the banks of the Potomac, 
 written by the commander-in-chief of our armies, the ap- 
 pointed head of the people, announces to the world a greater 
 victory than any won on fields of blood, fraught with grander 
 consequences, and sure of a higher renown. 
 
 We have thus led you through this very brief rSsumS of 
 events, from the first blast of the trumpet of Freedom from the 
 lips of a then obscure young Quaker printer, thirty years ago, 
 to the last, which has just been sounded out from the Presi- 
 dential mansion, foretelling the death of the monster, against 
 which the youthful David then went out to battle. William 
 Lloyd Garrison and Abraham Lincoln will stand together in 
 our history. They are the ministers of God the one the 
 forerunner of the Divine Liberator, and the other the Chief 
 of the Apostles, who establishes the liberty for which his 
 predecessor had prepared the way. 
 
 II. Let us consider some of the fruits of this Message, 
 which has been well declared to be the most important word 
 spoken in this land since the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 First, it will give clearness and tone to the national mind 
 as to the character of slavery. That mind has been exceed-
 
 FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 277 
 
 ingly beclouded and debased by the presence and power of 
 this sin. This debasement has not been confined to the region 
 where it especially dwells. Even in the Free States are 
 still found those who have thought any \vords hostile to the 
 institution harsh and fanatical. Though such words have 
 only embodied the sentiment of the Church in all ages, from 
 Moses to Wesley, though they are spoken in a community 
 whose fathers, from conscientious and religious motives, abol- 
 ished slavery, still, so fearfully have we been poisoned with 
 this malaria, that any strong and bracing word of truth 
 seemed deadly and dangerous. 
 
 Hawthorne tells a story of an Italian physician who trained 
 himself so that he could live a sickly life in a garden full of 
 poisonous plants, whose effluence was fatal to all others. If 
 another approached the inclosure, he dropped dead. But the 
 former breathed freely in its poisonous air. Mithridates, 
 to avoid death by poison, by constant habit was enabled to 
 eat harmlessly all manner of deadly and forbidden fruit. As 
 a nation, we have walked in a garden of death ; we have 
 lived on the fruit of the tree of death. In our insane lust 
 of wealth and power, in our more insane fear of the slave- 
 master and abhorrence of the slave, we have cried, 
 
 " Give me agates for my meat; 
 Give me cantharides to eat; 
 From all natures, sharp and slimy, 
 Salt and basalt, wild and tame ; 
 Tree of lichen, ape, sea-lion, 
 Bird and reptile, be my game ; 
 Ivy for my fillet-band, 
 Blinding dog-wood in my hand. 
 Hemlock for my sherbet cull me, 
 And the prussic juice to lull me. 
 Swing me in the Upas boughs, 
 Vampire-fanned, when I carouse." 
 
 No wonder that other nations looked on with amazement. 
 No wonder that coming here they were stifled in the fatal
 
 278 THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 air. No wonder that the nation, at last, dropped, faint and 
 dying, amid the miasma. Last winter, who believed, here 
 or abroad, that we were a nation ? This Presidential voice 
 will clear the air. Slavery may a little longer 
 
 " from her horrid hair 
 Shake pestilence and war," 
 
 but only against our earnest efforts for its extinction. The 
 "rights of mankind," which our fathers died to secure, 
 which are the proudest words on the memorial stone of Lex- 
 ington, the proudest words in our Declaration, these funda- 
 mental rights shall no longer be bartered away for aristocratic 
 and tyrannic distinctions, based on the accidents of color 
 and descent. Our fathers broke the chain that bound the 
 poor white laboring man to his master ; we shall break the 
 heavier chain that hangs upon the neck of the poor laborer 
 whose skin is sometimes a little more discolored than our 
 own. We shall fall back on first principles. We shall say 
 with Burns, 
 
 " That man to man shall brother be 
 The whole world o'er." 
 
 We shall feel as Jefferson did when he wrote, " ALL MEN 
 are created equal." We shall confess with Paul that God 
 has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the 
 face of the earth. We shall say as Christ taught us and all 
 mankind, '" OUR Father who art in heaven," and feel as He 
 taught us to feel that our neighbor is he whom we most 
 unrighteously loathe and despise ; and only by treating him 
 as our equal and our brother, can we be the children of our 
 Father,, or the brethren of our Savior. 
 
 The word of authority was needed ; a word from a high, 
 from the highest place. Such a word is this. When heavy 
 and pestilential airs cover the low places of the earth, only 
 the winds that sweep from mountain summits can displace 
 them. So does this word dispel the heavy fog that filled
 
 FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 279 
 
 many a heart with unnatural, with unchristian fear and hate. 
 I stood one August morning on the summit of Mount Wash- 
 ington. All the valleys below were pressed down with 
 clouds of vapor a mile thick. One could not see a score 
 of feet beneath the peak. The winds raged, and great moun- 
 tains of watery air, as huge, and seemingly as solid, as the 
 hills they covered, moved over the face of the motionless 
 ocean as icebergs over a waveless sea. But the instant 
 that the sun arose, and fixed his eye on this mighty deep, 
 the thick, oppressive air cleft asunder, the lowliest vales, 
 with their trees and shrubs, and almost their very grass 
 blades, stood forth to our view, defined and beautiful in the 
 lustrous light. Upon those beneath, the sun undoubtedly 
 shot down with equal suddenness and glory. So this dec- 
 laration in favor of the abolishment of slavery pierces the 
 mighty clouds of pride, and prejudice, and fear, that have 
 hung heavily over the nation, and every eye sees clearly the 
 great evil of slavery, and the necessity of its extirpation. 
 
 Hitherto many had failed to see. The convictions, the in- 
 stincts, in their nature in favor of universal freedom, the 
 authentic tales of cruelty which the system produces, re- 
 peated in thousands of instances, the political and infidel, 
 though professedly religious, pretensions and progress of 
 the slave power, its revolt and assault upon the government, 
 even civil war, distress, and death, in all their horrors, found 
 them stifled under the blinding vapor. This voice opens 
 every eye, uplifts and regulates every conscience. No man 
 here, no man elsewhere in our land, can again say, without 
 not only knowing, but confessing, that the " truth is not in 
 him," Slavery is right, is divine, is for the best good of the 
 African, though he be an American of ten generations, and 
 nine tenths of him be Caucasian. No one will wrest the 
 Scriptures to its defense, or wrest democracy to its defense. 
 That mean and miserable work this single word has de- 
 stroyed forever.
 
 260 THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 Second. It will hasten the downfall of the rebellion. It 
 will do this in, three ways. 1. It will make other nations 
 our allies, and compel their governments to cease to flatter 
 the slavocrats .with the hope of foreign support. They have 
 lived on this hope. Mr. Yancey pleaded with the ministers 
 of the British government that our government was as pro- 
 slavery as theirs. The English journals in their interest have 
 made like charges. This message, followed by correspond- 
 ent action on the part of Congress, stops that argument, 
 and, with it, all possible hope of success from abroad. For 
 all Christian Europe hates slavery ; God in Christ has wrought 
 that work there perfectly. Though defective in the great 
 democratic truth of equal rights, yet from emperor to serf 
 they abhor human bondage, and no government, how much 
 soever it may desire the disruption of this Union, is strong 
 enough to interfere in the struggle in the phase it is now 
 assuming. The people even of Spain and Austria, much 
 more of France and England, would hurl from their thrones 
 a monarch who should presume to fight for slavery. 
 
 2. Again : the word robs them of support at home by con- 
 ciliating all classes, who, through desire or through fear, 
 seek to support the government. The loyal slaveholder sees 
 in his partial remuneration an advantage to him. For this 
 so-called property is utterly valueless now, and never can 
 be marketable again. I was told, when in Maryland, of a 
 man for whom two thousand four hundred dollars was paid, 
 not eighteen months before. He is worth to-day less than 
 a Confederate note of a hundred dollars. The disloyal slave- 
 holder may even hope fqr compensation under a proclamation 
 of amnesty, or by the acts of his legislature, which the mes- 
 sage does not propose to override. The various classes of 
 the North will also agree. The extreme abolitionist, be- 
 cause he clearly sees at this new turn in the road, the depot 
 which he has so long toiled to reach ; the anti-abolitionist, 
 if any such still exist, because it advises compensation, and
 
 FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 281 
 
 suggests the possibility of delay in the full execution of the 
 work, and respects the verbal distinctions they cleave to, 
 though they no longer really exist. The men of peace will 
 approve it, because it makes for peace ; the men of war, 
 because they desire war only to break down the rebellion, 
 and that step is soonest reached by such a measure. The 
 great support, therefore, which the rebel cause has received 
 from these varied and conflicting sources will cease, and with 
 it much of their hold on power. 
 
 3. But a third and not unimportant reason why this will 
 hasten the overthrow of the rebellion is, because of its 
 effect on the slaves. Hitherto they could only see by faith 
 that the war would work out their liberation. Now sight 
 confirms faith. The tidings of this message will go by the 
 underground telegraph to every slave cabin. Thousands 
 this day have lifted up their heads in joy, for they see that 
 their redemption draws nigh. They are not ignorant of the 
 movements about them. When I entered Annapolis, with 
 the first regiments that hastened to the rescue of the capital 
 last April, I found the slave already aware of the real cause 
 of our coming. They alone of all the people came out of 
 their cabins on the road, and saluted the soldiers. At Wash- 
 ington I asked an old colored man if he knew what all this 
 meant. " 0, yes," said he, " it is for liberty." " Liberty 
 for whom ? " " To the white and the black," he replied. 
 At a slaveholder's mansion, near Annapolis Junction, where 
 we stopped for supper, the slaves, who were gathered near 
 the barns, received us with smiles and cordial welcomes, 
 and when we shouted for Union and Liberty, they respond- 
 ed with enthusiastic applause. While at the Eelay, I heard 
 a soldier of this regiment say to a colored man of Balti- 
 more, "You also attacked us." "It is false!" he instantly 
 answered, forgetting all about his skin, and his " natural in- 
 feriority ; " "not a colored man in Baltimore touched you. 
 We knew what you were coming for. Five thousand of
 
 282 THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 us would have defended you had we had arms." Like tes- 
 timonies abound. This message will confirm their hopes. 
 They see their prayers are being answered. 
 
 The year of God's redeemed is come. They could not 
 rise, if they would, while every white man is especially armed 
 and watchful. They will not now, as Freedom dawns peace- 
 fully upon them. But the power of their tyrants will be 
 broken by these new hopes implanted in their victims, and 
 they will hasten to make their peace with the government, 
 and with those whom they have so brutally treated and de- 
 spised. Thus will this word bring to a speedier close the 
 already waning power of the rebellion. 
 
 4. But another great blessing which it foretells is the 
 unification of the Republic. We have never been, in reality, 
 one people. Blood has not separated us ; for the French 
 of Indiana and Illinois have coalesced with the English of 
 Massachusetts ; the Dutch of New York with the Irish of 
 New Hampshire. Later immigrations flow into the ancient 
 ones, and into each other, easily, spontaneously. Natural 
 boundaries have not separated us. New Jersey is separated 
 from Pennsylvania by more natural boundaries than Penn- 
 sylvania is from Maryland. Iowa and Maine are closer 
 together than Ohio and Kentucky. There has been only 
 one distinction, and that was slavery. Slavery, a peculiar 
 institution, makes its supporters a peculiar people, though 
 not the people of God. 
 
 " The Baltimore Christian Advocate," but a year ago, 
 dwelt on the identity of the Southerners and their disparta- 
 tion from the North in thought, life, and religion. They 
 were excluded from the civilized world for their leprosy, and 
 sought to make their infamy an honor. This was so at the 
 beginning. John Adams calls them, in his day, the "Barons 
 of the South." South Carolina and Georgia assumed the 
 airs of aristocracy even thus early. The patents of this 
 nobility have been vastly increased since that time, and
 
 FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 283 
 
 their pride proportionally. We can never be one people, 
 truly and perfectly, till slavery is abolished. Some of our 
 citizens, of little money and less brains, foolishly suppose 
 the Middle States more like the South than they are like 
 New England ; and others, more foolish, rejoice over this 
 fancied resemblance. The truth is, that all the Free States 
 are substantially identical. For they are alike in the great 
 fundamental idea of free labor, of the dignity of labor, of 
 the rights of labor. They are distinguished among them- 
 selves by grades of development of intellect, enterprise, and 
 morality ; yet they are fundamentally one. Hence, you can 
 elect a mechanic to represent you in Congress, a mechanic 
 to represent your State in the Senate, a mechanic for your 
 mayor.* Hence you see the strong arm of a laborer, carved 
 in stone, on the front of one of your costliest buildings, and 
 the sign of a banking institution, too, that represents prima- 
 rily capital, and not labor. These sights are not seen south 
 of Mason and Dixon's line. All the Slave States are alike 
 in despising labor. There, the holder, breeder, seller, of 
 human beings, he is the great man ; the mechanic is the 
 slave. Bishop Polk owns his farmers, blacksmiths, carpen- 
 ters, masons, tailors, milliners, dress-makers, and cooks. 
 What he does not want of these laborers he sells, as we 
 do our cattle and horses, if we have more than are necessary 
 for carrying on our farms. 
 
 I talked with a slave at Annapolis Junction, who said he 
 carried on two farms for his owner, and never had a dollar 
 for his sagacious and constant oversight. The tea and su- 
 gar on his cabin table, his wife, a free woman, bought with 
 her labor. Is there a man capable of carrying on two farms 
 for a Northern gentleman, thus paid ? Is not such a super- 
 intendent always a respectable, often a leading, and even a 
 comparatively wealthy member of the community ? Such 
 
 * Such was the case at that time in Newark and New Jersey. Every 
 one of these offices was filled by a mechanic.
 
 284 THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 is the universal state of affairs there. This must be changed. 
 The great word of the Sixth of March initiates the reform. 
 Free institutions and free labor will move southward. Man 
 will be treated as man, woman as woman. A fair day's 
 wages for a fair day's work, will be the motto there as here. 
 Politics will conform to it. Said a friend of mine, a pay- 
 master in the army, to a Maryland machinist, " Why don't 
 you get up a workingman's candidate for Congress, instead 
 of taking one of these slaveholding aristocrats ? " The idea 
 struck him as preposterous. Such an attempt would be 
 laughed to scorn. But when slavery is suppressed, this 
 universal custom of the North will obtain there. 
 
 So will the religion of the North move southward. They 
 have a religion of their own. In it no stranger can meddle. 
 An Episcopalian may be high church or low church here and 
 in England. In the South a new Article, not written in the 
 Book of Common Prayer, is introduced, which outvalues 
 all that are inscribed there. You must say, " I believe in 
 Slavery," or all the Apostles' Creed goes for nothing. If 
 you say that, you are still Orthodox, although a heretic as 
 to all the rest of the creed. So is it with Presbyterianism. 
 You can go from Geneva, through Scotland, to Philadelphia, 
 and be an accepted Presbyterian. Cross the unseen line 
 and all your theology is changed to one dogma, arid that a 
 doctrine of devils. So the Methodists drop Wesley and As- 
 bury, and follow diabolic fables that have not the merit of 
 being even cunningly devised. Anti-slavery, inherited from 
 their fathers, still lives in a part of the border. But it is 
 like the shoal edge of the ocean, barren sand, always wet, 
 often under water, and never harvestable, while it rapidly 
 slopes down into the unfathomable gulf beyond, of abomi- 
 nable doctrines, and hardly more abominable practices. 
 
 This region must be regenerated. The waves of liber- 
 ty, a Nile of wealth, must fertilize this American Sahara. 
 Churches, schools, workshops and farms, must be filled with
 
 FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 285 
 
 free worshipers, students, toilers. A vast country remains 
 to be subdued the richest and most beautiful in America. 
 It is trodden under foot of the Gentiles. The voice of those 
 who are defrauded of their wages cries to God, and He has 
 come down to see if it be according to their cry. He finds 
 they told the truth. Therefore will He destroy those hus- 
 bandmen, and give that vineyard to others ? Their enslaved 
 neighbors shall till their own fields in freedom and happiness. 
 Their poor white neighbors, now more despised than their 
 slaves, will rise in intelligence, virtue, competence, and pow- 
 er. The great emigration of Europe and the North will 
 pour over the wilderness, and it shall blossom as the rose. 
 It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and 
 singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the 
 excellency of Carmel and Sharon. The victims of this ter- 
 rific cruelty will at last be free, prosperous, and happy. 
 The husband and wife, the babes and their mother, will 
 dwell in peaceful and blessed communion. No more scour- 
 ging lash, no more lordly lust, no more riven hearts, no more 
 ignorance, idleness, or misery. No more such sights will 
 be seen as would have made the Savior weep more bitterly 
 than he did over Jerusalem. A colored man in Baltimore, 
 now free, told me that he once received three hundred lashes 
 for unintentional delay in attending to a tobacco field on 
 Sunday. A member of the Baltimore Conference, a Virgin- 
 ian by birth, and an ardent abolitionist, told me that he knew 
 a Baptist deacon, in the Shenandoah Valley, who carried the 
 scalp of a slave at his saddle-bow, and a Presbyterian elder, 
 who had taken off the skin of a slave, tanned it, covered 
 his saddle with it, and rode upon it. Nat Turner's skin 
 was cut up into relics, which ladies proudly carried ; and 
 John Brown's son stands in the Medical College of Win- 
 chester, a proof of the worse than Indian brutality of South- 
 ern gentlemen, nay, rather of Southern fiends. For they are 
 not even men that can commit such barbarities.
 
 286 THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 These barbarities shall come to a perpetual end with the 
 monslrum Iwrrendum out of whose loins they have sprung. 
 Some, in the last resort of unbelief, have asked wildly, " What 
 are you going to do with these freedmen ? " We answer, 
 " Let them alone." 
 
 They will work ; they will sell the produce of their farms ; 
 they are the most intelligent, they are almost the only intelli- 
 gent, farmers of the South. They will be no burden to the 
 government. Let their friends do as they are now doing. 
 Let teachers and guides go forth as that ship-load went last 
 week.* That was an event not second to this message. A 
 new civilization went to South Carolina with them, and 
 its results will speedily prove their fitness for freedom, to 
 the overwhelming of our mean and wicked prejudice, with 
 shame and everlasting contempt. It may even be shown 
 that the superior race is the enslaved race ; that as it was 
 in Egypt, in Babylon, in Rome, so is it in the South. As 
 from this class came, anciently, generals, scholars, poets, 
 emperors, and statesmen, so may they yet, from this de- 
 spised and down-trodden people. We may loathe this word, 
 and him that declares it, as the Jews did Paul, when he 
 asserted the equality of the Gentiles with themselves ; but 
 we cannot gainsay or deny it. They are of our blood, of 
 the blood of Adam, of Noah, of Christ. They will prove 
 
 * The first vessel that carried out men and women for the establish- 
 ment of schools and churches, and the organization of labor in the South, 
 was the steamer Atlantic. She left New York, March 3, 18G2, for Port 
 Eoyal, South Carolina, with about sixty persons, under the superintend- 
 ence of Edward L. Pierce, of Boston, and Rev. Mansfield French, of 
 New York. Among them were fourteen ladies. She carried farming 
 utensils, seeds, sewing machines, books, clothing, etc. All who joined 
 the company took an oath of allegiance to the Constitution, and against 
 all its enemies. This was the beginning of that emigration which has 
 gone on so greatly since, and will proceed yet more rapidly under the 
 peaceful protection of the future government. This "Atlantic" was 
 the Mayflower that assured a New South after the Puritan and perfect 
 pattern.
 
 FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 287 
 
 their honorable right to it in God's good time and way. A 
 slaveholder's son in Maryland confessed to me that he had 
 first cousins who were slaves, and who were equally talented 
 with their cousins who were free. The best of Caucasian 
 blood flows in their veins. They will yet show that it has 
 not degenerated by commingling with the equally excellent, 
 if more torrid blood of Africa. 
 
 But in the great uplifting of the Southern territory, this 
 portion of the population will soon be lost sight of. Four 
 millions, to the score of millions that will pour over that 
 immense and beautiful country, will be less than the few 
 thousands of them in New York to its myriad population. 
 They will be merged in the great tides of life that will flow, 
 freely and grandly, over all the continent. 
 
 5. There are other and not valueless fruits of this pro- 
 phetic word. If carried out, or replaced, as it will be, by 
 more thorough measures,* it will restore the Republic to 
 its position among the nations of the earth. It will prevent 
 the absolutizing of America by putting offshoots of the effete 
 and discrowned families of Europe upon thrones propped 
 on foreign spears. It will give us full and mighty power 
 against the monarchical systems of Europe. It will abase 
 the high heads that maintain, among men and Christians, 
 factitious distinctions based on blood, not brains, on lineage, 
 not character, on rank, not worth. All these will go down 
 before the simple, majestic effulgence of a perfectly free and 
 equal people. Therefore let us laud and magnify the name 
 of our God. He has made us, who were less than a century 
 ago no people, the people of God. He brought a vine out of 
 Egypt, a vassalized, rank-ridden, priest-ridden Europe, and 
 planted it in this goodly land. The wild boar of slavery 
 has trodden it down and mastered it, and now is seeking 
 
 * The more thorough measure by which it was replaced was the 
 Proclamation, six months after, of universal and unconditional eman- 
 cipation.
 
 288 THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 to tear it up by the roots. Our God will not suffer it to be. 
 He may chastise us, but He will not destroy. The signs 
 of the times are propitious. The armies of the aliens are 
 put to flight ; distress has seized hold upon them. They are 
 suffering the just judgment of God. " They have called evil 
 good, and good evil ; they have put darkness for light, and 
 light for darkness, bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. 
 They have justified the wicked for a reward, and taken away 
 the righteousness of the righteous from him." Alas, how 
 many innocent victims of their passions lay this last sin to 
 their charge ! "Therefore," says God, " as the fire devour- 
 eth the stubble, and as the flame consumeth the chaff, so 
 their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go 
 up as dust ; because they have cast away the law of the 
 Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of 
 Israel, therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against 
 His people ; He hath stretched forth His hand against them 
 and hath smitten them, and their carcasses were torn in the 
 midst of the streets. And in this day He roars against 
 them like the roaring of the sea ; and if we look unto their 
 land, behold, darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened 
 in the heavens thereof." 
 
 It may be long ere this Presidential word shall be brought 
 to perfection. It may be refused by the Pharaoh hardness 
 of border slaveholders, in order that His strong arm may 
 give the more speedy and more complete liberation which 
 he threatens. The struggle with the hoary and haughty 
 sin may be long, and fierce, and bloody. Seven years of 
 suffering and death passed before the Declaration became 
 the Deliverance. We have been partaker of their sins, and 
 the measure of the judgment we have meted out to our en- 
 slaved brethren shall be measured to us again. We must 
 suffer in our basket and store ; we must suffer in our hearts, 
 in our anxiety for those who go out from us to keep the foe 
 from ravaging our firesides, in the dreadful griefs of wife,
 
 FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. 289 
 
 and mother, and child, over those who shall return no more. 
 But yet we may rejoice that not all the desolations of war, 
 nor even its chief miseries, are permitted by our loving and 
 just God to come upon us. We may especially rejoice that 
 His chastisements are leading us to repentance, that we are 
 not only fasting before Him, but doing as He requires ; pre- 
 paring to "break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free." 
 Then, after due infliction, after the godly sorrow has wrought 
 its perfect work, after Congress and the legislatures of the 
 guilty States shall cooperate in this divine work, or the 
 President shall himself decree liberty, and shall with his 
 own hand break the shackles from every limb, then, as He 
 has promised, He will surely perform ; " tlien shall thy 
 light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall 
 spring forth speedily. For thy righteousness shall go be- 
 fore thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward, 
 and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the 
 earth ; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." Soon 
 will the great Proclamation be answered by resounding 
 praises from over the sea ; sooner, by more grateful and 
 more ringing hallelujahs from our Southern shores ; and our 
 nation, delivered from its enemies, delivered of the sin which 
 has brought her to the verge of destruction, shall resume 
 her place, shall ascend to a far higher place, among the 
 nations of the earth. Her enemies at home, her rivals 
 abroad, shall bend down to the soles of her feet, and all 
 the other powers of earth shall 
 
 " perforce 
 
 Sway to her from their orbits as they move, 
 
 And girdle her with music." 
 
 Standing on the cheery hight to which the great words 
 of our leader have lifted us, I have striven to speak, as Paul 
 did in the storm, words of truth and of encouragement. 
 The Ship of State, the Ship Union and Liberty, shall not go 
 down. There shall be a loss, a blessed and eternal loss, of 
 19
 
 290 THE DAY DAWNS. 
 
 the accursed lading, but the ship shall be saved. "We are 
 flinging overboard that which caused the storm ; we shall 
 soon be able to sing, with our finest lyrist : 
 
 " The good Ship Union's voyage is o'er; 
 
 At anchor safe she swings, 
 And loud and clear, with cheer on cheer, 
 
 Her joyous welcome rings. 
 Hurrah ! hurrah ! it shakes the wave, 
 
 It thunders on the shore ; 
 One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, 
 
 One nation evermore."
 
 LETTEK TO THE LONDON 
 WATCHMAN.* 
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 
 
 To THE EDITORS OF THE WATCHMAN : 
 
 AVING been lately permitted to make a brief visit 
 to the land of jny ancestors, and to behold for 
 myself the spots made memorable by past deeds, 
 as well as the great centers of present life and 
 duty, I unexpectedly found all eyes turned away from their 
 own things, historic or living, and fixed intently on those 
 of America. 
 
 I could not ask a peasant the way, or follow a verger in 
 his tour of curiosities, or "take mine ease at mine inn," but 
 that, if they learned that I was an American, they instantly 
 plied me with questions as to our present and prospective 
 condition. The fullness with which our news is detailed, 
 the frequency, elaborateness, and intensity of the leaders in 
 your journals, the articles in every magazine and review, 
 
 * Letter to the London Watchman, written from Paris, July 4, 18G2. 
 See Note XI. 
 
 (291)
 
 292 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 the excitement attending parliamentary debates on our mu- 
 tual relations, all show the depth and fervor o this feeling. 
 
 The Times attempts to ridicule us, by saying that we suf- 
 fer all the extremes of intermittent fever, as conflicting re- 
 ports rapidly succeed each other. It is properly so ; for 
 we feel that we are hanging over the sick bed of an intensely 
 loved nationality sick almost unto death; and every symp- 
 tom, favorable or otherwise, naturally excites us. We are 
 giving of the fruit of our body for the saving of our nation, 
 and personal feelings are thus mingled profoundly in the 
 struggle. But I see that here, without any such causes, 
 almost as great excitement follows every important event ; 
 and British nerves respond as keenly as American to the 
 varying telegrams that sweep over them. 
 
 I have found, with this deep and wide-spread interest, 
 two other facts, painful to a lover of both England and 
 America to a lover of liberty and humanity. They are 
 a want of sympathy with the United States, and an appar- 
 ently intentional blindness as to the cause of the rebellion, 
 and the course the government is pursuing against not only 
 the revolt, but its primal and only cause. With few and 
 most honorable exceptions, the tone of inquiry lacked that 
 of sympathy. It was curiosity, not love, that prompted 
 the querist. Especially was the ignorance of intelligent 
 men of the connection of slavery with the rebellion, and of 
 the movements of the nation against that sin, most evident 
 and most deplorable. This last, I consider, arises from the 
 first ; for hostility or indifference of feeling will breed igno- 
 rance. And yet the latter affects, if it does not create, the 
 former. 
 
 Will you permit me to attempt to remove this ignorance 
 from any of your readers who may be thus affected ? I am 
 certain that, if removed, the fountains of sympathy will 
 break forth. Will you allow me, therefore, to state in your 
 columns the American cause as it appears to Americans. It
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 293 
 
 may possibly clear away from some minds the clouds that 
 darken them, so that they may see light in the light which 
 the providence of God so powerfully casts upon the Ameri- 
 can people. 
 
 I do not seek to defend America at the English bar. I 
 solicit no favors for her at its hands. She needs no defense. 
 She seeks no favors. She asks for neither material aid nor 
 moral support. She had a right to expect both. She would 
 have received them gratefully, had they been, as they ought 
 to have been, instantly and spontaneously offered ; but she 
 has never coveted them. Not that she despises the judg- 
 ment of others ; but when that judgment conflicts with the 
 decrees of divine duty, that seem to her to be almost audibly 
 uttered from heaven, so clearly, so powerfully do they ad- 
 dress her, she can say, with a feeling akin to the Apostle, 
 "It is .a small thing to be judged of man's judgment," 
 whether single, or associated and nationalized : " He that 
 judgeth me is the Lord." A great nation is not to be tried 
 and condemned by many or few hostile or friendly contem- 
 poraries. " God is judge ; He putteth down one and set- 
 teth up another." To Him Ave appeal. 
 
 It is because she is so unfairly, so criminally, placed be- 
 fore the great reading, the still greater hearing, public of 
 England, by almost all your influential journals and states- 
 men, that I ask the privilege of a hearing. It is because, 
 rather, of the great interests of humanity, present and future, 
 that are involved in this struggle. The position of your 
 journal more appreciative, and hence more sympathetic, 
 than most of your neighbors leads me to hope that my 
 words will be given to your readers. They shall be written 
 in all fairness and kindness of feeling, whatever plainness 
 and honesty of speech they may be constrained to exhibit. 
 
 One question, more than all others, is asked by all kindty 
 or hostile Englishmen. It is, " What is the war for ? " 
 They are in as great a state of perplexity as was Southey's
 
 294 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 child over Marlborough's famous victory. I can appreciate 
 the laureate's difficulty in attempting to clear up the mind 
 of his child. And, in the fact that the second, if not the 
 greatest, of England's generals, and the one to whom she 
 gave her most splendid testimonials, can give no reasons 
 for his fighting, that the next generation shall be able to 
 understand, I see the folly of endeavoring to establish the 
 righteousness of the American cause on any other than en- 
 during foundations. The rebellion began, and has been 
 waged, solely in the interests of Slavery. There is no need 
 of any argument in America to sustain this. There is no 
 man nor woman, North or South, bond or free, white or 
 black, that does not know it. And yet the rebels, and their 
 allies of the press, and of Parliament, allies, I am sorry 
 to say, some of whom are world-famous abolitionists, 
 have had the effrontery to say that Slavery was not. involved 
 in the struggle ; that other interests caused the revolt 
 the tariff, or natural alienation of the people, or oppression 
 of minorities. This is all chaff. We are one people, far 
 more than England and Scotland, by marriage, emigration, 
 language, interest, and feeling. Slavery, and slavery alone, 
 has attempted our disruption. I beg you to consider these 
 few facts as illustrative of this truth. 
 
 The slaveholders demanded, and secured, recognition in 
 the Constitution. But slavery being given up, from con- 
 scientious motives, in the States of one half of the Union, 
 and being impoverishing in its nature, it was expected that 
 it would soon cease everywhere ; especially as the foreign 
 slave trade was forbidden. But England, through her in- 
 ventions, becoming the great cotton manufacturing nation, 
 and the slaveholding States becoming the great cotton rais- 
 ing region, slaves rapidly rose in value, and with this in- 
 crease of wealth came an increased importance to this inter- 
 est. England's factories alone made this system mighty. 
 
 With this prosperity came also another power, working
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 295 
 
 on the conscience of the people, demanding the suppression 
 of the iniquity. To this cry, we are happy to say, England 
 contributed. Had she done so by refusing slave-labor cot- 
 ton, we should have long since, and peaceably, extirpated 
 the evil. The slave power demanded privileges not granted 
 them in the Constitution. The free sentiment resisted, and 
 in many ways, and with varying success, for twenty-five 
 years the conflict has been waged. At last, and for ten 
 years, not a single point of prominent and vital politics has 
 divided the nation, except as connected with slavery. In 
 1860 the slaveholders refused to take Mr. Douglas as their 
 candidate, because they knew that his doctrine of popular 
 sovereignty, backed by the growing sentiment of the North, 
 would be, ultimately, as fatal to slavery as the positions of 
 the Republicans. They spurned him, though with him they 
 could, undoubtedly, have retained their power, as his popu- 
 lar vote was over one million three hundred thousand, and 
 was second only to Mr. Lincoln's. With Mr. Breckinridge's 
 vote he would have had a quarter of a million more than 
 any other candidate. Thus they revolted from the Demo- 
 cratic party, and set up as their platform a slave code in 
 the Territories, and slave trade in all the States that is, 
 the right of free transit of slaves through all the States, and 
 protection to that property, as to .all other property, in the 
 Territories. Defeated, as they expected to be, they revolted 
 from the government, as they had intended and prepared to 
 do. Drunk with long-continued success and dominion, they 
 despised the North ; despised the party and principles that 
 had legitimately and constitutionally risen to power ; and 
 fancied that, affrighted by their warlike threats and prepa- 
 rations, and weakened by internal dissensions, we should 
 speedily submit, and they could return to their seats of 
 supremacy, or erect themselves into an independent nation, 
 without opposition, almost with the whining solicitation of 
 their foes. They never thought of tariff, of free trade, of
 
 296 LETTER TO *HE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 majorities trampling on the rights of minorities, of the nat- 
 ural desire for different peoples to be independent of each 
 other. These are cries got up afterward, and for a foreign 
 market. At home it was Slavery, and only Slavery. 
 
 It seems unnecessary to quote the words of their so-called 
 " Vice-President," declaring this to be the corner-stone of 
 the new nation ; to refer to the striking fact, that this class, 
 and this class only, with their adherents and subjects, re- 
 volted at the election of a representative of the opposite 
 sentiment, whose only vital article was the prevention of 
 the further growth of the system. Their instinct is a suffi- 
 cient proof of the truth of this position. They knew that 
 if they recognized an anti-slavery government, their domin- 
 ion was at an end. They revolted before it was established. 
 They revolted only because it was to be established. They 
 acted wisely, in the light of the wisdom of this world. Their 
 supremacy was gone the moment they bowed to the sover- 
 eignty of the anti-slavery sentiment ; and an evil principle, 
 in man or state, cannot long exist except as supreme. They 
 said, " We are strong enough to set up for ourselves. We 
 will never submit to a party led by Messrs. So ward, and 
 Chase, and Sumner." So they flung to the breeze the black 
 flag of human bondage, and arrayed their legions under its 
 accursed folds. 
 
 A simple illustration may set this more clearly before 
 you, if it should need additional light. Suppose a great 
 conflict had been raging in England for thirty years, between 
 the principles of democracy and aristocracy ; suppose that 
 after many fluctuations in Parliament, and before the people, 
 the democratic party should peacefully and constitutionally 
 secure the passage of a Bill forbidding the increase of the 
 peerage, and that, thereupon, the opposite party should re- 
 volt from the government and the sovereign head that made 
 the Bill a law : could anybody doubt why they had rebelled ? 
 Could anybody doubt that democracy had achieved a great
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 297 
 
 victory a victory that extinguished the power of its rivals, 
 and was certain, in a few years, to abolish their whole sys- 
 tem ? AVould any pretense of difference of blood, and de- 
 sire for separate national existence, give their rebellion char- 
 acter with a democratic people ? What would you say if 
 America should be deluded by such appeals, should rec- 
 ognize these aristocratic rebels as belligerents, and give 
 them protection under guise of neutrality ; while leading 
 New York democrats should send them guns and ammuni- 
 tion, to defend themselves against their legitimate and dem- 
 ocratic rulers ? What must America say, when an abolition 
 government and nation recognize these supporters of slavery 
 as legitimately rebellious, and permits her vessels full of arms 
 to leave her ports for their aid ; and when, even, great Chris- 
 tian, and alas ! that I must say it great Wesleyan, ab- 
 olitionists are making fortunes through such atrocious coop- 
 eration ? No blood-money wrung from the enforced toil of 
 slaves is as bad as that. 
 
 Slavery, then, is the cause the only cause of the re- 
 bellion. To traffic in the bodies and souls of their brethren, 
 to hold them as beasts, to use them for purposes infinitely 
 worse than they use their vilest beasts, for this they broke 
 from the mildest and most liberal government that existed 
 in the earth ; for this they are seeking its destruction. 
 There is no difference in blood ; Davis, Stephens, Slidell, and 
 a host of others, are of Northern origin. All are of one 
 European, one American blood. There is one, sole, terrible 
 difference, it is Slavery. 
 
 But it is often said here, If slavery be the cause of the 
 war, why does not the national government show it to be 
 so, by striking directly at that system ? I answer, The 
 assailant and thing assailed are two different things, and it 
 is the first duty of the government to defend, and, if possi- 
 ble, preserve that which is assailed. Slavery is the enemy. 
 That which is attacked is the Union that is, the govern-
 
 298 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 ment, the nationality of the United States. What she must 
 first do is to defend that Union, and to preserve it from de- 
 struction. Though slavery is the causa causans, yet what 
 she does is something very different from what she is. The 
 gold the thief steals is a different thing from the thievish 
 disposition. The loser seeks his money before he aims to 
 abolish the propensity that robbed him. Slavery stole our 
 arms, forts, ammunition ; cast off the judicial, the executive, 
 the entire national authority ; organized armies, and assumed 
 the prerogatives of sovereignty. What the government 
 must do is, not first to abolish slavery, but to re-possess it- 
 self of its property, re-assume its authority, and destroy the 
 insurrectionary armies. 
 
 Mr. Seward, the winter before the war began, well said 
 that we must see what our enemies assail, if we would know 
 what we should defend. They had ceased to oppose the 
 anti-slavery policy in the Union, they opposed the Union 
 itself. The instincts of the people taught them that this 
 was the point to defend. Hence their wonderful unanimity 
 and enthusiasm for the Union ; hence innumerable flags 
 blazed along every thoroughfare, reddened every house-top, 
 hung over every door, window, and mantel ; children car- 
 ried them in all their sports ; ladies' bonnets, gentlemen's 
 neck-ties, children's dresses, all assumed the national colors 
 the symbol of the nation's life. They even replaced the 
 more solemn drapery of the pulpit with their glowing col- 
 ors, and above the steeple's electric finger, or the heavenly 
 cross, they waved, instinct with spiritual, with divine life. 
 In the sacred voluntaries of the sanctuary the " Star-span- 
 gled Banner " was played; at every gathering its song was 
 sung. This was not because of the especial beauty of its 
 words or music ; but it was the song of the flag, and so of 
 the Union. Such a fever, so unanimous, so instinctive, so 
 mighty, was never before seen in history. The people knew 
 what was attacked, and what to defend ; and they sprang
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 299 
 
 to its defense with a zeal immeasurable, with a wisdom from 
 above. It would seem as if this mighty feeling had been 
 providentially hidden in secret, so that it should not be 
 weakened by preliminary conflicts ; that when it should ap- 
 pear, the Southern sympathizer, who had prepared himself 
 against the demands of freedom, and the timid conservative, 
 who trembled at them, should both be swept into the cur- 
 rent, and the one be filled with shame and silence, the other 
 with unwonted zeal and heroism. So came this new descent 
 of the Spirit of God on a praying and awaiting, but 
 otherwise powerless, people, with the sound as of a mighty 
 rushing wind, and it filled the whole place, the whole nation, 
 with new, with divine life. 
 
 This defense, of itself, without primarily attacking the 
 animus of its assailants, has been the course of every wise 
 nation and ruler, when like exigencies came upon them. 
 The good sense of America is simply the common sense of 
 the world. England has suffered many insurrections. She 
 never yet violently suppressed, or instantly attacked, the 
 moving cause of any one of them. Ireland revolted under 
 the lead of Romanism. Her rebellion was subdued, her Pa- 
 pacy pampered. The Sepoys revolted under the inspirations 
 of Mohammedanism. Parliament makes no laws, generals 
 strike no blows, at that superstition. William of Orange 
 overthrows the legitimate king in the interests of Protes- 
 tantism. He makes no edicts against the religion whose 
 representative he had driven into exile, and whom he had 
 dethroned, solely because of his adherence to that faith. So 
 always did Rome, wise in the wisdom of government above 
 all ancient nations. So, with equally consummate wisdom, 
 acts America. 
 
 But while this is her idea, simple, easily, universally 
 comprehended, yet let it be considered, that, in the work- 
 ing out of it, slavery inevitably, perhaps speedily, dies. 
 Romanism did not long live a vigorous life in England, if
 
 300 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 William of Orange abstained from assailing it. Moham- 
 medanism cannot long live in India, if its power is completely 
 broken. Ireland would have long since been Protestant, 
 had she been treated as an equal, and not as a conquered, 
 people. So Slavery, girdled, humbled, powerless to restrain 
 the liberty of speech and of the press, will speedily vanish. 
 It may linger for a generation in a feeble, dying state. It 
 may, and probably will, flee as in a night. It is crushed, it 
 must die. Nothing can save it but the success of the re- 
 bellion, and that cannot save it ! The government is actu- 
 ally, earnestly, entirely on the side of freedom. It has 
 abolished slavery in the District of Columbia ; it has liber- 
 ated thousands in the march of its armies ; it has given 
 them freedom, work, and wages, and opened schools for 
 their instruction in Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and 
 South Carolina. It has declared that Slavery shall never 
 exist in its Territories, in language such as no other gov- 
 ernment on earth uses. This is the preamble of her decree : 
 " To the end that FREEDOM may be, and remain forever, the 
 fundamental law in all places whatsoever, so far as it lies 
 within the power, or depends upon the action, of the gov- 
 ernment of the United States to make it so." Such is the 
 action of the government. It will go further, it will go 
 to the uttermost, if the rebellion is not speedily overthrown. 
 The struggle will never be ended by the success of the reb- 
 els till this last remedy is tried. God may require this at 
 our hands ; if so, it shall not be refused. The people are 
 too determined to make any terms but those of submission ; 
 and slaves will be freed, armed, and arrayed side by side 
 with their white brethren, if in no other way the govern- 
 ment can be preserved. 
 
 This is the cause of this gigantic rebellion, as seen in the 
 action both of rebel and loyal. The government steadily 
 approaches that great magazine which they revolted to pre- 
 serve. It may be compelled to put the torch to it. The
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 301 
 
 explosion may be terrible, will be glorious. Four millions 
 of men and women may enter into liberty with a Red Sea 
 deliverance, with a Red Sea destruction of their oppressors. 
 When God speaks to our Moses, "Say unto the people that 
 they go forward," He will give the command, and they will 
 march ; and if the cruel oppressors still retain their hard 
 and impenitent hearts, they will sink like lead in the mighty 
 waters. 
 
 For this, be assured, is with the people of America a 
 struggle for the highest national life. It is not a mere strug- 
 gle for ordinary national being. They prize their Constitu- 
 tion and Union not because they are, but because of what 
 they embody and guarantee. They are the seat, the center, 
 in their judgment, we may say in .the judgment of the 
 world, of the highest civil life. They are based on one 
 maxim : the majority of the people shall govern, if they 
 govern according to the letter of a just Constitution. If 
 they violate that, the minority have a right to rebel. If 
 the Constitution fails in any part, or transgresses the divine 
 law, out of which all human law ought to flow, it provides 
 for its peaceful amendment, so that its letter may ever con- 
 form to the growing intelligence of the ages. Such a Con- 
 stitution the world never saw before. If it be destroyed 
 through the weakness of its friends and violence of its ene- 
 mies, the cause of equal civil liberty fails in the world. This 
 is the profound conviction of the American people ; it may 
 be the offspring of vanity, but for it they are willing to spend 
 the last drop of their blood and the last farthing of their 
 treasure. Their reasoning is simple, it is sublime. It is 
 this : Only two modes of government can exist among men, 
 one based on the decision of the majority of the people, the 
 other on a class, elect and separate. The first is our sys- 
 tem. We believe it to be the right, and the only right one. 
 It is assailed ; the minority refuse to abide by the decisions 
 of the majority ; they take no peaceable ways of securing
 
 302 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 their rights professedly assailed, but scornfully, violently, 
 and murderously throw off allegiance to the government. 
 To permit this is to confess that we have ceased to be a 
 nation. It is to substitute the other system of government 
 for the one we have adopted. It is to say the minority 
 rules, for it has its way, not we ours. That is only the old 
 world system over again. The slaveholders are our nobles, 
 we their serfs. Out of their number, after long conflict 
 among themselves, may come a William of Normandy, a 
 Charlemagne, or a Napoleon, who will seize and transmit 
 the regal power ; and democratic equality, representative 
 and constitutional liberty, fade away from the earth. So 
 they said, so felt. And, feeling thus, as one man they de- 
 clared this first rebellion against their fundamental axiom 
 shall be overthrown. If the majority use their power wrong- 
 fully, revolution is just. But when used for liberty, for 
 justice, for the best interests of the world, it shall not be 
 trampled under foot by a despotism " built in the eclipse 
 and rigged with curses dark." God helping us, this devil 
 of an aristocracy shall not dethrone the angel of democracy. 
 He will help us, and Michael shall prevail over the dragon. 
 It is' not possible, jt seems to me, for any European peo- 
 ple thoroughly to apprehend the feelings of the American 
 people in this great crisis of its history. They are on a 
 lower plane of civil life. They are ruled over. We are the 
 rulers. They reverence a class ; we the whole. They have 
 no part, or the least possible, in the administration of affairs. 
 We are the sources of administrative power, and our King 
 and his Ministers are required every few years to submit 
 themselves as our representatives to our judgment. We 
 feel, therefore, precisely as a king feels when his crown is 
 assailed. Himself and his family are chiefly in his mind. 
 It was not the interests of the people that troubled Charles 
 I., or James II., or Napoleon, or the King of Naples, or 
 any dethroned or attacked monarch, but family interests.
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 303 
 
 His crown is his fortune. To dethrone him is to rob him. 
 Hence he fights for it. Hence he is careful to transmit it, 
 if possible, to his children. So does every American feel. 
 He is a sovereign. His sovereignty is assailed. He must 
 defend it, even to the death, or he is a worm and no man. 
 He must transmit this great inheritance to his children and 
 his children's children. It is worth more than any crown 
 or any kingly seat. Queen Victoria has no such gift for 
 Albert Edward as the poorest man in America has for all 
 his children. She can transmit authority over millions of 
 subjects ; he, authority, with millions of equals, over his 
 rulers. They are all of royal blood, all equal heirs to kingly 
 honors. This may, and probably will, seem vain and child- 
 ish to many of your readers ; so does a Christian's expe- 
 rience to many a proud listener. But it is true, neverthe- 
 less, and, like that, is in harmony with the profoundest 
 reason. It is consistent, as we have seen, with the uni- 
 versal instinct. We have no class. We had one. It 
 has tried to do as they all have done elsewhere assume 
 rights above its fellows. We have risen upon it ; we shall 
 grind it to powder. Its name shall rot. As William the 
 Conqueror blotted out the great house of Alfred, and" with 
 it the royal dominion of the Anglo-Saxon blood, extermi- 
 nating it so utterly that only French mottoes blaze on Eng- 
 land's banners, and French phrases make its legislative wishes 
 a law,* so shall this uprising of an aristocracy of a cacoc- 
 racy rather be blotted out in America. Not by a selfish 
 and cruel man, for his own selfish and cruel interests, but 
 by a great people, for themselves, their children, and the 
 world. For it is another peculiarity of American feeling, 
 in the opinion of others, perhaps also a vanity ; in their 
 own, an inspiration, that they a're fighting the battle of 
 the world. 
 
 * The Queen, or her Minister, acknowledges the enactments of Parlia- 
 ment by a French phrase La Reine le veut.
 
 304 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 Great Britain, in her conflicts, is inspired by the cry of 
 Nelson, "England expects every man to do his duty;" 
 France appeals to the glory of France ; America feels that 
 she is struggling for the rights of mankind. It is no new 
 feeling with her. You will find it on the monument to her 
 heroes that fell at Lexington, " Sacred to Liberty and the 
 Rights of Mankind." You will find it in her Declaration of In- 
 dependence. That great paper is the statement of the rights 
 of all men. You will find it rooted and grounded in her 
 earliest history. It inspired the Pilgrims of Plymouth, the 
 settlers of Rhode Island, of Pennsylvania, of Maryland, of 
 Georgia. It is on its greatest and probably final trial to-day. 
 The war of the Revolution made her a nation. To become 
 and be a nation, a people must first secure their liberty, 
 then defend it from without and from within. America had 
 secured hers after seven years of terrible suifering. She 
 had maintained it, so that all the caste powers of the earth 
 feared, if they did not respect her. In her unmailed arm 
 they saw her sleeping thunders. With but the skeleton of 
 a navy, with not a score of thousands in her army, she pro- 
 tected her citizens, native or adopted, in every sea and 
 under every flag. Now comes the assault from within. If 
 she yields, if she is humbled, equal liberty disappears from 
 the earth. " The bubble of democracy is broken," as Nes- 
 selrode said, and kings and rulers may revel, unaffrighted by 
 Belshazzar visions of dissolving kingdoms and vanishing 
 scepters. 
 
 She sees the eyes of the peoples of Europe fastened upon 
 her, no less than those of their rulers. She knows that if 
 any people are yet blind through ignorance and degradation, 
 their children will come to her light. She knows God has 
 lifted her up, for the world's benefit and blessing ; and, so 
 knowing, a grander inspiration possesses her. She may be 
 ridiculed for this. Yet she is not alone in her pride. One 
 cannot read a British journal, or hear a British speech, or
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 305 
 
 hardly open one of her books, where her greatness is not 
 set forth in full if not fulsome phrase. France is as little 
 afflicted with modesty. Both are partly right ; both have 
 honorable qualities, and, in many things, an honorable fame. 
 Yet the achievements and the liberties of America are far 
 greater than theirs. France owes whatever of liberty or 
 equality she possesses to America. America owes their 
 germs to England, but their growth and greatness are her 
 own. It is the seed of the age of Cromwell, first betrayed 
 by him, and then trodden under foot by succeeding dynasties, 
 which has found a good soil, there, and is bringing forth 
 fruit a hundredfold. .It will be transplanted to Europe, 
 and all nations shall sit under its blessed branches. 
 
 For these armed and separated kingdoms must become 
 peaceful, United, States. Destroy distinctions in society; 
 make the ruler subject to a written Constitution ; choose 
 him out of the people, to return in a brief time to the people ; 
 in a word, make the people sovereign, arid armies and arma- 
 ments will cease. Terror of each other, wasteful expendi- 
 tures to defend themselves against each other, yet heavier 
 ones to maintain a costly and useless pomp of government, 
 will also cease. England, like New York, will be simply a 
 great State, with its governor and local administration of 
 affairs. And New York is to-day as wisely and liberally 
 governed as England ; far more liberally in the matter of 
 education. Scotland, in like manner, will enjoy the bless- 
 ings of a real and not, as now, a quasi independence and 
 union. Ireland will have its governor elected by its people ; 
 France, Austria, Italy, Spain, each theirs. Each is no 
 larger, no better, than the States of the American Union. 
 Each, I may proudly say, with all its great history, has 
 no equal history ; for in none of them is the most vital of 
 all social and civil duties the education, the elevation, the 
 liberty of all so thoroughly carried out. These shall yet 
 be one Kepublic, a European Union ; copying the American,^ 
 20
 
 306 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 forerunning 1 the World Republic. Call not this a fantasy. It 
 is the democratic prophecy of England's laureate, drawn from 
 our living example. It shall be fulfilled in the earth when 
 
 "The war drums beat no longer, and the battle flag is furled 
 In the Parliament of Man the federation of the World ! 
 Then the common sense of Most will keep a fretful realm in awe, 
 And the holy earth will slumber, lapped in universal law." 
 
 It is essential to this era of accomplished bliss that the 
 American Republic be preserved ; for it is, what " Black- 
 wood " has long jeeringly called it, " the Model Republic." 
 Not that it is developed to the fullness of its own principles. 
 This very conflict has been thrust upon it by Divine Prov- 
 idence because it had become unfaithful to those principles. 
 It had ceased to regard all men as equal. Through social, 
 financial, and political interests it had been tempted to 
 disregard the cry of the slave ; it had allowed his masters 
 to rivet the chains which previous generations had cast 
 upon them. God rose upon -us in judgment. He made 
 us feel that our boasted strength was perfect weakness ; 
 that we should disappear as speedily as we had arisen, un- 
 less we gave full scope and play to those principles which 
 He had breathed into us, which were our breath of life, and 
 by which alone we had become a living, national soul. 
 Everybody saw it in the flashing of an eye ; and hence the 
 unanimous cry, " The Union shall be preserved ; let Slavery 
 die." This takes a much stronger form in most, but its 
 lowest expression is this. 
 
 We have yet a great work to do in this matter a work 
 which no European can comprehend, which almost every 
 American yet shrinks from, but whose preliminary steps, to 
 our honor it shall be said, we are willing to take, letting 
 Providence direct the issue. It is this the African race is 
 in among us, in slavery or akiji to it. It is unlike every 
 other race, who are welcomed, whose lineage -is speedily 
 forgotten, and whose blood mingles freely each with each.
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 307 
 
 The distinctions and pride of European races have totally 
 disappeared there. I know eminent families in whose 
 blood a half dozen of these races are represented. We 
 therefore cease to talk of English, Irish, German, French, 
 Celtic, Teutonic, or any such clannish blood. We call our- 
 selves the Caucasian the white race. Yet this is clannish. 
 
 | 
 
 And as these narrow feelings dwell in European nationalities, 
 so this like narrow, if larger, sentiment works in us. Now 
 the problem is thrust upon us by Providence, of the relation 
 of the Caucasian to the African race the white to the 
 black. Our fundamental and most vital theories require 
 that we make no distinction ; that we be as unmindful of 
 the accident of color as that of birth or tongue. But our 
 feelings are powerfully averse to the conclusions to which 
 we are thus driven. We cannot deny our foundation princi- 
 ples ; we cannot instantly overcome the repugnance of 
 generations. 
 
 It will not do for Europeans to say, We have overcome it ; 
 there is no distinction of color here. This is not quite true. 
 I saw but three colored men in England, and they were all 
 engaged in menial occupations, and one was dragging his 
 heavy mistress round the streets a service to which no 
 Southern slave was ever humiliated. I have seen like few 
 in France, and in no case have I seen gentlemen and ladies 
 freely associating with them. They seem to be alone. At 
 the Madeleine an elegantly dressed lady of color sat alone, 
 and though in a most eligible seat and a crowded assembly, 
 the chairs near her were left vacant. 
 
 But if received, they are only admitted to the lower 
 grades. Let us see them in your House of Commons, in 
 your House of Lords, generals in your army, riding in state 
 and authority above the people. Let your prince follow the 
 greater of Hebrew princes, and make a daughter of the 
 dark race the sharer of his throne, and you would see 
 whether England was as free from prejudice as she boasts.
 
 308 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 If every sixth person in Great Britain was more or less 
 African ; if, in some counties, two out of every three were 
 of this color ; if you, that were white, had imported them or 
 their ancestors as property, and still regarded them as such ; 
 or if, becoming weaned, by Providential dispensation, from 
 that conviction, you were instantly required to look upon 
 them as equals, to grant them all rights and privileges, 
 social and civil ; yea, more, if you were required to place 
 them in your ruling class, to make them your nobles and 
 kings, you would have some idea of the work of America. 
 
 She can have no lower class. She cannot, by virtue of 
 her very nature, persist in distinguishing between men on 
 account of complexion. She knows no Europe, no Asia, no 
 America, before the law ; she must know no Africa. Yet 
 this non-recognition brings in its shadowy train many a yet 
 abhorrent recognition. If all avenues are thrown open, who 
 knows whither they will mount ? Hence her principles and 
 her feelings are engaged in a terrific struggle. Nothing but 
 the danger of losing her own liberties could have made her 
 grant the African his. Nothing but_the sacrifice _of his own 
 equality would make a white citizen admit the black as a 
 sharer. The slaveholders had an immense leverage in the 
 depth and universality of this sentiment. They believed the 
 people would prefer them as rulers to the admission of 
 Africans as equals. The people have rejected them, in view 
 of the possibility, the probability, of the latter alternative. 
 This is far from being settled ; but the first steps are taken. 
 Many seek to expatriate the negro ; but he will not go, and 
 they dare not drive him out. Hence they wait the move- 
 ments of Providence. It may be that higher than all their 
 thoughts, far beyond all their desires, we are working out 
 another problem that must be solved before the Millennium 
 comes. It may be that the unity, as well as the equality, of 
 the human race is to be first reestablished in America. The 
 dispersion of Babel, continued for thousands of years, yet
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 309 
 
 potent in all the earth, may cease there first. To her may 
 the gathering of all the nations be. The extreme races of 
 mankind are forced together in a land whose greatest, all- 
 engrossing idea, is the perfect equalhy of all men. They are 
 being welded in the fiery furnace of war, and weakness, and 
 sorrow. They may become one and indivisible. If so, and 
 if, being so, the central idea of her nationality is unweak- 
 ened, if all men, of whatever shade or origin, move freely 
 in the great currents of social and civil life, then has 
 she indeed a high, the highest possible honor. Then will 
 she be the guide and example of the world. At present 
 it must be honestly said, she desires no such honor. It 
 is a greatness, of the kind which Bacon says is thrust 
 upon man. But she is determined to be faithful to her 
 principles in view of even such a possibility. The time will 
 come when she will hail it as a privilege. Europeans of the 
 higher and middle classes, even, shrink to-day from such 
 relations with their own blood in the lower classes with un- 
 utterable abhorrence. They can throw no stones at Ameri- 
 cans. What fearful processes our Creator may employ to 
 break up all these prejudices, everywhere prevailing, He 
 only knows. They must be abolished ; for He Himself 
 makes no such distinction among the children of Adam. 
 They must be like Him in this regard in respect to each 
 other. 
 
 It is not necessary for me to say that we do not con- 
 demn the course of all the citizens of Britain because we 
 must that of their government. We gratefully recognize 
 the sympathy of not a few of her eminent and private men. 
 We gladly commend the foresight, wisdom, as well as con- 
 stant abolitionism of George Thompson ; the bold and true 
 democratic utterances of John Bright ; the faithful and able 
 services of the Star and the News, and of a few other 
 sheets in the minor cities of the kingdom. We rejoice 
 that Dr. Jobson, and William Arthur, and Robinson Scott
 
 310 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 have not failed us in this hour, but have steadily approved 
 our course, and confidently awaited our success. 
 
 Let it also be remembered that America does not re- 
 fuse to recognize any excellences in England, though her 
 leading journals and statesmen find it very difficult to 
 see any good in America. She acknowledges her indebted- 
 ness to the men who wrested the Magna Charta from an 
 unwilling despot ; to the greater men of later date, Hamp- 
 den, Vane, Eussell, Sydney, Granville Sharpe, Erskine, 
 Fox, Wilberforce, and many others, who, by their labors, 
 dangers, and in not a few cases by their martyrdom, ad- 
 vanced the cause of human rights not only in Britain, but 
 throughout the world. She rejoices that the encroachments 
 of aristocracy and monarchy on the liberties of the people 
 have thus been resisted and beaten back, and that these 
 powers have been at least girdled and limited. These are 
 proud names, which she delights to honor. They have 
 labored, and she enters into their labors, not to revel idly 
 in the fruit of their toil, but to carry forward the work they 
 so perilously, so gloriously begun. A saying of Algernon 
 Sydney is the motto of Massachusetts the spirit of 
 Sydney is the spirit of America. There these great Britons 
 find a more congenial home than in their own yet half- 
 liberated land. There it is that Milton's spirit, as well as 
 language, is the mother tongue. Every heart beats in 
 unison with his principles ; every institution conforms to 
 their high behests. What is discordant must disappear, 
 what concordant must go on to perfection. 
 
 Neither does America quarrel with the crowned heads of 
 Europe because they are crowned. She has had imbecility, 
 if not treachery, in some whom she had appointed to main- 
 tain her authority. She knows that with the most irre- 
 sponsible powers an Antonine ruled wisely. She acknowl- 
 edges the good sense and admirable virtues of Victoria, and 
 rejoices that she feels the gratitude, as a mother and a
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 311 
 
 sovereign, which her government, as subjects, have forgot- 
 ten. She recognizes the consummate tact of Napoleon, the 
 wisdom of Victor Emanuel, and the larger, because more 
 liberal, nature of Alexander of Russia, more worthy than 
 the first of that nam'e to be called Alexander the Great. Yet 
 these exceptional cases cannot blind her eyes to the wrong- 
 fulness of the system on which, though not of which, they 
 flourish. As excellent have been not a few slaveholders. 
 Does England therefore approve of that institution ? So she 
 feels that the structure of society on this basis is wrong, and 
 that, as great and virtuous, far more so, as a whole, would 
 their rulers be, if from and with the people. 
 
 It only needs a Washington and Jefferson to prove this. 
 They will appear when the people shall call for them ; and 
 when that call is made, you, too, may feel the throes of 
 civil convulsions. They have always attended the birth 
 of new liberties. England, France, Italy, have organized 
 in the State the new demands of human nature only with 
 fierce civil wars. It seems to be a necessity laid upon man 
 that every triumph of Freedom must be through blood. 
 Would that the powers now leagued against her here would 
 take warning from the fate of their natural allies in America, 
 and yield without resistance to her divine demands. But it 
 is not probable that they will thus learn wisdom. Wrong 
 power never has". It has always to be overthrown by armed 
 right. Sydney's and Massachusetts' motto is painfully true : 
 Ense petit placidam sub libertale quietem She seeks with the 
 sword serene repose under liberty. Hence it is more than 
 probable that England's now peaceful and lovely fields will 
 again reecho with the ragings of civil war. Almost every 
 rood of her soil has been made fat with fraternal blood ; and 
 the warfare is not yet accomplished. It is but just begun. 
 Her masses with but little culture, comfort, civil rights, or 
 social equality. A few persons cover all her lands with
 
 312 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 their seal, while, as Tennyson declares, and declares too 
 truly, - 
 
 " Her poor are huddled and hustled together, each sex like swine; " 
 
 the right of primogeniture separating between children, and 
 impoverishing all but one, that he may be unnaturally hon- 
 ored ; a ruling class, based on birth, not worth ; a church 
 claiming exclusive privilege, protection, and power ; a chief 
 ruler born to his seat, and, as history has proved, almost as 
 frequently a curse as a blessing to his subjects, these rad- 
 ical and profound evils, as they appear to Americans, as they 
 are appearing to all men, must be abolished. Before their 
 abolition, they must be boldly assailed. Said I not truly the 
 warfare has hardly begun ? It will begin. The August 
 day of wealth and quiet which she is now enjoying is no 
 greater than that which America enjoyed two years ago. 
 We had to arise and attack a gigantic foe or surrender our 
 liberties. So must Britain arise. Somebody must sound the 
 democratic trumpet here, and call the people to contend for 
 their rights, peacefully, sternly, unto the triumphant end. 
 He who calls for this glorious warfare may find that the 
 traitor's gate of the Tower can still be opened, and that the 
 headman's ax is yet sharp, if rusty. 
 
 More than one has had to lay down his life in America 
 before the conflict came to its armed and final issue. Love- 
 joy died at the hands of a mob, defending liberty of speech. 
 Torrey expired in a Maryland dungeon for seeking to deliver 
 the captives. Others have been offered on the altar of this 
 faith, until the traitor's gibbet was honored with the heroic 
 martyrdom of John Brown and his devoted band. For some 
 yet unknown heroes in your land the hemlock and the laurel 
 are perhaps now growing. I hope and pray that this work 
 may require no such sacrifices, but that, by peaceful agita- 
 tion, this divine purpose may be accomplished. But it must 
 be begun, and on their heads be the guilt who seek thus to
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 313 
 
 suppress it. When accomplished, whether, as we hope, 
 peacefully, or, as may possibly happen, by such a conflict as 
 America is now passing through, there will be a new 
 England, far lovelier than the past or present ; an England 
 not only of charming ruins, and fields, and roads, and sheep, 
 and kine, of castles and villas, where a sumptuous nobility 
 or the comfortable middle class, dwell in delightful seclusion, 
 but an England where the multitudinous masses are upraised 
 in intelligence, comfort, and dignity ; where all have equal 
 rights, and legislators and governors, elected by the people, 
 feel that they are one with the people. The kindness which 
 now beautifies many in these high stations will not then be, 
 as now, one of condescension, but of the promptings of 
 equality and fraternity. Then, and not till then, shall the 
 saying of the Great Alfred (one of our founders as well as 
 of yours, for both peoples were in his loins) be fulfilled, that 
 " England wishes every man to be as free as his own 
 thoughts." 
 
 It is no child's play that is laid upon the Englishmen of 
 to-day. It is no chaffering between two pampered and pur- 
 poseless parties, whose quarrels are almost as powerless for 
 the good of the State as were those of the Court of Louis XV. 
 They may be swept away, as those were, by the strong wind 
 of a political revolution. May the men of Britain see and 
 seize this arduous, glorious calling. May they gird their 
 loins to the great work. Then will disinthralled America 
 forget the conduct of the present ruling caste, and with the 
 Commonwealth of England hold firm and eternal concord ; 
 for they will be one in feeling, work, and victory. 
 
 But I may be intruding upon your courtesy by such ut- 
 terances, though they have legitimate connection with the 
 whole argument ; for, to the American mind, democracy is in 
 .debate on her fields, and anti-democracy alone is the baleful 
 animus of English silence and practical complicity. But 
 these words, to be effectual in England, must be proclaimed
 
 314 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 by Englishmen. My excuse for the liberty I have indulged, 
 if any is needed, is that, though writing in France, I am 
 writing to England. Here a government professedly based 
 on seven and a half millions of free votes dare not allow a 
 single obscure word in an obscure journal to question its 
 pretended popular sovereignty ; but Britain has long re- 
 joiced in perfect liberty of speech and press. We trust it is 
 no vain boasting. It must be perfect, or it is .no liberty ; if 
 it cannot discuss the system as well as the policy of its 
 government the constitution as well as the administra- 
 tion it is as much paralyzed as though stricken with utter 
 dumbness. I remember, too, that one of your own poets 
 
 has said, 
 
 " Let us ponder boldly ; 'tis a base 
 Abandonment of reason to resign 
 Our right of thought." 
 
 But freedom of thought is riot freedom unless that of speech 
 accompany it. 
 
 As the utmost license of honest utterance exists in respect 
 to every other subject, so it must in respect to this also. 
 Our Creator subjects His nature, government, and move- 
 ments to the scrutiny of all His intelligent creatures. If He 
 thus casts His works and Word, His Gospel, and Himself in 
 His Incarnation, in His Trinity, in all His nature and work- 
 ings into the crucible of honest discussion, certainly this far 
 lesser idea of civil government cannot claim exemption. If 
 kings are kings, as they say they are, Dei gratia, then 
 they must be content with the condition He has imposed on 
 His own royalty. "It is enough for the servant that he be 
 as his Master." But it has no exemption in reality. Their 
 own government is discussed privately by Europeans, in 
 every parlor, kitchen, and workshop, as much as the Ameri- 
 can is in America. It must be publicly here as it is there. 
 Let not the advocates of any system fear for the result. As 
 was said of an infinitely greater cause, involved in an in-
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 315 
 
 finitely more vital controversy, so may it be of these con- 
 flicting ideas of government : "If they be of man, they will 
 come to naught ; but if of God, we cannot overthrow them, 
 lest haply we be found fighting against God." Napoleon 
 said Europe in half a century would be Republican or Cos- 
 sack. The Crimean War prevented the triumph of the 
 latter ; the rule of the slave power in America has thus far 
 prevented the former. If that be overthrown, it is not too 
 late in the remaining decade of time he suggested, to have 
 his prophecy fulfilled. He saw at least that the world was 
 too small for such hostile systems to long hold equal sov- 
 ereignty. It is getting smaller every day. All men must 
 soon decide whether they will rule themselves, or be ruled 
 by a self-elected few. Four reunions of the world's indus- 
 try within ten years show us how compact, how interwoven, 
 is the family of man. In like manner the world's politics 
 should be calmly, carefully, and courageously considered 
 by the world's representatives. It will be considered, but 
 whether in this or a more violent form, God knows. 
 
 But, finally, it is perhaps only a proper expression of 
 gratitude for an American to speak thus freely to Great 
 Britain of her great defect and duty. You sent one of your 
 most eloquent orators to America to show us our sin, and to 
 summon us to the work of its extirpation. You have faith- 
 fully and constantly set before us this duty in your journals, 
 in the resolutions of religious and philanthropic associations, 
 and even in the documents of State. A humble son of 
 America may show the gratitude which he and many of his 
 people truly feel for this faithfulness on your part, by a 
 reciprocal service. As Mr. Garrison said of some of his 
 warm English sympathizers, " Each nation, as each individual, 
 has its own cross to bear. Your duty is not ours. It is 
 ours to abolish slavery. It is yours to abolish aristocracy, 
 from the knight to the throne." Both will then arrive, 
 though by different paths, at the same high and glorious
 
 316 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. 
 
 table-land of universal liberty, equality, and fraternity May 
 our motto be an improvement of that of England, and in- 
 stead of the selfish Norman's proud French, " God and my 
 right," may it be the better, the best watchword, " God and 
 the Right." And may He give us grace and strength as na- 
 tions, as well as individuals, to see and to do our whole duty. 
 With great respect, 
 
 I remain, truly yours, 
 
 G. HAVEN. 
 PARIS, July 4, 1862.
 
 THE STATE 
 
 A CHRISTIAN 
 ERHOOD.* 
 
 BROTH- 
 
 " LET US KEEP THE FEAST, NOT WITH OLD LEAVEN, NEITHER WITH THE 
 LEAVEN OF MALICE AND WICKEDNESS, BUT WITH THE UNLEAVENED 
 BREAD OF SINCERITY AND TRUTH." 1 Cor. V. 8. 
 
 "ARISE; SHINE." ha. Ix. 1. 
 
 " ALL NATIONS SHALL CALL YOU BLESSED ; FOR YE SHALL BE A DE- 
 LIGHTSOME LAND, SAITH THE LORD OF HOSTS." Mai. Hi. 12. 
 
 HE feast referred to by the apostle was the Jew- 
 ish fast and feast, commemorative alike of the 
 greatest gloom and gladness. It is celebrated to- 
 night and to-morrow all over Christendom, by 
 both Jews and Christians, the solemn sacrifice, typical 
 and memorial, of the blessed Lord. With Paul, we see the 
 sacred supper, and the more sacred garden that eternally 
 sanctify this day. With him we behold the consummations 
 of the morrow, from the midnight betrayal to the mid- 
 night burial, the scorn and scourging, the mob, from pub- 
 lican to priest, seething with ferocious rage, the cross of 
 agony, the torn and bloody hands, and feet, and head, the 
 blackened heavens and rent earth ! How they overwhelm 
 
 * A discourse delivered before the New England Conference of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, at the High Street Church, Charlestown, 
 Mass., on the occasion of the annual State Fast, April 2, 18G3. 
 
 (317)
 
 318 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 us, as we stand on this distant point of earth and time, and 
 look upon that Form, high and lifted up ! The preliminary 
 services of many generations also rise before us ; even back 
 to that Thursday night, when there was wrought out the 
 earthly salvation of a nation, type of the earthly and eter- 
 nal salvation of the world. We see the poor slaves, aroused 
 by the screams of their hitherto haughty neighbors, hastily 
 cooking their unraised cakes, and, in great terror, as well 
 as great joy, fleeing from the house of bondage. The light 
 of four thousand years shines solemnly upon us. We feel 
 our unity with the emancipated founders of the memorial 
 sacrifice with Him in whom, in "the form of a slave," 
 it was divinely consummated. 
 
 But our responsibilities lie not with the past. We gather 
 from it incentives to duty ; but the Duties themselves are 
 here and 'now. The apostle introduces these words in an 
 earnest expostulation with his brethren for a local, Corin- 
 thian sin. So we, if we would rightly eat the unleavened 
 bread and bitter herbs of a true fast, must do it by purging 
 ourselves of the old leaven of malice and wickedness within 
 ourselves, and by eating the unleavened bread of sincerity 
 and truth, in respect to present and personal obligations. 
 The cause of this gathering is not to keep the passover, not 
 even to dwell on the great event, which, more than all oth- 
 ers, should be held by the Church in perpetual remembrance. 
 It is by invitation of this Commonwealth, through its elect 
 head, to deplore our national sins, and implore national for- 
 giveness and salvation. We may with especial propriety, 
 therefore, consider those questions of morality and religion 
 that connect themselves with our civil and social insti- 
 tutions. 
 
 In what respect must AVC, as citizens, must our nation, as 
 a nation, purge itself of the old leaven of malice and wick- 
 edness ? What are the new works, sincere and truthful, 
 demanded of us by the God and Savior of nations and of
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 319 
 
 men ? May God help us to speak and hear in the enjoined 
 spirit of sincerity, the eftixqlveta, or translucent clear- 
 ness of spiritual vision, by which, and by which alone, we 
 detect the perfect proportions and exquisite beauty of abso- 
 lute truth. If the green scum of pride cover the soul's 
 vision, if the muddy elements of prejudice float in it, 
 if the violent winds of passion toss it, if, as is often the 
 case, all these combine, a dead surface, muddy center, and 
 vehement commotion, then we shall not discern the truth. 
 We may fancy that we have found it, but it will be a luster- 
 less, crystalless thing, the worthless compound of our own 
 gross natures. We shall rage on those who do discover it, 
 and set it before us. Not in Christ's day, alone, did swine 
 trample pearls under their feet, and turn and rend those 
 who set before them these gifts that were then esteemed 
 more precious than diamonds. The human heart, here 
 and everywhere, in you and me, tempts to this same act. 
 It is a swinish heart, full of swinish conceit and appetite, 
 that the grace of God alone can purge and purify, and 
 uplift to the style and manners of the sky. Let us im- 
 plore for ourselves the presence of His Holy Spirit, which 
 alone can give us the eye serene and the transparent me- 
 dium by which we may see the very thought of God in 
 all its perfection of beauty. May we be lifted up by His 
 side, in a revelator's vision, and behold our land and our- 
 selves, as His eye now beholds them. Then shall we gather 
 from the thoughts of the hour both increasing purity and 
 increasing knowledge. The truth that thus shines out to 
 our humble-lidded eye will itself dissipate any remaining 
 darkness in the medium of vision. We shall see the more 
 clearly from seeing it the more clearly. 
 
 It is a favorite conceit with all famous peoples that they 
 have a mission. " For some especial purpose God has 
 raised them up," they say, forgetting that this purpose may 
 be, in their case, as it was in Pharaoh's, to show forth His
 
 320 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN- BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 power and His wrath. They forget that it is the simple, 
 universal, every-day mission of doing 1 justly, loving mercy, 
 and walking humbly before God, and that it is the national, 
 as well as private, observance of those probationary tests 
 that shall fit us for, and insure us admission to, the citizen- 
 ship of the heavenly nation. But worldly people dream 
 that they have some great earthly thing to "do, and cry out 
 with Pharisaic agony of conceit, How are we straitened till 
 it be accomplished ! So has it always been. Egypt, un- 
 doubtedly, fancied that she had a mission, and, looking on 
 her pyramids, obelisks, sphinxes, and temples, dreamed that 
 the problems of the universe were to find solution only in 
 her. So, evidently, felt Nebuchadnezzar and the powers of 
 Nineveh and Babylon. So did Athens, and Turkey, and 
 Venice, and mediaeval Italy. So did Spain and France. 
 So, to-day, do England and America. 
 
 It will be noticed that only as a people rise to wealth 
 and power do they begin to assume these airs, and when 
 that wealth and power leave them, much, if not all, the 
 sense of their peculiar mission departs also. Another fact 
 is also noticeable. The institutions under which they have 
 happened to flourish receive all the glory of their success 
 and the ardor of their propagation. Athens thought her 
 style of a slave democracy the world's panacea. Sparta 
 was certain that her fashion of a slave oligarchy was the 
 only remedy. Rome would Romanize everything. So is it 
 now. The British fancy that their Constitution is the sole 
 cause of their prosperity, and that, could it be applied to 
 all the weak bodies politic of Europe, it would effect an 
 instant cure ; while the truth is, her Constitution, for five 
 hundred years, never made her great. Protestantism and 
 the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope are the causes 
 of her wealth, and her wealth the cause of her arrogant 
 self-esteem. 
 
 We are treading in the same path. Is it a divine one, or
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 321 
 
 is it but the fantasy of a heated vanity ? One is constrained 
 to feel that much of it is the laudation with which success 
 crowns her votaries. She delights to wreathe the laurels 
 of virtue with those of victory. Yet there is a basis for 
 this universal sentiment. It is this. All nations, at their 
 beginning-, or at the hour of their especial development, 
 measurably recognize the equal rights of all. The Arab 
 and Turk, flying with the crescent, symbol of their bloody 
 cimeter, across three continents, offered equal privileges to 
 every soldier. The meanest serf was one with the haughti- 
 est bashaw before God and His prophet. A like sense of 
 equality won Marathon and Salamis, and founded the Gre- 
 cian power. Home's greatest victories were when she was 
 a republic. Gibbon begins her decline with her Caesars. 
 Venice, Holland, arid republican France, all felt this inspi- 
 ration sweeping them on to power. Yet these have per- 
 ished. They are broken in pieces as a potter's vessel. They 
 departed from God and God from them. It would seem as 
 if nations would be taught by their fate. But nations, like 
 individuals, are but slightly impressed with another's expe- 
 rience. England is traveling the same path. In the day 
 of her wealth and power- she is doing precisely what Venice, 
 Greece, and Rome did in theirs. She tramples on the rights 
 of her despised people, from whom alone is her real life. 
 Unless she is converted, she will follow her proud predeces- 
 sors to their eternal grave. 
 
 What is our mission ? It is of precisely the same char- 
 acter as theirs, and as all men's to fear God and keep His 
 commandments. Being the latest birth of time, the princi- 
 ples on which and of which we must live are so clearly rec- 
 ognized, that they have found expression in our organic law. 
 They are twofold. 
 
 First. Universal toleration of religion, with the acknowl- 
 edged supremacy of Christianity. 
 
 Second. The universal equality and fraternity of man. 
 21
 
 322 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 I. We may properly consider, as preliminary to the first 
 topic, the marked difference between this idea and those 
 which have been followed by previous nations. Religion 
 has always been recognized as the supreme idea of the 
 State. In Israel orthodoxy and obedience were identical ; 
 so were heterodoxy and treason. When Christianity became 
 potent in the Romam empire, it ascended the throne as the 
 supreme object of reverence. It supplanted heathenism, 
 which, for four centuries, had attacked it with instinctive 
 and increasing ferocity. Not without earthly wisdom did 
 Herod search, for his rival to the throne of David among the 
 babes of Bethlehem. Not without the bloody instincts of 
 self-preservation did he slay the whole, that he might the 
 One. He knew that the scepter of earthly sovereignty was 
 grasped by the appointed Heir of all things. He saw that 
 his central and sacred throne would be the first that He 
 would ascend. Every pagan emperor acted with like worldly 
 wisdom. The refusal to worship their dead predecessor was 
 a refusal to acknowledge their own legitimacy. If unhin- 
 dered by their clemency or carelessness, it must result in 
 the overthrow of their dynasty. Could Napoleon allow 
 citizens of France, or Victoria those of England, to openly 
 acknowledge a Bourbon or a Stuart as their sovereign ? 
 Then they could a president, and where are they and theirs ? 
 The same instinct of self-preservation worked alike in rulers 
 as sanguinary as Nero, as gross as Caligula, as states- 
 man-like as Trajan, as clement as Marcus Aurelius, as de- 
 votional as Pius Antoninus. They all, with one accord, sought 
 to uproot the pestiferous treason treason against the gods, 
 and, therefore, against the State. In the triumph of Chris- 
 tianity the same law obtained. It was Christianity, not 
 Constantino, that overthrew Paganism at the Pons Milvius. 
 Under its inspiration, he slays the gods in the person of his 
 rival Maxentius. Not without significance, too, may we 
 not say, not without Providence, did this heathen bring into
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 323 
 
 the conflict the holy vessels of the Hebrew service three 
 hundred years before, with their nation, brought captive to 
 Rome. As Jew arid pagan united in killing Christ because 
 He assumed to be their king, so they again, and for the 
 last time, appear together to prevent His elevation to the 
 throne of earthly dominion. The apostate Church and apos- 
 tate world are confederate against the Lord's Anointed. It 
 is in vain. The ark that once embodied the rejecting and 
 rejected Church, and the golden candlestick that suggested 
 its vanished light, follow the idolatrous Caesar, the incar- 
 nation of pagan supremacy, to the bed of the Tiber, while 
 the Cross, waving in the skies, leads the triumphing eagles 
 of the Christian Ceesar to the throne of the world. 
 
 From that hour till the organization of the American gov- 
 ernment, Christianity had allowed no real toleration to hos- 
 tile or indifferent faiths. However Christless it was, it yet 
 assumed an undivided sovereignty. Whatever civil wars it 
 had in itself, those wars never questioned its supremacy in 
 the affairs of state. Latin Occidentalism fought for centu- 
 ries with Greek Orientalism for the control of the empire. 
 Protestantism, in many preliminary skirmishes, and for gen- 
 erations after the Reformation dawned, contended mightily 
 with Romanism ; but none of these forms of faith ever 
 dreamed that they were contending for toleration. They 
 were striving for the mastery. Their success involved the 
 utter overthrow of their rival. Such were the wars of Ger- 
 many and England for two hundred years. As soon as any 
 especial type of faith prevailed, it demanded the complete 
 obedience of its foes. Presbyterianism was as zealous for 
 the rack and thumb-screw against Episcopacy, as both against 
 Papacy. Janet's stool, hurled against the robed and prayer- 
 reading Churchman in John Knox's kirk, was but a symbol 
 of the national feeling. Cromwell was as severe against 
 the liturgists as Charles II. against non-conformity. The 
 reason why the true faith outlived these persecutions was,
 
 324 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 because it was the true faith. Had it been false utterly, 
 as were the pagan systems, it would have died and 
 made no sign. Gonstantine was as rigid in requiring 1 sub- 
 jection to his religion as Diocletian, just before him, had 
 been. But Diocletian struggled to slay the divine truth, 
 and hence rightfully goes down to history as a persecutor ; 
 Constantine, to extirpate a false, though famous, faith, and 
 its advocates either yielded an outward conformity, because 
 it gave them no inward support in their extremity, or else, 
 resisting and perishing, have been accounted, by their 
 victors and their posterity to this day, as worthy of death 
 and infamy. 
 
 It is well to notice here the charge that is often laid against 
 our Puritan, not Pilgrim, fathers, for the Plymouth Pilgrims 
 learned toleration in their exile, and were the first to prac- 
 tice it in the world. But the Puritans of Massachusetts 
 Bay had suffered less and learned less. They simply con- 
 formed to this, till then, universal principle. They revolted 
 from the ritualistic forms of worship, and for almost a hun- 
 dred years had striven with it for the mastery of England. 
 They had been defeated. They must conform or fly. Had 
 they succeeded, their rivals must have done likewise. They 
 did so obey or fly in the reign of Cromwell. Defeated they 
 retreated to America. No wiser than their generation, than 
 all previous generations, they made their creed the supreme 
 law of the land. Any shade of difference was, so' far forth, 
 treason any avowal thereof must be punished as rigidly 
 as theft or murder ; more rigidly, for these concerned but 
 the estates or bodily lives of their people that, if allowed, 
 imperiled their eternal salvation. The idea of toleration 
 found occasional expression, but it was rather the dream of 
 a fanciful thinker than the resolute opinion of a sturdy be- 
 liever. Lord Bacon held to it, but Lord Bacon was hardly 
 thought to be a wise master-builder in ecclesiastical matters. 
 
 The first man who introduced it formally into the consti-
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 325 
 
 tution of human government, grew to the height of his 
 great argument in the prolific soil of Puritan politics. Roger 
 Williams " saw the light and hailed it in his joy," when, 
 seeking deliverance from the trammels of a human creed, he 
 found himself restrained by the bolts and bars of human 
 laws. It was the conflict of conscience with conscience 
 that struck out the spark of the inviolable sanctity of con- 
 science, which has become the peculiar light and glory of 
 America. It is not unlikely that had he been allowed a 
 measure of liberty in prophesying, he would have been con- 
 tented with his chains. He certainly shows the inconsis- 
 tency which every strong nature somewhere reveals, in that, 
 while contending for the utmost liberty of conscience in the 
 State, he should exclude from the Church all who refused 
 compliance with a mere form. Had his colony been as great 
 and prosperous 'as its neighbors, it might have returned to 
 their system. To expel unimmersed Christians from the 
 Church is as much greater violation of human rights than 
 to expel non-conformists and non-professors from the State, 
 as the Church itself is greater than the State. 
 
 Less catholic was the Catholicism of Maryland. Like 
 that of Rhode Island, it was constrained by events. Unlike 
 that, it was not developed from principle. James would 
 establish a colony. He wished that it should be Papal. His 
 power was not equal to his desires. A Prostestant Parlia- 
 ment was hostile. He secured his ends only by making 
 league with the most ultra of his opponents ; and on the 
 basis of perfect toleration the most extreme of Papists and 
 Protestants outwardly, not inwardly, united. Maryland 
 was the fruit of the strange marriage ; an unnatural 
 child, she reveals the unmingling contraries of her origin, 
 even to this day. 
 
 The American idea, therefore, of the equality of all 
 Churches and Christians before the law is of the latest origin. 
 It is also to-day as purely an American institution as the
 
 326 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 civil equality of the people. There are but few religious 
 bodies and no Christian governments elsewhere that yet 
 desire such a boon. They are as much afraid of spiritual, 
 as of social and civil democracy. 
 
 The Protestants of France accept subsidies from the State, 
 and submit to the restraints with which it pays for its aid. 
 M. Monod, one of the most able of the Evangelical preach- 
 ers of Paris, told me, with especial and unconscious pride, 
 of their success in building up congregations to the standard 
 required before they could draw on the government for the 
 support of a pastor, and of the various increments accord- 
 ing to which that aid was graded. He did not seem to feel 
 the ignominy of receiving his bread from such a hand as 
 Louis Napoleon's a professed Papist a real Infidel. lie 
 did not feel the further degradation, as it would seem to an 
 Englishman even, for they have grown to that stature, of 
 being forbidden by his patron from saying anything contro- 
 versially against the Papists. Napoleon keeps up the show 
 of impartiality by requiring like pledges of the Papal priests. 
 It is one of the shrewd dodges of that arch hypocrite, by 
 which he apparently serves the cause of liberty, and really 
 that of slavery. With Paris, thoroughly, openly, universally 
 Catholic, there is as little need of the priests declaiming 
 against Protestantism as in the days of Louis XIV. ; while 
 the possibility of Protestants converting those whose errors 
 of doctrine they are not allowed to oppose, would be as 
 hopeful as the like silence imposed by the Sanhedrim on 
 Peter and John, had they submitted to that decree of the 
 State, would have been in the conversion of the Jews. To 
 carry out his crafty trickery, he puts a policeman in every 
 church to see that it does not violate this law, and all 
 whether native or foreign, Wesleyan or American are 
 thus preserved from the errors of free speech, and bold de- 
 nunciation of dominant apostasy. What Monod and his 
 friends ought to do, would be to cast the gold of the empe-
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 327 
 
 ror at his feet, saying, " Thy money perish with thee," 
 and, departing from his presence, proclaim the whole truth 
 as it is in Jesus. He would undoubtedly make a vigorous 
 attempt to suppress their liberty, but they would grow with 
 persecutions. The days of St. Bartholomew are passed. 
 He would be constrained to concede what they piously and 
 persistently demanded. But they content themselves with 
 faithfully laboring in the imperial fetters, hoping for some 
 movement of Providence that shall set them at liberty. 
 
 Like, though less servile, are the dissenters of Britain. 
 The universal tax to support the Establishment is quietly 
 submitted to by millionfe of anti-Churchmen. If there were 
 but a uniform refusal to pay it, it would soon be swept 
 away. A single item illustrates the power of this tithe. 
 In the Epworth Church, where Samuel Wesley was rector, 
 a son of a Lord, Rev. and Hon. Charles Dundas, is the pres- 
 ent incumbent. His congregation, on a beautiful June Sab- 
 bath, was not over fifty ; less than twenty staid to the 
 sacrament. In the village around the church are, at least, 
 three churches or chapels of Wesleyans, Independents, and 
 others. Yet the income of the rector is over eleven hun- 
 dred pounds, or nearly six thousand dollars. Four fifths of 
 this is drawn from the poor neighbors who never attend his 
 preaching. This is a poor country parish, and bears no 
 comparison to the enormous wealth of some of the clerical 
 estates. Walking on the uplands near Shakspeare's cliff 
 at Dover, I asked a peasant who owned the land about me. 
 " The Archbishop of Canterbury," he replied. Yet this 
 was twenty-five miles from Canterbury, and a hundred from 
 his real residence, which is in London. 
 
 Such a system, of course, prevents real toleration. Lib- 
 erty of conscience is never perfect where one is compelled 
 to pay for the support of a religion he does not approve. 
 Nor is the liberty of the National Church itself more than a 
 name, when politicians, like Palmerston, appoint their bish-
 
 328 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 ops and station their preachers. But the non-conforming 
 mind, as a whole, is not ripe for a perfect independency. 
 The Free Church of Scotland, though it spurns the aid of a 
 patronizing State, would willingly receive it, if the State 
 would not interfere with its operations. Were that Church 
 strong enough to bring Scotland over to its view, it would 
 dictate terms, under threat of dissolving the British Union ; 
 would become the State Church, and take the moneys of 
 the government for the support of its preachers, while it 
 maintained its superiority over the State, and did not as 
 the National Kirk meekly does place the sovereign or 
 her lordly representative in a royal gallery, far above the 
 moderator, the real head of the Church. 
 
 Like ideas and usages prevail in Protestant Germany. 
 In fine, everywhere but here, is there more or less of a sub- 
 jection of the Church to the State, whereby the Church re- 
 ceives its stipends and surrenders her sovereignty. The Ro- 
 man States are the only exception. There the Church is the 
 State, as it was in the original Jewish nation. When one 
 sees in Rome officials, judge, policeman, custom-house offi- 
 cer, all, receiving their salaries from a clergyman, whose 
 council of state are also clergymen, he has a lively concep- 
 tion of Palestine under Samuel, and the high priests of a 
 later period. Even their kings were but the collectors and 
 disbursers of the Church tariffs never the supreme head 
 of the Church, as in England. 
 
 The Church and the State have thus experienced all the 
 evils of alternate authority. Now the Church rules the 
 State, and now the State the Church. Here, for the first 
 time, they agree to dissolve partnership. They who have 
 been united for good or evil, for better or worse, in life and 
 in death, in all previous ages and races, who have never 
 conceived a dissolution possible, have agreed to make the 
 experiment. The collisions of conscience have compelled 
 this not the advance of political science. Had the Con-
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 329 
 
 science been a unit, the State would have remained its ser- 
 vant. Dissensions in the Church made statesmen of indif- 
 ferent conscience as Jefferson and Franklin see that the 
 independence of each high contracting party was better for 
 both.* Others, more conscientious, adopted their views, 
 and thus was launched the great national idea. It is new 
 in history, and new in two important respects to ourselves. 
 
 1 . It has not been universal with us till the previous gen- 
 eration. But two or three colonies were without an estab- 
 lished Church at the beginning of our national existence. 
 
 2. A more important consideration is, that this toleration 
 had never been extended among the most extremely liberal 
 commonwealths, so as to place all faiths and non-faiths on 
 the same basis as Christianity. The colony of Roger Wil- 
 liams was a Baptist colony, with all its toleration : so was 
 Penn's a Quaker. Both were Christian. The deposition of 
 Christianity from the supreme seat is an act almost of our 
 day. It is not yet everywhere formally accomplished, 
 though the force of the current sweeps thither. 
 
 This idea seems to us eminently practical. It is not so 
 necessarily. It has its most grave and perplexing prob- 
 lems. Like all things human, it is defective and mortal. 
 It will have its day, and cease to be. But we live in the 
 hour of its supremacy. We are required to make full proof 
 of the ministry we have received of the Lord Jesus during 
 its dominion. We ought carefully to consider, then, what 
 are the dangerous tendencies of such a system, and what 
 are the duties of the ministry in view of these tendencies. 
 
 The greatest peril of such a disunion is, that the State 
 ceases to recognize Christ as its Head. We may be so 
 tolerant as to be intolerant of Christianity. We may al- 
 low such liberty as to reject the authority of the Author 
 of all our liberties. We are attempting to build up and 
 make mighty in the earth a nation that is Christian in reality, 
 
 * Mill on Liberty, p. 20.
 
 330 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 and not in name. How difficult, if not impossible, such a 
 work is, can only be seen by comparing it with every other 
 great nation in history. The four kingdoms that Daniel de- 
 scribed to Nebuchadnezzar were pagan powers, crushed by 
 the stone cut from the eternal mountain. The governments 
 since the days of Constantino have been imperfect portions 
 of that kingdom that is to fill the whole earth. This divine 
 kingdom is going on to its completion, and every power to 
 whom God giveth prominence must consider itself as one 
 of its component parts. 
 
 The successive rise of these Christian empires has been 
 because of their partial allegiance to Christ their succes- 
 sive fall, because of their subsequent revolt from Him. The 
 present hour beholds four great powers influencing the 
 world England, France, Russia, and the United States. 
 Each of the others is the representative of a grand division 
 of the Christian Church. We profess not to represent the 
 Christian Church in any of these great divisions. Further 
 than this, we profess not to represent Christianity itself. 
 The first position is right. The second is wrong. It is 
 proper for us to say we are not a Papist or Protestant nation. 
 It is proper to amply protect Jew, Mussulman, Pagan, and 
 Infidel, in his worship or non-worship ; but it is not proper 
 to refuse to recognize Christ as our national Head. It is 
 not right to carefully abstain, in every presidential message 
 and proclamation of fasting or thanksgiving, from mention- 
 ing the name of the Savior of the world. Such liberality is 
 licentiousness. Such fastidiousness is fatal. We aspire to 
 the leadership of the world. But it must be only as the 
 lieutenant of Christ. If we hope to thrust ourselves into 
 the front rank of the race, at this period of the world's his- 
 tory, and so near the millennial reign, without any especial 
 cognizance of Him by whom are all things, and for whom* 
 are all things, we shall find that we have made a dreadful 
 mistake. We shall surely and most suddenly be ground to
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 331 
 
 < 
 
 powder under the steady and rapid advance of that divine 
 Stone. We shall be as though we had never been. God 
 would make small account of us, no matter how large we 
 made of ourselves, did we thus trifle with His decree, made 
 before the world was, and confirmed often since man began 
 his career : " Ask of Me and I will give Thee the heathen 
 for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth 
 for Thy possession." Christ has asked, has earned the gift. 
 It shall be given. Who art thou, Goliath of America, that 
 dares to talk about establishing a kingdom with no Christ 
 in it, or with Christ put on a level with Mahomet or Buddh, 
 Paine or Parker ? " The nation and kingdom that will not 
 serve Thee shall perish. Yea, those nations shall be utterly 
 wasted." It is as true now as in the days of pagan Nero ; 
 as true here as in Mohammedan Turkey. You may say we 
 are Christian. So we might be if the majority governed ; 
 but this is a case where the minority govern ; and no Pres- 
 ident dares acknowledge Christianity to be the religion of 
 this nation. It may offend some unchristian conscience. 
 The call to prayer and fasting that appears in to-day's 
 papers confirms the statement. There is no Christ in it. 
 It is contrary to our cardinal principle. If this is to be 
 the doctrine of America, she will never live out half her 
 days. The attempt now being made to introduce into the 
 Constitution the confession of national faith in God and 
 Christ ought to be pressed forward. The blessing of God 
 will attend its success. 
 
 Already two great sores have broken out upon us in con- 
 sequence of this latitudinarianism one, the irreligious 
 character of many of our public men, and of the masses of 
 the people ; the other, false notions as to the minister's 
 relation to politics or the affairs of State. 
 
 1. It is a rare thing to see a man in the presidential seat 
 who is a professed Christian. I am not aware that such 
 an one has ever been elected to that chair. It is prob-
 
 332 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 able that not one of them was a member of an Evangelical 
 Church. This evil is not cured yet. We have had moral 
 men, and those who were far otherwise. But a man that 
 was willing to avow himself a Christian, that was con- 
 nected with a Christian church, and received its sacraments, 
 is yet a most rare novelty there. The same is true of the 
 majority of our high officials. Whatever the party in power, 
 that fact remains unaltered. The representatives of the 
 cause of liberty are as unwilling to personally profess Christ 
 as are those of the cause of slavery. This is strikingly 
 contrary to the managers of nations abroad. Whatever 
 defects they have, and they are many, however bitterly 
 they oppose the rights of the people, they recognize the 
 rights of Christ. They are professors of faith in Him, and 
 trust to Him alone for salvation. The prominence that they 
 thus give to personal Christian faith is not without marked 
 benefits. It recognizes the necessity of that faith. It re- 
 bukes infidelity. It popularizes religion. We may com- 
 plain of the feeble fruit of such a divine seed, as we see 
 their adhesion to hoary errors and violent perverting of jus- 
 tice ; but we forget that we, as a people, have been, and, 
 in a degree, are even now, guilty of like devotion to hideous 
 sins. Their corrupt sentiments and unchristian conduct are 
 not Christianity, and multitudes who are affected by the 
 fashion of the great men more than by their sins, may thus 
 be led to a simple and saving knowledge of Christ. Cer- 
 tainly the prevalence of a lack of Christian faith, on the 
 part of our representative men, reproduces this irrcligion in 
 a fearfully increasing ratio as we move through the masses 
 of society. The great majority of Americans have no re- 
 ligion. They are worse than the worst heathen, for these 
 do revere and worship something higher than themselves. 
 Even in New England, the majority, probably, of most 
 towns have no personal faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior. 
 So fearfully does this irreligion in high places reveal itself 
 in the low.
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 333 
 
 In Europe the poorest classes are very generally religious. 
 However low the tone of their piety, however ignorant 
 all, and immoral many may be, there is in the masses a 
 knowledge of Jesus as the only Redeemer, the conscious- 
 ness of the need of His blood for their salvation, a will- 
 ingness to confess such a need, and, perhaps, according to 
 the light they have, through the half-teachings of their 
 spiritual guides, as strict a conformity to the demands of 
 their faith as with us. All this is directly contrary to our 
 experience. How few attend our Sunday services ! When 
 there, how impious their bearing sitting and staring 
 through the prayers as coolly as at a play coming to 
 Sunday evening meetings in large numbers, but with no 
 thought of worship with no idea that they are expected 
 to feel a sentiment of godly fear, or sorrow, or faith, > 
 while myriads never darken the doors of a church, and 
 spend the Sabbath as thoughtlessly as they do a holiday ! 
 These are solemn, they are dreadful truths. 
 
 They may well make us pause in our rejoicings over the 
 perfect equality of all religions. They show us that we 
 may have gone further than the scriptural warrant, than the 
 liberty that is in Christ Jesus. I do not read that the 
 heavenly worlds put atheism, diabolism, and every other foe 
 of God, on a footing with God Himself. If they did, hell 
 and paradise would be identical, and Satan be as much pro- 
 tected in his idea of worship as Michael in his. Nay, more. 
 The synagogue of Satan would be on a perfect level with 
 that of Christ, and the impartial and tolerant Governor of 
 the universe would represent the two parties by being Him- 
 self without any religion whatever, as are our public schools 
 the neutral point where the two contraries become a 
 zero. This idea of God, which. Emerson sets forth in some 
 of his most nervous infidelity, is but the fitting expression of 
 our popular religious principle :
 
 334 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 "There unlike things are like; 
 There good and ill, 
 And joy and moan, 
 Melt into one." 
 
 2. But this is not its only 'defect. It is not negative ex- 
 clusively. No error is. It is eminently active, and one of 
 its activities is, that religion and the State being divorced, 
 ministers, the teachers and representatives of true religion, 
 must not meddle with politics or the affairs of State. "They 
 don't belong to your parish/' say the self-elected leaders 
 of civil affairs. " Let us alone. What have we to do with 
 thee, thou minister of Jesus, the Son of David ? Hast thou 
 come to torment us before our time ? " And they do not 
 cry out thus, cowering and trembling as did most of their 
 kindred of old, but with the effrontery of the same kindred 
 when they baffled the ministers of Christ at the foot of the 
 mount of transfiguration. 
 
 " You attend to the Church, and we will attend to the 
 State." It is much as if one should shut you up in a spa- 
 cious house, which he had no desire to enter, and say, 
 " Stay thou there while I roam at will through all the adja- 
 cent fields, and streets, and homes. I have all out of doors 
 to myself, and all in doors but that one habitation." In 
 due time such a haughty doorkeeper to the house of God 
 goes a little further. He not only forbids your leaving your 
 palace, which he thus makes a prison, but he forbids your 
 speaking, when there, on matters and things outside of your 
 walls. If he deigns to visit you, you must not dare to give 
 him advice as to how he shall have his conversation in this 
 world. You must not presume to discourse upon the prin- 
 ciples involved in his profession and career. You are de- 
 basing your profession, if you do. You are intruding on 
 domains forbidden to clerical feet. You are dragging your 
 robes in the mire of political strife. " Preach Christ," he 
 impudently says. Poor creature ! A full Christianity is
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 335 
 
 the last thing he wishes to have preached. A Christ who 
 is Lord of lords to whom belong the kingdoms of this 
 world who demands that they and all their subjects con- 
 form in all things to the kingdom of heaven He is what 
 such transgressors especially dislike and dread. 
 
 Even church members, and I am surprised and grieved 
 to say it, but it is true even the very ministers of Christ 
 themselves, have measurably yielded to this pressure of 
 antichrist. And in our land, alone of all lands since Adam, 
 has the doctrine been avowed by the Church and its minister, 
 that they have nothing to do with the movements of the 
 State. Far from it. They have everything to do with it. 
 They always have had, they always must. 
 
 What does God keep mankind on the earth for ? Only 
 that He may build them into a holy temple in the Lord. 
 But is one part of the temple open to the feet of His ser- 
 vants, and not another ? Laymen could not enter the holy 
 of holies ; but priests could go everywhere, from the court 
 of the Gentiles to the altar and ark. So is this great tem- 
 ple of humanity open to the inspection, under the surveil- 
 lance, of the ministry and the Church. 
 
 Thus lias it always been. More than once did the He- 
 brew kings seek to break away from the intermeddling 
 clergy; but God smote the politician, not the prophet. "Art 
 thou he that troubleth Israel?" cries the secessionist Ahaz 
 to the political preacher Elijah. Thus his traitorous de- 
 scendants in America yet confront the descendants of that 
 prophet. Saul meddled with Samuel's duties, and God took 
 his kingdom from him. But Samuel never was censured 
 for his frequent intermeddling with the affairs of Saul. David 
 had to submit to the authority of more than one priest. No 
 priest was ever compelled to silence before him. Isaiah, 
 Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, all the preachers of right- 
 eousness, dwelt on social and civil sins. They dwelt on 
 hardly anything else. So the beginner of the new dispen-
 
 336 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 sation laid down his head because of a bit of political inter- 
 meddling with the affairs of the government, and Christ was 
 bolder than all His followers in denouncing the conduct of 
 the real rulers of the people. 
 
 The whole history of the Church since has been a history 
 of its conflict with the world and the rulers of the world. 
 The first Christians were executed for treason. The officers 
 of the empire required them to take the prescribed oath of 
 allegiance the recognition of the divinity of the emperor. 
 They refused, and were cast to the lions. It was as legiti- 
 mate treason as that of John Brown's, and their death was 
 for the same folly. 
 
 It has continued thus ever since. The wars of Charles 
 Martel and Charlemagne against the Mohammedan and 
 heathen irruptors from Northern and Southern Asia, were 
 inspired by the clergy ; and the great Charles was crowned 
 by the Pope solely because of his zeal for the Church. They 
 show you the field where Zwingle fell, in a religious civil 
 war in Switzerland, at the head of the Protestant cantons 
 struck through with a lance because he would not pray to 
 the Virgin. 
 
 Cromwell's rebellion was inaugurated and sustained by 
 the clergy in the interests of the Church. James' conflict 
 was solely on matters of religion, and the famous trial of the 
 Seven Bishops, for meddling wjth the decrees of the State, 
 was the real cause of his expulsion. The prisoner of Chillon, 
 made memorable in Byron's verse, but more memorable by 
 his six years' confinement to a subterranean pillar by a chain 
 not ten feet in length, was a minister who, from his pulpit, 
 (Jared to defy the government of the Duke of Savoy. And 
 God, to release him, stirred up a civil war in all that region, 
 and brought the men of Geneva and Berne to reduce that 
 fortress. The conversion of Geneva, which was Roman 
 Catholic when he was cast into that dungeon, to the re- 
 formed faith, of which it has been for three hundred years so
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 337 
 
 eminent a defender, was due to the faithful political preach- 
 ing- of Bonivard, the prior of St. Victor.* 
 
 The necessity of defending such a thesis as this shows 
 the peril of the nation. As a law against an especial of- 
 fense proves the prevalence of that crime, so the many 
 words that have had to be spoken in America by clergymen 
 within the last few years in defense o the right to speak, 
 show how far we have departed from the custom of the world 
 elsewhere, and of America herself, till this generation. 
 
 England, who keeps nearly a score of prelates in her 
 highest house, whose first nobleman is a minister, the suc- 
 cessor of Augustine, never dreams that the clergy degrade 
 themselves by mingling in the civil strifes of the day. The 
 religious journals discuss political questions as freely as 
 religious, and the opening editorial of the London Watch- 
 man, the Wesleyan organ, is almost always a political article. 
 So was it here. What is this anniversary, of more than 
 two hundred years' standing, but a recognition by the State 
 of the duty of the minister to enlighten the community on 
 national sins and duties ? What is thanksgiving but a like 
 recognition by the State of its obligations to the God and 
 Savior of nations and men ? 
 
 Let me not be understood as undervaluing the central 
 duty of the Church and ministry, when I declare that our 
 chief peril, as a nation, is in refusing to avow ourselves 
 Christian, and in excluding the appointed embassadors for 
 Christ from the questions that agitate society. Their chief 
 mission is- to preach the Gospel ; but the Gospel is not con- 
 
 * " The range of the history of the Church is as wide as the range of 
 the world which it was designed to permeate. The Christian Church is 
 but another name for Christendom, and Christendom merely another 
 name for the most civilized, the most powerful, the most important na- 
 tions of the modern habitable world." Stanley's Lecture on the Province 
 of Ecclesiastical History, in the introduction to his History of the Eastern 
 Church, p. 33, et seq. See other admirable remarks on the Identity 
 of Church and State, in loc. 
 22
 
 338 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 fined to a repentance and faith that have no connection with 
 social or civil duties. The Evangel of Christ is an all-em- 
 bracing theme. It is the vital force of everything in earth 
 and in heaven. What the ancients dreamed respecting the 
 relation of the earth to the worlds around it is true in a 
 spiritual sense. The Cross is the centre of the spiritual, 
 and therefore of the material, universe. 
 
 If so, then must all things, human and temporal, acknowl- 
 edge its supremacy. Literature, science, politics, business, 
 the status of society, all charities, all reforms, there is 
 nothing that you can conceive that has not an intimate re- 
 lation, friendly or hostile, to the Cross of Christ. The God- 
 appointed bearers of that Cross have no right to omit the 
 consideration of these topics. They are traitors to their 
 Commander-in-chief if they do. Every knee and every 
 thing shall bow to Christ, and it is our duty to bring all 
 these matters to that divine test. It is thus alone that the 
 kingdom of Christ can be universally established. It is thus 
 alone that it can be preserved in any measure of purity and 
 vitality. 
 
 You can easily see what would be the result of yielding 
 this point through cowardly complicity. The politician says, 
 " You must not preach politics ; " and then goes on estab- 
 lishing the State on injustice, and framing iniquity by a law, 
 while you set before him, with great assiduity, the savorless 
 salt of an exhausted and tasteless Gospel. He opens his 
 thousands of grog-shops in defiance of you, as he has in Bos- 
 ton for years. He expels the Bible from the public schools. 
 He seeks to abolish the death penalty, giving free scope to 
 murderous passion. He abolishes, as they almost did last 
 week in our Legislature, the chief penalty for adultery, 
 undermining the corner-stone of human society. Thus he 
 cunningly thrusts Christ from His temple, and puts His 
 enemy on His throne. 
 
 The evil stops not here. It invades His inner sanctuary.
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 339 
 
 The crafty Philistines have entrapped the clergy in this 
 diabolic doctrine of State rights the parent of its better 
 known, but not baser kindred. They are shorn of their 
 strength. The pulpit must not preach against usury, the 
 besetting sin of business communities, that is not Christ 
 Crucified. Some rich brother, who has waxed fat on these 
 ill-gotten gains, will denounce you as an intermeddler, while 
 his conduct uncensured, and himself undisciplined, keeps 
 scores from the Church. You must not talk against the 
 opera or theater, for that is a social matter, and " Christ 
 Crucified" does not touch the pleasures of life. " It is not 
 forbidden," they say, " in the Bible, though it was then the 
 most popular amusement." In this respect it is on the 
 same level as slavery, according to its apologists. What 
 an age has passed since their base pleas defiled the nation ! 
 
 We cannot denounce the insane passion for fiction, even 
 when it is running wild over the Church itself, and so in- 
 fecting all the tiny vines of the nursery, that when we shall 
 hereafter look that they bring forth grapes, they will bring 
 forth wild grapes. Is there any connection between what 
 we shall read and " Christ and Him crucified " ? Thus the 
 enemy constrains us to throw down the hedge around the 
 Church itself, and invite the boar out of the wood to waste 
 it, and the wild beast of the field to devour it. 
 
 Do you say, " Such possibilities are the foolish fancies of 
 a mere theorist ? Why not tell things as they are ? " In 
 this I am no dreamer of dreams. The results of this divorce 
 have been seen in this country in a more shameful prostitu- 
 tion of the ministry and the Church than in any country in 
 modern history almost than in any country in any history. 
 We need not go outside of our own history as a Church for 
 the painful proof. We have seen in its brief life a large 
 portion of its clergy in the presence of an enormous sin, re- 
 fusing to confront it, declaring that to say aught against 
 it was to preach politics, and for this cause they were not
 
 340 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 sent. Though they knew that the political face of the many- 
 headed dog- of hell was the last and least, though they saw 
 the infinite immorality it engendered, the blasphemy against 
 Christ and His Church, the social, private, universal cor- 
 ruption that broke out everywhere in the regions it occu- 
 pied, still they said, to preach against it is to preach 
 politics, and our business is to proclaim Christ Crucified. 
 
 So they broke away from their brethren who protested 
 not against their silence, not even against their clerical 
 communion with the monster. The episcopal contact was 
 all they shuddered at. They felt that his anointed hands, 
 fresh from the scourging of slaves, could hardly impart or- 
 daining grace. His friends resented such a reflection on 
 them. They revolted, and set up for themselves as a Church 
 of Jesus Christ a pretense as profane as the claim of the 
 most corrupt of Popes, that he is Christ's vicegerent. 
 
 They entered into an alliance with this crime. The sons 
 of God married themselves to this daughter of Satan, 
 
 " Seems woman to the waist, and fair, 
 But endeth foul in many a scaly fold, 
 Voluminous and vast a serpent armed 
 With mortal sting. About her middle round 
 A cry of hell-hounds, never ceasing, bark 
 With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and ring 
 A hideous peal." 
 
 The Church and the State were made one flesh, and horrid 
 flesh it was too ; and to-day the deluge of fire is pouring 
 down upon the doomed region, and that haughty Methodist 
 Episcopal Church South, where is it ? With the antedilu- 
 vian cathedrals and congregations of Cain. They pretended 
 to be opposed to meddling with political and social sins. 
 They became their slave. "And God has wiped them as a 
 man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down." 
 So He dealt with His beloved Ephraim. So with the more 
 beloved Judah. So He will deal with every Church that 
 deals thus with Him. Only by repentance and a turning
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 341 
 
 with their whole heart to Him can this Church be saved. 
 May such repentance and salvation yet be theirs. 
 
 He appoints His ministers to watch over souls as those 
 that must give account. It is His duty, therefore, to make 
 every thing contribute to their salvation. Will a wicked 
 system of government imperil the spiritual welfare of its 
 subjects ? He must resist it unto the death. Will social 
 vices tend to their corruption ? They must be attacked and 
 overthrown. Will false doctrines delude souls to destruc- 
 tion ? They must be rebuked. Would not a holy society, 
 a correct system of government, correctly administered, a 
 pure and lofty literature, in fine, a virtuous civil and 
 social organization, tend to the salvation of more souls 
 than corrupted morals, despotic government, and debasing 
 literature ? Christ Crucified, preached to a community under 
 the pressure of all manner of inward and outward lust, would 
 be proclaimed almost as vainly as in Pandemonium itself. 
 He is most successfully lifted up when all the surroundings 
 approximate to the divinity of this central truth. 
 
 Only thus does He keep the field at all. To keep the 
 standard flying we must take care of the wings of the army. 
 We must prevent flank movements, and all manner of subtle 
 assaults. What matters it that you gather round the flag, 
 if you desert the outposts. Great Britain fought for herself 
 by trying with Nelson's fleet to confine Bonaparte in Egypt, 
 as much as by setting a guard in the English Channel. Wel- 
 lington was defending London when campaigning in the 
 Peninsula. 
 
 So is it with the Gospel of the Cross. Christ Crucified is 
 the grand banner of the Church, in its conflict with the 
 world. It is the only Name whereby the world can be 
 saved. It must be always and everywhere proclaimed. It 
 must be always and everywhere defended. But to come 
 and hug that flag-staff with apparent fondness, while the 
 enemy is plowing the outer lines with his diabolic artillery,
 
 342 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 is not affection, it is cowardice ; and the officer who tnus 
 comports himself receives contempt, not commendation, 
 from his Master. Take your flag with you, and rush thither. 
 Smite down the enemy in this remotest assault, and you 
 preserve your army from more central peril. 
 
 The indifference of God's ministers to this great social 
 duty has undoubtedly bred infidelity. The very Cross of 
 Christ, the ark of God, has it not been taken, in our pre- 
 tense that we must be so busy in defending- it, that we can- 
 not speak on a political sin ? The politicians we patronized 
 despised us. The men of conscience and moral vision, who 
 were blind to the full truth of the Gospel, also despised us 
 for truckling to popular and powerful sin, and both became 
 skeptics as to the very truth which we professed to be so 
 anxious to keep from harm. 
 
 Bear with me, my brethren, if my words seem overmuch. 
 They spring from the profoundest convictions of my moral 
 being. They seem to me eminently, preeminently appro- 
 priate to us, to the occasion, and to the land in which we 
 are required to make full proof of our ministry. The great- 
 est problem that we are working out here is not the equality 
 and fraternity of all the children of man, unspeakably great 
 as that is, but the power to preserve the utmost liberty of 
 worship and the utmost liberty of no worship, with a pure 
 society and a predominant Christianity. It is an attempt to 
 trust the human race with the offers of salvation, without 
 endeavoring, in the least degree, to compel their acquies- 
 cence. It is the last possible combination of the divine 
 and human in man's history. It is not unlike, one may 
 fancy, the probation of the angels who keep, and those who 
 kept not, their first estate. It is the very opposite of the 
 position of the Father of the Church. Abraham served God 
 with the whole world, to a man, against him. A State or a 
 national Christianity could not, therefore, then be possible. 
 David lived under a system in which every statute and cere-
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 343 
 
 mony, civil and religious, was of divine appointment. Eu- 
 ropean Christians have these outward constraints abounding. 
 We have no constraint at all. 
 
 Yet so much the more must the Church rule everywhere. 
 It is a calcium light, shining out over the whole field. It 
 is commander-in-chief, riding and ruling everywhere. It 
 must bring every thought into obedience to Christ. What- 
 ever subject or practice affects the morals, and so the bafis 
 of religion, it is not only legitimate for the ministry to bring 
 to the Gospel light, that it may be seen what manner of 
 spirit it is of, it is absolutely commanded them so to do. And 
 he who refuses no matter what excuse he may put forth 
 is verily guilty of treachery to the cause of his Master. He 
 may not so purpose in his heart, but that is the fatal end. 
 
 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and im- 
 movable in this great duty. Let the churches rejoice to 
 co-operate with their leaders in this work. Hold up aloft a 
 full Gospel, that shall illumine every custom, thought, and 
 feeling of the society, every path of human activity ; that 
 shall make all daily pursuits, mercantile, manufacturing 
 or otherwise, holy and unblamable before God; how far 
 they are from it let usury, adulteration, fraud, all the tricks 
 of trade, answer; that shall rectify and exalt civil govern- 
 ment as the confessed servant of Christ ; so that while grant- 
 ing the utmost liberty of conscience, it shall be none the 
 less bold to declare that it is a Christian government a 
 State of the great world-federation whereof our Lord is to 
 be the unseen, yet always seen, Sovereign. 
 
 II. The other topic connected with our theme and occa- 
 sion deserves ampler attention than we are now at liberty 
 to give. We have said that the mission of America seems 
 to be twofold. First, to prove that the utmost liberty of 
 conscience can co-exist with a ruling Christianity ; and, 
 second, that the utmost liberty and equality of all men can 
 co-exist with a stable and prosperous government. The last
 
 344 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 is as unsolved a problem as the first. It is being tested to- 
 day. Only the power of true Christianity can secure its 
 success. Many of you will say, " There is no question as 
 to its success. Have we not welcomed all Europe to our 
 shores ? Are we not proud to acknowledge Ireland and 
 England, Germany and Italy, Hungary and Poland every 
 exile from a murdered or a murdering nation, as our friend 
 aiftl brother ? " What does that prove ? Do we call the 
 Prince of Wales a democrat because he says, " I am willing 
 to marry any one of a certain rank ? " We look on these 
 peoples as first cousins. They are near of kin. Of course 
 it is no disgrace for us to recognize their equality. 
 
 But there is another people among us another portion of 
 our Father's family as much beloved of Him as any European. 
 How do we look on them ? How do we feel towards them ? 
 What merchant here will put behind his counter an intelli- 
 gent, accomplished, virtuous, gentlemanly youth, whose 
 blood is known to have come in ever so slight a degree 
 from the oldest continent and the oldest child of Noah ? 
 
 By the rights of primogeniture, Ham had precedence of 
 all his brethren. He should have been the father of the 
 Son of God. But sin in him, as in Cain, Esau, and Reuben, 
 deprived him of his birthright. And, lo ! his youngest 
 brother's sons, not those who took his place for the chil- 
 dren of Shem, the brothers and sisters of our Lord, have no 
 aversion to those of Ham not those of Japhet even, as a 
 whole but a little clique of this youngest brother's chil- 
 dren put on airs of immeasurable superiority, and talk of 
 colonizing their elder cousins by themselves, and of the im- 
 possibility of treating them as their equals and brothers, 
 their color is so very abhorrent, though many a darker 
 European than multitudes of them, have, in the same eyes, 
 the most aristocratic of complexions. 
 
 But we must welcome them as brothers or die. There is 
 no alternative. God, our Creator and theirs, has brought
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 345 
 
 us to this shore, foreign to both of us, that He may here 
 develop the fullness of that Gospel scheme He is seeking to 
 establish in the earth. 
 
 The division of languages and of man was because of 
 sin. It was the first punishment after the flood. In carry- 
 ing forward His enterprise of subduing the world to Himself, 
 He found that He must first separate the human race by 
 long-enduring boundaries. He must make them so substan- 
 tially independent creations, that some of their half wise 
 men should declare they had many original centers of dis- 
 persion. They had but one, in the plains of Shinar, at 
 the tower of Babel. 
 
 As the world is approaching its ultimate paradisiacal es- 
 tate, it must approach the conditions of the primitive abode. 
 There must be one language and one family. The language 
 which seems to be in advance of all others as a world-sub- 
 duing tongue, is the English. Though, when one has spent 
 months among millions of people who have never heard of 
 this tongue, he is constrained to doubt its speedy universal- 
 ity, still, it occupies to-day more diffused and more numerous 
 centers than any other tongue, and seems to be engirdling 
 the earth. America will, undoubtedly, contribute largely 
 to this end ; not a little by the enormous emigration which 
 she will yet draw from every nation of Europe. 
 
 She will also contribute, in no small degree, to the accom- 
 plishment of the other equally dubious and seemingly remote 
 but most certain event the solidarity of the human race. 
 As in Adam all were separated, so in Christ shall all be 
 united. In that oneness there shall be neither Greek nor 
 Jew, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. This was the 
 apostle's bold declaration to the proud Greeks of Colosse. 
 He did not add " white or black," because there are no 
 whites, as we call them, in that dusky clime. He touched 
 the marrow of their sensitive prejudice in putting Scythian 
 and barbarian on a level with themselves. His equally bold
 
 346 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 declaration to the most fastidious Athenians, that God made 
 of one blood all the nations of men, must yet be verified in 
 the earth. America seems to be the spot where this divine 
 purpose is to be first accomplished. 
 
 Other countries are in advance of us in some of the .ele- 
 ments of that perfect society. But in no one are all of 
 them in such rapid process of solution and recrystallization 
 as here. The three essentials of that state are well expressed 
 in the French democrat's saying, yet burning on the tri- 
 umphal arches of Louis the Great in spite of all the obscur- 
 ing eiforts of their present tyrant " Liberty Equality 
 Fraternity." The equality and fraternity of the African 
 and Asiatic are perfectly carried out in Egypt. Alike equal- 
 ity and fraternity of the African and European exist in 
 Mexico, the West Indies, and the Southern States. One 
 of the first scientific scholars of the country,* long a resi- 
 dent in Alabama and Georgia, informed me that seven eighths 
 of the colored people of the South are partly white. 
 
 But in neither of these eastern or western experiments 
 is there a corresponding liberty, culture, and Christianity. 
 These are needed to make the other three of any value. All 
 these may, and if we are true to our national mission will, 
 exist in this country. Here we have, as our foundation- 
 stone, the European democrat's triad. We have it elevated 
 and consecrated by universal education and the fullest ex- 
 pression of Christianity. 
 
 There we stop. To apply these to ALL our people "aye, 
 there's the rub." It is dreadful to many undeveloped natures 
 that God, upon opening for us this fountain of living waters, 
 should have invited our brethren of other climes to come 
 and drink also. He has built an 'ark for humanity, and, lo ! 
 as we very clean beasts are pompously marching in, these 
 strange and most unclean creatures also enter. 
 
 * Alexander "Winchcll, LL. D., Professor of Natural Science in Mich- 
 igan University.
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 347 
 
 We wanted the gifts all to ourselves. Like Peter, amid 
 the glories of the transfiguration, have we been in the 
 transfiguration of His truth in our land. We have been per- 
 fectly willing to abide in it ourselves, and have been utterly 
 thoughtless of these our brethren : nay, not utterly thought- 
 less, cruelly thoughtful in our aversion to their sharing with 
 us this excellent glory. Had Peter seen a Gentile coming 
 up the hill that moment, he would undoubtedly, in his hot, 
 self-confident, American fashion, have insisted on Christ in- 
 terrupting his conversation with the resplendent spirits while 
 he expelled the loathsome intruder. " Dost thou dare," he 
 would exclaim, " to intrude upon our dear, delightful, Ju- 
 dean banquet ! Don't you see that it is Moses and Elias 
 that are talking with our Lord ? Only the chosen people 
 can come up hither. Begone to your outer darkness ! " 
 
 Peter afterwards had a bitter trial of what he called 
 conscience and Christianity, but which \vas only a Satanic 
 prejudice, when, on that tanner's housetop he was invited 
 to the unseemly feast. Go to your dinner to-day, and see 
 .toads, and snakes, and snails upon the table, and you would 
 find it easy to comply with the request of the Governor. 
 But if, in addition to our so-called natural abhorrence, we 
 found in the Discipline, by special inspiration of God, 
 through the lips of our founder, an express command to 
 abstain from them as unclean, we should shake off the dust 
 of our feet against the profane host, and betake ourselves 
 to more Methodistical and more decent quarters. Yet God, 
 who had interdicted them through Moses, now says to this 
 zealous disciple of Moses, " What I have cleansed, that call 
 thou not common," says it to you and me to-day, no less 
 than to Peter at Joppa : as hard bound in carnal prejudice 
 as he, and, unlike him, without any shadow of Scripture 
 authority to support our contempt. 
 
 The vision is precisely adapted to us. We, like Peter, 
 call a portion of our neighbors and kindred common and
 
 348 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 unclean unlike him, in this respect, too, that he seemed 
 to have divine command so to call them, for they were 
 separated from him by decrees of His appointment. We 
 loathe our brothers of the same Gentile family. We look 
 on them as of another race. We talk about colonizing 
 them, giving up to them the Gulf States, or the torrid sec- 
 tions of America, 
 
 " Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world," 
 
 so that we can rid ourselves of their abhorred presence. 
 We are theoretically, vociferously, valiantly in favor of 
 equal rights. We pour out bur money and our lives for 
 the great cause. We fill the heavens with our jubilant re- 
 verberations on the national birthday. But when it comes 
 to the little practical matter of letting our darkly-hued 
 neighbor sit at our table, work at our bench, tend behind 
 our counter, enter into business partnerships with us, be 
 our teacher, doctor, or stationed preacher, ah, how the 
 Petrine nature swells indignantly within us, and we exclaim, 
 " Not so, Lord." Yea, we are ready to cry in the ears of 
 God, my brother, though we fancy it is only in those of 
 man, " Away with the fellow that talks such abominations 
 from the earth. It is not worthy that he should live." 
 
 Yet hither is God's providence drawing us. A profane 
 Bostonian lately said, " I never did, and do not now, care 
 anything for the negro. But I have about concluded that 
 God does." The tide sweeps with increasing force and 
 volume against these deep and ancient prejudices. They 
 will be overwhelmed. And when buried, we shall be borne 
 forward by the rolling waves of superior truth to the head- 
 lands of superior vision. Did not that faithful Jew feel a 
 strange enlargement of soul when lie saw the centurion and 
 his house receiving the word of the Lord ? When he touched 
 his holy Jewish hands, wet with the sacred water of bap- 
 tism, on that till then accursed brow, the preacher received
 
 'THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 349 
 
 a greater baptism of the Holy Ghost than the candidate. 
 There fell from his eyes as if it had been scales. He saw 
 the Gospel limited to no inconsiderable race and spot, but, 
 like the sun, shining with equal glory on every land and on 
 every man. 
 
 So we, emancipated from the base-born feeling of caste, 
 which now rules us with its rod of iron as tyrannically as 
 it does the Brahmins of India or the nobility of England, will 
 feel something of the length and breadth, the depth and 
 hight of His purposes and feelings toward our race. To 
 call every man brother, unmindful of all outward aspects ; 
 to feel that he is YOUR brother, absolutely, entirely ; to treat 
 him as such, unconscious of any distinction between you, 
 how will the heart, thus freed, grow in the likeness and 
 after the stature of its Creator and Redeemer ! It will have 
 climbed the last of the mountains interposed that have made 
 enemies of nations and of men. The whole landscape of 
 man's futurity lies before him ; the land of Beulah, whither 
 the race, with many weary pilgrim steps, is slowly tending, 
 
 " A land of corn, and wine, and oil, 
 Favored with God's peculiar smile, 
 
 With every blessing blest ; 
 There dwells the Lord our righteousness, 
 And keeps His own in perfect peace, 
 
 And everlasting rest." 
 
 'We shall see all the sons of Adam at peace with them- 
 selves and with their God. They speak one language. They 
 feel the pulsations of a common brotherhood. While they 
 have all the distinctions of a family, in taste and action 
 one a scholar, one an orator, one a merchant, one a me- 
 chanic ; while each nation may have its special character 
 after this sort, as Italy is the home of art, Germany of 
 thought, France of taste, and England of business, yet 
 like brothers of varied tastes and pursuits, they will rejoice 
 in this diversity of gifts, but the same spirit. The varieties
 
 350 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 of complexion will be as agreeable as is now the variety 
 of beautiful countenances. They will feel, not only no es- 
 trangement, but a vehement rush of blood to blood. 
 
 " Thither the warm affections move, 
 Nor shall we call them thence." 
 
 The whole earth will not seem too large to that Christian 
 family girded by steam, bound together by that electric 
 cord which transmits the feelings and thoughts of the whole 
 world as instantaneously as the brain communicates with 
 the heart, they, 
 
 " Like kindred drops, will mingle into one." * 
 
 In the glory of that fast coming prospect, how the petty 
 contractedness of our unseemly prejudice drops from us 
 as fetters from the emancipated slave, as a strait-jacket 
 from a cured maniac, as the weight of imbecility from 
 the enlightened idiot ! This effluence of spiritual illumination 
 will strike us more powerfully than it will our dark-complex- 
 ioned brother. It will be a novel outgleaming to us, not 
 to him. He has long felt the truth of the unity of Man. 
 He has long known that he is your brother. It is strange, 
 inconceivably strange to him, that you have not known that 
 you are his. You so intelligent, so superior to him in your 
 advantages, not to know this simplest and most fundamental 
 of truths. The words of Christ are his sole refuge in his 
 perplexity. " I thank Thee, Father, Maker of heaven and 
 earth, that Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and 
 prudent, and revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, 
 for so it seems good in Thy sight." 
 
 How great the strides made in America in the last two 
 years to this glorious consummation ! A friend of mine, a 
 New York lawyer, had a fine Afric-European superintending 
 his farm. The morning after the call for the first seventy- 
 five thousand volunteers, the young man informed him that 
 
 * Sec Note XII.
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 351 
 
 he could not work for him any longer. " Why not ? " "I 
 am going to war." " But you can't go." " Why not ? " 
 He was ashamed to answer the glowing patriot, but he had 
 to : " Because you are black ! " The poor fellow stood 
 paralyzed, as if a bullet had pierced his heart. He had for- 
 gotten all about his brown complexion. His heart was red 
 with the hottest of patriot blood. The call made no refer- 
 ence to white men. How was he excluded ? He shrunk 
 back to his enforced shame, and we went about the task 
 of saving the country without the aid of, with violent hos- 
 tility towards, such as him, full one sixth of our people. 
 
 God has taught us that we cannot be saved unless they 
 are saved also. We are beginning to accept His terms. 
 That young man can now be enrolled as a soldier. He may 
 soon take rank as an officer. He, or such as he, may yet 
 outrank and command their proud and half-hearted despisers, 
 whose blood is of the same complexion as their skins. They 
 are the true Copperheads that will save the Republic. They 
 will go into this war, as Frederick Douglass says, not as 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water, but as men. They 
 will come out of it our recognized equals and associates. 
 We shall be blood relations then, as never before. A com- 
 mon baptism of sorrow and death will make us, at last, one 
 people, and thus prepare the way for a universal family. 
 
 The last thought, though distasteful to some of our 
 brethren elsewhere, cannot be offensive to us. For last 
 year, by a unanimous vote, we adopted a resolution de- 
 nouncing the sin of caste. You remember the pregnant 
 words : 
 
 " Resolved, That we deprecate the unchristian spirit of 
 caste so prevalent throughout the North, and even among 
 many professed anti-slavery men with respect to people of 
 color, and we can never regard our reformatory work ac- 
 complished till they enjoy equal rights and privileges with 
 other classes."
 
 352 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 It is a high honor for this Conference to thus lead the 
 Church, and for once to lead the reformatory section of the 
 nation in the great movement. As our fathers, some of 
 whom are still present, though most have fallen asleep, in 
 advance of all other bodies of ministers, twenty-eight years 
 ago proclaimed the duty of immediate and unconditional 
 emancipation, elected delegates to the General Conference 
 on that issue, and began the agitation which, with all its 
 imperfections, has purged the Church, if not the Discipline, 
 of arrogant slaveholders in the ministry and membership, 
 and is fast purging the land, if it cannot the Constitution, 
 of the like mass of proud and putrid flesh ; so this resolution 
 is the first utterance by the Church of what will yet be a 
 truth, universally and proudly recognized. 
 
 Let our words and works agree. To do this will require 
 the discharge of many duties yet in violent conflict with our 
 pride and prejudice. May I mention a few of them ? 
 
 1. We must expunge the word " colored " from our Min- 
 utes. It ought never to have found a place there. How 
 abominable that epithet must appear in the eyes of the 
 Savior, by whom these His brethren were cleansed with the 
 same blood, and, perchance, at the same moment and the 
 same altar ! He does not write it in the Lamb's book of 
 life the heavenly Minutes of His church. Born into His 
 divine family, we are nearer of kin to them than brothers of 
 a human household. And yet we shamefully degrade them. 
 How unchristian and inhuman such conduct is, may be seen 
 from a single example. Suppose an unfortunate dwarf 
 should join this church, and the pastor should return three 
 hundred full grown adults and one dwarf ; or if a dozen 
 mutes, or blind, should become members, and we should 
 make the like distinction, how quickly should we revolt from 
 the revelation in ourselves of the old leaven of malice and 
 wickedness ! What a torrent of indignation would be poured 
 on our Missionary Board if they should publish in their East
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 353 
 
 Indian returns their Brahmin and Pariah members in separate 
 columns ! 
 
 But the worst feature in this iniquity is, that it casts 
 reproach on* those who, by the pressure of an ungodly 
 world, are already oppressed. The Gospel is especially 
 tender towards the lowly and despised. We are especially 
 cruel. It also inevitably breeds in us hardness of heart 
 the extreme opposite of the new heart, whose law is to 
 esteem others better than ourselves. 
 
 I was struck with this years ago, in a revival that oc- 
 curred in a country town in the State of New York. The 
 preacher, a godly brother, though not educated in this truth 
 above the community in which he lived, was inviting sinners 
 to the altar. Seeing some of his congregation urging the 
 few of this class present to go forward, the thought dimly 
 struck him that they were included in " all the world " whom 
 they were singing about as being invited by Christ. So he 
 said at the close of his invitation, " If there are any colored 
 persons present who have souls, let them come forward also." 
 To such a request no colored person who had a soul would 
 be apt to respond. The same brother, in summing up the 
 fruits of the revival, announced to the church that so many 
 "had been converted, and John, Jane, and Dinah, colored 
 persons." He was unconsciously but correctly conforming 
 to the practice of our church. 
 
 This distinction is the primum mobile of all our weakness. 
 Had we boldly taken the ground of Paul at the beginning, 
 refused to know white or black, bond or free, in the Church, 
 made emancipated slaves our preachers and bishops, as he 
 did Onesimus, mingled the whole in one pure and holy 
 brotherhood, we should never have met with the difficulties 
 we have. We should have grown less yet more. Our pro- 
 slavery foes would not have been as they have been, and 
 still arc, those of our own household. Our strength would 
 have increased uniformly, steadily, mightily. As it is, it 
 23
 
 354 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 has been as it has. Let us go back to first principles. Let 
 us cling to the corner-stone of Jesus Christ, the Brother 
 alike of all men, the Brother especially of the poor, the op- 
 pressed, and the despised. 
 
 2. This resolution involves home duties also. Some of 
 our churches yet permit invidious distinctions to be made 
 between His brethren in the house and at the table of the 
 Lord. They compel a portion of His family to sit together 
 in an ignoble place, and to come together to His feast after 
 they have concluded their banquet. Perhaps they think 
 these servants of men are also servants of the Lord, and are 
 therefore properly placed at the last table. I am afraid they, 
 much more than their fellow-servants, are indeed the ser- 
 vants of the Lord. How do James the Just's searching 
 words try our reins and our heart in the light of such con- 
 duct. " My brethren, hold not the grace of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ with respect of persons ; for if ye say unto the " 
 white member or visitor, " Sit thou here in a good place, and 
 say unto " your colored brother, " Stand thou there, or sit 
 here under my footstool, are ye not then partial in yourselves, 
 and become approvers of evil thoughts ? Hearken, my be- 
 loved brethren, hath not God chosen the poor of this world, 
 rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath prom- 
 ised to them that love Him ? But ye have despised the 
 poor ! " Arid that too, because of a complexion God gave 
 them, and as handsome in His eyes as yours in yours. We 
 should cease to allow this evil to be done. It should be 
 instantly abolished from every church in this Conference. 
 
 3. We should also abolish every colored church. All 
 should melt into each other. All ye are brethren. 
 
 4. These flourish for another and yet worse reason, which 
 springs from the same false root. God is pleased to call 
 some men to preach His gospel that are much nearer than 
 we are to the complexion and lineage of Christ and His 
 apostles. He pours grace upon their lips, so that all the
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 355 
 
 world runs afteg- them. But we call them negroes, or the 
 more classic and more contemptuous word by which we 
 designate this class, even if the Lord's anointed. They 
 cannot minister to white people. They cannot associate 
 with their not always whiter clerical brethren. Wp have no 
 humility by which we love to kneel down and wash their 
 feet, though that very deed was done by Christ, on this very 
 night, to teach us this very lesson. It is not learned yet. 
 
 We compromise with conscience by setting off others of 
 our brethren to whom they shall minister. Thus America 
 presents a spectacle seen nowhere else in Christendom, 
 seen never before in Christendom, of a body of poor be- 
 lievers, compelled by their brethren to worship by them- 
 selves under the ban of public infamy, and a body of God's 
 ministers, in like manner, compelled to make full proof of 
 their ministry under like disgrace. I say it is not seen nor 
 known anywhere else in the world, past or to-day. James 
 thought he had touched the bottom of sinful distinctions 
 when he dwelt on the partialities displayed in the same 
 church. What would he have thought had the Holy Ghost 
 required him to give warning to Christians against pushing 
 a portion of their brethren, and of their ministry also, into 
 separate churches separated for no fault of their own, for 
 no leprosy or disease that whitened skins, but because 
 of a heaven-daring pride on the part of their kindred. 
 
 This must be changed if we hope for the blessing of 
 God. The ministry must lead in the change. The proudest 
 churches in Europe are open to every body. You will find 
 the beggar and the noble worshiping side by side at West- 
 minster, the Madaleine, St. Peter's, everywhere. A minis- 
 ter is a minister there, no matter of what blood or color. 
 They are not without their prejudices, even against color. 
 But they do not carry it to our extreme. On the contrary, 
 they sometimes bravely overcome it. See Rev. Mr. Martin, 
 of Boston, invited to two churches in London. The most
 
 356 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 eloquent preacher of his denomination, and probably of any 
 denomination in our city, able to fill the Tremont Temple 
 every Sunday, he was stuck in a poor little house in the 
 Pariah quarter, and the Temple remained empty. Now he 
 is the welcomed pastor of a church of Englishmen the 
 proudest blood in Europe to-day. Should a brother of like 
 graces approach our doors, what would we do with our 
 resolution ? Stand by it, should we not ? Admit him as 
 our perfect equal, and cast the weight of our influence in 
 favor of his receiving such a station as his talents merit. 
 
 That this is the question of the age, a multitude of signs 
 show. We cannot pass over one. From it learn all. You 
 are aware of the great impression produced on the millions of 
 people from all parts of the world, at the Great Exhibition, 
 by Story's statue of the African prophetess the Lybica 
 Sybilla, as he called it. It took its place as the greatest 
 contribution of genius ; and critics, in London reviews, 
 discussed with much learning its relations to Greek and 
 Egyptian art ; when, lo ! it appears from Mrs. Stowe's 
 article in the Atlantic, that it is but the statue of a New 
 York slave, seventy years of age. She- is known to many 
 here an old John Street Methodist, who cannot read, but 
 who can do what is far better, she can talk. Sojourner 
 Truth is the rude, ungainly name of a rude, ungainly African 
 of the purest negro blood, who is the model of a statue sur- 
 passing the Moses of Michael Angelo ; for that is but a 
 marvel of genius ; this is the gospel for this generation a 
 new sermon of Christ's in stone. Europeans of every rank, 
 with their yet haughtier American fellows, like Joseph's 
 brethren, bow down to her whom they had sold into bondage 
 to all her race in her. 
 
 But I have long since wearied you. I shall be happy if I 
 have inflicted no heavier burden. I could not say less and 
 fulfil the injunctions of the text. I feel that America is the 
 center of the history of the world to-day. For good or evil,
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 357 
 
 in wrath or mercy, God has lifted her up before all men 
 He has endowed her with preeminent privileges and op- 
 portunities ; an estate of wondrous breadth and beauty ; 
 fundamental ideas of civil and social life, that have been only 
 the dreams of good and wise men in all other ages and 
 places a people knowing good and evil, full of enter- 
 prise, of resources, of capacity, individual and concrete, 
 such as all nations else have never seen ; an intelligence 
 diffused like the light ; a quickness of conscience that is 
 like fire shut up in the bones. Over such a nation, with 
 such a heritage, in such an exaltation, what infinite respon- 
 sibilities hang ! To be its guides and molders, as God has 
 made His Church and ministry, is a duty from which they 
 may well shrink of which they may justly be proud. 
 
 Our liberties must be preserved and extended only through 
 the Church. And the Church must be kept in its first estate 
 and advanced to its complete perfection chiefly through its 
 ministry. Upon you', then, as its divinely appointed of- 
 ficers, comes the responsibility. The ministry, the servants 
 of the Church, are its authorized and responsible officers. 
 God, not man, made the Church. He, not man, officers it. 
 And He holds us accountable to Him, not to our fellow- 
 Christians, much less to our fellow-men, for the manner in 
 which we discharge that high office. If we bow down to them, 
 and serve them ; if, like Aaron, at command of the people, 
 we make golden calves for their idolatry, their blood will He 
 require at our hands. " See, //' not the Church, nor the 
 Conference, nor the bishops, " / have set thee a watchman 
 on the walls of Zion," on the towers of time. 
 
 It is but for a moment that we stand here. Death soon 
 shoots us down. A more insatiate archer may first slay us, 
 if we are not vigilant and courageous. It is but a little step 
 from our post to the headquarters of our Commander. 
 Hither we must ceaselessly go for orders. We must pro- 
 claim them at the head of our several regiments, and see
 
 358 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 that the subordinate officers and soldiers observe them. 
 We must proclaim them to the hosts of rebellion, without 
 fear, without bitterness, without favor, without weariness. 
 
 Our encouragements may come partly from the Church, 
 but preeminently from God. It is a good and blessed 
 reward for one to have his praise in all the churches. It is 
 far better to have the approval of God. 
 
 There are times when every Church needs to be lifted up 
 out of itself. The Seven Churches required such treatment. 
 They were settling down into worldliness. They must be 
 stirred up, or they sleep the sleep that knows no waking. 
 He is seldom popular who is set for this work. Paul had 
 to say to his Corinthian brethren, with almost an air of 
 hauteur, " With me it is a very small thing that I should be 
 judged of you or of man's judgment." Edwards was driven 
 forth into the wilderness, and among savages, by his aristo- 
 cratic church of Northampton, after it had been blessed, 
 under his labors, with the greatest re'vival it had ever en- 
 joyed, simply because he scourged a popular sin. They 
 show you the narrow, low door beside the chancel of the 
 Epworth Church out of which John AVesley was thrust, as 
 Christ out of Nazareth, by his fellow-townsmen, led by 
 his father's successor and his father's vestrymen. St. 
 Mary's, the university Church of Oxford, yet testifies, in its 
 Christless vibration between Romanistic formalism and Broad 
 Church rationalism, to the crimes of those who, a century 
 and a quarter ago, expelled from her pulpit the same great 
 advocate, because he proclaimed that central truth of 
 Luther's preaching, and of a vital Christianity, Justification 
 by Faith. 
 
 Yet these men were not alone ; nor will you be, if 
 ordered to like duty. The Captain of the Hosts of the Lord 
 is with you. His still, small voice ever strengthens you. 
 
 Finally. To save this land to universal liberty and univer- 
 sal brotherhood, supported by universal law arid sanctified
 
 THE MISSION OF AMERICA. 359 
 
 by universal piety, is to save all lands. It may take all our 
 sons, all our treasure, all our generation to destroy the 
 enemy that is seeking to prevent this consummation. It 
 may take a longer time and greater struggles to destroy 
 the enemy within us, that with profounder and more power- 
 ful force works for the same diabolical end. But if we are 
 faithful to our principles and our God, we shall triumph over 
 both. We shall subdue the rebellious host without and 
 the rebellious spirit within. 
 
 Then shall other nations behold the image of the trans- 
 figured Christ shining in our uplifted face, that will glow, 
 like that of Moses, with the radiance of His divine coun- 
 tenance. European caste and tyranny, tottering everywhere 
 to its downfall, will speedily disappear, and the same 
 Christian union and liberty, " like a sea of glory, will spread 
 from pole to pole." 
 
 " Half of Europe will come to America if you break up- 
 this rebellion," was the last word almost that was spoken 
 to me as I was leaving the city of Liverpool. All of 
 America, in its influence, will go to Europe, will go over 
 the earth, not in the boastful spirit of national pride, but 
 in the humble spirit of Christian love. We have nothing we 
 have not received. We shall then only be a member of an 
 equal, universal, happy family, the family of Christ. 
 
 However dim and distant that glorious hour may seem to 
 our weary-watching eyes, we are required to labor for it, 
 in private and public, in ourselves, the Church, the nation, 
 the world. May we to that end, to-day, purge out the old 
 leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may.be a new 
 lump, sanctified and set apart for the Master's use. Then 
 shall this beautiful parable of the poet be to us henceforth 
 and forever a blessed realization : 
 
 " A Brahmin on a lotus pod 
 Once wrote the holy name of God.
 
 360 THE STATE A CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 Then, planting it, he asked in prayer, 
 For some new fruit unknown and fair. 
 
 A slave near by, who bore a load, 
 Fell fainting on the dusty road. 
 
 The Brahmin pitying, straightway ran, 
 And lifted up the fallen man. 
 
 The deed scarce done, he stood aghast, 
 At touching one beneath his caste. 
 
 ' Behold,' he cried, ' I am unclean, 
 
 My hands have clasped the vile and mean.' 
 
 God saw the shadow on his face, 
 And wrought a miracle of grace. 
 
 The buried seed arose from death, 
 And bloomed and fruited at his breath. 
 
 The stalk bore up a leaf of green, 
 Whereon these mystic words were seen : 
 
 FlEST, COUNT MEN ALL OF EQUAL CASTE, 
 THEN COUNT THYSELF THE LEAST AND LAST. 
 
 The Brahmin, with bewildered brain, 
 Beheld the will of God writ plain. 
 
 Transfigured then, in sudden light, 
 The slave stood sacred in his sight. 
 
 Thereafter, in the Brahmin's breast, 
 Abode God's peace, and he was blest."
 
 THE CHUECH AND THE NEGRO/ 
 
 ' HE Church Anti-Slavery Society : is not that 
 tautological ? A repetition that ought to be, if 
 it is not, vain ? The first includes the last. If 
 it is truly the Church, it is also by necessity the 
 Anti-Slavery Society ; for the greater ever includes the less. 
 Thus it was when its creed and sacraments were first 
 given. The Hebrews had two articles of faith anti- 
 idolatry and anti-slavery. The first had been taught them 
 by the divine miracles, the last by their own suffering and 
 salvation. Bunsen says that " History was born on the 
 night of Exodus." So was Abolitionism and the Church 
 as a congregation of believers. These twain were twins. 
 
 Never before had human slavery been abolished by divine 
 decree ; never since, by a single act, on so grand a scale, 
 save by the decree of last January. But the difference be- 
 tween the two was the simple, yet all-important difference, 
 between a proclamation and an execution. God abolished 
 Hebrew slavery. He set His millions free. He made their 
 enemies to sink like lead in the mighty waters. We only 
 
 * An address delivered in Tremont Temple, before the Church Anti- 
 Slavery Society, June 10, 1863. 
 
 (301)
 
 362 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 
 
 S(w ours are free, and still but half protect the freedmen, 
 even if in our armies, from worse than Pharaoh's assaults. 
 
 The Old Testament cannot, therefore, indorse human bond- 
 age. It was based on human freedom. Its original people 
 were, by creation and necessity, abolitionists. While as 
 yet no glimmering of the hideousness of slavery had dawned 
 upon the moral sense of the world, God revealed its char- 
 acter by emancipating a race. 
 
 These freedmen He organized into a nation. For the 
 corner-stone of their constitution He placed Abolitionism. 
 On the top of Sinai, before He enunciated a moral or a civil 
 institute, the higher and the lower law, He proclaims His 
 abolitionism. "I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee 
 out of the land of Egypt, OUT OF THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE." 
 
 His edicts not only abolish slavery, they abolish caste. 
 The laws of Moses are the essence of democracy. In all 
 eastern and all old countries there are families that have 
 served for generations, as there are those that have ruled. 
 To prevent this tendency, God proclaims every seven years, 
 and at the outside, every fifty years, a complete abolishment 
 of such relations. No father shall entail his servitude, how- 
 ever slight, on his children. Alt persons are equal. Had 
 these laws been faithfully executed which they never were 
 they would have preserved Israel from a monarchy, and 
 so from ruin. This perpetuation of the inferior status of a 
 family, from generation to generation, is the distinguished 
 peculiarity of England. It is the stronghold of its aristoc- 
 racy and its throne. It is against the pattern of civil soci- 
 ety given in the Mount, which was a democracy of equal 
 freemen. 
 
 It may be said that they were permitted to enslave the 
 heathen. Not so. Their time and labor were bought for a 
 season, as was that of the poorer of our ancestors in the 
 early emigrations to this continent ; but they could not 
 make a contract that held over seven years, except in
 
 THE CHUKCH AND THE NEGRO. 363 
 
 most rare cases, when the heathen were permitted to bind 
 themselves, not their masters to bind them, for a lifetime. 
 The Jews could not then sell these self-bound servants, nor 
 had they power over their children ; nor could they hold 
 them a moment after they acknowledged the true faith. 
 
 HOAV long would slavery have existed in the South if 
 these three conditions had been imposed upon it ? How 
 long, if the last only had been adhered to ? It was so 
 once in Maryland. The baptized slave became a free man ; 
 now he is sold for a higher price. By the law of Moses, 
 as rendered by these critics, the masters should be slaves 
 of their slaves, for they are by far the worse heathen. 
 
 How profane, in the light of these facts, have been the 
 ceaseless utterances of the Southern pulpits, and the too 
 general utterance of the Northern, that the. Israelites estab- 
 lished slavery. Their laws were against it, their animus 
 against it, their origin against it, their God against it. 
 
 The New Testament is equally anti-slavery. It is more 
 spoken against than theatric exhibitions or gladiatorial 
 shows. These are never specifically condemned, though 
 they were universal. They are frequently employed to 
 illustrate the Christian life. The apostle refers to an expe- 
 rience of the latter class among the beasts of Ephesus, with 
 no hint that it was immoral. So is it almost speechless 
 against the sin of war, then universal, and inspired solely 
 by lust of robbery or power, and unspeakably cruel against 
 the innocent. Yet see how John seems to revel in it ! Had 
 he spoken thus of slavery, what a perversion would its 
 monomaniacs have made of his illustrations ! Slavery is 
 condemned more frequently and more severely than them 
 all. 
 
 The New Testament Gentile Church was comprised 
 almost as exclusively of slaves as was the Mosaic Church, 
 as has been the real Church of Christ in the South. The 
 lowest class chiefly embraced it. The Abyssinian eunuch
 
 364 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 
 
 was an Ethiopian slave. They of Caesar's household were 
 largely Caesar's slaves. Why should the apostles preach 
 to them of the evils of slavery ? They knew it by a fearful 
 experience. We have prated loudly about the divine right 
 of slavery, but there was one class of the population to 
 whom we never addressed such remarks the slaves them- 
 selves. How superbly foolish would have been such preach- 
 ing. Equally foolish would have been like preaching on 
 the part of Paul and his associates. Paul rejoiced in his 
 freedom. The Centurion declares how much it cost him. 
 It was a subject that was evidently one of intense interest 
 to both parties. The very fact of Paul's being free, and 
 proudly availing himself of its privileges in avoiding pun- 
 ishments to which his brethren were often subjected, speaks 
 volumes as to the opinion of the early Church on this 
 question. 
 
 More than this, the New Testament especially enjoins 
 upon the master to give his slave liberty, and upon the 
 slave to run away if he has a fair chance of thus securing 
 his freedom. 
 
 Tf a sympathizer with slavery happened to be a preacher 
 to slaves, as too many have been, and he should scatter 
 among his parishioners this sentence of Paul's, "If ye may 
 be free, use it rather," how would they understand it ? 
 How would their masters, if they should hear of it, treat 
 such a circulator of the Scriptures without note or com- 
 ment ? The frequency of like remarks by the apostles 
 gives tone and character to all the New Testament. It is 
 in marked contrast with all cotemporary literature. 
 
 Slavery was abolished in Europe by the Church. She. 
 sold the sacred vessels from her altar to redeem her breth- 
 ren. She bought your yellow-haired fathers, chained cap- 
 tives in the market-place of Rome, from their dark-skinned 
 " owners," who, undoubtedly, entertained very strong prej- 
 udices against their red locks and white faces.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGKQ. 365 
 
 She would have abolished aristocracy and monarchy had 
 she not been betrayed into an oligarchy herself, and so be- 
 came the natural ally and servile tool of kindred castes in 
 the State. 
 
 " The Church Anti-Slavery Society " is, therefore, a ver- 
 bal repetition. If we appeal to its origin and early history, 
 it is a real repetition. Alas ! that it is not in its latest and 
 American history. It is too late now to repent. The mis- 
 sion of abolishing slavery was offered to the Church of Amer- 
 ica, as it was to that of Europe. Theirs was faithful to 
 their trust, ours not. And so God has been compelled to 
 take the work into His own hands. He has poured out 
 upon us the plague of war and its abounding miseries, be- 
 cause His Church would not testify and toil for the salvation 
 of their brethren ; because it arrayed itself by indifference 
 or by open violence against its brethren. He had not forgot- 
 ten the preamble of His Sinai declaration of Hebrew indepen- 
 dence. He had not forgotten His like proclamation at the 
 beginning of His ministry in Nazareth. He had not forgotten 
 our declarations both as a nation and as churches. We had. 
 
 I do not say that all the Church was silent and sinful. 
 Many testified, as local bodies, as individual preachers, 
 striving according to His working, which worked in them 
 mightily to save the Church from apostasy and silence, their 
 brethren from slavery, and their nation from war and de- 
 struction. But no great ecclesiastical body, as such, engaged 
 in this work. They almost unanimously strove against it. 
 They resisted those who sought to bring them into active 
 and determined hostility to the sin. They wilfully extracted 
 the vigor from resolutions they could not table, and care- 
 fully abstained from the execution of the tame decrees they 
 were compelled to declare by pressure of outward fear, and 
 not of inward inspiration. 
 
 This is a painful but most patent truth. What is written 
 is written. We cannot recall the past. Our record of the
 
 366 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 
 
 past generation, as the American Church, is laid up in the 
 archives of history. It will be collated and kept, with the 
 records of other eras, places, and branches of the Church. 
 It is laid up on high. Where is the bishop who, like Greg- 
 ory of Rome, has used the treasures of the Church for the 
 emancipation of our enslaved brethren ? Where is the synod, 
 assembly, or conference of a whole Church that has ex- 
 pelled the "owners" of their own members from their com- 
 munion, proclaimed themselves, exultingly and ceaselessly, 
 abolitionists, and uttered the decree of God without waver- 
 ing, and with divine boldness, in the ears of a slumbering 
 and sinning nation ? 
 
 We ought not to have spent a dollar for missionary work 
 abroad. It ought all to have gone for the manumission of 
 slaves at home. Such testimony, backed by such liberality, 
 would have cleansed the land of its curse, placed the Church, 
 where she is not, far above all rivalries of anti-church re- 
 formers, and given her a position and influence that to-day 
 would have covered this land with the fullness of millennial 
 glory. How painful the contrast. See it in that perfect 
 daguerreotype of ourselves the Church of Thyatira. 
 " These things, saith the Son of God, who hath eyes like a 
 flame of fire. ... I know thy works, and charity, and ser- 
 vice, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works, and the 
 last to be more than the first. Notwithstanding, I have a 
 few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman 
 Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess " (that is, a 
 Christian minister), " to teach and seduce my servants to 
 commit fornication. . . . And I gave her space to repent 
 of her fornication, and she repented not. Behold I will cast 
 her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into 
 great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I 
 will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall 
 know that I am lie which searcheth the reins and the hearts." 
 
 The churches and the world have known it. The South-
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 367 
 
 ern Church, the chief transgressor with this Jezebel, has 
 suffered the most with her. We have partially repented, 
 and so have partially escaped. 
 
 It is useless to dwell constantly on the past. It is right 
 to repent, to see what might have been, and to lament what 
 is. Yet it is wrong to pause there. The future is yet be- 
 fore us. The sincerity of our repentance must be shown by 
 the manner in which we fill that future. 
 
 The Church, as an Anti-Slavery Society, has but little 
 work left for it to do. The red right arm of God is achiev- 
 ing the redemption which He would fain have wrought 
 through his Church. Yet there is a mission before us as 
 great as that we have neglected. It is possible for us 
 to cover the shame we cannot obliterate with valor and 
 vigor in a service that peculiarly belongs to the Church of 
 Christ. 
 
 " What," you exclaim, " are we to have no rest from this 
 agitation ? Shall we not be permitted to devote ourselves 
 exclusively to personal and ecclesiastical edification, with- 
 out further intrusion of this offensive theme ? " Nay, the 
 Church has no pause in her mission, any more than her 
 Maker has in His. " My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
 work," she, as well as her Master, must ever say, 
 
 " Beneath the solemn arch 
 Naught resteth nor is still." 
 
 To purge herself and the world of sin, to build up human 
 society after the model of the heavenly society, demand 
 unceasing effort. The real cause of all this woe is far from 
 cured by universal emancipation. 
 
 The slave is gone, the negro remains. Many abolition- 
 ists, and all mere unionists and partisans, have fancied their 
 sole work was to liberate the slaves. It is their least work. 
 We are to be made one family. There are feelings and 
 usages contrary to this, almost as abhorrent, yea, every
 
 368 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 
 
 whit as abhorrent in the sight of God, as the ownership 
 of man, which lie in our hearts and in the customs of 
 society a hideous lump, " heavy as lead, and deep almost 
 as life." 
 
 The basis of slavery is caste. That feeling of caste yet 
 prevails exceedingly over all the land. The blackness cov- 
 ers our hearts deeper than it does the faces of our brethren. 
 It must be removed. Nowhere in the world except with 
 us does it have powerful dominion. In Asia, Mexico, West 
 Indies, the Southern States, it is practically unknown. It 
 has no real existence in us. Black coverings are preferred 
 for the top of the head, as the abundance of advertisements 
 of hair dyes testify. How much worse is the hair than the 
 face ? The black-gloved, and so black-skinned hand, is 
 esteemed comely ; so is the black-clothed, and therefore 
 practically, black-skinned body. A strip of white linen 
 around the neck and on the breast, and a bit of white flesh 
 between the forehead and the black-bearded mouth, are the 
 only specks of Caucasianism in an American gentleman in 
 full dress. From hat to boots, Paris declares, and Broad- 
 way confesses, an "inky suit of customary black" is the 
 requisite of a gentleman. And yet we pretend that we 
 have a natural antipathy to color. How foolish ! A black 
 man in a white vest is more of a white man than we in our 
 fashionable costume. 
 
 The Southern States will soon settle this problem when 
 peace and liberty prevail there. A Baltimore gentleman, 
 of the highest social standing, said tome, "that he had 
 long advocated the admission of half negroes to social equal- 
 ity with their white kindred." That event will come, and 
 with it the inevitable recognition of the other half of their 
 blood, and so of the whole of the attainted color. And 
 when Southern gentlemen lounge through our Saratogas 
 and Newports with their elegant quadroon wives on their 
 arms, we, who follow fashion more than principle, will be
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 369 
 
 as profusely eulogistic and servilely imitative as we have 
 been in commending and copying their diabolic contempt. 
 
 It is unchristian : they are our brethren and sisters ; they 
 should be treated as such. Dare you insult your own sister 
 for any real or seeming deformity ? Dare you expel her 
 from the family circle ? Would you allow another to taunt 
 her with her sinless misfortune ? How dare the Church to 
 allow others to treat thus her sisters and brethren ; nay, how 
 dare she to treat them herself as she has, and yet hope for 
 the blessing of God ? "I thank Thee that I am not as this 
 negro," has been our daily prayer in the temple of God. 
 Have we gone down to our houses justified of God ? Our 
 first duty is to make ourselves one with these, as Christ's 
 first duty was to make Himself one with us. He became 
 like unto His brethren ; so must we. Will the Church seize 
 the opportunity, trample out this prejudice, and thus deliver 
 herself from destruction ? I cannot say yes ; can you ? I 
 am afraid she will not. 
 
 Both army and people will give the highest military and 
 political honors to the black man before the Church con- 
 cedes him equal rights with his brethren. The regiment 
 that is to inaugurate the era of real democracy in our land 
 will march through our streets to-morrow.* We have not 
 yet dared to make its officers of the same blood as its pri- 
 vates ; but we shall. We could to-day without awakening 
 any feelings of animosity. I asked Mr. Douglass, when at 
 the camp the other day, why he had not command of the 
 regiment ? " Don't insult me," he replied. " I have had 
 hundreds of applications from white gentlemen to use my 
 influence to get them commissions, but they tell me the 
 times are not yet ripe for commissions to our people." They 
 soon will be. They have had straps long enough upon 
 their backs ; it is time they had them on their shoulders. 
 
 * See Note XIII. 
 24=
 
 370 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 
 
 And yet that day, I fear, will find the Church fast bound in 
 these chains of Satan. Frederick Douglass may be Major 
 General, may be Senator Douglass, representing the Empire 
 State in Congress, and, as I heard a New Yorker say, "the 
 only Senator Douglass that will be known in history," be- 
 fore any one of his clerical brethren will be settled over 
 such a congregation as this. They are already in the bar 
 of this city, in the medical fraternity of this State, the 
 acknowledged equals, often the associates of our first law- 
 yers and doctors. Into what conference, association, or 
 synod are they admitted as co-workers and brethren ? 
 
 God will chastise the Church if she persists in the hard- 
 ness and impenitence of heart, by not only taking, as Christ 
 threatens, the vineyard from her, but by giving it to these 
 with whom she refuses to fraternize. See one token of this: 
 The regimental banner of the Fifty-Fourth is a cross of 
 gold, with In hoc signo 'vinces inscribed beneath. This is 
 the first Christian banner that has gone into the war. It is 
 the first Christian flag ever unfurled in the American nation. 
 It is the oldest flag of Christianity. Is it not significant ? 
 God has thus made this despised class the leaders of the 
 nation. " He has put down the mighty from their seats, 
 and exalted them of low degree." The last shall be first. 
 They are the true Christ-bearers. They have borne His 
 Cross in unspeakable misery, oppression, agony, and degra- 
 dation ; they are now bearing it in honor, we believe unto 
 great glory. At one step they take precedence of the mil- 
 lion of their white forerunners. No regiment in the United 
 States has had grace enough to put that upon its standard. 
 This has : they shall not lose their reward. They stand up 
 for Jesus ; He will for them. 
 
 Let us, my friends, gird up our loins for the great duties 
 of the future. 
 
 " Never had Christians such high call before; 
 Never can Christians hope for higher one ;
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 371 
 
 And if they are but faithful to their trust, 
 Earth will remember them with love and joy; 
 And O, far better, God will not forget ! " 
 
 Let the Church take up this class, in the infancy of its 
 freedom, in her arms and bless them. God delivered Israel 
 in a night ; it took forty years to make them a people so 
 may it now. It is a work that will bless us more than them. 
 He would have done that work in two years had that people 
 been willing to cooperate with Him. So will He hasten 
 to bring this people into their promised land. They are 
 ready to obey Him. Will we lend an accordant hand ? 
 Will you be co-workers together with God ? Will you 
 cease to harbor this most unchristian pride and bitterness ? 
 Or will you act the Moabite and Edomite to these your 
 kinsfolk, wearily approaching your borders, and seek to 
 drive them back into their bondage, or to keep them from 
 their purchased, and promised, and most fairly earned pos- 
 sessions ? If you do thus treat them, be assured that God 
 will punish you as He did those disdainful relatives of His 
 chosen children. "God will smite thee, thou whited wall," 
 shall be said to every white-skinned scorner and repeller of 
 his browner, and, in this feeling, better brother. 
 
 As our Master gained a Name that is above every name 
 by humbling Himself to us outcasts of the universe, so will 
 the Church be uplifted by descending to these her breth- 
 ren. Uproot and expel the iniquitous prejudice from your 
 souls. Say with the fairest and finest of Shakspeare's 
 heroines, 
 
 " I see Othello's visage in his mind, 
 And to his honors and his valiant parts 
 Do I my soul and fortunes consecrate." 
 
 The hour is propitious. The great deeps of social pride 
 are breaking up. The Church can take the lead in these 
 divine movements if she will. She can drive this spirit of
 
 372 THE CHURCH AND THE NEGRO. 
 
 caste from the Temple of Christ a spirit more mean and 
 sinful than that which He scourged from His Father's 
 house. Let us cast it out of our stores, our shops, our 
 families, our pews, arid our pulpits, yea, and first of all, 
 out of our own hearts. Then shall it flee the land, and 
 the Church, redeemed by her valor and faithfulness from 
 her shame and sin, shall be without spot or wrinkle, the 
 Lamb's wife, winning and transforming the whole world 
 to her own loveliness, blessedness, and peace.
 
 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM.* 
 
 " THEY SHALL MAKE WAR WITH THE LAMB, AND THE LAMB SHALL OVER- 
 COME THEM." Revelation xvii. 14. 
 
 HE relation of the present conflict to the Millen- 
 nium ? "A very distant relation," you may say. 
 Can war and the thousand years of warlessness be 
 kindred ? Can the bloody feet of battle be shod 
 with the preparation of the gospel of peace ? Such is the 
 doctrine of the Word and Providence of God. War is the 
 forerunner of the Gospel, the one who cries, " Prepare ye 
 the way of the Lord ! " and what he cries, he does. The 
 Bible describes the advent of that hour as full of the tumults 
 and deaths of strife: They may have a Biblical, a divine 
 conjunction. Is ours one of that class ? Is God appointing 
 and directing it to the consummation of His desires, or is it 
 simply a bloody feud without meaning or end ? 
 To see this more fully, consider, 
 
 I. What is the Millennium ? 
 
 II. What are the principles involved in this struggle ? 
 
 III. How are these related in affinity and time ? 
 
 * A sermon preached in Boston, on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 
 ] 863. The battle of Lookout Mountain was fought on the 24th of No- 
 vomber, and that of Missionary Ridge on the 25th. 
 
 (373)
 
 374 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 I. What is the Millennium ? We need not plunge into the 
 morass of speculation as to the time or circumstances of the 
 Millennial year. Some fancy that it precedes the final resur- 
 rection, some that it follows it. Some believe the present 
 race and earth will be destroyed, or rejuvenated by miracu- 
 lous intervention in the present order of things ; others 
 believe that the present race of man, under its present cir- 
 cumstances, will occupy the present earth, changed in naught 
 save sin. Whatever be our theories as to the mode of its 
 coming and existence, all who believe in it agree as to its 
 character. It is simply the triumph of Christ over Satan in 
 the hearts and lives, the laws and institutions, of man. 
 What that war is between Christ and anti-Christ, all hearts 
 that know themselves, too painfully understand. It is 
 spiritual, vital, all penetrating, all embracing. It is a strug- 
 gle as to whether man shall be saved from sin, or kept in 
 sin. It is an attempt to make the earth a heaven or a hell. 
 
 This war begins in our moral nature, and in the sovereign 
 head of that nature, the free will. It extends through every 
 emotion, sensibility, intellect, appetite, habit, custom, law, 
 or institution, whether of the individual or society. It ex- 
 tends its vast, imperceptible influences to the lowest orders 
 of creation, and even the lifeless elements of earth and air. 
 At the first revolt of the reigning will in man from its super- 
 reigning Creator, 
 
 " Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat 
 Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe 
 That all was lost." 
 
 The ground was cursed because of his sin. It rolls in 
 waves, it cleaves in fire, it is frozen in winter, it is parched 
 in summer, for thy sake, man. Not the ground alone is 
 affected, the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 
 together until now. The whole creation is to be restored 
 only by the restoration of man. His new creation can alone
 
 BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 375 
 
 renew the face of the earth. As is the fall, so must the 
 rising be. As the struggle, so the triumph. The plunge 
 was through Satan unto sin, the deliverance must be through 
 Christ unto holiness. 
 
 The perfected deliverance is the Millennium. It is God 
 again at the helm of the soul, voluntarily restored there 
 as He was voluntarily expelled ; God moving thence through 
 every thought, impulse, volition, bringing all into subjection 
 to Him ; God thus sanctifying every part of every soul, and 
 making them communities of holiness, centers of sacred life, 
 sweeping away by their personal and united grace the curse 
 and the crime of civil and social life, working in healing 
 influences in the animate creation and in the earth itself, 
 until " the statelier Eden comes again " to a long-degraded 
 and ruined world. This is the essence of the Christian, the 
 Bible Millennium. This was promised to the first trans- 
 gressor on his first repentance. It gladdened far off his pen- 
 itent eyes, 
 
 " Fair as <i star when only one 
 Is shining in the sky." 
 
 It grew nearer and clearer to the faith of Abraham. The 
 solitary star had become a cluster, a hemisphere sprinkled 
 with beaming hopes. The Lord Jehovah Jesus, in the 
 solemn midnight, centuries ago, visited him in his little 
 black, goat-skin tent, under the rocky range of Hebron, and 
 brought him forth from its lowly, flapping door into the 
 hollow of the darkened hills. Far up the clear depths with- 
 in depths he beheld 
 
 " The abyss where the everlasting stars abide." 
 
 " Look now toward heaven," said his divine guide, " and 
 tell the stars, if thou be able to number them. So shall thy 
 seed be. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth 
 be blessed." 
 
 And yet he was then tho only representative of that
 
 376 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 multitude and blessedness in all the earth. The mighty 
 idolatries of Egypt, among which he had dwelt, were in the 
 hight of their seemingly eternal solidity of strength and 
 glory. Their temples, stout as the pillars of earth, were 
 then going up. Their pyramids, defying the shocks .of the 
 reeling globe or the bolts of shattering lightning, were then 
 exquisitely cutting the crystal sky with their perfect lines. 
 The Assyrian kingdom, within whose boundaries he was 
 born, and whose Euphratean metropolis he not unlikely had 
 visited in his youth, was then exultant in the unlimited pomp 
 and sway of a Satanic faith. The deluge of spiritual death 
 rose higher than the highest mountains of society, filled the 
 whole earth, every dell, and cleft, and crevice of every heart 
 of every people. His soul alone floated on the desolate, 
 rainy seas, a spiritual ark, built and guided of God, in whose 
 holy recesses the faith of his wife and son, and to a less 
 degree his nephews, were also carried. 
 
 Jacob's dying eyes beheld the like vision under a slight 
 increase of the on-marching light. A few score of his own 
 blo'od, separated from the rest of the world as unclean, are 
 all that profess the true and saving faith ; and these are 
 worldly, violent, corrupt, differing from their heathen neigh- 
 bors in but little more than their creed, and often inferior 
 to them in dignity and excellency of character. Levi, the 
 father of the priestly line, was shamed by the mildness and 
 manliness of Shechem, the pagan. Judah, from whom Christ 
 came, stamped himself and his tribe with indelible infamy. 
 Reuben had gone still further in sin, and done deeds that even 
 in that darkened age struck the public conscience with ab- 
 horrence, and called down upon him the dying maledictions 
 of his father. 
 
 Yet with these men standing about his couch, the aged 
 patriarch sees the coming Shiloh, the Messiah of God, and 
 declares that to Him shall the gathering of the peoples be. 
 The blessing that Abraham saw conferred in Christ upon all
 
 BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 377 
 
 the world, Jacob sees is responded to by all the world. The 
 nations shall gather about the Sent of God. Though not a na- 
 tion then acknowledged Him ; though only a few wild, wan- 
 dering men, sons of a thrifty, itinerant shepherd accepted 
 this announcement without perception of its meaning or 
 desire for its consummation ; though judging from his com- 
 mandments concerning his bones, Joseph was the only one 
 present that really possessed his father's faith in his father's 
 clearness and confidence, still the word is spoken. The 
 world shall come to the feet of Him who comes from God 
 through the line of Judah. 
 
 How this ray is multiplied in the widening light of Scripture 
 history ! How proud stand David and Isaiah on the misty 
 mountain tops of this dawning glory ! How clear, and round, 
 and shining it cuts the horizon at Bethlehem and Nazareth, 
 so simple, so lustrous, so pure, so grand, the very bright- 
 ness of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ ! How 
 this light increases in the pages that follow that advent and 
 conclude the oracles of God ! The confinement of the truth 
 to a single man, a single family, a single tribe, a single 
 nation, the necessity for all who would receive it to become 
 members of this household, is suddenly changed. As in 
 the night we can overcome the darkness only by seeking 
 the light, while in the day the light seeks us, so in the ages 
 before Shiloh came the world must ally itself to Judah, if it 
 would enjoy heavenly vision ; but after His advent the 
 divine light goetli out into all the world. The deeds of the 
 apostles show that this power is moving out for the sub- 
 jugation and ingathering of the world, East, West, North, 
 and South. Down to Ethiopia, over to Syria, up in Asia 
 Minor, far over to the forest depths of Illyricum, out to the 
 gates of Gibraltar, to Damascus, most ancient of cities, 
 Antioch, most wealthy, Athens, most cultivated, Corinth, 
 most luxurious, Home, most imperial, everywhere mightily 
 grew the word of God and prevailed. This omnipotent
 
 378 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 assault of the Spirit of God on the spirit of evil abounds and 
 superabounds in the closing chapters of the Book. Then all 
 the trumpets of heaven, with one acclaim, are ringing out the 
 conquests of Christ over Satan in all the earth. The slow, 
 dubious, often utterly imperceptible movements of the pre- 
 advent age are changed to the most intense and increasing 
 energy. Vials ever pouring, horsemen, as on battle-fields, 
 fiercely riding, war rapidly following war, the Captain of 
 the Hosts of the Lord pressing home His victories, giving 
 His baffled enemy no chance to rest and repair his loss, 
 driving him from his central throne, within twelve genera- 
 tions after His crucifixion, and thus expelling Him from the 
 sovereignty of what is called in the New Testament, " the 
 inhabitable world," and in the Roman writers, the " orbis 
 terrarum," the globe of the earth. 
 
 Driven to his savage devotees, Antichrist rallies these 
 vilest of his slaves and hurls them at the Christian empire. 
 The empire, backslidden, is seemingly destroyed, when, lo, 
 the savages, under the genial penetration of Christian grace, 
 become the saviors of civilization. They are as fresh soil 
 to worn-out lands. Christianity converts them, not they it. 
 Thus Christ advances, till to-day only three organized and 
 prominent powers in all the earth deny the divinity and 
 redemption of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Chinese, the Turk- 
 ish, the Japanese. The first two have yielded practically 
 their independence, and live only by the sufferance or 
 mutual jealousies of their Christian neighbors, while at the 
 gates of the last the guns of three powers are now thunder- 
 ing, the unconscious servants of Christ, battering down, not 
 Japan, but its idols and false worship. 
 
 The rebellion of man under the inspiration of Satan grows 
 weaker year by year. The Revelator's far-off vision from 
 the sharp, bare cliffs of Patmos, is our careless, every-day, 
 mid-noon brightness. The power of Antichrist was then 
 supreme. Across the smooth, black waves the hills of
 
 BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 379 
 
 Ephesus could be easily seen. On their farther sides, per- 
 haps visible through the opening which gave her a harbor, 
 Diana's wonderful temple glitters in the golden light of that 
 gorgeous clime. Across the opposite and wider sea 
 
 " The earth then wore the Parthenon 
 The brightest gem upon her zone." 
 
 No decay then blackened its shining pillars, no rifts 
 marred its matchless symmetry. Its goddess, sixty feet 
 tall, of ivory and gold, towered as the representative of that 
 worldly wisdom which is to-day the most pretentious of all 
 the enemies of Christ. Just below, Corinth was ablaze with 
 a magnificence that was all devoted to the most open and 
 shameful lust. Below Ephesus the horrid foulnesses of 
 Phenician abominations flourished in opulent Aritioch. In 
 sight lay the birth-place of Homer, who had clothed the 
 false offspring of false gods in the regalest robes of melody 
 and imagination ; and close beside him was the home of 
 Pythagoras, who had sought to give them the dignity and 
 authority of reason. Everywhere about him was Rome, in 
 closest amity with the enemy of God and man. Zealously 
 she followed his commands and shook her sceptre, full of fear 
 and death, over the trembling, scattered sheep of Christ. 
 Yet he saw through and beyond, above and around all this 
 dominion of darkness the bright, divine future, and was 
 glad. 
 
 Such is the Millennium in prophecy and history, in 
 progress and perfection. 
 
 II. What connection has our war with this consummation ? 
 The progress of the promised grace has subdued its first 
 enemy, idolatry. This destroyed man's allegiance to God. 
 It must subdue the second enemy, which is man's hostility 
 to man. This hostility assumes civil and social forms. It 
 is monarchic, Slavic, disuniting. Against these, march 
 democracy, unity, fraternity, every man the equal and the
 
 380 THE WAE AND THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 brother of every man. To gain this victory we are now 
 contending. 
 
 1 . The separation of man by artificial social barriers is one 
 of the earliest and deepest expressions of our rebellious na- 
 ture. Ambition, if the last infirmity of noble minds, is the first 
 of ignoble. Success gratifies it, power solidifies it. When 
 solidified, immediately the priest consecrates it, and to deny 
 its divinity is sacrilege. That is the way the monarchic and 
 aristocratic systems have always grown. England's social 
 structure, the proudest, and richest, and wickedest of any 
 that controls civilized society, has grown exclusively from 
 this seed. A robber chief, with a few hundred retainers, 
 lands on her coast, throws his sword into the balance of a 
 civil war, reduces both foes and allies to slavery, parcels 
 out the lands, confers titles, appoints bishops and cardinals 
 to sanctify his crime, and thus establishes the present gov- 
 ernment of England. The crimes, in which Kinglake so 
 forcibly shows that the present Napoleon laid his power, 
 were few and trifling beside these out of which Victoria's 
 throne has been built. But few and small as they were, they 
 were of like character, and show that the eight centuries that 
 separate their commission have not modified their nature. 
 
 All governments based on the few, by the few, and for 
 the few, are hostile to the government of Christ, and must 
 be abolished before His glory fully comes. They were con- 
 ceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. They breed pride, 
 licentiousness, violence in the ruler, poverty, cowardice, 
 sycophancy, ignorance, lawlessness in the ruled. The 
 Papal Church, and its eldest daughter, the Church of Eng- 
 land, are oligarchies. They uphold civil by religious 
 tyranny. Not so the first and future Church. That is 
 Democracy. Her people are equal each to each, and their 
 pastor's superiority is not one of authority but of service. 
 The governments of man and of the Church must correspond. 
 Both must be a brotherhood of equals.
 
 BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 381 
 
 2. Then comes the unification of Man. Unless he is one, 
 Church nor State can ever be one. Christ cannot be the 
 Head of our household. Whatever opposes this consumma- 
 tion, blood, language, color, caste, must give way, that 
 Christ may be all and in all. 
 
 These vital principles are involved in our struggle. The 
 first we saw at the first. So the whole world, kings 
 and peoples, instinctively saw that the struggle was over 
 that idea, over both ideas. The nation hailed the first with 
 unbounded fervor Union for the sake of Union. But 
 thoughtful men hailed the grander idea that rose behind 
 and above it, 
 
 " Another sun risen on mid noon," 
 
 the Equality and Fraternity of Man. Union, not for our- 
 selves alone, but for all men, was our strongest, our most 
 general feeling. It carried us safely over the disastrous 
 days of our first defeats, through that first winter of fearful 
 idleness, when the riotous rebels built their camp-fires and 
 boiled the bones of our slain heroes in sight of our capital. 
 It carried us through the still more terrible calamities of the 
 Peninsula defeats, and the yet severer defeat of our confi- 
 dence in the commander of that campaign. 
 
 But the people clung with increasing devotion to their 
 idea, and its embodiment in American nationality. Three 
 hundred thousand men hastened to cast themselves into the 
 gulf, that Union and democracy might be preserved. 
 
 The second, and even darker winter, came upon us ; a 
 winter of woful discontent. Treason triumphed in many 
 of the States of the North. The Proclamation of Emanci- 
 pation, a glad and glorious vision to holy hearts, was sur- 
 rounded by clouds and darkness, even like Him from whose 
 chambers it had truly proceeded. The Mississippi was still 
 fettered by stronger bands in its Southern windings than 
 the icy ones nature had imposed on its upper currents.
 
 382 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 McClellan removed, Burnside defeated, Hooker defeated, 
 Fremont cashiered, how thick the ^darkness, how faint the 
 national heart ! 
 
 Still her. purpose failed not. Why ? It was the salva- 
 tion of popular government. The Union must be preserved, 
 not alone because it was essential to our own welfare, but 
 because through its preservation would the divine doctrine 
 of popular government live among men. If America is lost, 
 the world is lost. 
 
 Under this chastisement the people accept that other 
 truth the Identity of Man. God compels them to take 
 this truth, just as very sick persons take very disagreeable 
 draughts, not that they like the medicine, but that they may 
 get well. Only this medicine of God is truly His best of 
 food ; the choicest of His gifts to men as men. The Union 
 is the American passion a passion which no European 
 appreciates. England sneers at it, and, if friendly, looks 
 blank and ignorant at such enthusiasm. " Why this fury 
 for the Union ? " " We have had one for two hundred and 
 fifty years, and nobody on either side feels for it an impulse 
 of enthusiasm or patriotic affection." "Why this talk about 
 'our country'?" Country, to an Englishman, is simply the 
 region not occupied by large cities. "The Times " acknowl- 
 edges that it does not understand Mr. Beecher when he talks 
 so much about "our country." An incident current in their 
 drawing-rooms illustrates this remark. An American lady, 
 who sought to conceal her American origin, as if ashamed 
 of it, was charged in company with being an American. 
 She reddened with shame and surprise. " Why do you 
 make such an accusation?" she asked. " Because you said 
 ' our country.' No Englishman ever uses that expres- 
 sion." 
 
 But our passion for our country is also and chiefly a 
 passion for liberty. We fight for empire, because empire 
 means democracy. We shall wage this war fifty years, if
 
 BATTLE OF MISSIONARY BIDGE. 383 
 
 need be, because ever3 T body, with more or less clearness, 
 sees that its success is essential to the preservation of those 
 ideas. It was not so ^at the first. Abolitionists, though 
 sound on the rights of man, were, as a whole, unsound on 
 the necessity of the Union to attain and maintain their rights. 
 Different classes of the people were the depositary of differ- 
 ent ideas. The one cried " Union at any cost. Down with 
 the abolitionists who are disturbing it. Union is liberty. 
 Union is democracy. Let it alone, even if it becomes the 
 patron of slavery. Some way and some time it will emanci- 
 pate the State from that iniquity." The other party, with 
 equal and superior fervor, cried, " The Rights of every man 
 at any cost. Down with the Union, if it stands in the way 
 of liberty." 
 
 As in the material world, the orbit pursued is the result- 
 ant of the forces employed upon the orb itself, so here. The 
 centrifugal lovers of Liberty, and the centripetal lovers of 
 Union, whose representatives were Phillips and Everett, 
 were each at heart lovers of the democratic and federative 
 ideas. Both sought their preservation. Both contended 
 together, because each felt his own principle was in danger 
 of destruction through the purpose of his antagonist's idea. 
 The shock of arms united them. The one saw that Union 
 now meant universal liberty. The other that abolitionism 
 meant Union, and only under its banner could the nation be 
 preserved. Equal rights were seen to mean every man's 
 rights. Democracy was identical with abolitionism. Hence 
 no men were more ardent to strike down the slave power 
 than the life-long democrats, democrats who were honest 
 believers in the corner-stone of their creed the equality of 
 man. Dickinson of New York was such a democrat ; Butler 
 of Massachusetts, another. They said instantly, " free the 
 slave ; make him a soldier ; cut out the cancer over the 
 heart of the republic." 
 
 3. But a greater truth than all the rest was born of the
 
 384 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 exigencies of this hour. We found we as yet had known 
 nothing, as it were, of the scope and fullness of that word 
 Democracy. It was with us, at the worst, equality of white 
 people, and the slavery of all other complexions ; at the 
 best, equality of the whites, and the liberty, but not fraternity, 
 of the blacks. Not the oneness of man as man, never, 
 never. We fell into spasms at the thought of that divine 
 truth, as a mushroom lord of England might at his equality 
 with his servant. 
 
 But the wisdom of God is wiser than men. You did not 
 create the doctrine of human fraternity. You may have 
 fancied that you did ; that it was your patent, and could 
 be limited and controlled at your pleasure. So did the 
 Athenian democrats. Where are they ? So have the 
 Southern slavemongers. Where are they? God, my friends, 
 not you, made man, of one father, that all might be brethren, 
 that each should in honor prefer one another, esteeming 
 others better than themselves. He is pushing us forward 
 to His, not our, Millennium. He is using and blessing us 
 if we choose to work with Him. If not, He is none the 
 less using us, while also chastising, for the advancement 
 of mankind to the same goal. He maketh our wrath or 
 righteousness alike to praise and prosper Him. Whether 
 gradually, and by the operation of laws that have been 
 molding and transforming man for ages, or suddenly, and 
 by the breaking up of the present order and institution of 
 a new earth and new man, as some devout students of the 
 Bible believe, whichever be the way, the end is sure and 
 the same. The Millennium is a world of men, equal, 
 brotherly, united, and holy. Every approach to that state 
 now renders its violent introduction less necessary. If it 
 can be effected by natural causes there will be no need of 
 the supernatural. It is being effected. The divine doctrine 
 of democracy has become choked with weeds and stones. 
 We said " It is true and grand, but it is only for white folks.
 
 BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 385 
 
 Do you dare to say that that negro aiid I are of one blood, 
 and should be one in social and civil life ? that it is as much 
 his duty to ignore my complexion as it is mine to ignore his ? 
 Horrible ! " And so we stone the prophets who simply preach 
 to us our own doctrine of democracy, rationally and divinely 
 developed. 
 
 But God is taking vengeance on us for destroying His 
 servants, and is compelling us to rise to the hights of our 
 own principles at the threat of losing all its lower develop- 
 ments, which we see to be our essential life. We listen, 
 refuse, yield, and most reluctantly obey. 
 
 Now comes another word of God. Arm him as a soldier ? 
 We refuse ; we scream in fear and hatred at that word. 
 When Charles Sumner said, at the Massachusetts Republican 
 Convention,* that such was the course of Marius to save 
 Rome, and such must be ours to save the country, the 
 journals of our capital denied the correctness of his quota- 
 tions, and scouted with horror- his proposals. To such a 
 pitch of fear did they reach, that on carrying a defense of 
 his scholarship as if it could need defense to the most 
 learned of our journals, which had been severest in denun- 
 ciation of his scholarship, I was told, after the article had 
 spent a night in their editorial rooms, that if they should 
 dare to publish that simple statement of the language of 
 Plutarch, their building would be torn down before night. 
 Another journal, " The Traveller," to its honor be it said, 
 admitted the article, and what was better, stood by the prin- 
 ciple, without loss of building or character. 
 
 Such opposition only new punishment could cure. So 
 God sent our enemies again upon us. They ate up our 
 boys as the ox eateth up grass. He develops demand for 
 work at home to subdue the recruiting fever. He makes 
 the draft unpopular and difficult. He wastes our armies, 
 and shows that they cannot be replenished from their pre- 
 
 2/r * September, 1861.
 
 386 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 vious sources. At length, crushed with calamity and nigh 
 the gates of the grave, we whiningly and meanly, yet hon- 
 estly say, " Come, you nigger, and fight for us." He comes. 
 Disregarding our hearts, mindful only of our danger, he 
 comes and fights like well tried warriors ; fights so grandly 
 that an officer at Port Hudson urged the appointment of 
 white officers over them, because if led by their own men 
 they would have certainly stormed those hights, and every 
 man been slain. Whoever heard before that it was the busi- 
 ness of an officer in battle to restrain the daring of his men. 
 
 We are being led gradually to higher hights. Providence 
 is using this degradation for the furtherance of His ends. 
 What means the cry that has just made every heart bleed 
 afresh. Our sons are starving in Richmond prisons ! Why 
 not exchange them ? We cannot. Why not ? Because 
 the rebels refuse to recognize the white officers of colored 
 regiments as prisoners of war, and are putting our colored 
 soldiers, whom they have taken captive, into slave-pens and 
 worse than slave miseries. If we call these men to fight 
 for us, we must, at least, protect them if captured, equally 
 with their fellow-soldiers. There, at least, white and black 
 are alike. The people are sad, but, thank God, are firm. 
 They might not have been, had the rebels used those white 
 officers as they do our other officers. They might have 
 said, " Let the blacks be enslaved, but release my white sons 
 by exchange for yours." God has made this trick of the 
 devil a clasp of his own to bind us to our despised brethren. 
 
 We must yet give these officers position. We must let 
 them serve in what regiments they choose. We must let 
 them rise in that regiment, if they are worthy, to the chief 
 command. We must make them generals, not of black 
 men, but of armies. This war, if greatly prolonged, will 
 not close till this progress is wrought. It is not as great 
 as has been achieved. It must be done to make our ways 
 straight for the coming of the Lord. God will not rest
 
 BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 387 
 
 until, either through this war, or by subsequent conflicts, 
 which He shall create and control, He has abolished this 
 iniquity from every institution and every heart. 
 
 The last word of commendation which Mr. Beecher re- 
 ceived in England was from the students of the non-con- 
 forming colleges, the heirs of the blood, principles, and 
 sovereignty of Cromwell and his associates. In that address 
 they urge him to labor for the abolition of all distinctions 
 in society based on color. It will be done, and we shall 
 yet see in Baltimore, as in Boston, people of African descent 
 moving freely in the best society. Africa is as good a 
 country as Asia, whence we are supposed to have come, 
 and its children will be held in as high an honor. 
 
 Thus shall the millennial day break upon the world. It 
 may be in a day. Events are hastening it forward. Every 
 step in Europe is to emancipation, equalization, unification. 
 There is no possibility of peace there on any other basis. 
 Nor is there here. 
 
 Christendom thus unified, heathendom and Islamdom 
 will soon be regenerated. Social vices will abate their 
 violence. Liberty and unity will prevent wars and arma- 
 ments, royal houses, and luxurious absorption by a few fam- 
 ilies of the people's wealth. Legitimate industry will pay 
 the old debts of kings and crimes, and easily supply the 
 slight demands of a popular and peaceful government. In- 
 temperance, Sabbath-breaking, infidelity, all the fruits of 
 crowned and Catholic Europe, will be replaced with the 
 graces of Christianity. The Lord Jesus will be the real and 
 recognized, if not visible, sovereign of the world. " Unto 
 Him shall all flesh come, and every knee bow." By Him 
 shall rulers reign, and judges decree justice. In Him shall 
 all the world, consciously, happily, completely, live, and 
 move, and have its being. 
 
 " Yea, truth and justice then, 
 Will down return to men,
 
 388 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 Orbed in a rainbow ; and, like glories wearing, 
 
 Mercy will sit between, 
 
 Throned in celestial sheen, 
 . With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering,. 
 
 And heaven, as at some festival, 
 Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall." 
 
 Say not this is all a golden dream. It is scriptural, ra- 
 tional, inevitable. It is hardly now a prophetic vision, so 
 much of it has been accomplished. The blindest-eyed can 
 see, through the vista before him, the glad consummation. 
 Compared with the dreary ages that are past, how brief, how 
 pleasant the remnant hours ! Gigantic sins can be brought 
 low as in a moment. Three years ago, and the most hopeful 
 souls in America could see no immediate end to its most 
 awful sin. Here and there was one who said the election 
 of Mr. Lincoln begins the end. But this gave it nearly or 
 over a score of years in which to die. The multitude saw 
 not even those misty mountain tops. They looked over 
 the immense territories ruled by the masters of these sins, 
 and no glare of sunshine greeted their eyes. Wickedness 
 stalked crowned, haughty, through all that land. 
 
 " The free were only they 
 Whom power made free to execute all ills 
 Their hearts imagine ; they alone were great 
 Whose passions nursed them from their cradle up 
 To luxury and lewdness whom to see 
 Was to despise whose aspect put to scorn 
 Their station's eminence. The wise, they only 
 Obscurely waiting till the bolts of heaven 
 Should break upon the land, and give them light 
 Whereby to walk ! The innocent, alas ! 
 Poor Innocency lay where four roads meet, 
 A stone upon her head, a stake driven through her. 
 Who that was innocent did care to live, 
 The hand of power did press the very life 
 Of Innocency out." 
 
 That horrid shape, most said, can never die. For centu- 
 ries, certainly, will it flourish. It arose in arms. How the
 
 BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 389 
 
 whole land trembled at the neighing of its strong ones ! 
 How we quailed and whitened at its imperial front ! Never 
 before was a nation so despised by its rebels. No epithets 
 could body forth their scorn. Egypt did not so disdain 
 her Hebrew slaves, nor the Philistines, with Goliath at their 
 head, the unarmed refugees of the cliffs of Judean wilder- 
 nesses. They had bounds to their contempt. Not so our 
 Southern masters. "Mudsills," "greasy mechanics," whom 
 "we can drive into the ocean with a lady's riding-whip," 
 these were the A B C of their scorn. They looked abroad, 
 and every aristocrat was nodding and winking approval, 
 chief of whom in this crime against God and humanity was 
 the aristocracy of Great Britain. 
 
 Our hopes were in our principles, our people, and our 
 God. They have not failed us. And the hideous iniquity 
 which we dared not touch, which we went round and round 
 to get at those who, sheltered behind its Gorgon-headed 
 shield, laughed us to scorn ; that Gorgon-hissing shield we 
 at last struck at and stnick through, and the monster lies 
 prone for many a league, prone over half the land, prone 
 forever. 
 
 Coifi, a priest of British paganism, at the time of that 
 island's conversion, and before its present backsliding, at 
 the risk of death from the insulted gods, rode full tilt 
 against their temples, before a ghastly crowd, who believed 
 instant death would be visited upon a priest who should dare, 
 armed, to approach these shrines, and were expecting that 
 such would be his sudden fate. But, as the poet tells us, 
 
 " He crashed 
 
 Through the inclosures, ever sacred held, 
 And gained the central space unharmed, and rode 
 Thrice round and round, and in his stirrup stood, 
 And with a higli defiance on his lip, 
 Smote with a clang an Idol, monster faced; 
 E'en as lie smote, the foul thing, reeling, fell, 
 And then from every heart the icy hand 
 Of fear was lifted.
 
 390 THE WAK AND THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 Within the crowd a sacred fury wrought ; 
 
 The deities were tumbled on the grass, 
 
 The pales and the inclosures were torn down, 
 
 And one a torch applied, and towers 
 
 Of flame rushed up, then licked the air and died, 
 
 While white-rohed priests, together standing, sung : 
 
 ' Down falls the wicked idol on his face 
 
 So let all wicked gods and idols fall.' " 
 
 Thus have the fears of our monster idol been dispelled, 
 and the demon that has burned to death screaming myriads 
 in his arms of fire, has been smitten of God and tumbled into 
 the lake of eternal burning, while we have stood amazed 
 and glad beyond all power of praise. Its priestly devotees 
 and lordly defenders are howling in sorrow and shame, de- 
 feat and destruction. 
 
 Let us not despair of further victories of the Lamb. This 
 demon slain, there is no such other hydra cursing the earth. 
 European tyrannies will fast follow it to its dishonored grave. 
 Asiatic abominations and African savagery will feel the 
 warm rays of the Sun of Righteousness, long held in disas- 
 trous eclipse by this horrific sin. They will wilt down at 
 His presence, as when the melting fire burneth, the fire 
 causeth the waters to boil. 
 
 Our own social sins, intemperance, Sabbath-breaking, 
 infidelity, immorality, will be more easily restrained and 
 extirpated after this Satan among the lesser fiends is cast 
 into the bottomless pit and chained there forever. Our 
 prejudices, born and fostered of him, will likewise disappear, 
 and brotherly love and unity possess all hearts. 
 
 The glad tidings of yesterday assure the speedy over- 
 throw of Pharaoh and his hosts. This great and growing 
 soldier, with a rare fitness, joins his victories to our national 
 holidays. They are thus twice blessed, in what they give 
 to these rejoiceful days, in what of higher quality they take 
 from their ancient worthiness, and add to their own high 
 meed of fame. Vicksburg crowns the nation's birthday with
 
 BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE. 391 
 
 an undying glory, and Chattanooga, relieved of its long- 
 exultant enemies, fills the most ancient of our festal days 
 with the tides of exultant life. See that band creeping 
 round the shaggy breast of yon sharp peak ; amid the blast- 
 ed pines, the prostrate firs, the loose stones, their perilous 
 path they keep, up and up, till a cloud receives them out 
 of our sight. Not a cloud of heaven, but of earth, a cloud 
 soon to flash with unwonted brightness, to rumble with 
 thunder-claps of death. The battle opens, rages, grows 
 closer, hotter, deadlier. Pressing ever on and up swing 
 the gallant troops around the last smooth precipitous wall, 
 that sits a crown of smooth, high rock upon the mountain's 
 brow. The rebels break and flee ; along the wild edge, head- 
 long plunges the host. The fiery Hooker is fleeter of foot. 
 Upon the plains beneath he breaks, like torrents into which 
 the mountain cloud seems to have burst, torrents sweeping 
 all things in their wild and fatal flight. 
 
 Across the plains, on a low ridge, hangs a heavier cloud 
 of war. It stretches for miles along its summit. In the 
 valley below, with Chattanooga at its back, but a mile or 
 two distant, on a little knob, stands a little man reconnoiter- 
 ing the scene. The plains are filled with mustering squad- 
 rons. Advances are made along the line up this bristling 
 hill. Here Sherman holds his enemy by the throat, each 
 bleeding, each fii-m. Then Thomas pushes forward his 
 columns, and below Hooker sweeps up the less precipitous 
 but more perilous sides, with his untamed daring. Day 
 and day writhes the mighty anaconda of the plains, and the 
 hills are wreathed in agony of strife. That point is reached 
 at last which every great general knows, and only great 
 generals, when, each side exhausted, that which summons 
 all its strength crushes its foe. The word is given. The 
 army summon up the spirits ; the hill is stormed, is swept, 
 is ours. The rebels, who but now had thought themselves 
 invulnerable, leap from their rifle-pits and intrenchments, 
 and fly in panic irrepressible.
 
 392 THE WAR AND THE MILLENNIUM. 
 
 This is the thanksgiving feast that the calm general sends 
 to a nation drunken with delight. This crushes the dragon 
 in all the region above the Gulf States, except that spot 
 where he raises his head sparkling defiance from his green 
 and deadly eyes. The. West is free from slave or rebel, and 
 shall be free forever. 
 
 This victory assures the end. Slavery is doomed by the 
 fiat of the nation and the arm of Grant. They have fought 
 with the Lamb, and the Lamb has overcome them. No 
 State, we fondly hope and believe, can ever resume its 
 place in the Union with this crime on its hands. Other 
 blessings shall speedily follow all blessings. The glory 
 of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the 
 sea. Already its beams cover thick the morning sky. 
 
 "Come forth, Light, from out the breaking East, 
 And with thy splendor pierce the heathen dark, 
 And morning make a continent and isle, 
 That Thou mayst reap the harvest of Thy tears, 
 O Holy One, who hung upon the tree."
 
 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED: 
 
 " AND THE LORD SAID UNTO JOSHUA, FEAR NOT, NEITHER BE THOU 
 DISMAYED ; TAKE ALL THE PEOPLE OF WAR WITH THEE, AND ARISE, 
 GO UP TO Al : SEE, I HAVE GIVEN INTO THY HAND THE KING OF Al, 
 
 AND HIS PEOPLE, AND HIS CITY, AND HIS LAND." Joshua viii. 1. 
 
 HE land trembles with the conflict that has been 
 raging for more than a week in the seat of the 
 rebellion. The smoke of the great agony curls 
 up in the central heavens, and almost casts its 
 lurid darkness over our visible skies. Under its sulphurous 
 canopy our sons and brothers have been wrestling in a death 
 struggle with those who should be our sons and brothers, 
 for principles and privileges that are dearer than life. We 
 gather in this quiet house of prayer, far from the scene 
 of the contest ; yet we hear but little save the rapid pelting 
 of the musketry or the fearful boom of the artillery. Our 
 ears are filled with the hurrahs of our boys as they fly up 
 the steep sides of rebel earthworks, or the Indian yells of 
 our foes, as they leap in mighty masses upon our serried 
 columns. The piled dead lie before our vision, ghastly, 
 
 * A sermon preached in Boston, Sunday, May 15, 1864, on the occa- 
 sion of the advance of General Grant on Kichmond. See Note XIV. 
 
 (393)
 
 394 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 
 
 torn, trampled, their eyes glazed, or " staring in muddy im- 
 purity." The wounded, sinking, fainting, groaning, bleed- 
 ing, fill our souls with inexpressible anguish. We see not 
 each other's faces, we hear not each other's voices.- These 
 sights and sounds fill sense and soul to a staggering fullness. 
 
 "The fires of death, 
 
 The bale fires, flash on high ; from rock to rock, 
 Each volley tells that thousands cease to breathe ; 
 Death rides upon the sulphury siroc ; 
 lied Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock." 
 
 Amid such powerful presences it is difficult for congre- 
 gations to gather in churches to-day. Telegrams, not texts, 
 are our spiritual food. The battle, not the Bible, draws our 
 attention. The lives of myriads, nay, the life of the nation, 
 hangs on the dreadful die. 
 
 We do not condemn this feeling. Were one of your 
 family to-day struggling with disease, and life or death 
 hung trembling in the balance, you would not be a listener 
 here. You would be busy in the chamber, nursing and 
 praying. The quiet worship of God's house is sometimes 
 more profane than the active worship of out-door philan- 
 thropy. Should you, on coming hither, see a horse cast in 
 the street, and say, "It is Sunday ; I cannot miss my seat 
 and sermon to relieve this poor beast," you would find no 
 spiritual nourishment in the service. God would scorn 
 your advances. How much more, then, when your country 
 is struggling for existence, when the principles of civil and 
 Christian society are cast into the wavering scales of war, 
 when the welfare of the living generation and unborn gen- 
 erations is subjected to the risks of battle ; then, if ever, in 
 every church and congregation, should prayers, meditations, 
 and eloquence, all conspire for one end. Do you suppose, 
 had Joshua's battle been on the Sabbath, that Eliezer and 
 the Levitcs would have forbidden the non-combatants to 
 think about their contending kindred on that day? Or that
 
 ADVANCE ON RICHMOND. 395 
 
 Phinehas would have told the worshipers at Shiloh, "Your 
 brethren are having a terrible civil war down at Gibeah to- 
 day, but you must think only of your sacrifices and ceremo- 
 nial service." Nay ; he would have said, " Leave here thy 
 gift before the altar, and let us hasten up to yonder hill, 
 where perchance we may see the fearful strife. Let us 
 earnestly pray for their success ; let us fly to the dreadful 
 scene, and administer our aid and comfort to the wounded 
 and dying." So now we may, we ought, to pray and talk 
 on the all-absorbing theme. 
 
 We are led hither, also, by the request of our Chief Magis- 
 trate, who desires us to acknowledge the goodness of God 
 in crowning our onward movement with victory. Especially 
 should we consider this subject, that we may lift it above 
 the bloody phases it presents to the natural eye, or the 
 mere shifts and windings of politics that it exhibits to 
 some minds, into the grand hights of divine workings. 
 God moves with our moving army ; God fights with our 
 fighting soldiers ; not for the welfare of America, as an 
 especial arid peculiar nation ; that is a heathen's idea of 
 God, who thought Jove or Zeus was his god only, and not 
 the god of his enemy. He contends for us, because He 
 has certain ends to be consummated on the earth, that can 
 only be effected through the overthrow of the doctrines and 
 usages of the rebellious confederacy. 
 
 We may not see Him. Perhaps Joshua did not when he 
 stole up the high wall of the Jordan valley, and through its 
 passes wound his way to the long and lofty hill upon which 
 Ai frowned contemptuously upon him. He knew that that 
 city must be taken or the hill country of Palestine could 
 not be occupied by his people. He knew that the narrow 
 gorge of the Jordan would soon cease to contain them, if 
 they failed to gain a foothold upon the hights. It was a 
 military necessity. It was an absolute necessity. He saw 
 not that his success involved even the redemption of man.
 
 396 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 
 
 He did not fully know that out of it would come salvation 
 for the world. Even though this inspiring vision did lift 
 itself before his eyes, yet he felt none the less that his work 
 was to deliver a nation of fugitives from destruction, and 
 establish them upon immovable foundations. As in all 
 greatest duties, there was the vision of future perfection, 
 and the present obligation, hard, painful, bloody. 
 
 " God has conceded two sights to a man 
 
 One of men's whole work, time's completed plan, 
 The other of the minute's work, man's first 
 Step to the plan's completeness." 
 
 So Joshua might have seen the infinite necessities that 
 compelled the capture of the hostile town ; but the strong, 
 hard duty of the hour was its capture. We, too, looking 
 over the bloody and blackened field of wasting strife, look- 
 ing at the yet unsettled, and perhaps most desperate future, 
 may rightfully inspire our hearts, as was that of Joshua, 
 with visions of the plans of God that necessitate our victory. 
 
 This last and greatest ground for our assurance of success 
 covers the final issue. Others, like those that pressed im- 
 mediately upon the mind of the Hebrew captain, press upon 
 us. The future of revelation may be near or distant 
 dim or clear. In it America may appear shining with a 
 celestial glory, or may be blotted out as completely and 
 indifferently as are Egypt, Assyria, and Kome, or may shine 
 in as baleful light as Judea, whose central principles and 
 Person, like that nation, it may have scornfully rejected. 
 
 Whatever be that ultimate summing up of God concern- 
 ing this nation, depends upon the manner in which we re- 
 spond to His calls at the present moment. 
 
 It is often said that we are settling the question for the 
 rights of man in America and in the world. We are not 
 doing exactly this. For the question of the success of the 
 rights of man does not depend upon America, but upon 
 God. If we follow His orders we may be His favorites
 
 ADVANCE ON EICHMOND. 397 
 
 the ministers of this divine purpose. If we fail to follow 
 them, we shall be cast aside as unceremoniously as we have 
 cast aside disobedient or incompetent generals, and He will 
 make others His officers, servants, and friends. So, then, 
 we are led, in considering our grounds for hoping to succeed, 
 solely to the consideration of the manner in which we have 
 responded to the demands of God. We have no political 
 or merely military problems to discuss. We trace our de- 
 feats and victories to no incompetent or competent general- 
 ship. A higher law regulates these matters. Not that we 
 despise generalship. Not that we believe victory usually 
 follows virtuous imbecility and defeat vicious ability. Suc- 
 cess requires sagacity, even in the way of righteousness. 
 Folly is not God's favorite. Moses was as naturally as he 
 was supernaturally gifted. David was of extraordinary 
 powers independent of their extraordinary subjugation to 
 the divine will. Paul was the acknowledged leader of the 
 Jewish leaders before he became the head of the Christian 
 Church. Luther, Calvin, Wesley, were men of the amplest 
 parts, independent of the lofty purpose in which they em- 
 ployed their genius. 
 
 And yet the wisest of minds set against the will of God 
 is weaker than the weakest working with that will. The 
 mightiest steamer tugs in vain against Niagara's current, 
 the tiniest feather flies resistlessly upon its rushing floods. 
 So, in estimating the reasons for our success, we shall ever 
 bear in mind that though great generals are a great neces- 
 sity, great ideas are a greater. Joshua was a great general. 
 No superior appears in Hebrew, if in any other history. 
 Yet at the very beginning of his campaign he meets with 
 an ignominious repulse. He is chased down the mountains 
 of Bethel a ruinous rout. Why ? He had ceased to ally 
 himself with God. He was but a lieutenant of the Divine 
 Captain. He was not in unison with his commander-in-chief. 
 He flies as miserably as the weakest of his soldiers before
 
 398 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 
 
 the impetuous mountaineers the avowed rebels of the 
 cause which he was tamely supporting. So the eleven tribes 
 for the clerical tribe cooperated largely in the patriotic 
 and holy enterprise fled twice in utter disgrace and con- 
 fusion before their corrupt and abominable brethren of Ben- 
 jamin and Gibeah. They had as good leaders, doubtless. 
 But they were not in earnest against the sin of their breth- 
 ren. They took up the quarrel compulsorily, and not seri- 
 ously fearing for their Constitution more than for their 
 God, and He drove them down the rocky slope and across the 
 broad meadows at its base in unspeakable panic, until they 
 had begun to fast, and repent, and search their souls, and 
 seek for God's way before they expected any victory. 
 
 In the light of this high principle we see why we did 
 not succeed at the first. We had become almost as deeply 
 implicated in the sin of the nation as our revolting brethren. 
 We refused to let the cry of the slave rouse us from our 
 torpidity ; even after the shot at a national vessel and the 
 capture of a national fort had stung us into a war for na- 
 tional self-preservation, we still vociferated at the top of our 
 lungs, " War for union, not for liberty for white men, not 
 for man for the Constitution, not for the right." So we 
 rushed to Washington bravely, no doubt, as did Joshua's 
 men up the sides of Ai ; yet vain-gloriously, godlessly, pro- 
 fanely stuffed with hate, and prejudice, and all unclean- 
 ness. Then came Big Bethel, Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, with 
 their chastening experiences. But they did not chasten us. 
 The leaven began to work, yet wrought slowly, slowly. A 
 young Napoleon came down from the Alleghanies, and was 
 going to conquer without God ; nay, against God. His 
 army lies around him, superb in equipment, gay in capari- 
 son, matchless on parade, encumbered with material which 
 a lavish nation squandered upon them. He wanted to con- 
 quer. Everybody does. He wanted to substantiate the 
 fame which danced before him. But he said, " I must be
 
 ADVANCE ON EICHMOND. 399 
 
 the victor of a people united on the old basis slavery must 
 go out gradually not by my right arm." He did not like 
 it, did not approve it. He wished its death. But he would 
 not touch it. It was the sacred Hyena before which we 
 bowed in adoration which at least we would keep care- 
 fully pastured and folded not caged exactly for though 
 inclosed in bars, he had wide ranging-ground and ample 
 privilege to eat men, women, and children by the million. 
 
 One event, like Achari's little wedge, showed the rotten- 
 ness of that army, and the certainty of its fate. God sent 
 two or three sweet singers into the winter's camp, to be- 
 guile a lonely hour of the soldiers with their melodies. They 
 were honest singers. Not such as black their faces, and 
 travesty all sincere and truthful things to beguile bewitched 
 ears of their money and their time, but men that feared 
 God, and would sing, as did Miriam, and Deborah, and Da- 
 vid, the songs He taught them. They essayed to sing the 
 grandest hymn of the war ; solemn and stately as the oracles 
 of heaven. You know its deep pathos. 
 
 " We wait beneath the furnace blast 
 The pangs of transformation ; 
 Not painlessly doth God recast 
 And mould anew the nation ; 
 
 Hot burns the fire 
 
 Where wrongs expire, 
 
 Nor spares the hand, 
 
 That from the land 
 
 Uproots the ancient evil. 
 
 " What gives the wheat-fields blades of steel? 
 What points the rebel cannon ? 
 What sets the roaring rabble's heel 
 On the old star-spangled pennon? 
 
 What breaks the oath 
 
 Of the men o' the South? 
 
 What whets the knife 
 
 For the Union's life ? 
 
 Hark to the answer Slavery !
 
 400 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 
 
 " Then waste no blows on lesser foes, 
 In strife, unworthy freemen ; 
 God lifts to-day the vail, and shows 
 The features of the demon ! 
 
 O, North and South, 
 
 Its victims both, 
 
 Can ye not cry, 
 
 Let Slavery die, 
 
 And Union find in Freedom ? " 
 
 That hymn the soldiers were forbidden to hear. From 
 that hour dated the disasters of the Peninsula, and the dis- 
 grace of to-day ; while the general who was the mouth- 
 piece of his commander in that crowd has lately crowned 
 his practical treason at Manassas with complete defeat at 
 Shreveport. Then God left us to the pride that goeth be- 
 fore destruction, and the haughty spirit that precedes the 
 fall. He went not with us into that campaign. Miserable 
 destruction overwhelmed us. 
 
 And yet, as if to show how clear was His line of action, 
 there was going forward at that very time another movement 
 on His basis. A general .who had started out determined 
 to conquer but hoping to do it without touching the great 
 iniquity, who had offered to protect the slaveholders of 
 Maryland against the fugacious losses of their human prop- 
 erty had been whelmed in disgrace and defeat at Big 
 Bethel. Unlike every other defeated man, he instantly saw 
 that if he would win he must be true to truth. And he was 
 as instantly and as thoroughly converted. He goes to 
 New Orleans in the power of that conversion. Its forts fall 
 before him, as did Jericho before Joshua. He ruled that 
 great city in justice. He decreed liberty ; gave the freed- 
 man a uniform, long before Massachusetts wrung from a 
 defeated government the privilege to organize her now 
 famous " Fifty-Fourth." He did what the government has 
 not yet done put men of color in command of the regi- 
 ments he raised. Success throngs to him ; he rises be-
 
 ADVANCE ON RICHMOND. 401 
 
 fore the nation, before his foes, before the world, the man 
 who has done more than all others to really save the coun- 
 try. He alone of the generals who were first appointed to 
 lead the assault upon the rebel Capitol is to-day in the field, 
 and under the gates of the city. Arid he to-day stands so 
 strong in the judgment and conscience of his countrymen, 
 that should he be defeated by superior forces, or superior 
 military scholarship, he would suffer no real loss in their 
 hearts. They know that he means to be right. He may 
 not know all about war. He knows that which is of more 
 worth. He may have been a blasphemer, a persecutor. So 
 was Paul. But in this matter, if in no other, he is true. 
 
 We did not succeed, notwithstanding the light that shone 
 at the mouth of the Mississippi ; the government refused to 
 speak the word of Liberty, and destruction came. That word 
 appeared, and light broke dimly over the black and madden- 
 ing waves. The waves still roared, and were troubled. The 
 mountains shook with the swelling thereof. But a new 
 creating spirit was brooding upon its turbulent depths. The 
 influences of regeneration moved through the seething mass. 
 The enemy arose and defeated the idea at the polls. It raged 
 again in mobs and massacre ; it was savage, unrelenting. 
 The kings of the earth took counsel together against us. 
 All that passed by wagged their heads, exclaiming, 
 
 " She has gone down, our evil-boding star, 
 Beneath a hideous cloud of civil war, 
 Strife such as heathen slaughterers abhorred, 
 The lawless band who would call no man lord, 
 In the fierce splendor of her insolent morn, 
 She has gone down the world's eternal scorn." 
 
 It was too late that hate and scorning. She had begun 
 to live. But not yet was she deserving success. The slave 
 is freed by compulsion, not by love. Not honestly, but 
 meanly, did we 
 
 " Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame : " 
 26
 
 402 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 
 
 blushed with a real sense of shame. We disliked our col- 
 ored fellow-men. We hated to call them truly brethren. 
 They must not enter our armies, they must not stay in our 
 borders. We will free them, and expatriate them. There- 
 fore successes come slowly. The waters dash against the 
 light, and almost obliterate it. Burnside moves out only to 
 be miserably defeated. Hooker takes up the gage of battle, 
 and with a larger army than the one that is now sweeping 
 down to Richmond, is completely destroyed in the Wilder- 
 ness. Flushed with success, and welcomed by bloody in- 
 surrections and secret machinations, the foe moves down 
 upon us out from its fastnesses. Wasting and destruction 
 are in all our borders. He is barely repulsed. We sit down 
 before him, unable to take Ai or Gibeah, unable to get anear it. 
 
 Meantime in the West is another general, who believes 
 in ideas no less than arms ; who sees and accepts the call 
 of God. As little and unknown as David among his flocks, 
 he would have remained unknown but for that God saw his 
 heart was simple, right, and true. Being thus, he clothed 
 him with power, and the West stood disinthrallcd from the 
 fetters of the rebellion. God's gift for our partial service 
 was the freely flowing Mississippi. His punishment for our 
 yet Egyptian longings and rebellions of spirit was Freder- 
 icksburg, Chancellorsville, and the invasion of Pennsylvania. 
 
 But we grow in righteousness. The spirit of the people 
 is becoming penitent and sincere. We see that not only is 
 slavery wrong, caste is wrong. It is abominable in the 
 sight of God for man to look with loathing upon his fellow- 
 man. He made us all alike all of one blood, all brothers 
 and sisters, as close as those born of the same father and 
 mother. We are not yet cured of that iniquity, though we 
 are advancing thitherward. We put them into our ranks. 
 In one or two instances we conferred on them commis- 
 sions. Still we held them in the servants' place and at 
 servants' wages. That brings disaster, Fort Pillow, Plym-
 
 ADVANCE ON RICHMOND. 403 
 
 outh, Shreveport. The campaign opens most dismally. 
 The government pompously refuses to raise their wages, 
 and shoots one who asserts, and justly, that he was enlisted 
 under false pretences on the part of the government, and 
 that it has no claim upon his services. Mutiny mutters 
 through all the army. 
 
 Had Grant moved upon Richmond with that iniquity un- 
 removed, he would be to-day a disgraced and ruined man. 
 We call him a great general, and so he is ; but his general- 
 ship could not have saved him. God would have given him 
 into the hands of his enemies, as He has given another at 
 New Orleans, whose reputation has been hardly less than 
 his ; but who defrauded the freedman of his right to nego- 
 tiate his own terms for labor; who compelled him to receive 
 the pittance that secession land-owners proposed to give, 
 and forbade his being paid but half of that before the close 
 of the year; who shut him up on the plantations, and forbade 
 his crossing the boundaries without a pass the hideous 
 reminder of his old condition ; who stripped the epaulets 
 from the shoulders of wealthy gentlemen, that had won them 
 by their valor, simply because they were slightly tinged with 
 a browner complexion than his own ; who disfranchised two 
 thirds of the Union men of the State, and compelled the 
 election of a rebel in heart over an honest lover of union, 
 liberty, and the rights of man. And then, having inaugu- 
 rated with a monster concert from one who had desecrated 
 Puritan Massachusetts with his Sabbath amusements, his 
 new, false, and unjust government, he moves out to subdue 
 his foes, and is dashed back upon his capital, like a weed 
 torn up by the sea, and hurled on the rocks. As a Presi- 
 dential candidate, 
 
 " He falls like Lucifer 
 Never to hope again." 
 
 And this man was one of the ablest minds in the land ; 
 the pet of his commonwealth ; the hope and pride of the
 
 404 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 
 
 nation. What has killed him ? God. He set himself 
 against the Almighty. He scorned the doctrine that there 
 was sentiment in politics ; that soul should appear in govern- 
 ment. He is dashed to pieces. All is gone. Honor, fame, 
 hopes, and more than all, a good conscience. Never was 
 there a fall in this nation so sudden and so irremediable. 
 And why ? Not because he lacked generalship. Other 
 generals have failed. He lacked principle. His fate is a 
 warning a painful, dreadful warning to every man. Sooner 
 or later, in such hours as this, everything short of truth and 
 justice is burned up, and every one who makes these idols 
 his trust is burned with them. "The strong shall be as 
 tow, and the maker of it as a spark, and they shall both 
 burn together, and none shall quench them." 
 
 So, too, would our chief army have perished, but for 
 timely repentance and its meet works. The President de- 
 clares for ten months that he has no power to treat colored 
 soldiers as soldiers. All at once, fearful lest Congress will 
 not give him, in time for the advance, the power that he 
 has said he did not have, his attorney general informs him 
 that the original bill granted him this power. Could he not 
 have found that out before ten months of disastrous trial 
 had opened his eyes ? 
 
 Then marches the new army to battle, with colored soldiers 
 as soldiers ; with colored cavalry sweeping up to the gates 
 of the rebel capital. And then and therefore comes the 
 victory. That is why we shall succeed. Our men are con- 
 verted to the truth. They treat their associates in arms as 
 their equals, their friends. They march together, fight to- 
 gether, bleed together, shout together, die together, triumph 
 together, brothers in blood and brothers forever. 
 
 How must the trembling sinners of Richmond look aghast 
 as they see the dark faces of their slaves riding insolently 
 up to their walls. Nemesis, shod not now in wool, but 
 with fire, is marching upon them. She brings the death of
 
 ADVANCE ON KICHMOND. 405 
 
 their pride, their power, their all. Their end is coming. 
 "Go up," says God; "for I have given them into thy hand." 
 
 But this success will avail us nothing unless we purge 
 ourselves of the least and last remains of this iniquity. 
 We must put away from us the unclean thing. Not those 
 we call unclean, but our prejudices, far more unclean and 
 abominable in the sight of God. Your soul, not your neigh- 
 bor's color, your God hateth. We must abolish colored 
 regiments, colored conferences, colored churches, colored 
 pews, and colored distinctions in everything. Our full sal- 
 vation depends on our faithfulness to this duty. 
 
 For, my friends, be assured God cares but very little for 
 you unless you will aid Him in carrying out His designs on 
 the earth. To that design if America is willing to contrib- 
 ute, well for her ; if not, she is broken in pieces as a pot- 
 ter's vessel. That design is the brotherhood of man in 
 Christ. If we cooperate with Him, He will make us His 
 vanguard. If we refuse, He will do with us as He did with 
 His more chosen and more beloved people cast us off, and 
 raise up another people who shall follow His guidance. 
 
 The world looks to us to obey His commands ; to expel 
 from our hearts the accursed thing; to lock foot and heart 
 with these our brethren, for a courageous march across the 
 world. Europe hangs on the destiny of this hour. If we 
 come out o this struggle clear and glorious, if a man irre- 
 proachably just and fearless shall lead this nation out of 
 its slime and sin, then the hundredth anniversary of our 
 Independence will not see a throne in Europe, so ripe is that 
 continent for liberty. 
 
 May God help us so to go on to perfection, that with the 
 certain fall of the stronghold and strong arms of the rebel- 
 lion before our Joshua, there shall be a more perfect down- 
 fall and destruction of the stronger holds of false and fatal 
 pride, that have so long ruled and ruined our souls. 
 
 Then, fearful as are our calamities, distressful as is the
 
 406 WHY GRANT WILL SUCCEED. 
 
 fate of many wounded heroes, and riven and bleeding hearts, 
 we shall feel that their tears and blood are not shed in vain. 
 As the blood of brave Hebrews won the citadels of the 
 hills from heathen foes, and made them the fair and chosen 
 seats of the Lord for a thousand years, so will these sacred 
 gifts secure for us generations of peace and joy. 
 
 " God's hand within the shadow lays 
 The stones whereon His gates of praise 
 Shall rise at last." 
 
 And in those ages to come, when that temple shall stand 
 complete, no honors too great can be paid to our memory. 
 The world's feet will pass by the tomb of the great Wash- 
 ington, to pause at the mounds where his children, with 
 superior heroism, poured forth their blood to preserve and to 
 perfect the blessings he partially secured. Throughout all 
 nations shall strong men weep for gratitude over their un- 
 speakable valor, and all the world, Asian, European, African, 
 American, with one united and unceasing impulse, in a 
 regenerated and fraternal brotherhood of man, shall rise up 
 and call us blessed. 
 
 "Triumph not, fools, and weep not, ye faint-hearted. 
 Have ye believed that the divine decree 
 Of Heaven had given this people o'er to perish? 
 Have ye believed that God would cease to cherish 
 This great new world of Christian liberty? 
 And that our light forever had departed? 
 Nay, by the precious blood shed to redeem 
 The nation from its selfishness and sin, 
 By each true heart that burst in holy strife, 
 Leaving its kindred hearts to break through life ; 
 By all the tears that will not cease to stream 
 Forever, every desolate home within, 
 We will return to our appointed place, 
 First in the vanguard of the human race."
 
 THKEE SUMMERS OF WAE.* 
 
 THE REVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION. 
 
 " WHOSE ARE THE FATHERS." Romans ix. 5. 
 
 E have just slowly waded through the third sum- 
 mer of blood. The waves still roar and are 
 troubled. The mountains shake with the swell- 
 ing thereof. It is well in such an hour to 
 strengthen our souls with the experience of our fathers. 
 The third year of our revolutionary struggle may be proper- 
 ly placed beside the third year of our war. They were, 
 waged for the same ends, by the same people, against the 
 same pretensions. Our foe, like that of our fathers, speak 
 our language ; like that, seek our annihilation as a nation in 
 the interests of slavery and despotism. Our fortunes merit 
 and will reward comparison. The analogy naturally resolves 
 itself into the military, the moral, and the financial. 
 
 1 . In a military view, if we take our stand at Philadelphia, 
 July 4, 1776, and look over the country which had just been 
 declared free and independent, we see not an armed enemy 
 in all its borders. Four months before they had been ex- 
 
 * A sermon preached in Boston, July 4, 1864. 
 
 (407)
 
 408 THREE SUMMERS OF WAR. 
 
 pelled from Boston. The nation was seemingly master of 
 the whole land. Yet they were far from being its undis- 
 puted possessors. Though Britain was ousted, she was 
 rapidly entering. On that very day the white sails of her 
 army-laden navy, moving down from Halifax, were off 
 Staten Island. The troops soon occupied its shores, and 
 New York was a beleageured town. On the 27th of August 
 their Bull Eun occurred at Brooklyn. Two weeks later 
 there was a second panic at Harlem, when Washington 
 vainly attempted to keep his men in front of the enemy, and 
 exclaimed in dismay, " Are these the men with whom I am 
 to defend America ? " 
 
 So great was the depression of the public mind by that 
 disastrous defeat, that Washington, in a letter to the pres- 
 ident of Congress, dated the 2d of September, writes in 
 almost a state of despair. " The check," he says, "that 
 our detachment sustained on the 2tth ult. has dispirited 
 too great a proportion of our troops, and filled their minds 
 with apprehension and despair. The militia, instead of 
 calling forth their utmost efforts to a brave and manly op- 
 position in order to repair our losses, are dismayed, intract- 
 able, and impatient to return. Great numbers of them have 
 gone off; in some instances almost by whole regiments." 
 The British were as jubilant and hopeful as the rebels at 
 Manassas ; while, to complete the analogy, General McClellan 
 appears on the stage in the person of General Lee (ominous 
 conjunction) as the dreamed-of deliverer, while the defeated 
 Washington is despised, if not rejected. An American 
 officer in the camp writes to a friend, " General Lee is hour- 
 ly expected, as if from heaven." He had had some minor 
 successes at the South, like our then favorite, and was 
 looked upon for more than two years by many patriots as 
 our only savior. 
 
 We were soon driven from New York, and the American 
 cause would have perished that year but for the brilliant
 
 THE REVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION 409 
 
 raids of Washington at Trenton and Princeton. The next 
 spring* he was driven from Philadelphia, after the two fatal 
 fields of Brandywine and Germantown. The campaign was 
 redeemed only by the capture of Burgoyne, in which Wash- 
 ington gained nothing, and Gates everything. 
 
 The terrible winter of Valley Forge settles down as a 
 shroud over the handful of bleeding and starving soldiery. 
 The French alliance alone relieves the dismal prospect. The 
 arrival of a French fleet the next spring at the mouth of the 
 Delaware compels the British evacuation of Philadelphia. 
 Washington pursues and fights the drawn battle of Mon- 
 mouth. In fact, no decisive victory in open combat ever 
 crowned his arms. The triumphs of Greene and Gates were 
 added to his other troubles. 
 
 Thus stood aifairs in the summer of 1778. Burgoyne 
 defeated, the French alliance effected ; only these. The 
 following year was one of unvarying disaster. We at- 
 tempted to take Newport, in conjunction with the French 
 fleet, and failed. New Bedford was burned, and the adjacent 
 country laid waste. The coast of New Jersey was similarly 
 ravaged, and a body of infantry, under Pulaski, was sur- 
 prised and bayoneted, after the fashion faithfully followed at 
 Fort Pillow. The winter saw Savannah and Charleston, 
 with the whole country south of Virginia, fall into the hands 
 of the enemy. Norfolk and Portsmouth were burned, and 
 property to the amount of two millions of dollars destroyed. 
 New Haven and the Connecticut coast were sacked. Wash- 
 ington with a little force was cooped up in the Highlands, 
 incapable of relieving the ravaged sea-coast, or of descend- 
 ing upon New York, and avenging the insults on the head 
 of the enemy. Thus stood the military situation at the end 
 of three years. A ragged, mutinous corps was all that were 
 between the country and its subjugation. They were power- 
 less to assail or to defend. The capture of Stony Point, 
 ten days afterward, was almost instantly followed by its
 
 410 THREE SUMMERS OF THE WAR. 
 
 abandonment, so difficult did Washington find it, before 
 
 Wordsworth, 
 
 "To keep 
 Heights which his soul was competent to gain." 
 
 Compare this condition of affairs with ours in the same 
 space of time. 
 
 Every post south of the Potomac and the Ohio, at the be- 
 ginning, was in the hands of the rebels ; the whole of Kentucky, 
 of Missouri outside of St. Louis, of Virginia, West and East, 
 of the Mississippi below Cairo. The Relay House was our 
 advance post. Three years have passed, and where are we ? 
 Swept back in terror from our first field, we have steadily 
 gained ground. Western Virginia is ours, and the most of 
 Eastern ; Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, most 
 of Mississippi, portions of Louisiana, including the metrop- 
 olis of the Gulf, Northern Alabama, and Georgia, the edge 
 of Florida and South Carolina. The lines of the rebellion 
 are pressed back in their center from the Ohio almost to the 
 Gulf. 
 
 The Mississippi has been stripped of its batteries. No 
 frowning forts prevent commerce. Its capital receives 
 Massachusetts principle from a Massachusetts governor. 
 Their second city, Nashville, second to none in its pride of 
 place, is ruled by the candidate of the friends of union and 
 liberty for the second office in the gift of the nation. The 
 foe is penned up in Charleston, Richmond, Atlanta, and 
 Mobile, except the few that ravage the plains of Texas. 
 All of these are under investment. Charleston is half 
 consumed, and Richmond threatened by the national 
 cannon. 
 
 We are not compelled, as was Washington, simply to 
 repel assaults on our intrenchments. Our troops celebrated 
 their last 4th of July, not as they did the one before, in 
 victories won on Northern soil, but in the very center of 
 the rebellion, with their hand at its throat and their foot on
 
 THE REVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION. 411 
 
 its heart. Richmond and Atlanta, the two foci of the blazing 
 
 comet that 
 
 ' From his horrid hair 
 Shakes pestilence and war," 
 
 are within the guns and the grasp of our armies. How 
 superior are our successes to those our fathers had won in 
 the same space of time ! 
 
 2. The moral victories are not less striking, nor is the 
 comparison of the two wars in the progress of their ideas 
 less valuable. The Declaration was thought premature by 
 many friends of the cause, as has been its twin brother, the 
 Proclamation. At the first ballot in Congress, June 8, only 
 seven States out of the thirteen voted in its favor. Introduced 
 by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and seconded by John 
 Adams of Massachusetts, it was opposed by Dickinson and 
 Wilson of Pennsylvania, Robert R. Livingston of New 
 York, and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, not because 
 it was wrong, but premature. July 1, it was opposed by 
 four States, and was finally carried, with New York silent, 
 but hostile. There was a like division of sentiment out- 
 side of Congress. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation has provoked far less bitter- 
 ness among the friends of the Union than did the Declara- 
 tion ; yet we find that two years later, when British com- 
 missioners appeared in New York, and sought to beguile 
 us from our steadfastness, they were unanimously, and 
 even contemptuously, repulsed. It was then that the offer 
 of ten thousand pounds and a high office to Dr. Rush drew 
 from him the famous reply, " I am not worth purchasing, 
 but such as I am, the king of England is not rich enough to 
 buy me." They declare that Great Britain has granted all 
 the colonists originally demanded, appeal to the colonial 
 government against Congress, seek to stir up Protestant 
 and Puritan prejudices by calling the French allies Papists, 
 entreat the lovers of peace not to let the ambition of a few
 
 412 THREE SUMMERS OF THE WAK. 
 
 members of Congress ruin their whole people, and threaten 
 increased chastisement if their offers are rejected. 
 
 All their efforts were vain. Congress coolly publishes 
 their appeal in the public journals, and treats them with 
 confident disdain. So great had grown the public sentiment 
 in these two years of most moderate success. 
 
 In other respects the public conscience had not grown. 
 Though the war was waged professedly for the rights of 
 man, they still failed to see the iniquity of slavery. In no 
 instance did a state decree emancipation, and summon its 
 slaves to its banners. These were treated usually as they are 
 by the rebels to-day made useful in the camp, sometimes 
 in the field, but with no idea of granting them their rights 
 as equals. In the third summer of the war, 1779, a body 
 of soldiers, having captured some slaves with a British out- 
 post on Lake Erie, sold them for five hundred pounds, and 
 divided the money as booty. To-day, our soldiers, making 
 such a capture, would put arms in their hands, and welcome 
 them to their side as brethren. 
 
 But as they progressed rapidly in their main idea of 
 independence, so have we in ours of liberty and union. It 
 is doubtful if, in the winter of 186061, one man in a thou- 
 sand believed in a free and united nation. The South was 
 defiant, the North indifferent. If the Union stood, it seemed 
 evident that it would be only as the tool of the slave power. 
 Now, the men who believe in its dissolution are as few or as 
 powerless as those who then believed in its salvation ; while 
 through the South, in a multitude of places, are its numer- 
 ous, fearless, and tireless friends that then were gagged by 
 the mailed hand of secession. 
 
 So also and herein we augur the best of results the 
 public conscience has grown more rapidly than the public 
 resolution. When the war broke out, how deep was our 
 detestation of the negro ! how feeble our hatred of slavery ! 
 Probably three fourths of the three months' soldiers were far
 
 THE REVOLUTION AND THE EEBELLION. 413 
 
 better haters of the cause of freedom than slavery. They 
 went not chiefly as volunteers, but because they were 
 members of already organized regiments. The first regi- 
 ments of volunteers were of a far different composition, 
 though even these grew slowly in the faith. Yet they grew. 
 Negro soldiers, but a year ago, marching through the streets 
 of Boston, amazed the whole land ; now they are as un- 
 noticed as their white brethren in Baltimore, and even 
 march, though fortunately for their foes, as prisoners and 
 without arms through the streets of Richmond, exciting un- 
 speakable terror even in this unsubstantial military form in 
 their Macbeth murderers. They have won their way to the 
 front ; they will yet to commissions and commands. All 
 honors await patient and steadfast souls. 
 
 Meanwhile elsewhere the renewal of the land goes for- 
 ward. Congress has abolished all its fugitive slave law 
 iniquities, including that which George Washington signed 
 and Josiah Quincy* resisted. It has also abolished dis- 
 tinctions of color in the cars of the capital, opens the courts 
 to their testimony and their rights as appellants com- 
 pelling Judge Taney, we trust, ere he shall vacate his seat, 
 to respect many a right where he declared none existed. It 
 prohibits slavery in the Territories, and almost secured 
 universal suffrage there, and the abolishment of slavery in 
 all the laud. Maryland accepts the ordinance of 1181 at 
 the same time that Congress abolishes that of 1193. 
 
 Thus in our ideas we have advanced as rapidly as our 
 fathers did in theirs. They waxed strong in independence 
 amid the storms of disaster and death. So have we in our 
 equally great idea of union, and far greater one of liberty. 
 
 3. The financial question is of far less importance than 
 that of ideas or arms. We could afford to sacrifice all our 
 business and all our wealth so that we should preserve un- 
 weakened our national boundaries and political principles. 
 Yet in this field we have great ground for gratulation.
 
 414 THREE SUMMERS OF THE WAR. 
 
 Many are affrighted at the value of gold and the deprecia- 
 tion of the currency. They may find encouragement in the 
 history of their fathers. 
 
 The issues of paper began with the issue of the Declara- 
 tion. In eighteen months it amounted to twenty millions 
 of dollars of Continental currency, besides large colonial 
 issues. Thus far there had been no depreciation. In this 
 they were our superiors as financiers, for our gold remained 
 at par a year only after the war began. Their decline, how- 
 ever, was much more rapid. Loans, lotteries, and other 
 devices were tried, but without success. New bills of 
 credit must be issued ; they were refused by the people. 
 Congress declared that they " ought to pass current, and be 
 deemed equal to the same nominal sums in Spanish dollars," 
 and that " all who refused to take them should be considered 
 enemies of the United States." But still their best friends 
 declined to receive their currency as equivalent to silver. 
 The States were called upon to make this refusal penal, but 
 declined. They were urged to tax their people, but also 
 refused. Again appear the Continental greenbacks. Sixty- 
 three and one half millions were issued in 1778, making the 
 total to that date over a hundred millions of dollars. By 
 the 4th of July, 1779, they had reached one hundred and 
 sixty millions of dollars. The dollar went down to five 
 cents. The loans and foreign debt were only thirty-seven 
 millions and a half. A riot broke out in Philadelphia while 
 Congress was in session in consequence of this disastrous 
 condition of affairs. At the end of the year the issue had 
 reached two hundred millions, and the value, three cents.* 
 
 Thus stood, or rather thus fell, at the end of three years, the 
 finances of the Revolution. There was a deep beyond this 
 lowest deep, whither they plunged before the paper Declara- 
 tion of 1776 became a living reality. How do our three 
 years of conflict compare with these ? Our loans are 
 negotiated readily, our interest paid in gold steadily. Our 
 
 * See Note XV.
 
 THE REVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION. 415 
 
 currency has reached six hundred millions, or, with the local 
 issues, eight hundred millions ; not thrice the amount of 
 theirs. Two dollars and a half, not thirty dollars, can buy a 
 Spanish dollar. Our real estate and other property, which 
 was estimated at more than sixteen thousand millions in 
 1860, has not decreased in value. In this most tremulous 
 of all the nerves of society there is unspeakably less agitation 
 than in the days when Jay brooded, like Chase and Fes- 
 senden, over this question of finance, and Congress wore 
 anxious brows in their painful and ineffectual deliberations. 
 The results of this state of the finances were not unlike 
 what prevail to-day. The extravagance and seeming abun- 
 dance of these times obtained then. " If I were called upon 
 to draw a picture of the times and the men/' says Washing- 
 ton, in a letter to Colonel Harrison, the father of the future 
 president, dated December 30, IT 78, " from what I have 
 heard and seen, and in part know, I should in one word say 
 that idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seem to have 
 laid fast hold of most of them ; that speculation, peculation, 
 and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better 
 of every* other consideration, and almost of every order of 
 men ; that party disputes and personal quarrels are the 
 great business of the day, while the momentous concerns of 
 an empire, a great and accumulating debt, ruined finances, 
 depreciated money, and want of credit, which in its con- 
 sequences is want of everything, are but secondary con- 
 siderations." At Philadelphia he saw and lamented the 
 folly and extravagance of the people, " spending three and 
 four hundred pounds for an assembly, a concert, a dinner, a 
 supper, while the great part of the officers of the army, 
 from absolute necessity, were quitting the service, and the 
 more virtuous few, rather than do this, were sinking by sure 
 degrees to beggary and want." "Meantime," says Irving, 
 " it was hard to recruit the armies. There was abundance 
 of employment, wages were high, the value of money low,
 
 416 THREE SUMMERS OF THE WAR. 
 
 consequently there was but little temptation to enlist." 
 How aptly do these times mirror forth the same image ! 
 Washington, too, found contractors his bane. He calls 
 them "the murderers of our cause," and exclaims, "I 
 would to God some one of the more atrocious in each State, 
 was hung in gibbets upon a gallows five times as high as 
 the one prepared for Haman. No punishment, in my opin- 
 ion, is too severe for the man who can build his greatness 
 on his country's ruin." He would have deemed Forts 
 Warren and Lafayette slight repayal for our modern plun- 
 derers. The rise of " shoddy " was more marked, and its 
 sway more perfect, than in this day. Says Hildreth, " In 
 place of the old mercantile interest, almost annihilated by 
 the Revolution, a new money interest had sprung into exist- 
 ence since the war, and as the resources of Congress and 
 the States diminished with the rapid decline of public credit, 
 began to exercise a constantly increasing influence over 
 American affairs. Sudden fortunes had been acquired by 
 privateering, by rise in the prices of foreign goods, by the 
 sutlers who followed the camp, and by others who knew how 
 to make money out of the great public expenditure.' It was 
 remarked that while the honest and patriotic were impover- 
 ished, rogues and Tories were fast growing rich." 
 
 They had no stocks in those days, and so put lotteries in 
 their place a fitting substitute.* 
 
 * In this matter of finance we are following precisely the experience 
 of England in her attempts to ruin Napoleon. " For eighteen years she 
 suspended specie payments in her desperate struggle with France. Bank 
 of England notes were made, in effect, a ' legal tender,' by every person 
 being protected from arrest who offered them in payment of a debt, and 
 by the bank being guarded by law from any suit for non-payment of its 
 notes. For eighteen years there was thus in Great Britain an inconverti- 
 ble paper currency. From 1797 to 1815 the Bank of England tripled 
 its circulation, and the country banks increased from two hundred, in the 
 same time, to nine hundred and forty, or almost five times. The deprecia- 
 tion was, of course, enormous, not shown so much in the price of gold, 
 which only reached forty-one in 1812-13, but especially in values : one
 
 THE REVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION. 417 
 
 4. In other respects their condition was more deplorable. 
 
 (1.) Mutiny broke out in the camp. Whole regiments, 
 with their officers, being ordered upon expeditions, refused. 
 With great difficulty did Washington prevail upon them to 
 abide faithful. Poverty at home and nakedness in the camp 
 were destructive of patriotism. 
 
 (2.) Sectional jealousies embittered the army. The South 
 loathed the North ; the North was jealous of the South. New 
 York despised New England ; New England hated New 
 York. The French assumed superior airs, which terribly 
 inflamed the American mind. It was even thought danger- 
 ous for D'Estaing to moor his fleet in Boston harbor. 
 
 (3.) Added to this were the jealousies and feuds of the 
 officers. Duels were not unusual. Gates, Lafayette, Mifflin, 
 and others were involved in them. Stark threw up his com- 
 mission in a pet at being slighted ; Greene chafed at his 
 post of quartermaster-general ; Wilkinson, Conway, Gates, 
 
 pound in paper became worth but ten shillings in 1813, and, according to 
 Doubleday, fell to seven or eight shillings, that is, a depreciation of near- 
 ly seventy-five per cent. The price of wheat rose from 53 s. Id. a 
 quarter in 1797 to 125 s. 5 d. in 1812 ; oats from 16 s. 9 d. to 44 s. ; wool 
 from 3s. 8 d. to 10s. The rent of arable land increased from 88 6 s. 
 3|d. to the hundred acres, in 1790, to 1G1 12 s. 7j d. in 1812. But un- 
 like America, no increase of prices arose in England from diminished 
 labor ; on the contrary, labor was supplied in abundance, and wages did 
 not rise with other values ; the final rise being only about twenty per 
 centum in many parishes. In this depreciated currency, worth forty or 
 fifty per cent, below what the foreign fund-holders had supposed them- 
 selves pledged to receive, did England pay her former creditors. In- 
 dividuals, of course, complained, but it was manifest she could do nothing 
 else, and this ' repudiation ' has never, we believe, been thrown in her 
 teeth. The enormous volume of paper money, amounting, according to 
 the best authorities, to four hundred and fifty millions of dollars in 1815, 
 naturally stimulated speculation and extravagance to the highest degree, 
 and left its bad effects on the national habits. Still, despite all the infla- 
 tion, and with a public debt in 1815 of some sixty-seven hundred mil- 
 lions of dollars, England resumed specie payments within four years 
 after the termination of the war, and began a career of prosperity which 
 has made her the richest nation in the world." 
 
 27
 
 418 THREE SUMMERS OF THE WAR. 
 
 Schuyler, and many others were removed, or removed them- 
 selves. Above all, cabals flourished against the commandcr- 
 in-chief. He was for a time less popular than Gates with 
 Congress and the nation, and came near losing his command 
 through the violent conflicts that raged around him. 
 
 In these minor yet not unimportant points we see how 
 much more kindly Providence has dealt with us. No star- 
 vation has Avrought mutiny in the camp ; no jealousies and' 
 feuds among the officers have proceeded to blood ; no cabals 
 have materially weakened our cause ; no sectional jealousies 
 have separated the soldiers. The flags of every State have 
 waved together in the smoke of battle, filling their followers 
 with a common enthusiasm, which has only provoked them 
 to love and good works. If we consider how frequent were 
 personal encounters in the West and South before the war, 
 and how intense were sectional jealousies and animosities, 
 especially against New England, we have great reason to 
 thank God and take courage at the marked harmony and 
 cordiality of men and States during the fearful struggle. 
 
 " After the fathers shall be the children." In duty, in 
 suffering, in reward we are the rightful descendants of these 
 patient, persistent, triumphant heroes. Our cause is as 
 holy, our success as sure. We may be called to emulate 
 their virtues amid yet greater sacrifices. We may see our 
 wealth melt away. National bankruptcy may be our ex- 
 perience also. Our credit may vanish from foreign markets 
 and our own. Our tables may be thinly spread with the poor- 
 est fare ; our g'arments may be of the coarsest fabric ; our 
 wharves, vessels may rot at them ; and before our cities 
 foreign armaments may hover. The dead may lie in every 
 house, and mourning fill all the land. Still the great ques- 
 tion is before us. Shall we prove our right to the blessings 
 God has conferred upon us ? Will we show ourselves 
 heroic sons of heroic sires ? 
 
 To that state our foe is reduced. What is their money
 
 THE REVOLUTION AND THE REBELLION. 419 
 
 worth ? Yet do they fight less strenuously ? And for 
 what ? An empire of sin and hell freedom to iniquity of 
 every kind and of every degree of baseness ; to overthrow 
 the government and the institutions upon which hang the 
 hopes of the world ; to establish despotism here, to establish 
 it everywhere ; to put Maximilian safe upon his stolen seat ; 
 to abolish liberty in Chili and Peru ; to extirpate democracy in 
 Europe and America. If they succeed, we die. Crushed by 
 enormous debts, distracted by standing armies, by burning 
 animosities and divisions, we shall crumble into fragments, 
 and the millennial glory that seemed breaking upon the earth 
 will fade away, while the darkness of death will enshroud 
 the people. Then let the minions of tyranny exult. 
 
 " Shout, through your dungeons and palaces, Freedom is o'er! " 
 
 What are our losses, actual or possible, to such a catas- 
 trophe ? Shall Boston and New York be as Hamburg, mere 
 commercial towns, with no influence beyond their suburbs ? 
 Shall rent and rending States tear each other in their mutual 
 ferocity ? Shall liberty become servitude, and the world 
 be thrust back into the cave of despair, from which it is 
 emerging ? Then let us whine, and talk of ruin, because 
 gamblers crowd gold toward three hundred per cent. Ruin ? 
 Well would it be if this insane thirst for wealth that is mad- 
 dening the people were instantly ruined. Well would it be if 
 trade should retire to the legitimate channels that it has so 
 fearfully and destructively overflowed. Well would it be if 
 our conceit and arrogance were ruined. But not our cause, 
 nor our country. Of these we must say, "I am persuaded that 
 neither poverty nor anguish, neither false friends nor fierce 
 foes, neither treason nor death, shall separate me from the 
 grand, eternal principles of our fathers, of our fathers' God." 
 
 Upon us the ends of the world have come. We are the 
 depository of the civil principles of the millennium. There 
 is nothing more theoretically perfect in the secrets of
 
 420 THREE SUMMERS OF THE WAR. 
 
 Divine Wisdom for the construction of human society than 
 has been given to us. If we shall abandon them through 
 love of gain, or fear of poverty, we shall be accursed of God 
 and all mankind, as were his chosen people for like treason. 
 The American name, now the highest, will be the lowest in 
 all the earth. The American flag will be the emblem of dis- 
 honor. Did England ask, How much will it cost to defeat 
 Napoleon ? Reverse after reverse for a score of years did 
 not daunt her purpose. A Nelson slain, and the supremacy 
 of the seas slain with him, an impoverished currency, dis- 
 tractions at home and disaster abroad, these made her not 
 waver. She persevered unto the end ; and for what ? To 
 overthrow democracy in Europe, in England, in the world. 
 Shall we be less faithful to the truth than she was to error? 
 Shall we cringe, and crawl, and submit to disunion or a viler 
 reunion because politicians plot for perfidious peace, and 
 speculators press prices to fabulous hights ? Not if they 
 multiply their stratagems and their prices a tho'usand fold. 
 
 There may be worse years before us, as there were before 
 our fathers at the close of the summer of 1779. Our loans 
 may fail, our currency depreciate, distress and death may 
 stalk through the land. What matters it ? If faithful to 
 God, He will give us the victory. The work will be done. 
 Slavery shall die. Our foes shall be made our footstool. 
 Our fathers shall not disdain their sons. Let us be of good 
 courage, and take joyfully the spoiling of our goods, know- 
 ing that there is in store for us a more abundant recompense. 
 
 " O, well for him whose will is strong ; 
 He suffers, but he will not suffer long; 
 He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong. 
 For him nor moves the loud world's random mock, 
 Nor all calamity's hugest waves confound, 
 Who seems a promontory of rock, 
 That compassed round with turbulent sound, 
 In middle ocean meets the surging shock, 
 Tempest-buffeted, citadel crowned."
 
 THE CRISIS HOUK.* 
 
 " TURN YE, TURN YE, FROM YOUR EVIL WAYS : FOR WHY WILL YE DIE, 
 
 O HOUSE OF ISRAEL?" Ezekiel xxxiii. 11. 
 
 HREE years of war ! The three months which we 
 were told at the beginning, by the most influential 
 man in the nation, was to see its completion, have 
 been painfully stretched into years. Again and 
 again, and yet again, have our harvests of brave men been 
 swept down by the reaper Death. Myriads of souls of 
 heroes have descended untimely to Hades, and still the 
 bloody sickle is thrust in, and still the dreadful harvest is 
 gathered. 
 
 A nation that had almost ceased to believe in war, where 
 peace societies flourished, and peace ideas were in authority, 
 where a uniform was a bauble pleasing chiefly to the eye of 
 children, where soldiering had become the synonym of folly 
 and extravagance, where every one was fancying that the 
 era of armed settlements of difficulties had passed, at least 
 for this country, and that the Supreme Court and the ballot- 
 box were its permanent substitutes in such a land has 
 raged for forty months the most terrific, the most bloody, 
 
 * A sermon preached in Boston on the occasion of the National Fast, 
 
 August 4, 1804. 
 
 (421)
 
 422 THE CRISIS HOUR. 
 
 the most costly, the most violent war of the age, we may 
 truly say, with the great Napoleon's campaigns before us, 
 of the century and of civilization. For that great captain, 
 in the same space of time, neither mustered nor mastered 
 such mighty armies, neither swept over such breadth of ter- 
 ritory nor slaughtered so many milliards of men. Not less 
 than three millions, probably three millions and a half, of 
 men have been engaged in active strife on this lately most 
 peaceful soil. A number almost exactly equal to that of 
 the victims whose cries to God caused the conflict, have 
 thus been busily and too successfully striking at each other's 
 hearts. Strange coincidence ! Nay, a marvelous Provi- 
 dence, rather a revelation of the righteous judgment of 
 God. He saw His children writhing under the lash, and 
 the lust of their oppressors, under the neglect, and scorn, and 
 contumely of the whole nation. He has meted out a meas- 
 ure according to our sin. " There are four millions crowded 
 into that black hole of America," He says " four millions 
 of My dear, despised children. Thirty millions walk proudly 
 the upper deck, lift up haughty eyes to heaven, and present 
 a daily prayer that My soul hateth. ' Lord, I thank Thee 
 that I am not as this negro.' The four millions of their 
 brethren also, daily, from the depths of their darkness arid 
 distress, cry to Me." And the Lord hearkened and heard. 
 He descended from heaven. He set the battle in array. 
 He made brother spring at the throat of brother, until, to 
 the number of the enslaved, including even their wives and 
 little ones, the mighty men are set against the mighty, 
 while death and mourning fill all the land. 
 
 For the fourth time since this collision cast its bloody 
 blackness athwart the heavens, have we been summoned by 
 the National Executive to prostrate ourselves at the foot- 
 stool of God in penitence and prayer for the salvation of the 
 nation. Each time the wail has been deeper, as if the fear 
 increased rather than diminished with each year ; as if
 
 THE CALL OF GOD. 423 
 
 rather the true sense of our peril, and of the only source 
 of our salvation, began to break more and more upon our 
 blinded, hardened hearts. The wounds of the Great Surgeon 
 and Physician probe deeper and deeper. Our cries break 
 forth more and more sharply. The sense of our awful 
 crimes arid our just punishment grows and grows in our 
 affrighted souls. We almost begin to confess our sins. 
 We have not yet done it. This Proclamation comes the 
 nearest to it. Yet this fails to mention it. We bow the 
 head, but not yet the knee. We pour forth prayers, but 
 no confessions, especially no tears. The nation has never 
 yet broken forth in the penitential cries of David, when 
 he had been guilty of a far less sin. We have been guilty 
 of the enslavement and murder of multitudes of Uriahs. We 
 have been guilty of the ruin of millions of Bathshebas. We 
 have sold from them the children they have been compelled 
 to bear, reducing both the innocent victims of our shame 
 and their innocent offspring to more horrid bondage. Again 
 and again did God send His Nathans to tell us our sins. 
 Again and again, so far from listening to His prophets, and 
 prostrating ourselves before Him, have we stoned those He 
 sent unto us, and, sitting in our palaces of power and pride, 
 have despised God and feared not man. We have never 
 acknowledged the greatness of our sin. We have never 
 cried, "Against Thee, THEE only, have we sinned, and done 
 this evil in THY sight. Have mercy on us, according to Thy 
 loving kindness : according to the multitude of Thy tender 
 mercies blot out our transgressions. Deliver us from blood- 
 guiltiness, God." 
 
 Instead thereof, how carefully we have refrained from any 
 confession of our sin ! Not yet in a single Executive sum- 
 mons to penitence is there a direct reference to our national 
 transgression. In the last it is glanced at only covertly and 
 by indirection. The first cry burst from the lips of the re- 
 tiring President, by whose connivance the crime of national
 
 424 THE CRISIS HOUR. 
 
 destruction became organized and outbreaking. He dreamed 
 not that God was to punish us because of our submission to 
 the devil of slavery. He desired Union, but hated Aboli- 
 tionism, and asked this people to entreat God to defeat the 
 last and preserve the first, insulting Him by petitions against 
 His most clear desire and purpose. Those that our later 
 and better leader has issued, if less hostile to God, have not 
 been more penitential or more honest in their confessions. 
 Not one has mentioned the sin that has ruled us. Not 
 one has asked this people to pray for its extirpation, nor 
 for the uprooting of its baleful cause- our hatred of our 
 brother for certain distinctions made by God Himself. The 
 last comes nearest to the demands of God, and is, therefore, 
 the most hopeful of all. It contains these lines, in the con- 
 gressional resolution which the President has made the basis 
 of his appeal : "To implore Him, as the Supreme Ruler of 
 the nations, not to destroy us as a people, nor suffer us to be 
 destroyed by the hostility or connivance of other nations, 
 or by obstinate adhesion to our own counsels, which may be 
 in conflict with His eternal purposes ; to implore Him to 
 enlighten the mind of the nation to know and do His will ; 
 humbly believing that it is in accordance with His will that 
 our place should be maintained as a united people among 
 the family of nations." Under such circumstances we come 
 together. With a mighty war raging fiercely ; with wasting 
 and destruction in all our borders ; with the heavens brass 
 and the earth "blood ; with the vultures and wild beasts of 
 prey hastening from across the seas to devour the remains 
 of the Great Republic ere it is dead ; with traitors on every 
 side and in every haunt ; with a monstrous debt, rapidly 
 accumulating ; with armies imperilled and almost exhausted 
 in the long and doubtful conflict surely never had a people 
 greater cause to cry mightily unto God to come and save 
 them. 
 
 Let us sorrowfully and prayerfully consider our duties
 
 THE CALL OF GOD. 425 
 
 and perils in this dark hour. Dark as it is, God can make 
 it light God only. Let us implore His guidance, and, 
 hardest of all, do His will, 
 
 " Hang on His arm alone 
 
 With self-distrusting care, 
 And deeply in the spirit groan 
 The never-ceasing prayer." 
 
 The cause has a bright face, if we have the humility neces- 
 sary to behold it. 
 
 Consider, 1. Our perils. 2. Our duties. 3. Our encour- 
 agements. 
 
 Our words may be familiar, even to the breeding of dis- 
 gust. But that should not prevent their solemn considera- 
 tion. Novelties are unseemly in the house of mourning. 
 And such is this house to-day. Novelties are not needed 
 in the front of the army. Earnest, courageous, steadfast 
 discharge of most familiar duties alone deserves the victory. 
 So with us. It is not flights of fancy that you need, if you 
 crave them ; not subtilties of casuistry, not windings of 
 metaphysics, not poetry, nor rhetoric, nor oratory ; these 
 are as much out of place as they would be in a fire engineer 
 seeking the extinction of a furious conflagration ; as they 
 would be in a captain striving to get his ship, freighted with 
 a precious cargo of humanity, from the rocks against which 
 she is dashing. How hollow and heartless would seem fine 
 phrases and postures from such a man in such an hour ! 
 Much more now should we feel that our sole business is to 
 hear and do the will of God. Hear with trembling, do with 
 zeal ; hear with contrition, do with hope. 
 
 Gather about His oracle. Stand upon His tripod. Let 
 His afflatus breathe its divine breath into our weak and 
 earthly natures, and lift them up to the stature and the 
 manners of the sky. 
 
 I. First, then. What are our perils, or why may we fail ? 
 "Fail!" you say: "impossible:" the very word is treason-
 
 426 THE CRISIS HOUR. 
 
 able. Nay, that depends on the spirit with which it is 
 uttered. Isaiah was no traitor because he warned Israel 
 that unless they repented they should perish. Nor Jere- 
 miah, nor Amos, nor -John the Baptist, nor Jesus Christ. 
 The traitor is he who wishes or seeks the ruin of his land 
 in the interests of iniquity. Not so the patriot. He warns 
 that he may save. So, by divine direction, scattered through 
 His word, by the authority to me committed, I must declare 
 to this people the possibility of failure. Our efforts so 
 marvelous and so mighty, our expenses so great, our sacri- 
 fice of life so costly, our zeal so fiery, may avail naught. 
 The Ship of State may go down among the breakers, among 
 which she has so long been rolling. Why ? Why may we 
 be blotted out of the family of nations ? Because of our un- 
 faithfulness to the divine idea upon which this nation alone 
 can live. Our perils are not from our foes, but from our God. 
 Is there evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it? Did 
 He not tell His chosen people in the solemn threatening of 
 Moses that, if they kept not His commandments, He would 
 blot them out of the earth ? And has He not long since fulfilled 
 that threat against five sixths of the nation, including the very 
 tribe to which Moses belonged ? It was He that brought 
 the armies of the heathen to their gates. It was He that 
 drove them into captivity, and made them servants of their 
 enemies. It was He that abolished Israel from among the 
 nations of men. Thus does He now "speak unto us in His 
 wrath, and vex us in His sore displeasure." Our perils are 
 not from Lee and Davis, nor from Napoleon and England, 
 not even from Vallandigham and "the Courier," but from 
 God. These are but the instruments wherewith He executes 
 His punishments. 
 
 We may fail, for two reasons. 1. Because we are so 
 false to Christ as a people. 2. Because we are so false to 
 the lower professions we boastingly avow. When one stops 
 to consider how glaring, how intense, how universal is the
 
 THE CALL OF GOD. 427 
 
 impiety of this nation, he may well tremble for its existence. 
 In this city of the Puritans, hardly a thousand young- men 
 avow themselves the servants of the Most High God. Hardly 
 ten thousand, young and old, are active members of Chris- 
 tian churches. Where you meet one God-fearing, God-praying 
 youth, you will meet ten who drink and swear, and are lovers 
 of themselves and of sinful pleasures rather than of God. 
 The same proportion exists throughout the country. Not 
 four millions of the twenty-four in the Free States profess 
 religion not one million of its twelve millions of males 
 not one quarter of a million of its four millions of young 
 men between sixteen and thirty. Not one in ten, the whole 
 land through, are voluntary servants of the Most High, 
 hardly one in twenty. With the female portion of society 
 the ratio is less horrible, yet it is sufficiently fearful. The 
 vast majority of them, who in other lands are almost en- 
 tirely devoted to the Church, are utterly indifferent, and 
 usually hostile to the claims of the Gospel. We are a 
 prayerless nation. We lament the wickedness of Europe, 
 the desecration of her Sabbaths. But we forget that 
 their worst Sabbath-breakers attend service at least once in 
 the day that the church is crowded, if also the theater. 
 We, with a more baleful consistency, seeing that the two 
 are incompatible, abandon the Church entirely, and throng 
 the haunts of pleasure and of sin. 
 
 Should we not tremble for our country when we think of 
 this sin ? Why should God strive to preserve a nation of 
 idolaters, idolaters of the vilest kind, worshipers of self and 
 sin ? What reason has He for covering this continent with 
 a deluge of Sabbath-breaking, worldliness, infidelity, and 
 crime ? The righteous few He can save, or transfer to 
 heaven. Let the Christless many perish in their sins. 
 
 2. But this peril is increased, if we consider how false 
 we are even to the pretensions we make. As a people 
 we avow our independence of Christ. We never take His
 
 428 THE CRISIS HOUR. 
 
 name upon our official lips. We never recognize Him as 
 our Sovereign, nor His Gospel as our law of life. But we 
 make great professions, nevertheless. No people were ever 
 more boastful ; not the English, not the French, not the 
 German, all very boastful nations, ever bragging of their 
 prowess, their talents, their taste. Yet none of these pro- 
 claim their principles as their glory. None of them say, 
 " I am the believer in the equal rights of every man." An 
 almost obliterated inscription upon the arch of St. Martin, 
 in the Boulevards of Paris, has the faded words, " Liberte, 
 Egalite", Fraternite* ; " but they do not blaze, by decrees of 
 her emperor, from her present Arcs de Triomphe, her halls, 
 her flags, her journals. They are not on the lips of her rulers. 
 No word has been more upon our lips these last three years 
 than Democracy, not the false, but the true. We are the 
 representatives of its claims among men. We are its armed 
 defenders. In our victory it lives ; in our failure it dies. 
 We have stirred our assemblies with harangues upon its 
 nationalities. We have fired our soldiers with appeals for 
 its preservation. We have filled our press, our pulpit, our 
 people, with its inspirations. Yet we still hideously disre- 
 gard its most plain and palpable injunctions. We compel 
 one fifth of our people to live by themselves, to fight by 
 themselves, to marry among themselves, and even to worship 
 by themselves. They are more apart than the lepers of 
 Jerusalem. Here and there we grant them the ballot-box ; 
 here and there the privileges of schools. But never do we 
 ignore the color of their face or the crinkle of their hair. 
 Never do we say, " Away with the most violent foe to our 
 organic idea ! All are one in Christ Jesus." As a nation, 
 we burn with contempt. We call them to our armies, but 
 it is to hold inferior places. We give them no commissions, 
 nor commands. We separate them into regiments by them- 
 selves. We give them posts of honor and of danger, but 
 still by themselves. Why should we put them thus apart
 
 THE CALL OF GOD. 429 
 
 from their brethren ? Why cling to our prejudice more 
 violently than an Englishman to his ? A murder is commit- 
 ted there in a first-class carriage. The public is affrighted. 
 How shall its repetition be prevented ? A dozen devices 
 are suggested, but the simplest device of them all the in- 
 troduction of the American rail-car nobody dares to pro- 
 pose. Why? This compels too great familiarity. "We 
 must be by ourselves," says wealth and blood, "even if mur- 
 derers buy seats in our carriage and kill us, because of this 
 excess of gentility. So we say to our African blooded 
 people, "Keep by yourselves, even if such separation causes 
 our national destruction." 
 
 What an answer to our loud-mouthed professions of 
 equality and fraternity ! What a mockery of our lives 
 against our lips ! It would be ludicrous were it not for its 
 awful results. The Jews, who proclaimed themselves the 
 depositary of God's will, and then slew His own Son, were 
 not greater hypocrites than is America to-day ; nay, they 
 were not so great, for their light and knowledge was far less 
 than ours. They did not know that He was truly the Son 
 of God ; we do know that these are truly our brethren. Our 
 Declaration is read every Fourth of July, and broken every 
 other day of the year, and that also. Our friends and neigh- 
 bors, who have dwelt in this land as long as we, nine tenths 
 of whom have English blood in their veins, and one half of 
 whom have more of that blood than of their original African, 
 all of whom, if entirely and directly from the lowest tribe 
 of Africa, are included in our national creed, these fellow- 
 citizens and fellow-men, born of our blood and on our soil, 
 are shut-out of the legitimate workings of that creed. They 
 are disfranchised in thirty States of this Union. They are 
 despised in them all. Why should we talk of victory ? 
 Why dream of it ? What claim have we to it ? Is the 
 Church erect and godlike in this matter ? Is any Church ? 
 Is ours ? We had many jubilations in our quadrennial
 
 430 THE CRISIS HOUR. 
 
 council, because we concluded no longer to harbor a certain 
 class of sinners, when there were no more of these sinners 
 to be harbored. But when the question was asked whether 
 there was any objection to admitting a colored brother to 
 our Conferences, it was answered gravely by the committee 
 to whom it was referred, and their report accepted by the 
 Conference, that "there was no legal objection" as if there 
 were moral ; thus elevating their prejudices into the dignity 
 of divine law. Then they proceed to organize colored Con- 
 ferences, but give them no right of representation in the 
 General Conference. Church and society join hand in hand 
 in this sin, and God is not letting them go unpunished. So- 
 ciety stamps upon them, crushes God's image and Christ's 
 brethren, and their own, into contemptuous dust. What 
 Church would imitate the example of the first Gentile Church 
 that of Antioch ? Simeon, called Niger, put his ordaining 
 hands on Barnabas and Paul. Where is the Church com- 
 p*osed chiefly of white members, where a black man is one 
 of its officers, and ordains its ministers ? even such min- 
 isters as an apostle, and such an apostle as Paul. 
 
 The like treatment the nation, as a whole, gives to its chil- 
 dren, its poor, its unfortunates. Its orphans cannot have the 
 same asylum as those of its white neighbors, though both 
 may come from one house, nor can its children attend the 
 same school. Everywhere, save in a few of the New Eng- 
 land States, does this curse reign. Is it any wonder that 
 we are in peril ? We are wrestling with the Almighty, not 
 for a blessing, but a cursing. We annul His laws, despise 
 His children ; and can we hope for prosperity ? 
 
 II. But perils nerve true men to their duty. An enemy 
 at our gates makes the coward pale, makes a hero cool and 
 cairn. God, who sends the dangers because of our sins, 
 sends salvation, if we repent and forsake those sins. We 
 may see our duty in the dreary horror of our danger. As 
 the brave commander sees his when his vessel shivers in
 
 THE CALL OF GOD. 431 
 
 the roaring breakers, as the competent officer discerns and 
 discharges his in the surprise and shock of battle, so should 
 we. We who profess to be Christians, let us seek and follow 
 the way of escape. "Gird up thy loins as a man," is God's 
 reply to us, when we faint, and whine, and beg, as we are re- 
 buked of Him. When Joshua lay on his face, and asked God 
 if He was going to destroy the nation which He had redeemed 
 with such great wonders, the Lord answers with appropriate 
 scorn, " Get thee up. Why liest thou thus upon thy face? 
 Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed My cov- 
 enant which I commanded them, for they have even taken 
 of the accursed thing, and have also stolen and dissembled 
 also." How have we dissembled ! " Therefore they could 
 not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before 
 their enemies, because they were accursed ; neither will I 
 be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from 
 among you." Joshua instantly leaps up, and sturdily follows 
 the will of God ; and lo, ere the week is out, so far from being 
 driven down into the valley of the Jordan, back upon his 
 camps and his families, he is chasing his enemies down the 
 opposite hill-side, across the plains of the Mediterranean, and 
 halting sun and moon in the heavens till he completes the 
 work of subjugation. Had this nation been as earnest in 
 its fastings and prayers, had its President and Cabinet, 
 Generals and Congress, been as sincere in their humiliations, 
 they would years ago have chased their enemies into the 
 Gulf, and peace and liberty have long possessed the land. 
 But they are not sincere. We are not honest before God. 
 Our honest President here fails in honesty. He was honest 
 in seeking the expatriation of this portion of his people, he 
 is not in seeking their elevation. He still refuses to pay 
 two Massachusetts regiments the same as the rest are paid. 
 He refuses lieutenancies to those who, were they white and 
 foreigners, would have been made major generals for their 
 skill and valor.
 
 432 THE CRISIS HOUR. 
 
 What must we do ? 
 
 1. Pray for the conversion of this people. The Holy 
 Spirit must renew us after the image and power of God, or 
 we perish. This nation must be holy or unholy, Christian 
 or infidel. It must be converted. The Church should rest 
 not, day nor night, praying and laboring for its salvation. 
 
 2. The nation must conform to its lower but hardly less 
 vital principle of democracy. There is no alternative betwixt 
 a perfect democracy and a monarchy. Europe has proved 
 this again and again. She attempted a mixed democracy 
 in the Italian cities, in Venice, Florence, and Ferrara. They 
 became soon dukedoms, and then appendages of a kingdom. 
 She tried it in Holland, but the Princes of Orange despoiled 
 their people of liberty in conferring upon them nationality. 
 She tried it in Flanders, but Ghent and Bruges gave alle- 
 giance to a ruling class, and lost their rights and liberties 
 by their error. France tried it, but developing a military 
 leader to preserve her liberties against leagued tyrants, that 
 leader robbed those he assumed to protect. So will it be 
 here, if we persist in declaring our rights are based on color. 
 If we, who are of the aristocratic blood, declare that any 
 tinge of Africa expels its possessor from the heritage of 
 equality, we shall assuredly resolve ourselves into a mon- 
 archy. We shall become as Greece, Rome, Venice, and Hol- 
 land. We shall lose all our rights as equals. The dominant 
 class will be reclassed, as in all aristocratic countries, and 
 the stratifications of our society will be solidified and per- 
 manent. As the Irish, who hate the Negro, are almost as 
 completely excluded as their next lower neighbor from the 
 superior rank of Americans, so shall we find others above 
 us, and on the top of all some selected families, with ducal, 
 royal, or imperial pride and power. 
 
 If we would escape this calamity, we must abolish our 
 prejudices. We must be true to our principles. Will we 
 be ? God waits for our answer. To-day, if ye will hear
 
 THE CALL OF GOD. 433 
 
 His voice, harden not your hearts. Our fathers hardened 
 theirs, and He swore in His wrath that we should not enter 
 the desired rest. Will we persist in our sin ? If we scoff 
 at His commands, if we nickname His principles, as His 
 people and His work have alwaj's been nicknamed by a 
 mocking world, when they started upon their mission, then 
 He will laugh at our calamity and mock when our fear 
 cometh, when our fear cometh as desolation, and our de- 
 struction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish 
 cometh upon us. Calamity and fear, distress and anguish, 
 are all upon us. Beware lest you hear the scorning voice 
 of a scorned God sounding through terrified souls, "Where 
 now is thy confidence, thy strength, thy glory ? Woe to 
 rebellious children, who seek counsel, but not of Me. The 
 Lord doth have them in derision." Let us hasten to expel 
 this kind that go not forth without prayer and fasting. 
 
 3. A third duty, not less imperative, is to cordially sup- 
 port, while encouraging, the Church and the nation. We 
 are not of that class who abandon those they seek to con- 
 vert. We do not hate the Church because we condemn her 
 short-comings. We do not traitorously oppose the govern- 
 ment we hope to save. With alt its faults the American 
 Church and the American nation are, to-day, the advance 
 guard of the human race. They may be chastised, they 
 maybe slain, because of their sins. That work belongs not 
 to their children, but to their Creator. He can create and 
 He destroy. It is ours to correct, to instruct, to aid by our 
 prayers, our utterances, our sacrifices. For this work we 
 may be required to lay down our lives. The period of vol- 
 unteering for this service is past, that of drafting is corning. 
 We may in honorable ways maintain our government without 
 the surrender of our lives. We may loan the government 
 our moneys ; we may restrict our expenses ; we may give 
 liberally for the relief of our sick and wounded soldiers, and 
 for the desolated families of the fallen heroes ; we may thus, 
 28
 
 434 THE CRISIS HOUR. 
 
 in many ways, illustrate our patriotism. But we may be 
 required to go yet further in our zeal and our service. The 
 call of the nation may summon us to its service. Substi- 
 tutes may not be secured, and if secured will not always 
 answer the summons to duty. The cause of liberty and 
 humanity may demand our life. Let us not refuse the gift. 
 It was right and proper for the persecuted Christian to try 
 to escape from his persecutors ; but if caught, if summoned 
 to trial, then he must manfully face his fate. Paul could 
 not say, "I stand by my vows, but I will hire a trained glad- 
 iator to fight the lions in my place." These were duties that 
 could not be transferred. So now it may come to us. Let us 
 meet it as the sons of our fathers, as the brothers of those 
 who are now in battle array, or who have fallen for our sal- 
 vation. You, too, may yet be called to give the parting kiss 
 and start for the perilous field. Humanity hangs in the haz- 
 ardous balance. Let its principles not fail for lack of your 
 support. Pray, speak, fight for Christ and your fellow-man. 
 
 III. What are our encouragements ? Many say, "To what 
 purpose is this waste of life and treasure ? " We have seen it 
 is for purposes of punishment ; we shall also see that it is for 
 purposes of mercy. God has chastened us very sore, yet 
 far less than our desert. He has compelled North and South, 
 alike guilty, if not equally, to scourge each other with bloody 
 rods. He has arrayed millions against millions, and made 
 the whole land rock with His thunders. In the midst of 
 our sufferings, He has wrought salvation for His sufferers. 
 
 1. Slavery is practically dead. Whichever way this war 
 terminates, this iniquity ceases. If the South maintain 
 their independence, without foreign aid they can keep no 
 slaves in their borders. The nations that desire their success 
 will scorn their alliance with that barbarism alive. They 
 will, undoubtedly, adopt an oligarchic system of govern- 
 ment, in which white and black will hold inferior, servile 
 perhaps, but not slavish positions. Those awful sights, so
 
 THE CALL OF GOD. 435 
 
 frequent and familiar in this land but four years since, are 
 gone forever. The auction-block, the separated families, the 
 plied lash, the illimitable concubinage, the enforced igno- 
 rance and bestiality, the chained coffles traversing the States, 
 the prison-house, the whipping-post, the hell upon hell of 
 torture, shame, and sorrow, the land of darkness and the 
 shadow of death, we can never see again. Many talk pertly 
 of this, and say, " Five dollars expended in cowhides will 
 restore the old system." Others as pertly say, " An 
 amendment of the Constitution alone will save us from the 
 returning flood. Hasten to erect this sea-wall while the 
 tide is out." My friends, the Constitution did not kill and 
 cannot kill slavery. It died BY THE VISITATION OF GOD. It 
 can never come to life again. As easy is it to revive glad- 
 iatorial shows in Eome, or Druidic burnings of children in 
 England, or the wanton worship of Venus at Corinth, or 
 cannibalism at Otaheite. The slaveholder himself is cured 
 of slavery. Jefferson Davis declares they are not fight- 
 ing for slavery, but for independence. Their only cry for 
 thirty years, increasing in the culmination of the outbreak, 
 was, "We fight for slavery, not independence." They know 
 they cannot restore that system. With no fugitive slave 
 law, with a North intensely hostile to slavery, with the 
 world hating it, they must abandon their darling demon. 
 It has gone down, down to its wicked hell, down beyond 
 all resurrection. Enough has been accomplished for all the 
 dreadful cost. With a great, but not too great a price, have 
 we won this freedom. An institution many believed would 
 endure for ages, lies prone for many a league. Millions of 
 its victims, escaped from its devouring jaws, are exulting 
 to-day in irreversible freedom. State after State is wheel- 
 ing into the line of liberty. Praise God from Whom these 
 blessings, so great, so marvelous, have flowed. 
 
 2. Hardly second has been the great uplift of the despised 
 race. Much yet remains to be done, but much has been
 
 436 THE CRISIS HOUR. 
 
 achieved. They walk our streets with erecter mien than 
 ever they wore before. The scornful white begins to dis- 
 cern comeliness in their countenances, and grace in their 
 steps. The lighter shades, Mrs. Kemble Butler can assert, 
 are improvements on the mere white and red of our com- 
 plexions, and many respond, "Amen." The lovely children 
 of slavery are smothered in the ardent embraces of fastidious 
 and lately loathing dames and damsels. They are warmly 
 welcomed to our pulpits. They are made the advance guard 
 in our most desperate assaults. They will mount the ram- 
 parts of Richmond, and aid in dictating terms of peace to 
 their once arrogant masters. 
 
 That the work is not accomplished should not make us 
 repine. If Grant fails to take Richmond, and Sherman 
 Atlanta, the campaign has not failed. We have marched 
 to the heart of the Confederacy. We have kept their armies 
 pent up in their capitals, with but brief and temporary es- 
 capades therefrom. We have possessed ourselves of two 
 thirds of their territory east of the Mississippi, and one half 
 of that beyond. We have not yet drained our first quota 
 of fighting men, between twenty years and forty-five. The 
 large class below and above those ages are still unsum- 
 moned. If Grant is delayed before Richmond, it is not for 
 our destruction, but purification. The new draft of five 
 hundred thousand men must embrace two hundred thousand 
 blacks. Ere another year, if the war lasts that long, they 
 will be Colonels and Brigadier Generals in the United States 
 army. The favorite nickname of the negro and the nation, 
 " Sambo " and " Samuel," is of the same origin. Is not 
 this prophetic of their future identity ? Our victories are 
 encouraging; so are our defeats. We have moved forward 
 as fast as we deserved to move. There is much to be done 
 before the war for democracy can be closed by complete 
 victory of democracy. Desdemona loved Othello because 
 he had saved her country from destruction ; so must we his 
 American kindred.
 
 THE CALL OF GOD. 437 
 
 When Jules Girard, the lion-killer of Africa, had slain one 
 of these devourers of the people, he says, " Even the women 
 crowded around the man with thanks and praises, who a 
 month before would have fled from him as from a noxious 
 beast, whose very appearance is repulsive. Now they 
 talked, and wondered, and chatted, with a mixture of famil- 
 iarity and respect that they would not have shown even to 
 one of their own countrymen." So, when this rebellion, 
 the awful master of our land and lives, shall have been slain 
 by the very hands which it was started to enslave, we shall 
 fall upon our knees in gratitude to our deliverer. And as deliv- 
 erers are always beautiful to those they save, so will these who 
 were to us before like the French soldier to the Arab wo- 
 men, " a noxious beast, whose very appearance is repulsive," 
 like him become objects of respect and admiration, of regard 
 and love. We shall see in them the features of a common 
 parent. Adam and Eve will beam from their countenances. 
 We shall welcome them as brothers and sisters, and the 
 long nightmare of our fears and hates will break up, while 
 the flood of bliss in us, and the sunshine of peace streaming 
 upon the land, will make us glad with exceeding great joy. 
 
 3. The last encouragement we should do wrong to omit 
 is that which comes to us from foreign lands. Not the 
 decrees of rnonarchs, not the scowls of .titled leaders and 
 their toady flunkies, but the honest, earnest, unanimous, 
 passionate regard of the people. There was more joy in 
 Manchester than in Boston when the Kearsarge sunk the 
 Alabama ; as much delight in Paris as in New York. The 
 people are with us. It is their war. All people are here 
 fighting their masters. The "mudsill " is contending with the 
 Corinthian capital; "the greasy mechanic " with the scented 
 lordling. The revolutions of the last century paved the 
 way for the progress of this. If -we win, Europe is theirs. 
 The United States of Europe will wheel into line with us, 
 perchance ere the century shall close, and kings, nobles, and
 
 438 THE CRISIS HOUE. 
 
 standing armies, palaces, pride, and aggrandizement of lands 
 and houses, will be scattered like Charlemagne's bones, so 
 that none shall gather them. The movements in England 
 against primogeniture and for manhood suffrage * will triumph 
 soon after we shall subdue the rebellion, and then the family 
 of the Conqueror will bid a long farewell to all its greatness. 
 There is no other possible solution for that ever-recurring 
 problem, if we win. And we shall win. 
 
 " This fine old world of ours is but a child 
 Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time 
 To learn its limbs ; there is a Hand that guides." 
 
 Great as is our impiety, our insolent scorn of God and His 
 children, our infidelity, our worldliness, our crime, yet He 
 will spare us. He will redeem us. The world's future 
 shall not be blotted out with our destruction. As He spared 
 His rebellious people in the wilderness, not for their sake, 
 but for the sake of the world, so will He now spare us. As 
 He punished that generation with destruction for their un- 
 belief, so He may this ; but our children, growing up without 
 our prejudice, with more than our patriotism, shall preserve 
 this land for liberty, for fraternity, for God and His Christ. 
 They shall dwell together, unmindful of color and of origin. 
 They shall be one in love, and in life. As in heaven, so in 
 earth, this region of all nations, kindreds, tribes, and tongues 
 shall dwell together in unity Asiatic, Afric, European, 
 American ; Chinese, Negro, Indian, and all ; one people, the 
 people of God, with one law, one liberty, one destiny; the 
 founders of the New World, wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
 " For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great 
 mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid My face 
 from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I 
 have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer." 
 
 * Her victory for suffrage was won in three years after our war 
 ceased, that of freedom of lands will soon follow.
 
 THE WORLD WAR.* 
 
 BEHOLD, THIS ONE is SET FOR THE FALL AND THE RISING AGAIN OF 
 MANY." Luke ii. 34. 
 
 MERICA proclaimed war against the thrones of 
 Europe when she declared her Declaration. The 
 irrepressible conflict began at that moment. It 
 has continued ever since. It is increasing to-day. 
 It may come to blows to-morrow. The babe Christ, as 
 Simeon told Mary, was set for the fall and the rising again 
 of many in Israel, that the thoughts of many hearts should 
 be revealed. Herod's palace and Hell's palace felt His 
 presence. Great disputes, greater wrath raged in both. 
 The events were noised abroad in hill, country, and valley ; 
 from shepherds to Eastern magi and kings. Not only were 
 the events a subject of discourse ; issues sharp, violent, 
 deadly, instantly arose from them. The massacre of the 
 babes and the flight into Egypt were but the beginnings of 
 a warfare that has gone on, unceasing and without truce, 
 even to this day. How many empires have fallen ; how 
 
 * A sermon preached on the occasion of the Annual State Fast, in 
 Boston, April 4, 1864. 
 
 (439)
 
 440 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 many have risen since that hour ! Not always were His 
 allies flying or Himself in flight. The Babe was triumphant, 
 even in seeming disaster. Gods, devils, and sinners were 
 alike controlled by Him. 
 
 " They feel from Judah's land 
 The dreaded Infant's hand ; 
 The rays of Bethlehem blind their dusky e'en ; 
 Our Babe, to show his Godhead true, 
 Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew." 
 
 So was it with the American nation in its infancy. When 
 born it amazed tyrants. When but a child it confounded 
 the doctors of monarchical political philosophy, and now, 
 when tyrants, doctors, and the ruthless mob of sycophantic 
 priests and press cry " Let it be crucified ! " they cry in 
 vain. Christ only once yielded His life to His murderers. 
 Death hath no more dominion over Him. No more hath 
 it over His. In His Church and in His State, the body 
 whereof the Church is the soul, shall He go forward con- 
 quering and to conquer. 
 
 The words which announce my theme should not affright 
 you. Many people are very fearful of a war with Europe. 
 " Don't proclaim the possibility of a war with England. Have 
 not we enough on our hands to-day ? " My friends, we are 
 at war with England.. We have been at war with her for 
 almost a hundred years. We must continue it till one or 
 the other is subjugated. It is a war of ideas, a war of 
 principles. Whether or not it shall clothe itself in armor 
 and flow in blood, God knows. He ordained the conflict, lie 
 will conduct it to its divine, triumphant issue. Let us on 
 this day of national humiliation and prayer consider these 
 most vital, national questions. 
 
 Man cannot escape his responsibilities. Gifts and duties 
 are born together, by the creation of God. We are required 
 to-day to view those gifts, not in their own blessed light, but
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 441 
 
 in the shadow and more serious glooms of their attendant 
 duties. The Christian, when he first feels the pulses of the 
 divine life rising in his soul, fancies his life is to be a Gau- 
 dama paradise of the perpetual contemplation of his delight. 
 He soon finds that not only must he fight if he would reign, 
 but he must fight if he would live. So we long fancied 
 that we were to enjoy the blessings of our wonderful sys- 
 tem of Union and Liberty without disturbance from within 
 or without. We were aroused from our luxurious trance 
 by internal enemies rushing fiercely upon us, disarmed and 
 enervated in body and soul. We leaped to our feet, and 
 looked hither and thither for aid ; and, lo, the very faces 
 that smiled so blandly upon us an hour ago, how cold, how 
 scowling now ! What hauteur, what undisguised contempt, 
 what sensitiveness to the remotest and most unintentional 
 interference on our part with their pretended rights and 
 dignities ! What hastening to cast loving side-glances at 
 our foes ! 
 
 Did we say, " France is our old ally. Surely she will 
 sympathize with us ? " We were compelled to read, as a 
 response, the imperial letter, declaring our dissolution essen- 
 tial to the safety of Europe. Did we say, " England, our 
 mother, our commercial ally, who boasts in her liberty, and 
 bo'asts in her abolitionism, she will earnestly espouse their 
 cause who represent this liberty and abolitionism in the 
 fiercest struggle to which they ever have or can be sub- 
 jected ? " We were surprised to behold her, in advance 
 of all others, proclaiming not merely the desirableness, but 
 the fact of our dissolution, conceding our rebels belligerent 
 rights, and aiding them with vessels, armaments, men, 
 means of subsistence, and far from least, unceasing words 
 of compliment and encouragement, through Parliament, the 
 platform, and the press ? 
 
 They were consistent, we not. They were wise in worldly 
 wisdom, we fools. But we have acquired wisdom in the
 
 442 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 painful school of experience the only school in which it 
 can be learned. They saw that an earth so small as to 
 have five World Conventions of its industry in ten years, 
 whose ocean channels, bridged with multitudinous ships, 
 would practically disappear when the telegraphic wire 
 should make both hemispheres throb with one pulse ; whose 
 industrial wares and devices were simultaneously sold in 
 India, Europe, America, and Australia : such a pent up 
 Utica could not endure two radically and bitterly hostile 
 systems of government in equal supremacy. The American 
 Idea appeared among these throned powers and pretensions, 
 as the Nazarene among the gods of Greece and Rome. It 
 could allow their existence neither as equals nor inferiors. 
 No niche in the Pantheon satisfies its claims. One or all 
 must die. 
 
 Their wisdom will be the more clearly seen, if we notice 
 how vital are the differences between the two systems of 
 society. What is this man-child of America, against 
 which, from its infancy, the kings of the earth have in- 
 stinctively set themselves, and the rulers taken counsel 
 together ? 
 
 I. Three ideas were born into organized society in the 
 birth of the American nation. 
 
 1. A successful revolution in favor of human rights. 
 Other revolutions have transpired in the world's history, 
 not a few. This was the first that appealed to the world 
 in behalf of the world. " A decent respect for the opin- 
 ions " of mankind is in the inaugural sentence of the Dec- 
 laration. It is fittingly completed in the enunciation of 
 certain " inalienable rights " not of themselves merely 
 or chiefly but of "all men." Rev. Jonas Clark, who 
 heralded the Revolution by brave words, that were half 
 battles, spoken often in the church on Lexington green, by 
 which his flock was strengthened to begin the armed strife, 
 by brave deeds there, was permitted at the close of the
 
 AEISTOCKACY AND DEMOCRACY. 443 
 
 century to write the inscription for their monument. His 
 youthful political sermons glow in its first line : " Sacred 
 to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind." * 
 
 What previous people ever proclaimed such a doctrine, 
 ever felt its inspiration ? Their revolutions were local re- 
 actions from local oppressions. The Cromwellian revolt 
 was against the absolutism of Church and State. It did 
 not affect the world, because it did not feel its oneness with 
 the oppressed of the world. Its religious character was 
 thus expansive, not its political. Hence every religious, 
 but no civil Protestant, saw and sought the Protector's pro- 
 tection. The Protestant Waldensians felt his uplifting, the 
 Papal Irish his descending arm. 
 
 The Dutch uprising was a brave resisting of a foreign 
 foe. They regarded themselves alone, their deprivations, 
 their duties. Hence they never flashed their energies into 
 like suffering and seeking peoples. They had so died out 
 of the memory of men that their eloquent historiographer 
 has enjoyed the privileges of the novelist as well as histo- 
 rian in his narrative of their exploits. Earlier revolts were 
 usually the struggles of slaves against the cord ; if suc- 
 cessful, slaves still, revelling, like triumphing usurpers, more 
 bloodily than their dethroned masters, in the spoils of 
 victory. 
 
 This was the first that stood upon principles as broad and 
 deep as human nature. Hence the inspiration it has breathed 
 into the human race. Hence, too, the ceaseless, Ilerodian 
 virulence against it of all the monarchic and aristocratic 
 tyrants of man. 
 
 It would be a curious and valuable study to know how 
 and whence these vital ideas became the soul of our Revolu- 
 
 * This striking American usage has been revived in our present 
 struggle ; President Lincoln's immortal Proclamation closing in the 
 Revolutionary style, with an appeal to " the considerate judgment of 
 mankind,"
 
 444 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 tion and our national being. How did the cry of taxation 
 and representation the whole preliminary struggle become 
 lifted up into the hight of a contest of a people for the 
 rights of man ? Was Puritanism or Rousseauism its father ? 
 Or did both of these seemingly most hostile elements unite 
 in their common basis of personal liberty, and so build up 
 the great idea of social, civil, and universal liberty ? Was 
 it not rather that the fullness of times had come, arid 
 God sent forth this new truth to renovate and unite the 
 earth ? 
 
 2. A second element of our national idea is the organiz- 
 ing of the disrupted mass into planetary States, wherein the 
 central idea of liberty should have fullest scope under 
 righteous law. It is an easy matter to destroy ; the diffi- 
 culty is to build up. The Israelites could be delivered in a 
 few days. It took, forty years to make them a nation. 
 More miracles of Omnipotence, and the greatest of all mira- 
 cles, the infinitude of the divine patience, alone changed the 
 enfranchised mob into a mighty people. Cromwell could 
 behead Charles. To rehead the State, "there was the rub." 
 France found like difficulty. So have the Central and South 
 American republics. Their triumphs were failures because 
 of this weakness. 
 
 A far greater feat, therefore, than the accomplishment of 
 our Revolution was the organization of the revolted colonies 
 into self-poised, prosperous commonwealths. This work de- 
 manded the highest qualities self-respect, obedience, indus- 
 try, education, temperance, religion. They exhibited them 
 in the highest degree. The sobriety with which they drank 
 the cup of liberty amazed the world. Expelling from the 
 continent the only power that could affect them, Europe 
 looked to see here as elsewhere liberty speedily becoming 
 licentiousness. But they failed to see the sight as logically 
 as heartily desired. We were the lesson and the pattern of 
 the world in our organific more than in our revolutionary life.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 445 
 
 We built up our political temple in perfect liberty and in 
 perfect solidity. Its pillars were of the hardest marble, 
 though their finish was as velvet, and they touched the 
 earth with the ease and grace of 
 
 " The herald Mercury, 
 New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill." 
 
 The State became the home and garden of liberty, shel- 
 tered by the walls of law. It brought forth fruit after its 
 kind, of many kinds, and of unspeakable sweetness and re- 
 freshment, while the leaves of its tree were for the healing 
 of nations. Thus, before the Union was formed these inde- 
 pendent communities had attained civil manhood. They 
 were sepai'ately free and prosperous, though as yet disu- 
 nited, and therefore weak and chaotic in their relations to 
 each other and the powers of Europe. 
 
 3. There must be a force added that shall make them 
 one, and so change chaos to cosmos, worlds to a universe. 
 This is our greatest apparent characteristic. By this we 
 become the American nation. Had it not been formed, no 
 such nationality would have been known, for no State could 
 have been recognized as the representative of this continent. 
 Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, or the united New 
 England might have had boasting sons. Not one of them 
 could have spoken the proudest word man as man has ever 
 uttered, "I am an American." To say, "I am a Roman," 
 was but to proclaim one's self connected Avith a city. To 
 say, " I am an Englishman," is but to boast of connection 
 with a bit of an island. To say, " I am a Frenchman," 
 " German," or " Italian," is proclaiming a nationality nar- 
 rowed to a strip of a continent. " I am an American," 
 asserts an heirship to a hemisphere. It is next to saying, 
 " I am a man." 
 
 This step was necessary to create a nation. The segre- 
 gated sovereignties must become a congregated sovereign.
 
 446 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 How shall it be done ? Can it be done at all ? It is an 
 experiment that has never succeeded. Palestine tried it 
 and failed. Greece tried it and failed. Rome, Venice, Hol- 
 land, and others, have called themselves republics, but they 
 never made their provinces their equals, much less made 
 the whole a unit, of which they were but the same fraction 
 as their fellows. Nothing in history was encouraging 1 . Yet 
 necessity was laid upon them. They saw that their free- 
 dom, personal, social, civil, would avail them nothing if 
 contending States were to dismember the continent. The 
 Union must be, and it was. 
 
 This made us a people. Europe took small note of our 
 quarrel with Britain, only as the separation humbled a 
 haughty neighbor. France helped us more out of revenge 
 for losing the Canadas than from any hope or fear that we 
 should become a powerful nation. Our disorganized state, 
 for several years after peace, was after the former pattern. 
 " There is no escape," shrewd politicians of Europe say, 
 "but in the old way a monarchy gradually developed 
 out of weak and warring tribes." There was but one way 
 of escape, and of that they dreamed not. It was by framing 
 a Union, in which some of the most vital rights of sove- 
 reignty, such as the making of war and peace, regulating 
 commerce and currency, and representation at foreign courts, 
 were forever relinquished ; while others equally vital, as the 
 tenure of property, and punishment of death, were retained. 
 
 The Union closed up our pupilage. We entered on our 
 majority. It lifted us out of the obscurity of barbarous and 
 fighting clans into a compact, vigorous, free nationality, 
 and made the world behold the dawning of a new day for 
 humanity. 
 
 It may be asked, " Was not the trail of the serpent over 
 all this ? " Yes, but Eden was Eden if the devil had crept 
 in there. The theory of our fathers was right. It was faith- 
 fully applied to all our people, save one fraction. It was
 
 AEISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. . 447 
 
 conferred in form, though not in feeling and in fact, upon 
 them in some of the States. Our present struggle to pre- 
 serve the last of these blessings, is because we had become 
 false to the principle that gave life to the first, and so to all. 
 We are wrestling with principalities and powers without 
 and within, to the intent that our Union and Constitution 
 may conform to our primal and preeminently vital doctrine 
 the liberty, fraternity, and unity of mankind. This is the 
 threefold cord of individual, State, and nation, which binds 
 America together. The least right of the least citizen is 
 preserved intact by the State in its sphere, and the Union 
 in its, while the volitions of all flow in a mighty and steady 
 volume through the whole realm, and move it, as with one 
 impulse, to universal influence, perchance universal do- 
 minion. 
 
 II. Such are the principles first introduced into civil socie- 
 ty, on a grand scale, by the organization of the United States 
 of America. Can we fail to see that they are in most direct 
 and violent conflict with the civil institutions of Europe ? 
 The supporters of those institutions see it if we do not. It 
 is written in the history of Europe ever since that day. 
 The very year that saw the inauguration of Washington 
 saw the fires of democracy burst forth from beneath the 
 throne of France. Within four years from that date they 
 had consumed that throne and him that sat upon it. The 
 oldest and haughtiest house in Europe had set in blood, 
 while the titled blood of its supporters had daily flowed, a 
 dark and dreadful stream, past the Tuileries into the red- 
 dened waters of the Seine. 
 
 The kings of Europe banded themselves together against 
 it, determined to put out the direful conflagration, or at 
 least to keep it within its original bounds. Vain hope. 
 Their very effort spread the flames. Democracy defied, 
 marched forth in defiance. The flames leaped over the 
 wholg continent. Armed liberty swept away every throne
 
 448 . . THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 in middle Europe, and cleansed the churches of their tro- 
 phies of idolatrous obsequiousness. Crowns were trampled 
 as mire in the streets. Imperial dust sleeping haughtily at 
 St. Denis, Aix la Chapelle, and Spires, was driven into eter- 
 nal exile. It swept on, a vast prairie fire, through France, 
 Germany, and Italy. Everywhere the traces of the great 
 conflagration are yet visible. All monarchic and aristo- 
 cratic elements melted in the fervent heat. It changed at 
 once, and in spite of momentary reaction, changed forever 
 the face and the soul of the civilized world. 
 
 III. The question naturally occurs at this point, Why were 
 not these successes successful ? Why did a reaction set 
 in that has maintained its supremacy, in spite of all attempts 
 to the contrai-y, to the present hour ? The answer usually 
 is, that the people of Europe were not fit to enjoy the lib- 
 erties they had secured. John Adams began this charge 
 as early as 1790, when, in the interests of aristocracy and 
 England, he called the French people " a nation of thirty 
 millions of atheists." Others fastened upon them other 
 equally false imputations, such as their ignorance, violence, 
 lawlessness, brutality. They are the staple excuses with 
 which the tyrant ever defends his tyranny. The people of 
 France, even in the bloody outbreak of the September mas- 
 sacres, as a body, were peaceful and placable. That fatal 
 month but feebly repaid the contempt and cruelty of cen- 
 turies. They would have maintained their liberties, and 
 developed them in solidest and comeliest perfection, but 
 for three reasons, for none of which are they directly re- 
 sponsible the hostility of the priesthood, the league of 
 frightened royalties, and, sad conjunction, the neutrality 
 of America. The first caused infidelit}*, the second, war, 
 the third, defeat and re-subjugation. 
 
 The Papal Church clove to its natural ally, the throne. 
 Of one aristocratic nature, they share one destiny. The 
 sense of right in the breasts of their devotees they strove
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 449 
 
 to trample out with the hoof of ecclesiastical authority. The 
 people saw their rights ; they saw no form of Christianity 
 asserting and defending them, and they renounced the truth 
 for a season, because it was made the servant of a lie. 
 Yet never substantially out of Paris, never in the masses 
 there, was Christ rejected. They staggered blindly, with- 
 out the appointed guides, but they groped not in utter 
 darkness. The same experience has partially transpired 
 here. Men of active conscience and profound sense of the 
 right saw the Church speechless before the horrid demon 
 of Slavery ; nay, in many of its organizations prostrate 
 before it ; and they have been tempted to reject, not only 
 the sinning Church, but the divine truths which have thus 
 been held in unrighteousness. Yet as here so there, the 
 people would have rallied from the shock their infidelity 
 gave to their conscience ; the Church would have been rent 
 as here, and its ministers largely allied themselves to the 
 cause of man as well as of God, and faith and worship would 
 have crowned and sanctified a triumphing democracy. This 
 consummation was prevented by the war into which they 
 were drawn by the league of all the thrones against them, 
 and the refusal of this nation to aid them in their struggle 
 to maintain their liberties. This neutrality created immense 
 excitement at the time of its adoption, sundered Cabinets 
 and Congress, threw Washington, though President, into 
 the minority, and organized the party which is now breath- 
 ing its last, and which is dying solely because it abandoned 
 the only principle on which it began to be, earnest devotion 
 to the rights of man everywhere. 
 
 This doctrine has been a chief source of evil to ourselves 
 and to our cause at home and abroad. It was a departure 
 from principle under the guise of selfish policy. It was the 
 first temptation and the first fall of the American nation, 
 and the prolific parent of all our woes. The sword has 
 been found two-edged, and the stout British arm has made 
 29
 
 450 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 it cut as deep into our vitals, as our youthful arm did into 
 that of the more youthful French republic. The chastise- 
 ment it has inflicted has revived the once potent views as 
 to its character, and the restraints, unjust, unbrotherly, 
 ungrateful, and unwise, which it imposes on our proper 
 duty in the affairs of nations.* 
 
 Slavery, the parent of our aristocracy, and parent of dis- 
 union and war, sprung into new life on Washington's proc- 
 lamation of neutrality. The first Fugitive Slave Law was 
 signed in the same year and by the same hand that had 
 signed that proclamation. . So soon did this fatal germ 
 shoot up from the error-planted soil. That tree has grown 
 with steady rapidity. We sat weak, sick, and dying beneath 
 its pestilent shade. By a clear working of Providence, the 
 bitterest and extremest foe to our national ideas grew out of 
 their very root, because we sought to selfishly confine them 
 to ourselves. The essence and perfection of anti-liberty 
 and anti-Union flourished in the soil of a selfish liberty and 
 Union. Had we vigorously aided in the establishment of 
 the former ideas abroad, the latter would have never flour- 
 ished at home. Our spirit would have informed our action, 
 and the earnest defense of liberty there would have speedily 
 delivered us from the power and the presence of slavery 
 here. Had we aided our friends then we should have had 
 no enemies now. That neutrality destroyed our friends and 
 multiplied our enemies. No less than six republics, the 
 fruit of our loins, have we sacrificed to this mistaken policy. 
 We refused to hear France when she cried to us, as she 
 saw the armies of Europe gathering under the lead of our 
 greatest foe. " Let the galled jade wince," we wickedly 
 cried ;," our withers are unstrung." Lafayette had exerted 
 no small influence in giving Washington a free nation. 
 Washington refuses to aid Lafaj^ette in maintaining the free- 
 dom .to which they had attained. The Poles appealed to 
 
 * See Note XVI.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 451 
 
 our arms, but appealed in vain. Ireland twice sought to 
 deliver itself from the clutch of its oppressor : we blandly 
 witnessed its failure. The Central South American repub- 
 lics asked for cooperation : we gave them a resolution. 
 To Greece we sent brave words but no sword. We have 
 calmly seen Napoleon trample out in Rome the sparks that 
 our hands had scattered. Garibaldi and Mazzini looked to 
 us for aid, and looked in vain. Finally, Kossuth was sent 
 to us, to save us, if possible, from ruin, by bringing us into 
 active cooperation with our European brethren. He passed 
 through the land, the most feted and most lauded of orators. 
 But he effected nothing. We were stupefied with the en- 
 chantments of neutrality and slavery. " What's Hecuba 
 to me, or I to Hecuba?" we selfishly proclaimed. "Let us 
 eat arid drink, for to-morrow we die." Too true was our 
 unconscious prophecy. We were then struck with death. 
 " Material aid for Hungary ? Hungary, torn by the 
 talons and beaks of the double-headed eagles of Austria 
 and Russia? Ah, no! Hungary has our sympathy, you 
 our ears, no more." We had eaten the lotus. It was not 
 for us to go a Quixoting over the world rescuing imaginary 
 Dulcineas from imaginary robbers. " Liberty and Democ- 
 racy for Europe," did you say ? Our grandfathers heard 
 that cry, and stopped their ears. Why should we unstop 
 purs. We were born deaf. 
 
 " Our voice was thin, as voices from the grave, 
 And deep asleep we seemed, yet all awake, 
 And music in our ears our beating hearts did make." 
 
 And with one voice the nation cried, 
 
 " Let us alone. What pleasure can we have 
 To war with evil. Is there any peace 
 In ever climbing up the climbing wave? 
 All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave 
 In silence : ripen, fall, and cease ; 
 Give us long rest or death, dark death or dreamful ease."
 
 452 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 We refused to listen to his cry. He turned sadly from us, 
 and lo, we were waked with the knife of our brother at our 
 throat, while we cried wildly for help and no help came. 
 How we staggered in blindness, and fell, weak with loss of 
 spirit, of confidence, of friends, of the blood of our sons. 
 Had not God lifted us, and animated us with principle, the 
 higher and only life, we should have been as when He over- 
 threw Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 
 Thus have His laws had their revenge. We have expe- 
 rienced the only possible result. The disease our fathers 
 hated and feared, and hoped would depart, by the very in- 
 activity they imposed upon us grew to an awful magnitude. 
 The farewell address says, " Let us keep what treaties we 
 have made, but make no more." Live in the swaddling 
 bands of selfishness. Be the Japan of Christendom, and lo, 
 our bandages, like a Chinese lady's shoe, compel weakness 
 and corruption, not strength, sweetness and beauty. Our 
 evils and perils, not repressed and eliminated by a vigorous 
 out-door exercise, but nursed by an in-door luxury of indo- 
 lence, make us faint even unto death. We have lived solely 
 by the miraculous goodness of God.* 
 
 IV. But if we refused to accompany our principles with 
 our prowess in their march through the earth, the principles 
 themselves went forth conquering and to conquer. They 
 could not be hidden under a bushel though we hid ourselves 
 there. Our relations were, in reality, in spite of our adju- 
 rations and mercenary spirit, far more political than com- 
 mercial. Our doctrines affected the theories of publicists ; 
 they soon affected the practice of the people. "Every con- 
 tinental writer on civil government, with a very few excep- 
 tions," says J. Stuart Mill, " for two generations, has been 
 an ardent democrat." He traces this as directly to America 
 as the tides in the harbor are traced to the outer sea. "A 
 democratic republic," he says, " came to occupy a large 
 
 * See Note XVII.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 453 
 
 portion of the earth's surface, and to make itself felt as one 
 of the most powerful members of the community of nations." 
 Had it been free in fact and free to act, it would have long 
 since republicanized Christendom. 
 
 Every country felt that earthquake. Enceladus stirred, 
 the volcano muttered, and kings trembled. Thrones rocked 
 on the sea of a restless democracy. They would have been 
 buried in its waves but for the rise of one man, who, like 
 the inheritor of his name and seat to-day, sought to destroy 
 the very principles through which alone he became the 
 arbiter of Europe, its kings and its peoples. Still his 
 course was ever felt to be against thrones and kings. On 
 the walls of a hotel in Ooblenz I saw a little picture of a 
 company of European kings, to whom a messenger is an- 
 nouncing the escape of Napoleon from Elba. 
 
 " My God," cry they, with white lips, " is he come 
 again ? " Such a picture in that town, full of soldiers, and 
 strengthened with the finest fortifications of Europe, is as 
 significant of the popular sentiments as would have been a 
 portrait of John Brown in the cabin of a Charleston slave. 
 For though he betrayed the cause of democracy, he was 
 ever and instinctively the enemy of the feudal aristocracy. 
 Marrying into them, he was still like Samson with his 
 Philistine bride, none the less the foe of her brethren. 
 
 Great Britain preserved herself from the eruption of these 
 ideas in two ways. Having waged a long war with us in at- 
 tempting to suppress these doctrines, her people, as is usually 
 the case in belligerent nations, became largely hostile to the 
 principles of those with whom they were contending. 
 
 But this cause was slight to that created by the fears and 
 the vigor of her nobility and gentry. For forty years they 
 struggled to suppress the growth and extirpate the root of 
 the tree of liberty. In America, in Europe, on every sea 
 and shore, they waged ceaseless war. Burke became their
 
 454 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 defender, and sold his birthright for a mess of royal pottage, 
 doing for the cause of man, that had nursed him to great- 
 ness, precisely what his great successor, Brougham, has done 
 in our day turning on the principles and people that had 
 elevated him, and fawning at the feet of a despising royalty. 
 He had impeached king and nobles when he dared to con- 
 front Hastings, and king and nobles knew it, and never con- 
 demned that faithful ally. Not many years elapse before he 
 whines, in eloquent terms, for the king and nobles of local 
 oppressions as deep and damning as any committed in India. 
 He leaves the people out of his category of British rulers. 
 He was so sensible of his treason that he chose to be buried 
 in a wooden coffin, that dissolution might be the more 
 speedy, and his body escape the profanations with which 
 the anticipated triumph of democracy in England would, he 
 feared, assuredly visit it. 
 
 But the ruling class was not content with the service of 
 pamphleteers, however able ; they imprisoned those who as- 
 sumed, with any earnestness of purpose, the popular side 
 poets like Montgomery and Leigh Hunt, editors like Cobbett, 
 lecturers, almost voiceless thinkers, every one who dared 
 avow their sympathy for the cause of man. They have 
 suppressed substantial freedom of speech to this day.* 
 
 * Speaking of the difference between English and continental publi- 
 cists on theories of government, Mr. Mill significantly says, p. 11, "A 
 similar [that is a democratic] tone of sentiment might by this time have 
 been prevalent in our country if circumstances, which for a time en- 
 couraged it, had continued unchanged." He elsewhere declares (p. 33) 
 that " the law of England on the subject of the press is as servile to- 
 day as it was in the time of the Tudors ; " and while declaring in the text 
 that there is no danger of its being enforced, has to confess in the notes 
 that it was enforced as late as 1858. These laws were rigidly carried 
 out by Castlereagh and Ellenborough, and caused a worse reign of terror 
 in England than prevailed in France. Here a few tyrants lost their 
 heads, and executions raged for a single month. There for two genera- 
 tions every lover of equal human rights has been prevented from declar- 
 ing his sentiments. To do so now would insure the utterer a speedy 
 acquaintance with the cell and ax of the Tower.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 455 
 
 They stirred up a war with France, and compelled the Con- 
 tinental monarchs to make their territory the battle-ground 
 against humanity. They developed the power of Napoleon, 
 and thus attained their end, his triumphs establishing the 
 despotism that they loved, and overthrowing the republican- 
 ism which they feared. 
 
 V. The present state of this conflict is not less important. 
 
 The degradation of our people before the slave power, and 
 the almost total extinction of our liberties, the utter extinc- 
 tion of our sympathy as a nation with the peoples of Europe, 
 had made their oppressors less fearful. Our name was yet 
 a spell, perhaps, to evoke the spirit of democracy withal, 
 but they saw that when we boldly supported and sought to 
 extend the most anti-democratic institution in the world, 
 that our name might call this spirit from the vasty deep, but 
 they did not fear that it would answer us. They could 
 safely send hither the heir apparent of their throne to re- 
 ceive our adulations, and to witness, with pitying contempt, 
 an enslaved and dying democracy. 
 
 But the uprisal of a great people in the cause of its 
 fathers, its fame, and its God, quickened all these ancient 
 fears. They had visions of corresponding insurrections at 
 home. Their martyrs for liberty, from Vane to Orsini, arose 
 to avenge their cause by creating the free and equal state 
 for which they had died. 
 
 Hence they instantly arrange themselves on the side of 
 our foes. They leap to embrace the hideous monster of 
 Slavery. Its bloody hand is at the throat of democracy. 
 They trust it will stifle its divine life here and everywhere 
 forever and forever. 
 
 1. The British government lead off in this degrading al- 
 liance. It brought forth fruit after its kind. The recital of 
 the acts in which the feelings of the British aristocracy found 
 expression would be longer than that in which our first Con- 
 gress indicted its king. Before a battle had been fought,
 
 456 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 even before an army on either side had been gathered, it 
 took every possible step to insult, weaken, embarrass, and 
 destroy our government, except that of active hostilities, 
 and this was withheld only from fear of civil war at home. 
 It sheltered piratical steamers in its harbors ; and when our 
 vessels of war lay in wait for them in the Channel, it put 
 its men of war under their bows, with directions to blow 
 them out of the water if they presumed to obey the orders 
 of their government. And this too, not in British waters, 
 but upon the high seas. It forbade our national vessels from 
 staying in its ports over twenty-four hours, or coaling there 
 oftener than once in three months, while its own vessels 
 rode at anchor in our harbors. It recognized the rebels as 
 belligerents before they had fought a single battle; when 
 they had only mastered a single fort and a starving garrison. 
 To do this was to recognize them as a nation ; for nations 
 only have a belligerent, that is, a war-making power. This 
 it did not grant to Italy till all her battles had been fought 
 and won. This it never gave to Hungary, though she was 
 for months successful, and was only overthrown by foreign 
 intervention. This it did not give to Poland, though she 
 maintained for over a year a provisional government by 
 arms as ably as the Confederates did theirs, and that too 
 against a power it hates and dreads almost as much as it 
 does the United States. The all-important difference is, that 
 the rising of Poland is against it own institutions, our in- 
 surrection is in its favor. Russia is dangerous to its empire, 
 America to itself. Eussia may rob it of India, our ideas 
 will rob it of England. 
 
 The whole scope of its proclamation was to confer nation- 
 ality upon the rebels. So they understood it. So did we. 
 So did England herself. It would have been followed by 
 its legitimate acts but for the grand uprising of our people, 
 and a fear of the future at home. 
 
 Her course subsequently was consistent. In her feelings
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 457 
 
 as well as policy that were exhibited in the Trent imbroglio, 
 in allowing armed privateers to sail from her ports, in re- 
 fusing to amend her laws while acknowledging their inef- 
 ficiency, so as to control these pirates, she acted according 
 to the theory she wished and purposed should prove true. 
 Lord Palmerston was called in Paliament " our Confederate 
 Premier" amid the applause of the house. He declared in 
 his seat that " the difference between him and Mr. Cobden 
 consists in the fact that Mr. Cobden considered that but one 
 government exists within the original boundaries of the 
 Union, while the administration have, from the beginning, 
 ACTED as if there were two." That is, they gave the rebels 
 a practical, but not formal recognition. 
 
 All this has been done by instinct. " Instinct is a great 
 matter." It made them detect and worship monarchy in 
 the disguise of the robber Slavery, as it made Falstaff dis- 
 cern and respect his master in the garb of a highwayman. 
 It has been as natural and universal with the ruling classes, 
 as has been our enthusiasm here for the Union. " Five 
 sixths," Mr. Cobden declared, "of the upper classes were 
 in favor of our disruption." As here a few adhered to 
 slavery and secession, the apparent, against freedom, the 
 real national idea, so there a few have stood forth for the 
 theories and boastings of the nation against its root and 
 ruling principle. These few were most rarely in govern- 
 mental positions, much less of titled and gentle blood. Al- 
 most every lord, however mushroom, was meanly unan- 
 imous. Abolitionists like Brougham and Shaftesbury, liberals 
 like Morpeth and Russell, men of tact without principles 
 like Palmerston and D'Israeli, all took counsel together 
 against us. The Duke of Argyle was almost the only titled 
 exception to this universal law. 
 
 The gentry, who are the wall-flowers of the nobility, out- 
 side wall-flowers, ever trying to creep over into the sacred 
 inclosure, even if of such blood as Buxton and Wilberforce,
 
 458 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 turned up their noses at the dead democracy of America. 
 " An ounce of civet, good apothecary," they cried, "these 
 west winds smell dreadfully." 
 
 The lackeys of the Church, press, of the counting-house 
 and factory, fell into like spasms. They all wore livery. 
 They worshiped the upper, and trampled on the lower 
 classes. They joined the upper in their detestation of 
 America. 
 
 The Times declared that not a gentleman, member of 
 Parliament, nobleman, nor representative Londoner sat on 
 Mr. Beecher's platform at Exeter Hall. It carried its syc- 
 ophancy to such a pitch that it asserted that " the two 
 essentials of a government to-day are monarchy and money." 
 Thus stood ruling England till success crowned our arms ; 
 thus in feeling stands she still. 
 
 It is in no spirit of invective that we make this record, 
 but simply as students of natural laws, which work as clear- 
 ly and inevitably in the realm of politics as in that of science 
 and religion. They are the creatures of the idea that con- 
 trols them an idea irrepressibly hostile to that which has 
 been in debate on our fields and seas, and which has come 
 forth the unquestioned conqueror. They will yet rejoice in 
 its overthrow, and in their absorption into the grander name 
 than Queen, Lords, and Commons even that of the People 
 of England. That people we profoundly esteem. They 
 have acted as nobly in their chains, as our slaves did in 
 theirs. We doubt not their future sovereignty, and an 
 increasing glory to the national name when that hour 
 dawns. 
 
 2. But our conflict with continental crowns is none the 
 less positive though less marked. It is less marked because 
 those crowns have" had all that they could do to keep their 
 places on their masters' heads, so intelligent and deter- 
 mined are their peoples. Blondin has too much to do in 
 keeping his balance over the deadly-flying glassiness of
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 459 
 
 Niagara's stream to attend to the difficulties of rival 
 gymnasts. The Pope, Francis of Austria, William of 
 Prussia, Victor Emanuel, the King of the Danes, all are 
 tossed on the wildest seas, and may in a moment be dashed 
 upon the fatal rocks of Democracy. 
 
 Napoleon was the only one that could look abroad, and 
 he more because he is a Blondin, the prince of tight-rope 
 dancers, than because his vigilance is less or his peril less. 
 From him learn all. He made our traditional friendship with 
 France a deceitful brook. Why ? Because his France is 
 not France. She is garroted. He speaks for himself, not 
 for his people. They are intensely democratic. Their elec- 
 tions show the vitality of their democracy. He knows that 
 our salvation is his destruction, our destruction his preserva- 
 tion. Therefore has he steadily sought our ruin. With the 
 complicity of England, Spain, and Austria he seized Mexico 
 as the basis of operations against us. His success there 
 drew forth the public congratulation of every crowned head 
 on the Continent. They trusted that this triumph assured 
 our overthrow. 
 
 The European Church, in its highest officials, has been 
 their close ally. The guns of St. Angelo exulted over the 
 fall of Mexico. The Pope went still further in revealing his 
 fears of democracy, when he called Jefferson Davis " Illustri- 
 ous President." The Protestant State Churches have been 
 equally unfriendly. They see that the bands of Church 
 and State will be the first to dissolve when the state and 
 the people are one. John Bright, the future Premier of 
 England, has already more than hinted at such a separa- 
 tion.* 
 
 VI. Such is the past and present conflict of America with 
 Europe. It has a future. We can read it in their light. 
 
 * This step is already taken in the election of a Parliament pledged 
 to disestablishing of the Irish Church. The elder must follow her daugh- 
 ter, and State and Church cease to be one.
 
 460 THE WOELD WAR. 
 
 It is simply this, Europe must become a Union of Democratic 
 States, in league, if not one with America. The instinctive 
 cry of the people of France and America just threescore 
 years and ten ago must be answered, " We are One." 
 
 Great truths are always simple. When first announced 
 they are apt to appear visionary. Yet when once embraced 
 they become as familiar and pleasant as light and life. The 
 truth of the absolute unity of Man, how simple, how sublime ! 
 And yet -when we see in a brightness above the brightness 
 of the sun, whither it is leading us, how many start back 
 
 appalled, 
 
 ' ; And each particular hair doth stand on end, 
 Like quills upon a fretful porcupine." 
 
 So this self-evident, imperative, fast-hastening event, how 
 few believe, how few delightedly embrace ! How many say, 
 "Why, they are not fit to govern themselves." So we said, 
 till within three years, " The slaves are not fit to be freed at 
 once. They must be trained to liberty." Nobody but a 
 little clique of so-called fanatics dared to cry, for thirty 
 years, "Immediate and Unconditional Emancipation I" and 
 they did not dare, had they desired, to add, "By the red 
 arm of War." If they had, they would have perished, or 
 ere their truth was born. But God has answered their cry, 
 though in a way of which they dreamed not. The slaves 
 were liberated in an instant, thrust out in a night, as were 
 Pharaoh's, through our fear for ourselves, not regard for 
 them. New Year's eve will ever be the American- Afric's 
 Passover. And lo ! at the sight every one exults. They 
 declare it to be marvelously natural and proper. In fact, 
 it is the only possible way. 
 
 So shall we see concerning this truth. It started from 
 Independence Hall. It will not cease to march till it has 
 subdued the world. Its line has gone out through all the 
 earth, and its words unto the end of the world.* 
 
 * See Note XVIII.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 461 
 
 Not a state, except the free state of Switzerland, and the 
 wealthy state of England, but that has been rent with this 
 new cloth sewed into its moth-eaten purple. The new wine 
 is ever bursting the rotten bottles of hereditary privilege, 
 from which they are trying vainly to exclude it. They are 
 ever busy repairing their ragged robes of royalty, which 
 the people are ever rending, but the Sartor Resartus has to 
 do his patching with new cloth popular suffrage, constitu- 
 tional government, or some fresh-woveii bit from the Amer- 
 ican looms. 
 
 The conflict is springing up in England. Her political 
 managers are the shrewdest in the world. They have 
 steered, with remarkable skill, their Ship of State. Through 
 the war they held high carnival. They were warm sup- 
 porters of the murderer of Liberty in France : they talked 
 about Poland, but declared they would do nothing to save 
 her. They allowed the people to compliment Garibaldi, 
 while they rejoiced that Victor Emanuel had shot him. I 
 heard Mr. Disraeli thus sharply and truly retort on Lord 
 Palmerston, when he declared that the cause of the unity 
 of Italy required the countenance of his government. 
 
 " The noble lord observed that not any generous word 
 of sympathy, no word of approbation, ever came from me 
 in favor of the Italians. That cannot be said of the noble 
 lord. Words enough he has given the Italians ; but what 
 more he has given, the Italians know best. I can only say, 
 that if all the encouragement they have received, and all 
 the assistance they have had in their hard fortunes, were 
 furnished by the noble lord, I doubt very much whether 
 they would occupy the position which they now do." 
 
 Even these " windy inspirations of forced breath " were 
 not given until a year after their liberties had been achieved. 
 And these same rulers of a Protestant nation have since al- 
 lowed Napoleon to suppress liberal institutions and free- 
 dom of religion in Mexico, and to seek to establish monarchy
 
 462 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 and papacy in that land, solely that their class might not 
 be absorbed by the natural growth of democracy here and 
 at home. 
 
 But that democracy is growing. Every ardent advocate 
 of America is a latent or patent, a nascent or adult demo- 
 crat. John Bright, their Quaker leader, like our Quaker 
 leaders, he who started the great reform, and he who for a 
 quarter of a century has written the battle-songs of freedom, 
 is a bold and earnest fighter in its ranks. His head may 
 yet grace the block in behalf of the cause of man. He has 
 had the courage to say that a President elected by the suf- 
 frage of a free and equal people, is in a far loftier seat than 
 one inheriting a throne. He talks of a world-republic after 
 the model of America. His coadjutors, just returned to 
 Parliament, will replace the fallen Cobden in their zeal for 
 the people. Hughes boasted that the men of toil gave him 
 his seat, and Stuart Mills was yet more pronounced in his 
 adhesion to the principles which will necessitate democracy. 
 Gladstone appeals from the most conservative to the most- 
 radical of constituencies. He must regard the people who 
 trust him. 
 
 Poland, in its brief insurrection, revealed the same ten- 
 dency. The proclamation of the national committee was 
 based on that of President Lincoln's. The serfs were prom- 
 ised freedom and the possession of the soil they till, in 
 this respect in advance of our proclamation and action, 
 while loyal masters were to be reimbursed from the national 
 treasury. Such decree, if carried out, would change the 
 face of Europe. Lest it should be carried out by the suc- 
 cess of the people, the three powers of England, Austria, and 
 France hastened to inform Russia that she must make some 
 concession, or they would take the matter into their own 
 hands. Not by recognizing this decree and establishing the 
 republic of Poland a thousand times, no ! but by the erec- 
 tion of some sort of a kingdom, whose movements should
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 463 
 
 not jar too harshly the Prince Rupert's drop in which each 
 of them dwells. The success of Russia in suppressing- the 
 uprising made them rescind their demands. It was not to 
 humble her, but to save themselves, that they were so active. 
 That success will yet result in failure : the principles of that 
 uprising must prevail if their nationality fails. 
 
 Italy is thus breaking the bonds of centuries. Michael 
 Angelo's gigantic, heavy slumbering Night is changed into 
 the more gigantic, arousing Day. What life, what strength, 
 in its Samsonian limbs ! It will speedily awake, arise, and 
 go forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber. He who has 
 once trodden its soil, and seen the enthusiasm of its people 
 for Garibaldi, whose bust and picture are everywhere, knows 
 that its present government is but the brittlest of cords that 
 holds for a moment the upsoaring eagle. France alone can 
 stay the unification and republicanizing of that land. 
 
 Greece cast off the incubus of ages in an hour, and 
 proceeded, in calmest style, to elect her ruler. I saw that 
 election in Athens. It was exactly like one in America 
 the same talking in the streets and at the cafes, the same 
 running of carriages with voters for rival candidates, the 
 same counting of the ballots at the polls, in fine, a purely 
 American idea, as is universal suffrage carried out in purely 
 American style, in that most ancient and most famous of 
 democracies. The ostracizing and approving shells and 
 pebbles, carried round the Pnyx, were replaced by poll 
 booths, inspectors of elections, ballots, and all the other 
 paraphernalia of her sister more than twenty hundred years 
 younger. Had not England restrained her, she would have 
 declared herself of the political faith of her fathers. In 
 conjunction with Napoleon, that power compelled them to 
 continue their throne. They called a pale lad from the 
 Rhode Island of European kingdoms to rule a nation of 
 democrats, whose constitution, like ours, forbids any citizen
 
 464 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 from wearing a title. More than one Athenian said to me, 
 at that time, that England would .not allow them to establish 
 a republic. She appoints their head as indifferently to their 
 wishes or to the popular suffrage, over which they were so 
 jubilant, as an Arab is to his daughter's choice of a hus- 
 band, or a slaveholder's to his slave's choice of anything. 
 A great time they had with their universal suffrage. The 
 king they get had not a single vote. The prince they al- 
 most unanimously ask for, as well as the nation that invites 
 him, are quietly snubbed by the Great Powers, so called, 
 that adjust the affairs to suit their own convenience; and 
 yet when there is an outbreak there, people say they are 
 unfit for liberty. They had no outbreak till their rights as 
 a people were trampled in the dust. King George affects 
 the citizen king, going about in plain costume and unat- 
 tended. If he is equal to this role he may reign a few 
 years, because he recognizes the people ; and he may not. 
 Whether he reigns long or short, the inevitable future of 
 Greece is freedom and democracy. 
 
 So is it everywhere, and everywhere it is taking more 
 and more the threefold American form. 
 
 A revolution in favor of the equal rights of all. This is 
 accomplished in Switzerland, Greece, Italy. No titles are 
 allowed in the first two to any citizen, but few in the last. 
 It is substantially so in France, and becoming rapidly so in 
 Poland, Russia, and Germany. 
 
 The organization of these people into States, electing 
 their rulers, and enjoying local independence and liberty. 
 
 Their union into one nation. 
 
 The pronounced sympathies show how rapidly this union 
 of feeling, antecedent to a union of fact, is pervading Europe. 
 Huge Garibaldi meetings were held in England, suppressed 
 by the government professedly out of fear of the Irish, but 
 really out of fear of the Ideas. Like meetings assembled in
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 465 
 
 behalf of Poland, in London and Paris. The leaders of the 
 same idea, in different states, are beginning to see eye to 
 eye. Kossuth works for Garibaldi ; Garibaldi sends a proc- 
 lamation to Hungary as he starts for Rome. Victor Hugo 
 and Garibaldi issue proclamations to the Poles. Failure 
 only binds them closer together, and nerves their souls for 
 future victory. As Washington in Virginia, Adams in New 
 England, Hamilton in New York, Franklin in Pennsylvania, 
 and Pinckney in South Carolina, saw the absolute necessity 
 of union for success, so these wise men are working together 
 for one end. As the kings conspire against their peoples, 
 so do these leaders of the people breathe one breath against 
 their oppressors, Union of all, Liberty for all. 
 
 Before this goal is reached, civil war will doubtless break 
 out over the whole Continent. From Belfast to Moscow, 
 from Scotland to Greece, the uprising may be bloody, des- 
 perate, universal. England, the slowest of all European 
 states, is rapidly developing three parties the radical dem- 
 ocrats, radical monarchists, and timid go-betweens, whose 
 sympathies incline them to the former, and fears compel 
 them to the latter. In a late number of the London Watch- 
 man, the organ of the Wesleyan Church, the whole subject 
 is summed up in an article against John Bright. It says, 
 " That 'democracy may rule forever, from ocean to ocean, is 
 a project so precarious, though so vast, that no wonder Mr. 
 Bright's eyes can be so dazzled by it as not to perceive the 
 Red Sea of blood which is now weltering between. We 
 hope that the honorable gentleman, in the lack of other 
 topics, is not about to preach up republicanism in Eng- 
 land." 
 
 The people of Great Britain will follow Bright, or any 
 
 other leader, through that Red Sea to the Canaan of equal 
 
 rights that lies beyond. The very lull in English politics 
 
 which that article notices, is precisely like that which oc- 
 
 30
 
 466 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 curred here as we were approaching 1 the dread crisis. The 
 questions of bank, tariff, foreign population, and papal in- 
 fluence, that had organized great armies under their banners, 
 died out of the public mind, and one sole absorbing theme 
 took their place.* Whether Mr. Bright has the qualities 
 for the leadership in this struggle remains to be seen. He 
 may be too old and too peacefully educated for the full de- 
 mands of the hour. He may be the John Quincy Adams, 
 seeing and saying what others will achieve. Some younger 
 man, whom his sentiments shall inspire, may take up the 
 standard when he pauses, and advance to death and victory. 
 When begun, whosoever first falls will be followed by his 
 destroyer. This lull can only be changed by the coming 
 conflict between aristocracy and democracy first with 
 voice, then, we fear, with arms. The late election portends 
 this future. The voice of the people was low, but it was 
 clear ; never so clear before. Their leaders must come to 
 this issue, or give way to those that will. 
 
 On the Continent is witnessed a like uprising. The king 
 and representatives of Prussia have been in a permanent 
 feud for more than three years. They are getting into 
 closer conflict. He is suppressing liberty of speech, as he 
 has the liberty of the budget. But one issue can come 
 ultimately of the struggle, f Napoleon and Paris are in 
 open opposition. Denmark's late king threatened to trans- 
 form his kingdom into a republic on certain contingencies. 
 Though he failed to keep his promise, his people may not 
 fail to remember it. They may say, "We thank thee, king, 
 for teaching us that word," and proceed to do for th'em- 
 
 * The excitement that has sprung up since, and the center around 
 which it revolved, confirm these views. The ballot has been extended, 
 and a long stride made toward a democratic republic of Great Britain. 
 
 f The vast changes in Prussia are really the triumph of the people. 
 A united Germany insures a German republic. Bismarck discerns this 
 future, and is preparing the way for it.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 467 
 
 selves what he shrank from doing for them. The tongues 
 of fire leaping out of every crevice of the tottering state- 
 craft of Europe, betoken an inextinguishable conflagration. 
 Into this war we may be drawn. 
 
 VII. The many attempts at liberation that have been 
 made for almost a century, have failed, for three reasons : 
 the leaders of the people had no concert of action, while 
 their masters were in close league; they had no sympathy 
 nor guidance from the Church, and, especially, they had 
 no nation to help them, while many nations were banded 
 against them. 
 
 1. The first, as we have seen, is being changed. European 
 democrats feel that as their arms and interests are one, so 
 must their efforts be. But one barrier separates them 
 language ; and that is ceasing to be a barrier. Switzerland, 
 their model in its government, is their representative in its 
 condition. Italian, French, and German almost equally 
 divide their territory. Among the mottoes for a national 
 celebration at Neuchatel, was this : " Our enemies say we 
 speak so many languages they cannot understand us. Let 
 them attack us, and they will find that we have but one 
 tongue the cannon." So will it be with the people of 
 Europe, They will yet speak one word Liberty with 
 one mouth, the cannon, against one foe their masters, for 
 one object a European republic. 
 
 2. The second cause of their prolonged failure lay in the 
 want of sympathy of the Church with their movement. The 
 position of the Church in our Revolution was most valuable. 
 " The opening ball of the Revolution," John Adams pro- 
 nounced young Mayhew's sermon on the Higher Law, that 
 he preached in the West Church, Boston, in 1750, on the 
 anniversary of the execution of Charles I. ; which the Pu- 
 ritans were compelled to recognize, but which he turned 
 into an opportunity of defending the deed, and of inaugural-
 
 468 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 ing our liberties. It took a generation then, as it has in our 
 present revolution, to develop the truths that must, ere 
 they be perfected, bear 
 
 " The blood-red blossom of war, with a heart of fire." 
 
 With him, and after him everywhere, the clergy came to 
 the defense of the great principles of Liberty and Indepen- 
 dence. 
 
 Not alike fortunate was European democracy in its earliest 
 conflicts. The Church was its chief adversary. It was 
 constrained to oppose her in its attempts to obtain its rights. 
 This wrought the scoffing infidelity of Voltaire and Rousseau. 
 This, too, wrought her destruction. An atheistic democracy 
 was more dangerous to the people than a corrupt and slavish 
 priesthood. But to-day this powerful class are joining and 
 leading the people. The dissenting clergy of England are 
 becoming more and more identified with the political, as 
 they have always been with the religious principles of their 
 ancestors, the Puritan ministers of the Commonwealth. 
 The Protestant clergy of France, by their unanimous letter 
 to us of sympathy and encouragement, show themselves fit 
 to guide their great nation in its escape from the Giant 
 Despair castle, where treachery and violence have so long 
 chained and beat it. The archbishops of Greece, first of all 
 in the public ballot signing their names for a Protestant 
 prince, while the constitution forbids any one not of the 
 Orthodox or National Church, to ascend the throne, proved 
 that they are willing to lead their people toward liberty at 
 the expense of a wrongful edict of their constitution. Eleven 
 thousand Italian priests petitioning the Pope to abrogate his 
 temporal sovereignty, proves that Garibaldi has high and 
 numerous helpers in this most, we might almost say only, 
 influential body in that land. The Catholic and Protestant 
 clergy of Hungary are largely identified with the people.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 469 
 
 They refused greater privileges offered by the Austrian gov- 
 ernment than they hoped to obtain in their own independent 
 action. Thus is the Church coming up out of the wilder- 
 ness, the leader aud benefactor of the people. Her con- 
 version will go forward, and insure to the future European 
 republic a stable and Christian triumph. 
 
 3. The last defect we may have to remedy. To save our- 
 selves we may be compelled to save others. We shall then 
 be the inspiring and molding nation that they have long 
 needed. As England molded and inspired all Europe for a 
 quarter of a century to resist and overthrow republicanism in 
 Europe that she might preserve her own aristocratic institu- 
 tions intact, so America, her grander daughter, may have 
 to guide those peoples in a conflict for republicanism, how- 
 ever long, however costly, however bloody. We are the only 
 great nation that represents the sovereignty of the people. 
 We may be compelled to maintain that sovereignty every- 
 where with the sword. They turned our neutrality between 
 themselves and their people into a like neutrality between 
 us and our slave-rnongering rebels. They set at naught a 
 compromise we made, not they, by which, without their so- 
 licitation, we abandoned Europe, and declared this continent 
 should be ours. We must abandon a vow, that we should 
 have never made, to confine ourselves to this hemisphere. 
 England is nearer than Mexico, France than South America. 
 We may have to carry freedom there, in return for their 
 attempt to bring slavery here. Mr. Sumner in his speech 
 on our foreign relations, more than suggests this issue. He 
 describes the armed intervention of Cromwell in favor of the 
 Walensians, in words that glow with a kindred enthusiasm 
 for the like oppressed, and struggling, and despoiled Hun- 
 garians, Venetians, and Romans of to-day. He says, 
 
 " A mightier pen than that of any plodding secretary was enlisted in 
 this pious intervention. It was John Milton, glowing with that indigna-
 
 470 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 tion which his sonnet on the massacre in Piemart has made immortal 
 in the heart of man, who wrote the magnificent despatches in which the 
 English nation of that day, after declaring itself ' linked together with its 
 distant brethren, not only by the same type of humanity, but by joint 
 communion of the same religion,' naturally and gloriously insisted that 
 whatever had been decreed to their disturbance on account of the re- 
 formed religion should be abrogated, and that an end be put to their 
 oppressions." 
 
 He shows that Cromwell was not content with mere pro- 
 nunciamentos, but sought to enlist the Protestant powers in 
 their favor, and proceeds, before such a league can be ef- 
 fected, to intervene with arms. This martial display wrought 
 the desired end. Had it not, the flag of St. George and the 
 Cross would have waved in the mountains of Savoy, beside 
 the banners of persecuted Protestantism, for the cause of 
 Liberty of the Soul. Of this event, Mr. Sumner makes the 
 following pregnant application. In his concluding passages, 
 after describing our relation as a Republic to the European 
 monarchies, he adds, 
 
 " Born in this latter day, and the child of its own struggles, without 
 ancestral claims, but heir of all the ages, it will stand forth to assert 
 the dignity of man, and wherever any member of the human family is to 
 be succored, there its voice will reach, as the voice of Cromwell reached 
 across France, even to the persecuted mountaineers of the Alps. Such 
 will be this Republic upstart among the nations. Ay, as the steam- 
 engine, the telegraph, and chloroform are upstart. Comforter and helper 
 like these, it can know no bounds to its empire over a willing world." 
 
 Even if this third element be kept from the seething 
 caldron of European politics, so far as armed intervention is 
 concerned, the other components will unceasingly disturb 
 and ultimately dissolve their thrones. If we refuse to hear 
 the cries of those who are " linked together with us by the 
 same type of humanity and by joint communion of the same " 
 political faith, our institutions and success will fight for 
 them.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY. 471 
 
 The two ideas are abroad in the earth ; they are wrestling 
 for the crown of the world. Democracy has clothed itself 
 with continental thunders, is regnant in a mighty state. The 
 world is too small for two such hostile systems to hold equal 
 sovereignty. All peoples are fast becoming one people. 
 They can have but one system of government. It must be 
 that of themselves. We are its divinely appointed rep- 
 resentatives and defenders. We may be its divinely armed 
 and appointed propagandists. 
 
 Such is the clear, unanswerable logic of principles, the 
 necessary precursor of the more evident but not more certain 
 logic of events. Our propositions are stronger than Euclid's. 
 They are the mathematics of humanity, of morals, of the 
 Spirit of God. 
 
 Thus stand the relations, past, present, and future, of Amer- 
 ica to Europe, its kings and its peoples. The first century 
 of our nationality is rapidly concluding. It is a century of 
 greater progress in political thought and life than any, in 
 some respects, than all its predecessors. In all this activity 
 America is foremost. She is a sign that is spoken against. 
 Yea, a sword has pierced through her own soul also, that the 
 thoughts of mafcy hearts, at home and abroad, may be re- 
 vealed. Many states have already risen, and fallen, and 
 risen again under her involuntary influence. That influence 
 is but just begun. If she casts off the grevious sin that has 
 beset her, if she humbles herself before her God and Savior, 
 if she carries out faithfully her own principles of equality 
 and fraternity through all her social and civil life, ignoring 
 distinctions of color as she does those of language and 
 birthplace, she will stand forth, under Christ, the redeemer 
 and mistress of the world. The enslaved of Europe will hail 
 her midday glory with greater acclamations than they have 
 her dawning beauty. They will struggle the more fiercely in 
 their chains. They will snap them asunder. We are set
 
 472 THE WORLD WAR. 
 
 for the fall of tyrants and the rising of the nations. Our in- 
 fluence will not be confined to this continent, but will renew 
 and unite the world. The nations that have so long sat in 
 darkness, and have now seen the great light, will come to 
 that light, and kings to the brightness of its rising. Thus 
 and then will wars cease to the end of the earth, the mil- 
 lennial glory rest upon the world-republic, and universal 
 liberty, equality, and brotherhood bring universal peace.
 
 THE END NEAK.* 
 
 " THE MORNING COMETH." Isaiah xxi. 12. 
 
 " THROUGH THE TENDER MERCY OF OUR GOD, WHEREBY THE DAY- 
 SPRING FROM ON HIGH HATH VISITED US." Luke L 78. 
 
 FTER a long, long night of clouds, and darkness, 
 and storm, thunderings, and lightnings, and tem- 
 pests of blood, with faint gleamings of the muf- 
 fled stars at times, to show us that the heavens 
 still abide, yet with no grayness even betokening the actual 
 dawn, suddenly we see the " King of Day rejoicing in the 
 East." The shadows flee, the golden glory covers the hori- 
 zon, and shoots its radiance across the whole heavens. Even 
 the blindest bats of night, that beat their leathery wings 
 and eyeless heads against the walls of the national temple, 
 confess that something bright and beautiful is stealing over 
 their feeble senses. They know not what it means or is. 
 For they have torn out their eyes with their own claws. 
 They feel a warmth, a sunniness, pervading their spirits, 
 that compels their unwilling recognition of the coming day: 
 But these poor, darkened creatures apart, the people see 
 
 * A sermon preached in Boston on the day of National Thanksgiving 
 for General Sherman's capture of Atlanta, September 11, 18G4. 
 
 (473)
 
 474 THE END NEAR. 
 
 the light, and rejoice in it, and hasten to the brightness of 
 its rising. Most true in this case was the familiar saying 
 verified the darkest hour is just before day. Last July 
 and August were probably the gloomiest months since the 
 night of war closed us in. Our armies lay in their trenches 
 while marauding bands vexed their rear. Our mines ex- 
 ploded only to our loss and not the enemy's. The North was 
 invaded, and triumphantly trampled by robbing feet. For 
 the first time since the war the enemy cut off our commu- 
 nications with the capital, and defiantly approached its very 
 gates. Our villages were sacked and burned to the ground. 
 Gold leaped up to three hundred. Provisions and wares 
 followed at a yet swifter pace. The earth burned like an 
 oven. Nature, too, lay sick with a fever, and seemed to 
 be dying with the dying nation. And, as a fitting crown of 
 all the calamities, thousands upon thousands of traitors, a 
 generation of vipers, " a coil voluminous and vast," assem- 
 bled in one of our greatest cities, the especial symbol and 
 proof of the magnificent workings of our free institutions, 
 on the birthday of our first great traitor, Benedict Arnold, 
 great, but far less than these his children, and there under 
 the guidance of men who had been openly consulting with 
 our open foes for months before, with jubilant and hopeful 
 hearts, plotted the dismemberment, the reenslavement of 
 the nation nay, not plotted, boldly exulted in her ruin.* 
 Through the words of one who had once been placed by 
 the nation in its highest seat, they defied the government 
 to prevent traitors from seizing and controlling the polls, 
 declared the only rebellion in the land to be that of the 
 rulers against the people, spoke no word of reprobation 
 against those who for more than three years have struck 
 terrific blows at thte national life, and but for God's right 
 arm would have long since cast it as dead among the nations 
 as Egypt or Korne. Such was the dreadful record of those 
 
 * The Chicago Democratic Presidential Convention.
 
 THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 475 
 
 burning months ; drouth in the heavens and on the earth, 
 the war hanging dubious, weakness in the hearts of the 
 people, and treason stalking boldly through all the land. 
 
 " The red-ribbed ledges dripped with a silent horror of blood; 
 Echo, whatever was asked her, answered, ' Death.' " 
 
 Yet, lo ! almost in the twinkling of an eye, the scene 
 changes. The heavy clouds not only seemed to shut out 
 the day, but to proclaim an everlasting night the night 
 of death and national destruction. Beasts of prey roamed 
 everywhere through our land. Their hideous howls af- 
 frighted our ears. Across the continent rolled their can- 
 non. The grave yawned, and multitudes of ghosts of cow- 
 ards and traitors went gibbering through the streets. 
 
 And now we cry, the morning cometh ! the blessed 
 morning of peace and liberty ! It is really breaking. These 
 are no cold, deceitful, auroral beams betokening a deepening 
 winter. They are the true dayspring. The Dayspring from 
 on high is visiting us. The present Thanksgiving Procla- 
 mation of the President has a more confident and cheerful 
 tone than any of its predecessors. He penetrates the 
 dread entangled forest. This valley of the shadow of death, 
 with its fiery, flying serpents hissing and stinging, with its 
 darkness, and storms, and desolation, its groans and death, 
 how dark, how woful, how deadly ; he can almost see 
 through it. Dangers yet stand as thick around him as ser- 
 ried soldiers, but a glimmering comes through the strait 
 and narrow way that he is steadfastly pursuing, which be- 
 speaks a blue sky, peaceful fields, and the light of heaven. 
 
 With these encouragements we are invited to assemble 
 in our respective places of worship, and offer thanksgiving 
 to God for His mercy in preserving our national existence 
 against the insurgent rebels, who have been waging a civil 
 war against the government of the United States for its 
 overthrow. And surely no locality is more worthy of our
 
 476 THE END NEAK. 
 
 assemblage than this. We are within a few rods of the 
 spot where John Adams declared that the opening gun of 
 the Revolution was fired. Where a young minister, in a 
 city subject to a foreign power, and with all its wealth, 
 office, and influence supporting that power, dared to preach 
 a sermon on the Higher Law, defying that power in the 
 name of his God, and first starting in the mind of this city 
 the doctrine of Independence. To the same mind was due 
 the other focus of our orbit, the body of which Indepen- 
 dence was the soul, Union. Both came from one brain, 
 and his a minister's. For while meditating upon the discon- 
 nected, and hence useless efforts, of the patriots of Massa- 
 chusetts and Virginia, New York and South Carolina, as he 
 was preparing to go to an association of ministers, he 
 thought, Why not have such an association of patriots ? why 
 not of provinces ? He instantly wrote his thought to John 
 Adams, and the Union then first began to be. With such 
 auspices hanging over us, we cannot be untimely in con- 
 sidering the great, duties of the hour as Christians, as 
 men. 
 
 But what proof have you, some half-hearted, perhaps 
 some over-cautious soul may say, that the night is far spent? 
 Are not the rebels yet firm and undaunted ? Are they not 
 armed, and organized, and active ? Have they not posses- 
 sion of their original capital ? Do they not yet rule in 
 Charleston ? What are your signs of promise ? Let us 
 put them into one bird's-eye view. 
 
 Suppose Jefferson Davis had been able to carry out his 
 boasted threat at Montgomery before the opening of the 
 war that if war should come from secession, it was the 
 North and not the South should be its theatre; we "should 
 smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel." Suppose 
 that in carrying out this threat New York had been taken
 
 THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 477 
 
 by his armies within a year after that time, and had been 
 kept in their grasp firmly to this hour, while two South 
 Carolina generals had been its actual governors ; suppose 
 the Mississippi had been opened to its fountain, and St. 
 Louis, and all the cities were in their hands ; suppose an 
 army had penetrated into New England, and secured Spring- 
 field, the center of our railroads, and the chief depot of our 
 military stores, and had annihilated, by the same act, the 
 last but one of our great armies ; suppose that every one 
 of our seaports was captured or invested, leaving only New 
 London as a place where we could smuggle in a few of the 
 necessary supplies for our army and our people ; suppose 
 that Boston was half burned, Fort Warren a chaotic mass 
 of brick and stone, the lower half of this city, including 
 its shipping, warehouses, and stores, up even to Tre- 
 mont Street, all in ashes and abandoned, and that daily in 
 our more retired portions" the deadly shell should drop from 
 the enemy's vessels which filled the outer harbor ; suppose 
 that gold had long since ceased to be an article of trade, 
 and that our greenbacks had become so worthless that it 
 took eight hundred dollars of them to buy a barrel of flour ; 
 suppose that Washington had been held in close siege for 
 four months ; that Lee had earned out his contemplated 
 invasion of the North last spring ; that on May last he had 
 drawn Grant back from Fredericksburg, from Culpepper, 
 from Manassas, and had thrown his troops around the south, 
 and east, and north of the city, leaving only the west open ; 
 suppose that he had clung to this position ever since the 
 middle of May, now throwing himself on one side of the 
 Potomac and now the other, and, at last, by a sudden move- 
 ment, had got possession of the Baltimore Railroad, from 
 which assaults after assaults on our part were unable to dis- 
 lodge him ; suppose that provisions had risen in that city 
 to famine prices, and even then our people, and our soldiers 
 too, had scarcely nothing to eat : should we not think our
 
 478 THE END NEAR. 
 
 end was near? Should we not prepare to accept any terms 
 our victors might demand ? This is an exact picture of 
 the rebellion to-day. Its state is even worse than this. 
 Three of their States are supporting the administration 
 through military governments Tennessee, Arkansas, and 
 Louisiana. Only Eastern Virginia and the Carolinas are 
 able to retain any efficient hold upon their peoples. 
 
 If every north-west State was thus ruled by military gov- 
 ernors of the confederacy ; if Pennsylvania and half of New 
 York were theirs ; if only Massachusetts, eastern New York, 
 and the State between were ours, the parallel would be 
 complete. Study your map, and your faith and patriotism 
 will have free course and be glorified. 
 
 But if the night be so far spent, what is our duty ? 
 
 1. Not to desert our posts. The morning is coming, but 
 is not come. Should the watchmen engaged in protecting 
 your houses and stores desert their posts at the first gray 
 glimpse of dawn, your city would instantly swarm with 
 thieves and murderers. They would rush out from their 
 dens and coverts, whither they had been driven by your pro- 
 tectors, and lay waste and destroy. So if we slacken our 
 arm, if we withdraw our troops, if, as some traitorously 
 advise, we throw open our doors to their murderous feet, 
 instantly they would swarm from every hole in the South 
 where they are now shut up. They would rush to the Po- 
 tomac. They would slay every Union man, white and black, 
 in that whole region. They would open their ports to for- 
 eign emissaries and associates. They would assume their 
 old defiant attitude with yet greater defiance, while we, 
 craven of spirit, would hide ourselves from them, as we 
 should from armed rioters, if they had possession of this 
 city. 
 
 No, the only duty is to fight it out on this line, if it takes 
 the whole century. There is no release in this war except 
 by the death of its cause. There should be no relaxing of
 
 THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 479 
 
 our efforts to compel their complete subjugation. The army 
 should overflow with soldiers. The exhausted fighters, 
 through this long, long night, should be encouraged by the 
 faces of their friends thronging to their support. The young 
 men, untrammeled by family cares and duties, should fly to 
 the field. When Burgoyne seemed almost in the net which 
 Schuyler, and afterwards Gates, had prepared for him, he 
 was intrapped only by the multitudes that flocked to their 
 banners. So when their last great army is penned up in 
 its first stronghold, everybody that can leave his home and 
 handle a musket should swell the heroic ranks, and see this 
 huge, amorphous sin die its eternal death. 
 
 2. But our duty is also to support the government 
 with our voice and vote at home. Every presidential elec- 
 tion is important, but none has been so important as this. 
 It was vastly important that the gigantic slave power should 
 be opposed by the people ; that the great national uprising 
 should be indeed an uprising, not a mere rolling over in sin- 
 ful and slavish slumber. Therefore all the preliminary con- 
 tests for liberty for twenty years were vital. It was vital 
 that Birney should be nominated and voted for in 1840. 
 Unless the child was born, it could never become the strong 
 man. Unless the sentiment against slavery had condensed 
 itself into political form then, it might not have conquered 
 yet. For four presidential canvasses it was the subject of 
 insult, of scorn, of neglect, and in the minds of few wise 
 enemies, of fear. Said John C. Calhoun, " While aboli- 
 tionism contents itself with talking, we are in no danger ; 
 when it begins to vote, we are dead." Yet not till 1856, 
 till arrogance after arrogance had been successfully exhib- 
 ited by the slave power, till the right of petition in Con- 
 gress, freedom of the mails, rights of citizens in Southern 
 ports, rights of pleadings of State against State in the 
 Supreme Courts, the freedom of territory north of 36 30' 
 beyond -the Mississippi, the right of fugitives from slavery
 
 480 THE END NEAK. 
 
 to their liberty, the rights of any man of any portion of 
 African descent in the courts of the nation, had been all 
 stricken down, a foreign state invaded and dismembered in 
 the interests of slavery, members of Congress smitten for 
 declaiming against the monster, a war waged with all the 
 powers of the government for the subjugation of liberty in 
 Kansas ; not until these assaults on the national ideas and 
 life had been committed could the people be sufficiently 
 aroused to see their sin and their danger, and to de- 
 clare their purpose to return to the old paths. Even then 
 they failed to see it. Many honest men hoped for other 
 ways of escape than by confronting in battle of leagued and 
 banded States. 
 
 Another four years in the wilderness and Canaan was 
 reached, the Jordan crossed, and the tribes of God in pos- 
 session of His inheritance. Then came the long and bloody 
 struggle, as with them after the passage of the Jordan. 
 Pour years of war and we appear again in our tribes to 
 choose our ruler. Some say, " Enough of war ! Let us 
 make peace with the rebels. Any peace that will insure 
 Union, or that will not." Joshua and his lieutenants are 
 objects of unspeakable abuse. What shall the people do ? 
 Shall they elect a chieftain who will make terms with the 
 idolatrous Canaanites, whereby one half of the territory 
 wrested from them shall be restored to their control ? Shall 
 we give up Jericho, so miraculously conferred upon us, or 
 Ai, for which we so bloodily contended, or Bethoron, down 
 whose steeps we pursued the hostile chiefs in rout and 
 ruin, while God held the light for us in the heavens to 
 enable us to complete the work ? Shall we restore the 
 Gibeonites, to whom we have made solemn pledges, into the 
 hands of their enemies, who will reduce them to bondage, 
 and waste them with furious slaughter? "0, yes. Depose 
 Joshua, and elect some one of those who cowardly advised 
 against taking possession of the land. Depose him, and
 
 THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 481 
 
 appoint one who shall secure for us a dishonorable peace 
 and an everlasting war." 
 
 In such a crisis every lover of God and his country has 
 but one duty to do. He must stand by Joshua. Treason 
 in the camp is as fatal as the foe on the field. He must 
 bear aloft the banner of liberty and righteousness, unfurled 
 twenty-four years ago, and never to be laid up till the vic- 
 tory is entirely won. 
 
 Some object to the political canvass at such an hour. 
 Yet it has its advantages. It allows the country to say 
 whether it has confidence in its own principles and purposes. 
 Had the vote been taken in this nation in 1719, at the darkest 
 moment in our history, after three years of almost unsuc- 
 cessful war, whether George Washington should still head 
 the armies of the republic, and John Adams its Congress, 
 it would have encouraged them more than a score of victo- 
 ries, and paralyzed the arm of their oppressors more than a 
 hundred defeats, to have had the people, by an immense 
 majority, declare their purpose to support their heroic lead- 
 ers unto the end. So will it inspire our soldiers with fresh 
 courage, stagger our enemies more than the loss of ten 
 Atlantas, and cause the whole world to settle down into 
 the conviction of the intense earnestness of the American 
 people, if we reelect our leader to the seat he has so ably 
 filled. 
 
 The Church should unite as one man in this exigency. 
 Prayers should go up daily for success in this election. 
 Her salvation depends upon her faithfulness. She has had 
 much to do with this revival of pure and undefiled religion. 
 From the beginning her children have been found fighting 
 for the cause of liberty and of man. She did more to de- 
 velop the sentiment that was crowned in the elections of 
 1860 than all other influences combined. The great revival 
 was a fitting and necessary prelude to that great election. 
 Let her continue faithful and the work is done. Let her 
 31
 
 482 THE END NEAR. 
 
 once more march to the ballot-box, an army of Christ, with 
 the banners of the Cross, and deposit, as she can, a million 
 of votes for her true representative, and she will give the 
 last blow to the reeling 1 fiend ; she will keep, where she 
 belongs, in the fore front of the nation in civil and social 
 righteousness ; she will be stronger to assail the fortress of 
 religious error, and to effect the renewal of the land in 
 holiness. 
 
 If she refuses this duty, if she listens to the siren voice 
 of a seductive but fatal peace, if she is beguiled from her 
 steadfastness by those who hate her with an unblushing and 
 ferocious hatred, who in every bar-room and gambling hole 
 throughout the land to-day are heaping upon her all manner 
 of curses and revilings because she is true to the cause of 
 God and man if she shall league with these, her fate is 
 sealed. She goes down, with Jerusalem of old, into dust and 
 desolation. Her enemies mock at her, crucify her, kill her, 
 and God will grant her no resurrection. The Church must 
 do her duty in this hour, and that duty is, by every righteous 
 means in her power to secure the reelection of Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
 3. But a third duty of the hour is, to maintain the whole 
 truth as to the questions at issue in this conflict. The 
 morning cometh, but a higher morning is also breaking upon 
 the land. When the women were hastening to Christ's 
 sepulcher on the morning of His resurrection there was a 
 rosy flush upon the Mount of Olives. How gay and glad 
 danced the flames upon the distant hills of Moab ! How 
 bright the face of Nature ! Trees were rustling in their new 
 spring robes, flowers were pouring forth their fragrance on 
 the balmy air, birds were filling the sky with their matin 
 music. They, perhaps, felt that the outward glory did not 
 well conform with the inner darkness. The sun should still 
 be darkened. It should rise every day in the garments of
 
 THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 483 
 
 mourning which it assumed in those dread hours of the 
 previous Friday. But when they come to the sepulcher 
 and find the stone rolled away, and the Savior arisen, they 
 see with their souls' eyes why the sun seems to dance in 
 the heavens, and the birds emulate the angelic chorus, and 
 trees drop balm, while 
 
 " Flowers laugh before them in their beds 
 And fragrance in their footing tre'ads." 
 
 Another morn had broke upon the world, a divine, eternal 
 morn, of which this earthly and perishable one was but a 
 feeble emblem. 
 
 So if we will lift up our eyes we shall behold another 
 morning breaking on the land. The Dayspring from on 
 high is visiting us. Peace comes with healing on her wings. 
 There might have been a peace full of infamy, full of calam- 
 ity, a peace that came from cowardice, that created disunion, 
 that was sure to be the fruitful parent of unceasing war. 
 Not such shall we see if faithful to the new sun that is now 
 arising. This day began to dawn more than two years ago. 
 When the President, in March, 1862, issued a proclamation 
 to the Border States, urging them to abolish slavery with 
 national compensation, and informed them that in case they 
 did not, its abolishment might come from another quarter, 
 then the day began to break ; that was the first' gray ray 
 which pierced the involving dark. When six months later 
 he announced emancipation in all the rebellious region, if, 
 after three months' warning, they did not return to their 
 allegiance, the grayness became golden. The east was 
 ruddy with the rushing dawn. And when, on January 1, 
 1863, he proclaimed their liberty in all the land, and re- 
 quired the army to welcome them as such, the first segment 
 of the solid globe of fire appeared above the horizon. The 
 enrolling and arming of the slave, the abolishment of in-
 
 484 THE END NEAR. 
 
 vidious distinctions of color in courts and cars, are further 
 evidences that a true and glorious day is breaking ; a day 
 that no night shall follow, and in which peace shall 
 be one with brotherhood ; in which true democracy, the 
 rights and fraternity of all men, shall be universally recog- 
 nized and practiced. When there shall be no school to 
 prepare white men to rule colored regiments, but such regi- 
 ments shall be abolished, and men, without distinction of 
 color, rule and serve in all the armies of the republic ; when 
 there shall be no white nor colored churches, but all in Christ 
 shall be one in Christ. 
 
 This morning is dawning. Thanks be to God. This is 
 more than the victory of Farragut and Sherman. Far 
 greater is he that conquereth his own spirit than he that 
 taketh a city. If the nation shall conquer its own proud, 
 rebellious, unbrotherly spirit, it will do a far greater work 
 for God and man than if it should annihilate every hostile 
 power in the world. We know that work is the most dif- 
 ficult. Let us address ourselves to it, therefore, the most 
 diligently. 
 
 While we do the first and second works, supporting the 
 army and the government, let us not leave this undone. 
 
 Let us labor and pray that the only divine morning may 
 indeed come. Our fathers had a rosy peace, but it was only 
 for an earthly day. We found twilight fast gathering over 
 it when this generation appeared' on the stage of action. That 
 disastrous twilight deepened into night a night of storm 
 and darkness ; a night like that in Egypt, in which every 
 household has sent forth exceeding great and bitter cries, for 
 in every house has been one dead. We are emerging again 
 into day. Shall it be like the other, a day of earth, stormy and 
 brief? or shall it be a day of heaven, calm and eternal ? That 
 depends entirely on our faithfulness to the principles of God 
 and His Gospel. Mr. Seward declares that if peace comes,
 
 THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 485 
 
 slavery, as well as all other questions, must adjust them- 
 selves to that basis. If by this he means that this nation is 
 not to uproot slavery, and caste, its tap-root, then will our 
 peace be brief and worthless. If by it he means that these 
 duties must go forward under the new conditions, it is well, 
 but go forward they must, or we go backward. Our fathers 
 made much more rapid progress in the storms of the Revolu- 
 tion than in the peace that followed. We must beware that 
 our morning is not darker than our night. Fearful as that 
 has been, the eye of God has shone upon us, as it did upon 
 the Israelites in the tempest's gloom and destruction of the 
 Red Sea. We have 
 
 " Touched God's right hand in the darkness, 
 And been lifted up and strengthened." 
 
 Go forward in that strength. Cleanse yourselves, and 
 prepare for the duties of the coming day. The light is not 
 given as a luxury, not for idle saunterings, but for labor. 
 Man goeth forth to his work when the sun comes out of 
 his chambers. We have a great and glorious work to do. 
 We have our land to cleanse from its sins, to deliver from 
 its enemies, to make the glory of all lands. We must 
 educate this people so that all nations may seek after the 
 same likeness and image. We must take the foreigners, who 
 are rushing by thousands, and will by tens of thousands, to 
 our shores, and inspire them with the gospel of truth and 
 brotherhood. 
 
 The war draws near its end. In forty days, we might 
 almost say, and Richmond shall be overthrown. With her 
 vanishes the last rebellious army from the field, and the last 
 hope from their breast. As Lord North, when tidings were 
 brought to him of the capture of Cornwallis, threw up his 
 arms as though a bullet had pierced his breast, and pacing 
 up and down his apartments, exclaimed wildly, " God, it
 
 486 THE END NEAR. 
 
 is all over!" thus will the grand instigator of this unlaw- 
 ful war cry out as he flees from his proud citadel to hide 
 his dishonored head when the conquering armies of Union 
 and Liberty shall enter Richmond. 
 
 See to it that the third word is added, Fraternity, or, 
 as sure as there is a God in heaven, there will be another war 
 in America; a war more fierce, more bloody, more fatal than 
 this a war of races and of extermination. Justice and 
 brotherly kindness can alone prevent this sun from going 
 down. They can. Let us so live and labor that the peace 
 and the nation shall be perpetual, universal, celestial. 
 
 It may seem improper to prognosticate evil when the 
 good is breaking upon us, but truth is truth. Our fathers 
 would have cried out at him who, on the day of Thanksgiv- 
 ing for the capture of Yorktown, had declared that unless 
 they abolished slavery there would come upon. their children 
 a fiercer war than the one from whose red waves they saw 
 themselves emerging. And yet he would have told them 
 the truth. Liberty for all has had to be purchased at a 
 great price, because they would not then bestow it freely 
 upon all. So our war has established universal liberty. I 
 have not the least doubt that slavery, under no subterfuge 
 of compromise and complicity, can long live. Should the 
 rebels succeed, should Mr. Lincoln be defeated, slavery 
 must die. But Fraternity, the oneness of man, is yet an 
 unsolved problem in this land. Our hearts still hate our 
 brothers still we thrust them from our arms. We have 
 not half completed this work of regeneration. We have 
 hardly begun it. 
 
 It must be begun, it must be completed, or a future war 
 grows out of the seeds of an imperfect peace. We must 
 conquer our prejudices, or God will again cast us into weak- 
 ness and agony. Be assured that this word is of God. It 
 is written on every page of His Bible, on every page of
 
 THE CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. 487 
 
 history, on every promise of the future. Man can exist on 
 the earth happily, righteously, divinely, only as one. Five 
 millions of our brethren held insoluble amid thirty or one 
 hundred millions, can only disturb, and, unless cured, will 
 destroy the body politic. They must be treated without 
 special consideration or contempt ; without special exclu- 
 sion or inclusion. The sons of the first parent differed : 
 the. older despised the younger, and hence death and dis- 
 union to this hour. We must go back to Eden. We must 
 say, and show it as a natural trait, 
 
 " That every person who shall lift again 
 His tongue against his brother, on his forehead 
 Shall wear forevermore the curse of Cain." 
 
 Gird on, then, the armor for God and your Country for 
 Liberty, and Union, and Fraternity. The day breaks, the 
 shadows flee. Ere long the last grand note of triumph will 
 fly through the land, over the seas. The dragon is broken 
 in the midst of the waters. Slavery is gone down forever. 
 The power that four years ago defied the whole world 
 that said to America, " Submit, or we will destroy you ; " 
 that said to Europe, " Acknowledge us or your people 
 shall starve in their huts, your factories be silent, your 
 ships rot at you wharves ; " that said to itself, " We 
 have climbed to the top of human sovereignty the South, 
 the East, the West, the North are ours." Where is it 
 now ? " Perished from the earth it has so long so griev- 
 iously cursed." Hallelujah ! the Lord God omnipotent 
 reigneth ! 
 
 One more blow on his accursed brow by our soldiers, one 
 more by every patriot arm at the ballot-box, and he lies dead 
 forever. He enters history, cruel as the burning Moloch, 
 vile as the wanton Baal, proud as the imperious Satan,
 
 488 THE END NEAR. 
 
 the demon of America cast out forever from the earth, 
 thrust down forever to the lowest hell. 
 
 "Up then, in Freedom's manly part, 
 
 From gray-beard eld to fiery youth, 
 And on the nation's naked heart 
 
 Scatter the burning coals of Truth. 
 Now break the chain the yoke remove, 
 
 And smite to earth oppression's rod, 
 With those mild arms of Truth and Love, 
 
 Made mighty through the living God."
 
 THE WONDERFUL TEAK/ 
 
 " THE TEAR OF THE RIGHT HAND OF THE MOST HlGH." Ps. IxxiH. 10. 
 
 HE year 1666 was long known in British annals as 
 Annus Mirabilis, The Wonderful Year. Dryden 
 celebrated its marvels in one of his ablest poems. 
 Yet its wonders consisted solely in a few forgot- 
 ten victories over the Dutch and the great fire of London. 
 Much more will the year 1864 stand forth in our annals as 
 wonderful. 
 
 The year naturally divides itself in two parts our prog- 
 ress in arms, our greater progress in principles. Let us 
 first consider the least, though the seeming greatest. 
 
 I. Our military progress is a cause of the highest national 
 exultation. One year ago our situation was far inferior to 
 what it is to-day. We held, under menace, Chattanooga 
 and the Rapidan. We were beleaguered in Knoxville ; a 
 proud and confident foe ranged through the valleys of East 
 Tennessee. We were holding foolish revelry in New Or- 
 leans, while the enemy, growling and hungry, were prowl- 
 ing through the whole interior, and often upon the banks 
 
 A sermon preached in Boston, January 1, 1865. 
 
 (489)
 
 490 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 of the Mississippi, looked in contemptuously upon our silly 
 junketings. Great activity prevailed through the hostile 
 region in the recruiting of their armies and the replenishing 
 of their military stores. Never were their ranks so full ; 
 never their cannon so numerous ; never their muskets so 
 many and so good ; never their spirits or their stock so 
 high. They were sure that this year would conclude the 
 war in their favor. Their friends, here and abroad, were 
 not the less sanguine. Six times had we sought, under as 
 many different commanders, to break the line of their Rich- 
 mond approaches, and each time had been bloodily repulsed. 
 
 The opening of the year was disastrous. Our gay and 
 festive army at New Orleans abandoned its gayety and fes- 
 tivity for a season, and sailed pompously out, down the 
 coast of Texas, only to sail back again, shorn of their 
 pomp, but not their vanity. Again they essay a land attack ; 
 and, like Braddock in the equipage of a muster field, with 
 trains of cotton speculators in their ranks or rear, they 
 march into the deadly ambuscades of Shreveport. The 
 scattered fragments pick their perilous way back to the 
 hilarious city, and the conquered hero comes North to 
 receive an ovation from his exultant fellow-citizens. At 
 Chattanooga the results were equally disastrous. We had 
 sought to move out southward, only to be surprised and 
 nearly annihilated at the bloody streamlet of Chickamauga. 
 One wing and one chieftain alone preserved us from com- 
 plete destruction the same chief that has just crowned 
 himself with fresh and unfading glory in his utter annihi- 
 lation at Nashville of the same army that there so nearly 
 routed ours. 
 
 Driven back into Chattanooga, the enemy had followed, 
 and the hills about the city were covered with the insulting 
 foe. The railroads were under their control ; means of 
 subsistence had failed ; their shot and shell dropped daily 
 into a defenceless camp, and the extinction of the army of
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 491 
 
 the Cumberland was daily expected would soon have been 
 consummated. From this calamity General Grant had saved 
 us ; and under his bold generals had stormed the hights of 
 Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, and forced the foe 
 back from the bloody fords of Chickamauga. Here he had 
 paused ; and here only did a gleam of sunshine glitter upon 
 our bayonets till more than a third of the year had passed. 
 Nay, so thick was the darkness, that as late as May our 
 fortified posts on the North Carolina coast were attacked, 
 and all but Newbern captured. Forrest made sacred forever 
 the waters of the Mississippi with the blood of our massa- 
 cred soldiers blood that, flowing from dusky veins, gave 
 the stream the holy redness of our flag of national freedom 
 and fraternity the holier redness of the heart of Christ. 
 With insolent ferocity he raged through Kentucky, and 
 made good his boast that he would water his horses in the 
 Ohio. Of our three armies, one was annihilated, one barely 
 holding its own in the heart of the rebellion, and the last, 
 long considered the first, held at bay in the same spot, 
 beyond which it had essayed for three years in vain to 
 march. 
 
 Now witness the contrast. In these eight months we 
 have thrown our army upon Richmond, and held it there. 
 Steadily have we pushed our lines around the fated city, 
 and the line once formed has never been broken. In a 
 series of battles that have had no equal on this continent, 
 and no superior on any, have we won our way to its gates. 
 Its chief line of communication is sundered. Its army, cooped 
 up within its walls, is constrained to helplessly behold the 
 overthrow of its coordinate armies in other sections of the 
 field. Its general, by far the greatest, almost the only 
 great one in its service, looks painfully on the desolations 
 that are made in the very heart of his territory, but with 
 no power to stay the march of the desolator. He awaits 
 in sullen silence his own steadily approaching doom. The
 
 492 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 troops that lay in Chattanooga, helpless under the fiery 
 shower from the surrounding summits, now look upon the 
 blue sea, in possession of the second commercial seat of the 
 rebellion, after a fierce and deadly march of over two hun- 
 dred miles, to the seat of the armaments and military fac- 
 tories of the rebellion, and with a subsequent march of three 
 hundred miles, most agreeable, most peaceful, most tri- 
 umphant. 
 
 The deluded foe seeks to take vengeance by recapturing 
 one of its own cities, that it now with a prophetic instinct 
 calls ours, only to meet with complete and everlasting de- 
 struction. Thus rests the field to-day. One repulse alone 
 shades the picture that of Wilmington ; offset, however, 
 by the victory of Farragut at Mobile, who shows that on 
 the sea, as with England in the days of Nelson, we have 
 one captain that always conquers. To him the two re- 
 maining posts of the rebellion may bow, as the two greatest 
 have, unless Sherman captures them by land as he has 
 Savannah. 
 
 In this military review we should not fail to see the dif- 
 ferent status of affairs between this winter and last, in the 
 langour that invades the spirits and the purposes of the re- 
 bellious leaders. A year ago they were alive with activity. 
 The conscription was everywhere gathering in its strong 
 grasp their idle or cowardly subjects. They were a unit 
 in purpose and in action. To-day distractions rule their 
 counsels, inactivity pervades their movements ; no new 
 levies, except those of slaves ; no new armies springing out 
 the earth to cope with our victorious legions ; the faintness, 
 the chill, the tremor, the horror of death invade this huge, 
 tyrannic frame. The Giant Despair rages in blind passion, 
 and staggers to his eternal doom. 
 
 How dark was the prospect last May. How impenetra- 
 ble the gloom of last August the darkest month of the 
 whole war. How wonderful the brightness of this new
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABHAHAM LINCOLN. 493 
 
 year's morning. Surely must we exclaim, with most hum- 
 ble, most grateful hearts, Thy right arm, Lord, hath gotten 
 us the victory ! 
 
 H. But other and greater victories await our attention. 
 The triumphs of principles surpass those of arms. 
 
 One of the most important battles ever fought among 
 men was waged in the late Presidential contest. Over 
 myriads of leagues the combatants contended. Three thou- 
 sand miles, from ocean to ocean, the line of battle stretched. 
 Three millions of soldiers were in the field. The gage of 
 battle was equally grand. Not only the life of a nation, 
 but the life of humanity, hung trembling in the balance of 
 the hour. Milton's imagination is of the sublimest order ; 
 yet his description of the war in heaven excels not the 
 plain statements of the actual events that have transpired 
 in America to-day. Were he living at this hour, and in 
 this land, in his moments of repose from the duties to which 
 his patriot soul would devote itself, his pen would revel 
 in the grandeur of the scenes that have moved forward 
 under our half-apprehensive eyes. It will assume its place 
 in history as one of the last turning points, may we hope, 
 in that divine highway which is being cast up among men, 
 and which ends in the 
 
 " Shining table-lands, 
 To which our God himself is moon and sun." 
 
 1. Its importance will be the more clearly recognized 
 by contrasting it with its predecessor the election of 
 eighteen hundred and sixty. In every respect will it be 
 found superior. 
 
 (1.) It is superior in the circumstances under which they 
 were fought. Then the land was in apparent peace. Quiet 
 possessed its borders. No tramp of armed men resounded 
 through our streets. No cannon shook the skies. No 
 groans of wounded multitudes made the heavens mourn.
 
 494 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 No maimed thousands limped about our doors. No weeds 
 of hopeless sorrow shadowed the souls of mothers, wives, 
 and children, " grieving over the unreturning brave." No 
 dreams of war, horrid war, affrighted men's hearts. Here 
 and there a fevered vision might fancy it discerned it. 
 . Here and there, possibly, a clearer eye did behold it. But 
 none imagined that it would assume such a fearful magni- 
 tude. The wildest dreamer did not so fill the land with 
 blood. Among peaceful fields, from the Rio Grande to the 
 St. John's, the discussion went forward, and the decision 
 was made. Shotless cannon announced the victory, and 
 tearless eyes overflowed with joy. 
 
 This battle was fought in the midst of gloom and anguish. 
 Blood, and fire, and vapor of cannon smoke filled all the 
 air. Hundreds of thousands of our bravest arid best had 
 entered untimely graves. Hundreds of thousands breathed 
 painful breath, eating the bread of affliction in Southern 
 prisons, lying torn and shattered on the nation's couches, 
 or wandering among us, with riven frames and pallid faces, 
 fragments of their then vigorous and manly selves. Crape 
 covered many a heart that then was bright with bridal 
 bloom. Children cried for fathers, whose bones unburied 
 looked up to the pitying and avenging eyes of God. Moth- 
 ers by scores of thousands had become Naomis and Rachels. 
 Wives by tens of thousands were going down in sorrow to 
 the grave. What a land ! lamentation and mourning, the 
 screaming ball and the wailing household joining in doleful 
 miserere. Starvation over hundreds of miles that then 
 flourished in plenty ; and worse than all, brothers aiming 
 the rifle at each other's hearts that then were dwelling 
 together in unity. 
 
 Can we say that an election proceeding under such cir- 
 cumstances is superior to its peaceful predecessor ? Yes, 
 even in these very elements is it superior. Look beneath
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 495 
 
 the calm exterior of the former campaign. Over all that 
 vast domain, where now war rolls its bloody surges, rested 
 the gloom of hell. Millions of delicate women wrought 
 daily in the field without reward except the lash of the 
 master, and were nightly scourged to most horrible service. 
 Millions of men were subject to like unmitigated toil, and 
 to hardly less agony unutterable as they were compelled 
 helplessly to behold their dearest selves the dreadful victims 
 of their oppressors' lust. Everywhere the auction-block 
 was mounted by Christians, while demons in human guise 
 discussed their points, as they would those of beasts, but 
 with a ferocity of passion such as no legitimate and lower 
 merchandise awakens. The husband and wife, whom God 
 had joined together, man rent asunder. The babe was torn 
 from its mother's breast. The saintly maiden was cast into 
 the lecherous clutch of a fiendish buyer ; arid all this was 
 sanctioned by the professed Church of Jesus Christ. Dea- 
 cons, vestrymen, and class-leaders, ministers, and bishops, 
 vied with the rumseller, the gambler, and the avowed liber- 
 tine, in this traffic of hell. Not of the Father's house, but 
 of the Father's sons and daughters, did they make merchan- 
 dise. All churches ran together to see which should soonest 
 reach this goal of Satan. They all alike threw off the im- 
 pediments of Northern conscience and communion, that they 
 might the more easily surpass their rivals in their diabolic 
 race. Bishop Polk and Bishop Pierce, Dr. Palmer and Dr. 
 Manly, led their several hosts down the steep places of sin 
 into this gulf of perdition. They yet retained the form and 
 likeness of sacramental hosts of God's elect, though with 
 no divine presence within them, and only divine justice 
 overhanging them. As we saw their seemingly sacred 
 forms, Abdiel's exclamation at Satan's yet undimmed glory 
 leaped from our lips. 
 
 "O Heaven ! that such resemblance of the highest 
 Should yet remain, where faith and fealty
 
 496 THE WONDERFUL YEAE. 
 
 Remain not ! Wherefore should not strength and might 
 There fail where virtue fails, or weakest prove 
 Where boldest, though to sight unconquerable ? " 
 
 They have thus proved. Their brightness, their strength, 
 their good name is gone. Those then puissant congrega- 
 tions and commanders have sunk into as complete infamy, 
 and will into as complete destruction, as the less apostate 
 churches of Ephraim and Jerusalem. 
 
 Is not this election preferable ? The auction-block has 
 rarely exhibited its atrocities since the fires of heaven fell 
 upon this hideous Sodom, whose very Lots had become par- 
 takers of its vilest sins. Bare have been the forced sepa- 
 rations, then so frequent ; rare the lash, then so constant ; 
 rare the unspeakable shames, then so universal and so awful. 
 God has suspended these atrocities, even where he has not 
 yet led them into liberty. Their Pharaohs have paused in 
 their career of abominations where they have not yet let 
 them go. Baleful as were the attendant miseries of the 
 last election, they were blessed as the smile of heaven in 
 comparison with the agonies that then rolled up from half 
 the land in a wail that made the angels weep. 
 
 (2.) In another respect it may be said this last election 
 is inferior to its predecessor. " That was held freely over 
 the whole country, this only over a fraction." But this 
 statement is not true. This was a freer and fuller expres- 
 sion of the people's sentiments than was that. 
 
 In one half of the land four years ago, no man could 
 have deposited a ballot for Mr. Lincoln without the sacrifice 
 of his life. Freedom of the ballot was as much precluded 
 from the States below the Ohio as freedom of men. There 
 was immeasurably greater liberty of voting at this election 
 in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Maryland, than was 
 ever known there before. A friend in Baltimore told me 
 that it was at the risk of his life that he gave his vote for 
 Mr. Lincoln in 1860. Now that city rolls up a heavier vote
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 497 
 
 for him than even Boston. The alarm cry of our regiments 
 at the Relay, fearing midnight assault, was " Baltimore ; " 
 the midnoon shout of joy to-day is " Baltimore ; " so swift 
 tread time and truth. 
 
 (3.) The late campaign is superior to the former in its 
 relation to the great evil against which they fought. Both 
 are but parts of one stupendous whole. Both are steps of 
 God in His march through the earth. Each involves more 
 than it formally asserts. Their declarations of policy and 
 purpose show how great has been our progress in this brief 
 hour of time. 
 
 Four years ago, the highest we could reach was the non- 
 extension of slavery. To touch it where it ruled, was de- 
 clared impossible. To lift the fetters from a single neck, to 
 even express sympathy for those who wore them, was for- 
 bidden. Our unpeopled territories should be free. So said 
 only a minority of the people, and they not its representa- 
 tives of fashion, wealth, or influence. To-day, by a great 
 majority, the people say, " No more slavery. If the Con- 
 stitution does not forbid it, amend the Constitution. Not 
 territories alone but States, not wilds but cities, shall be 
 cleansed of this plague. The nation shall be pure." How 
 vast that stride ! Then defensive, almost in a posture of 
 entreaty, now aggressive and defiant, liberty wraps her 
 starry robe about her, and marches forth to the sovereignty 
 of the continent. 
 
 We saw the gradual approach of the sun of Liberty. We 
 knew that it was the first blow slavery had received from 
 the arm of the people, and that from it she could not re- 
 cover. Though it might fight long and die hard, die it 
 must ; yet we could not believe it would die so soon. 
 
 The first word spoken against it doomed it. Though 
 
 Church and nation subsided into silence and submission, still 
 
 that word lived. It broke forth with new power through 
 
 the pen of Mr. Garrison. And for the first time since he 
 
 32
 
 498 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 leaped into this conflict with all the power and populace 
 of the land, could the great revivalist of this reform approve 
 the nomination and aid in the election of a chief magistrate. 
 He ought to have been on the electoral ticket of Massachu- 
 setts with Edward Everett. The dullest eye would then 
 have seen the mighty change. The two antagonists of 
 Mr. Lincoln, each from an opposite side, the one the con- 
 servative candidate for the vice-presidency, the other the 
 most radical denouncer of any presidency upon such a Con- 
 stitution, the extreme lover of the Union and the extreme 
 lover of liberty unite together, to uphold both of these great 
 pillars of our national temple. 
 
 (4.) This conflict is greater than its predecessor in its 
 effect upon foreign nations. The former election was local 
 and unknown. It was not seen across the Atlantic save 
 by a few discerning eyes. The masses, whether titled or 
 without a surname, whether in robes or rags, saw nothing. 
 To-day they see nothing else. The quarrels of Europe were 
 unseen. Their international politics, once so grand to their 
 unwidened vision, appear as the battles or diplomacies of 
 pigmies. What matters it if Denmark is disparted, or Italy 
 united, or Poland subjugated ? They are baubles of an 
 hour, tiny eddies of the great current whose gulf stream 
 sweeps across America. Even the pregnant movements of 
 this continent, the imperializing of Mexico, and nationalizing 
 of British America, are unlike unnoticed. Europe pays' no 
 regard to them. "What is that rent and bleeding Democracy 
 going to do?" cry these pallid kings. "Will she assert her 
 purpose to fight it out on that line, if it takes a century, 
 or will she succumb to her foes and her wounds, and, sink- 
 ing amid the waves her blood has reddened, leave the ocean 
 of the future free to our monarchic sails ? " 
 
 "Will she," cry their half-despairing subjects, "will she 
 abandon the struggle for our rights no less than for her 
 own ? Will she be slain in her own home by her own
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 499 
 
 children, the most horrible matricide in history ? And shall 
 we weep in unutterable sorrow the death of her who might 
 have been the mother of free empires wide as the earth, 
 enduring as time ? " How they gathered to their shores ! 
 How they fastened greedy eyes upon our great controversy ! 
 How they .prayed for our salvation ! How they leaped for 
 joy at the glorious result ! We were exultant, but with no 
 such happiness as beat in every peasant Breast of Europe. 
 
 As the first election awoke the greatest exultation in the 
 cabins of Southern slaves, so has this in the hardly less 
 degraded cabins of England, and Scotland, and France, and 
 Germany. It carries dismay and death to kings and their 
 minions, life and light to their down-trodden brethren. Never 
 before did such a message cut the skies. 
 
 2. But the greatness of this election is better seen by a 
 more direct contemplation of its actual results. Not alone 
 in the questionable superiority of war over slavery, or pub- 
 licity over privacy, does it deserve its title of great, but by 
 the principles which, through it, have become the unalterable 
 masters of the nation, the certain masters of the world. 
 
 Three ideas essential to the consummation of the divine 
 desire in Christ with respect to man have been established 
 by this decree of America. 
 
 (1.) The first is that of Union. The debate on that topic 
 is closed. Till this year it has always been questionable 
 whether the Union would endure. It was effected with 
 great difficulty. It was imperiled at the stai't by the wrong- 
 ful demands of some of the States, by the wrongful pride 
 of others. 
 
 When effected by the partial, and, as we have too pain- 
 fully learned, by the fatal surrender of principle, it was still 
 expected to survive but for a season. In 1798, within ten 
 years after its organization, the Virginia Democrats set State 
 sovereignty above the Union. The resolutions of Kentucky, 
 which were written by Thomas Jefferson, became the serpent
 
 500 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 that the Satan of slavery entered and seduced the new-born 
 nation from her rectitude. To what depths of weakness 
 and disgrace it brought her, the closing hours of Mr. Bu- 
 chanan's administration have written with the point of a 
 diamond. Under their formulary the nation saw her forts 
 and armaments seized, her power triumphantly defied in her 
 own domain, and herself the scorn and derision of every 
 petty princedom. 
 
 Not only did resolutions thus early foreshadow this strug- 
 gle ; the purpose to sever the Union was itself avowed in 
 the same century that witnessed its birth. It assumed many 
 forms, and was never formally passed upon by the people, 
 unless the reelection of Andrew Jackson, by a great major- 
 ity, after his suppression of South Carolina nullification, was 
 an expression of their hostility to it. If so, the determination 
 still lived. It flourished more and more. The re-awaken- 
 ing of the national conscience to the great evil of slavery, 
 gave its supporters the pretext they desired. For thirty 
 years they waged the ceaseless strife. At last, when the 
 people had mildly said to this iniquity, " Thus far shalt thou 
 go, but no further," they sprang to arms. " The United 
 States," cries Keitt, of South Carolina, in a jubilant voice 
 to his rebellious associates, " are scattered unto a thousand 
 fragments." " Disunion forever !" reecho the leagued trai- 
 tors, as they hold by the throat eleven States, more than 
 a third of her commonwealths, more than a half of her 
 domain. 
 
 To this shout of disruption, the nation with a universal 
 voice, responded, " Not yet ! " 
 
 " Not yet the hour is nigh, when they 
 
 Who deep in Eld's dim twilight sit, 
 Earth's valiant kings, shall rise and say, 
 
 ' Proud country, welcome to the pit ! 
 So soon art thou, like us, brought low? ' 
 No, sullen group of shadows, No !
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 501 
 
 " For now, behold, the arm that gsive 
 
 The victory in our fathers' day, 
 Strong, as of old, to guard and save, 
 
 That mighty arm, which none can stay, 
 On clouds above and fields below, 
 .Writes, in men's sight, the answer, No ! 
 
 " O country, marvel of the earth! 
 
 O realm, to sudden greatness grown ! 
 The age that gloried in thy birth, 
 
 Shall it behold thee overthrown? 
 Shall traitors lay that greatness low ? 
 No, land of hope and beauty, No ! " 
 
 The first cry for the Union was an inspiration. It sprang 
 unconsciously from every lip. They said " a picnic excur- 
 sion to the Potomac will settle the business. Seventy-five 
 thousand men, in holiday costume, lounging in Baltimore 
 and Washington hotels, and easily moving down upon Rich- 
 mond, will re-cement the Union in its old and immaculate 
 perfection." They knew not with how great a price this 
 treasure was to be bought. One army after another must 
 perish. The pleasure excursion must become funereal. 
 " Death must come up into all our windows, and enter into 
 our palaces, to cut off the young men from the streets." 
 After three years and over, of such a price paid for the 
 Union, the people reaffirmed their solemn vow, not as at 
 first in thoughtless exultation and enthusiasm, but in a tear- 
 ful, a humble, yet most resolute . purpose to carry out that 
 divine inspiration, at whatever expense of money or of life. 
 
 So intense was this feeling, that no one presumed to ask 
 our suffrages who would not publicly consecrate himself to 
 the Union. But some held out the olive branch to the re- 
 bellion ; complained of the war and the sacrifices of purse, 
 of life, of liberty that were essential to secure its perpetua- 
 tion ; and the people decided, with an agreement that has 
 since been made unanimous by the willing cooperation of 
 all, " the Union shall be preserved ; at whatever cost, at
 
 502 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 whatever hazard, at whatever suffering, we will bo still one 
 people." From the Calais of our continent to its Golden 
 Gate, a space larger than that which Europe spans between 
 her Calais and her Golden Horn, with a depth, a solemnity, 
 an enthusiasm that was unutterable, the heart, the voice, 
 the vote said, " We are, we will be one." That debate has 
 closed ; 1864, it will be said by the future historian, settled 
 the question of America's nationality. No longer will State- 
 rights resolutions vex and frighten the people. No longer 
 will we foolishly say, "Our system is an experiment." It 
 has ceased to occupy that place in human aifairs. Once the 
 press was an experiment ; so was the railroad, so the steam- 
 ship, so ocean steam-navigation, so the telegraph, so Protes- 
 tantism, so Christianity. But they have ceased to hold such 
 positions. The American Union has likewise ; it stands 
 forth before the world the most tried, the most triumphant 
 form of government that exists among men. 
 
 (2.) The election settled the greater and more doubtful 
 question of liberty. The President had proclaimed eman- 
 cipation ; but would the nation proclaim it ? It was his act 
 before, his alone. Congress had not confirmed it. The 
 Supreme Court had not constitutionalized it. The people, 
 " the masters," as the President happily says, " of Congress 
 and the courts," sat in judgment upon it. They heard the 
 appeals of the contending attorneys. They carefully de- 
 liberated. They enthusiastically affirmed it. Henceforth it 
 stands as enduring and sublime as the Declaration and the 
 Constitution. 
 
 Already has it brought forth perfect fruit. Congress, 
 the servant of the people, has uttered its decree, and the 
 nation is redeemed forever from the yoke of bondage. Four 
 years ago we only dared to stay the progress of this deluge 
 of death. We promised to preserve it inviolate where it 
 was. We would have passed an amendment to the Consti- 
 tution, pledging ourselves to secure it national protection in
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 503 
 
 the States where it existed, if that would have appeased our 
 enraged masters. Charles Francis Adams offered such an 
 amendment, and only the hopelessness of its acceptance by 
 the slaveholders prevented its passage ; and now another 
 amendment has passed, not to preserve it intact, but to 
 sweep it from the land. Then the President, under his 
 inaugural oath, promised it the support of his official arm ; 
 now the same President, before the campaign opens, and 
 when policy requires those declarations that are the least 
 offensive and the most popular, announces his purpose to 
 labor for its universal extirpation. 
 
 No equal reform was ever so speedily effected. Never 
 before has a great nation so suddenly swept away an 
 iniquity which was so inwoven into its whole fabric of 
 social as well as civil life as to have received the familiar 
 title of " the domestic institution." Till within four years it 
 governed the land. It had elected our presidents, appointed 
 our judges, sent abroad our ambassadors, chosen our Con- 
 gresses, enacted our laws, controlled our commerce, dictated 
 our fashions, tyrannized over society ; had been the only 
 constant, the supreme power in the land. 
 
 Thus stood the system then. The people after years of 
 exhortation gained courage to look the monster in the face ; 
 they dared to say to it in its onward march, Halt ! It raged 
 on them with supercilious scorn. "If war comes," says its 
 arch-leader, "it shall be on Northern soil. They shall smell 
 Southern powder and feel Southern steel." Little did its 
 myrmidons fancy its future. They were assured of unques- 
 tioned dominion. 
 
 How are the mighty fallen ! Three fifths of their territory 
 is wrested from them. One half of their slaves are national 
 freemen. One half of their States have broken from their 
 allegiance, and have adopted constitutions forbidding slavery. 
 And now we are on the verge of universal emancipation. 
 Ere this year shall close, liberty will be proclaimed by the
 
 504 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 agreement of the ratifying States throughout all the land 
 to all the inhabitants thereof. Hallelujah ! the Lord God 
 omnipotent reigneth ! His right arm hath gotten Him the 
 victory ! 
 
 Wise men, even when believing in Abolitionism, counted 
 those foolish who said when the former election occurred, 
 that under peaceable movements slavery would cease before 
 1876, but if war came it would not last five years. War 
 came, and where is it ? You may diligently consider its 
 place, but it is not. As the antediluvian world in forty days 
 was washed out of the earth, with all its wealth and pride, 
 with its solid temples and palaces, so that the keenest 
 antiquarian can find no trace of its existence, so has this 
 system, wicked as any the antediluvian sinners imagined, 
 much less did, been buried under the deluge of God's in- 
 dignation through the myriad arms and votes of His obedient 
 people. 
 
 (3.) This election was the victory of Democracy. Union 
 might have been maintained and true democracy destroyed. 
 So was it well nigh in the " save-the-Union " victories of 
 1852 and 1856. So is it utterly in the strong league of the 
 slaveholders to-day. But our victory was the triumph of 
 the equal rights of all men, without distinction of color or 
 origin. " I vote the white man's ticket," said one on 
 depositing his ballot for the unsuccessful candidate. " I 
 vote all men's ticket," might have been the just response to 
 his anti-democratic democracy. This question, deeper far 
 than that of Union, deeper even than that of liberty, was 
 also in the thickest of the great conflict. It was the un- 
 spoken word, louder than any that was uttered. It was the 
 undertow, stronger than any which agitated the surface, that 
 moved the Ship of State on its God-appointed course. 
 
 This victory has already achieved great results. Its 
 greatest we have mentioned. It alone produced the amend- 
 ment and purged the land of its ancestral curse. Another
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 505 
 
 result, hardly inferior, deserves a record. It caused the 
 elevation of Mr. Chase to the Chief- Justiceship. Had 
 his principles not triumphed in that campaign, he would 
 not sit, to-day, on the throne of national justice, their 
 most permanent, and, with one exception, most exalted em- 
 bodiment. 
 
 For a generation the people had been made to err in 
 judgment. One who occupied that bench had begun his 
 career as an abolitionist, but abandoned it under the tempta- 
 tions of ambition. That seat became the fountain of in- 
 justice. The whole bench became corrupt. Every judge 
 became a partaker of the sins of his chief. If one died who 
 kept his ermine spotless amid the great defilement, his place 
 was supplied with one fouler than the rest, until at the last 
 the whole was a unit of sin and shame. The circuit judges, 
 and even the commissioners, were infected with the same 
 poison, so that no human being pleading for his liberty 
 found favor in the eyes of these unjust judges. The fact 
 that they sought it was made the ground of its refusal. 
 The more they wearied them the less they obtained justice. 
 In Boston as well as in Charleston did this iniquity sit in the 
 throne of judgment. 
 
 At last their Chief spoke, and, like his master in Eden, 
 gave the lie to all the principles in which we were created. 
 America, the child of equal rights, gives no rights to one 
 sixth of her population. Free or slave, they are all without 
 the pale of law. They cannot plead 'at her bar for property, 
 liberty, or life. They cannot testify for themselves or 
 others. They cannot defend themselves, their wives, or 
 their children. They have no rights which this nation is 
 bound to respect. 
 
 God heard that hiss of hell, and He too entered this Eden 
 and walked among a fallen people, who sought to hide them- 
 selves from Him by impudently denying His authority and 
 His law. He said, " If My children have no rights, you
 
 506 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 shall have no peace. If they cannot hold their property, I 
 will take yours away. If they are deprived of their liberty, 
 your sons shall pine in a more loathsome prison-house, 
 beside which the hut and the fare of My negro child are 
 princely. If their lives are not protected, yours shall be 
 wasted." How fearfully has He avenged His own elect who 
 cried day and night unto Him ! We have heard and heeded, 
 and through this election brought forth a great work, meet 
 for our great repentance. For that God-vacated office the 
 national voice nominated their candidate. It was God's ap- 
 pointment, not theirs. He had identified himself with the 
 oppressed from the beginning. lie had been a consistent, 
 humble, faithful lover of God and his fellow-man. He had 
 plead their rights unheard at the very bar where now he 
 sits supreme. Greatest of all our victories is this. More 
 than the triumphs of Grant, and Sherman, and Farragut ; 
 more than the reelection of Mr. Lincoln and the assertion of 
 our unity and abolitionism, is the elevation of Salmon P. 
 Chase to the Chief-Justiceship of America. Those were 
 wrested from our foes, this from ourselves. Those were 
 the expressions of pride, this of principle. Those sought to 
 save the national life, this the national soul. Those insured 
 our existence, this^our glory. 
 
 His was more than the appointment of Jay or Marshall. 
 Upright as they were, they were not selected especially in 
 view of the relation of their uprightness to existing wrong. 
 Justice Chase was. He will uproot with his judicial ax not 
 slavery alone, but its worse roots, caste and prejudice, and 
 all the undemocratic and unjust treatment of our fellow- 
 citizens and fellow-men, and complete the work that is so 
 gloriously begun.* 
 
 * In the light of this position of Mr. Chase, his private words, written 
 to Theodore Parker, are worthy of our attention. They are found in 
 the Appendix to Mr. Parker's Life, p. 520. Thus he writes: "I don't 
 pretend to be a very wise or expert statesman, or anything of that sort ;
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 507 
 
 3. The consequences of this decision are twofold : those 
 that concern foreign states, those that will affect our own. 
 
 (1.) This election will be an important step in the libera- 
 tion of Europe. As the " bubble democracy " has not 
 "burst," that of aristocracy must. The two systems are 
 wrestling for the mastery of the world. Three millions of 
 bayonets support a half dozen thrones on the necks of a 
 hundred millions of men. Those hundred millions have 
 heard this great decision ; their half a score of masters have 
 heard it also. Victoria sees in it the hand of America, her 
 nation's first born, writing the doom of her family on the 
 walls of her palace. Napoleon beholds in it his dream 
 dissolving, of Mexican domination and California acquisi- 
 tion. The breakwater he had hoped to have set across our 
 Southern line to the deluge of democracy is swept away, 
 and the refluent waves will not only drown his American 
 pretensions but his central throne. 
 
 Already "The Times" confesses its influence on the rising 
 demands of the disfranchised masses of Britain. Already 
 the Secretary of her Treasury declares that manhood is the 
 only right basis for suffrage. Already the peasants and 
 patriots of the continent are uniting together for the com- 
 mon weal. 
 
 The suddenness and completeness of our emancipation is 
 but a type of that which will yet renew the face of the earth. 
 In a day has this nation been born. In one shall those of 
 England, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Russia ; not 
 in their present disintegrated and hostile condition, but like 
 ours, a unity of life, of liberty, of name ; one nation, free, 
 fraternal, Christian. 
 
 (2.) But more important duties invite our service. We 
 
 but a roughly-trained practical man, who wishes to do something for 
 truth, justice, and human progress, and who would prefer that what little 
 he does or says should be so spoken of, that nothing in his example of 
 word or deed shall even seem to contribute to the upholding of wrong."
 
 508 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 too have a future as well as a present and a past ; and it 
 would ill become us in our rejoicings over what we have 
 attained to be unmindful of what yet remains to be ac- 
 complished. 
 
 This battle has settled two great questions that have been in 
 fierce debate and in perilous position throughout our history. 
 It has shown that the nation is rooted and grounded in the 
 doctrine of Union and the doctrine of liberty. These pillars 
 of its common weal it will stand by so long as its nationality 
 endures. There is yet one step it must take, Fraternity. 
 The French democrats wisely put this as the climax of their 
 creed. It is there and everywhere the highest grace, arid 
 the last attained. We have decided for democracy. We 
 must carry out the principles of democracy. That principle 
 is no distinction of man from man by any accidents of color 
 or clime. "All ye are brethren" is its sole creed. We 
 have yet failed to embrace this truth. The Cleveland Plat- 
 form declared the right of all men to suffrage. Congress in 
 its territorial constitutions, Maryland and Missouri in their 
 new free constitutions, limit that right to white men. They 
 are not yet wholly free. Only by consistently obeying this 
 call of God can we preserve that whereto we have attained. 
 Cromwell and Napoleon both failed in the great revolutions 
 they achieved ; and why ? Because they were false to the 
 fundamental principle of those revolutions. The Pilgrims of 
 Plymouth gave Cromwell the model of a free commonwealth. 
 Equality and fraternity were the foci of its orbit. He 
 created himself lord, and the Lord of lords cast him down 
 headlong, and his work fell with him into a grave, where it 
 has lain for more than two centuries. Napoleon was the 
 child of democracy. He denied the mother that bore him, 
 and was cast out and trodden under, foot of his enemies. 
 This grace he could not retain. The peasant Frenchman the 
 Emperor's equal ? Never. Do not we feel like him ? Would 
 we not welcome to our tables to-day a rebellious slaveholder
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 509 
 
 sooner than his loyal slave, even if the latter was as well- 
 mannered as the former ? Would we place one of this class 
 in our stores or shops, however capable ? Would we accept 
 the brightest scholar in the land, if of this race, as a pro- 
 fessor in our schools, or the most eloquent preacher, whose 
 lips God has anointed with grace, as our pastor arid guide ? 
 
 This prejudice exists only in this fraction of our continent. 
 It must be overcome here. The conductor on the cars from 
 Cairo to Alexandria was as black as ebony, while nearly all 
 the passengers were either Europeans or Arabs ; and the 
 African was the easy master of the turbulent Asiatics and 
 the haughty Caucasians. 
 
 To the removal of this prejudice every lover of Christ and 
 his country should devote himself. If we pause now, we 
 fall back into a deeper pit than that out of which God has 
 most mercifully and most miraculously delivered us. 
 
 That such is our peril, the history of the great party 
 whose career is just closing clearly shows. No party ever 
 had a more glorious beginning. It sprang into life as the 
 friend of man. 
 
 It won the power, and war arose. In the hight of the 
 war the Federalists assailed it and were annihilated. An 
 era of good feeling sprang up. The Democrats rejected 
 the doctrine of the equal rights of all men, the headstone 
 of their corner, and it has become the headstone of their 
 grave. Jeiferson favored slavery, of which he had declared 
 God had no attribute that did not make war upon it. lie 
 urged its extension beyond the Mississippi. The democracy 
 passed the Missouri Compromise, and in that day, dying it 
 died. Neve'r since has it breathed its natal air. Never 
 since has it been the defender of the rights of man. 
 
 4. But if the year has been thus wonderful in its deeds, 
 the duties it imposes are not less vital. What is the service 
 to which the Master calls us ? This, and this only : 
 
 To abolish from the national action and the national heart 
 all distinctions arising from color or origin.
 
 510 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 (1.) In the discharge of this duty we must seek to abolish 
 the unrighteous distinctions which are made in the composi- 
 tion and control of our armies. Had it been announced to our 
 foreign-born population, "You can only serve in regiments of 
 your own nationality ; you are forbidden to march in the 
 same company with American troops," how would they have 
 scorned the summons of such a government ! How justly 
 would they have said, " Let Americans save America, if 
 they persist in oppressing us with such invidious distinc- 
 tions!" Equally just would it have been for colored Ameri- 
 cans to have said, " You compel us to keep in regiments by 
 ourselves ; we will march in no regiments at all. You brand 
 us with prejudicial infamy ; we will not voluntarily accept 
 the insult. If your government shall draft us and compel us 
 to fight, we are powerless to resist; but not of ourselves 
 will we rally to the flag; that is not fraternal." 
 
 This distinction must be abolished. A citizen, if he volun- 
 teers, should join what regiment he chooses ; if he is drafted, 
 those that most need his musket. We shall then cease to 
 read of the valor of white or colored troops as separate 
 bodies, but of men and patriots, whose complexion may be 
 various, but whose blood and bravery are one. 
 
 We should abolish also the refusal to grant them commis- 
 sions and commands. This glaring injustice will be patent 
 to every eye, if we consider what would be the feelings and 
 conduct of other privates should such a law degrade them. 
 Were it announced to the army that only West Point 
 graduates could hold commissions ; that their valor, their 
 skill, their experience can only elevate them to a sergeant's 
 bands, how long would they serve such a land ?' Yet there 
 are a hundred thousand of our soldiers who fight under this 
 insulting opprobrium. However valorous, however endowed 
 with military genius, however prodigal of life, they are not 
 only compelled to serve in the ranks, but to see less com- 
 petent white men set over them, and that solely on the
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 511 
 
 ground of their complexion. This great injustice, this 
 democratic lie, must be abandoned. It is part and parcel 
 of the system of aristocracy that we have formally decreed 
 shall vanish away. The work has been initiated by the 
 conferring of a lieutenant's commission on one of these 
 soldiers. It should be hastened forward. Congress should 
 abolish the unjust distinction, and the man, whatever his 
 complexion or origin, who wins his shoulder straps, should 
 wear them studded, if he deserves it, with the three stars of 
 a lieutenant-general. 
 
 (2.) We must grant them civil equality and fraternity. 
 
 The question of negro suffrage is assuming an importance, 
 not only to the true Democrat and Christian, but to the most 
 feeble or most false professor of democracy and Christianity. 
 It will be found that here as in the army we must call on 
 those we yet despise to corne and save us. Professor 
 Lieber shows that by abolishing slavery we have increased 
 the basis of representation in the Southern States by the two 
 fifths of the slaves who were before constitutionally ex- 
 cluded. If these are forbidden to vote, it increases the 
 power of the white man in those States against his fellow of 
 the North, by that large addition to a census-counted but 
 non-voting population. If the rebels should be allowed to 
 return with any powers and privileges, such as would have 
 been accorded them in the late peace conferences, they 
 would avail themselves of this iniquity to reestablish them- 
 selves in more than their former power. Our only and sure 
 cure for this peril, is for Congress to decree the right of suf- 
 frage for national officers to be without respect of color. 
 
 Again, the loyal white men of the South must call on their 
 equally loyal brothers, often of more white than colored 
 descent, to come and save them from the voting of their 
 secession neighbors. These once active rebels, when these 
 States resume their forms of civil life, will outnumber their 
 loyal neighbors, and snatch again the scepter after having
 
 512 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 thrown down the sword with which they had sought the 
 murder of the very government they will then represent. 
 The loyal whites will be cast back into the pit out of which 
 the national arm has dragged them, unless they will lift 
 their like loyal colored fellow-citizens to equal honor. 
 
 But not as a measure of necessity should this be urged. 
 It is one of duty. In many States of the Union this cruel 
 disability exists. With proud, rebellious hearts we say, 
 " The foreigner may vote, the native shall not. The brutal- 
 ized victim of Papacy, whom priests and pope make hostile 
 to our ideas and institutions, may oppose the government 
 that protects him with ballot, almost with bullet, and yet 
 lose no right of suffrage ; while the most Protestant of our 
 Protestants, the most godly of the godly, the most faithful 
 of the faithful, shall not utter his voice at the ballot-box 
 against these foreign foes." We should instantly annihilate 
 every such barrier, and make suffrage and manhood identi- 
 cal. What Gladstone demands for England, Congress ought 
 to bestow upon America. 
 
 " But," cries one of timid soul, "if this right is conferred 
 so freely in States where the blacks have a majority, they will 
 become its governors and representatives, and a black man 
 may sit as a senator in our national Capitol ! " And why 
 not ? Ought not the larger fraction of the population of 
 South Carolina, who are among the most loyal in the land, 
 to have the administration of the affairs of that Common- 
 wealth ? And if the most conservative citizens have for 
 years contemplated with approval, and aided with their 
 liberality, the rising glory of Liberia, can they object to a 
 more truly named Liberia growing into majestic life on the 
 ruins of Charleston, so long the seat of the beast ? Will not 
 Captain Kobert Small be as good a governor of South 
 Carolina as Michael Hahn, far less loyal, is of Louisiana ? 
 Is not his first office prophetic of his future, and is not the 
 master of "The Planter" yet to be the master of the planters ?
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 513 
 
 But not alone in the States where they are numerically 
 superior will they justly claim the position their merits 
 shall secure for them. In every State the same privileges 
 must be accorded. No more and no less in Carolina than 
 New York should they rise higher than they merit. Here as 
 there, whoever deserves the highest seats, should sit there. 
 Frederick Douglass, one of the first orators and clearest 
 headed statesmen of America, should be the representative 
 in Congress from his district. He has no equal in the 
 national estimation within its boundaries. He would soon 
 show that he was worthy to follow his great Auburn neigh- 
 bor into the Senate chamber arid the Cabinet. He might 
 win what the other has lost, because to his ability is joined 
 more popularity if not more principle the highest honor the 
 nation can bestow. " Palmamferat qui meruit " is the only 
 motto for a democratic people. If he deserves the palm he 
 should carry it, by the votea and with the applause of all 
 the nation. 
 
 (3.) This work should be carried forward in the Church. 
 Sad is the fact, but most true, that those who call them- 
 selves the disciples and representatives of Jesus Christ are 
 in their body, the most tenacious of this iniquity. What- 
 ever the name of the Church, her spirit and act is the same. 
 No professed Church of Jesus Christ here has reached the 
 hights of fraternity which every other profession has al- 
 lowed. The medical and the legal bodies have admitted 
 them as equals ; not so the clerical. They visit around the 
 same couch, they act as attorneys for the same client as 
 their whiter fellows ; they cannot belong to the same con- 
 ference with us, travel the same circuit, or be settled over 
 the same congregation. And yet the Church professes to 
 represent, and should represent, the highest ideas that man 
 can receive or entertain. It is the depository, the vehicle 
 of God. His best truths he commits to her as a distributing- 
 reservoir to all the world. Her ministers He deigns to call 
 33
 
 514 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 His servants and embassadors ; her members, His sons and 
 daughters ; and yet when His Son, the brightness of His 
 glory, and the express image of His person, calls himself 
 especially the Son of man not of men, much less of a 
 class of men, and that white men, but the Son of MAN ; 
 when His Spirit orders His servant to declare to the Churches 
 that in Christ Jesus the middle wall of partition is broken 
 down ; that in Him there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian 
 nor Scythian, bond nor free, male nor female ; when He 
 forbids the setting off one portion of the Church by itself 
 for any outward distinctions ; against the words of Christ, 
 the teachings of the apostles, the lessons of history, the 
 testimony of every conscience in the sight of God, the 
 Church in America gives herself earnestly to the support of 
 this heaven-hated sin. She compels these her brethren and 
 sisters to form Churches of their own. She separates God's 
 ministers, if the least tinged w.ith this complexion into con- 
 ferences by themselves. If any of these Christians come 
 into her Brahmin assemblies, she hastens to commit the very 
 sin that James rebukes, and has "the faith of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons," 
 saying unto his brother, often of the very complexion of 
 James and the Lord Jesus Christ, " Stand thou there, or sit 
 here under my footstool." How those holy words rebuke 
 our haughty sin ! " If ye fulfill the royal law according to 
 the Scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye 
 do well. But if ye have respect of persons, ye commit 
 sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors." Then 
 comes that dreadful imprecation, so awfully fulfilled upon 
 the apostate Churches of the South, so fearfully experienced 
 in our own griefs and calamities : " For he shall have judg- 
 ment without mercy that hath showed no mercy." 
 
 0, that the Church would arise and wash herself of this 
 abomination ! She should instantly invite her despised 
 brethren to sit in her exalted seats. She should abolish
 
 SECOND ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 515 
 
 the iniquity known only to Protestant America, the colored 
 Church. She should invite all those whom* God has called 
 to serve at her altars, which are not hers, but His. She 
 should throw her mighty influence against this cruel and 
 false prejudice, and drive it from the land. She should 
 proclaim the great doctrine of the Bible, the central doc- 
 trine of the Cross, the unity, the fraternity of man, and 
 should declare that what God hath put together man shall 
 not put asunder. Then, and then only, will God's smile 
 and benediction rest upon her. Then shall she go forth, 
 not as now, to feeble victories and frequent defeats, but 
 to constant, glorious, and increasing triumphs. Scrip- 
 tural holiness will spread rapidly over all the land, and the 
 coming of Christ speedily redden the divine horizon. 
 
 To this high and heavenly work the great election calls 
 us. This grand future opens its celestial vistas to our 
 waiting eyes. Union, emancipation, democracy, the triad 
 of triumphant principles, will insure the unification, the 
 liberation, the fraternization of America. Her sons, of 
 whatever hue, -shall wear her honors of whatever hight. 
 Sella Martin will be the popular pastor of a popular Church, 
 having no taint in its composition of the present bitterness 
 of Christians against their better brethren, but composed 
 indiscriminately of those who, though of many complexions, 
 are of one Lord, one faith, one baptism. John S. Rock will 
 sit as judge where now not one of his race can sit as a 
 juror even when those of their own color are on trial for 
 their life; and the perfection of justice will be consummated, 
 and God the Judge of all, be satisfied then, and then only, 
 when one of this blood whom our late Chief-Justice declared 
 had no rights, shall occupy his seat as the administrator of 
 equal rights to all the land. Such a one is the Queen's 
 highest judicial representative in Jamaica to-day. Such will 
 be America's in Washington to-morrow. 
 
 Such are some of the results and obligations which spring
 
 516 THE WONDERFUL YEAR. 
 
 from that national decree. The work is not yet accom- 
 plished. Our brothers yet pine in prison-houses, and suffer 
 unto death on the bloody field. The foe is yet stiff-necked 
 and rebellious. It may be long ere the high lands of per- 
 petual peace are reached. We may see days as dark as any 
 which have covered us. Yet the end is sure. The grand 
 uprising assures its coming. Does it also that higher, that 
 diviner end to which the whole creation moves ? Will the 
 nation, will the Church, will every Christian, every minister, 
 every man gird himself for this greater task ? If so, that 
 higher glory will speedily dawn. The sun will rise that 
 knows no setting. The kingdom of Christ will be estab- 
 lished. The whole earth, one family, will dwell in Him, 
 knit together in love, in labor, in faith, in joy ; while over 
 it all will bend the cloud of witnesses, with celestial faces, 
 the martyred and sainted dead of every age and clime, not 
 the least in honor and happiness those of our own age and 
 clime, reliving happiest lives in their more saintly children, 
 the inheritors of their sacrifices, their grace, their renown. 
 
 " For all they thought, and loved, and did, 
 And hoped, and suffered, is but seed 
 Of what in these is flower and fruit."
 
 THE YIAL POURED OUT ON THE SEAT 
 OF THE BEAST.* 
 
 AND THE FIFTH ANGEL POURED OUT HIS VIAL UPON THE SEAT OF THE 
 BEAST ; AND HIS KINGDOM WAS FULL OF DARKNESS J AND THEY 
 GNAWED THEIR TONGUES FOR PAIN, AND BLASPHEMED THE GOD 
 OF HEAVEN BECAUSE OF THEIR PAINS AND THEIR SORES, AND RE- 
 PENTED NOT OF THEIR DEEDS." Revelation xvi. 10, 11. 
 
 E have often been summoned to the sanctuary, in 
 the progress of the great controversy so near its 
 end, at times to exult, but chiefly to mourn. We 
 have been constrained to set forth the national sin 
 and the national danger ; to point to the cloud charged 
 with God's thunderbolts, that hung black and fiery over a 
 vain and careless land, and to urge upon the Church and the 
 nation the tears, the words, the deeds of repentance. We 
 have seen that cloud gather blackness as the nation and the 
 Church went plunging from sin to sin, until at last it broke, 
 forth in such a storm as has not fallen upon any land since 
 the fiery shower fell upon Sodom. Under that cloud, through 
 that sea, we have waded forward, slowly and tremblingly, 
 
 * A sermon preached in Boston on the occasion of the Fall of Charles- 
 ton, March 5, 18G5. 
 
 (517)
 
 518 THE VIAL POURED OUT. 
 
 stumbling often in the mire of our own corruptions, refus- 
 ing often to listen to the command of God, which ordered 
 us onward, trusting in arms of flesh, in compromises, in 
 pride, in self, in sin. But as these fancied helps broke under 
 the weight with which our weakness compelled us to burden 
 them, we found ourselves sinking, with a faintness almost 
 unto death, upon the only Arm that could save. The unwel- 
 comed duty sounded dreary as a funeral knell in our fright- 
 ened ears, and only to preserve ourselves from destruction 
 did we heed its hated summons. A merciful God granted 
 us salvation even under such undeserving circumstances. 
 Though with great and sore chastisements, with misery and 
 death multiplied manifold, He saved us from utter exter- 
 mination. He is bringing us out into a wealthy place. 
 
 We are, we hope, on the verge of complete victory. The 
 last steps to this divine consummation are being taken. 
 One more, and the goal is reached. That step must, ere 
 long, follow, and the arch-rebel flees for life through the 
 regions where for years he has ruled in power and great 
 glory, and where he fancied his glory was to be perpetual. 
 In the progress of these achievements we have reached one 
 event that ought not to pass unnoticed. The fall of Charles- 
 ton will be more memorable to the future student of this 
 war than that of any other city. Its capture will surpass 
 in interest that of all its rivals in iniquity, from New Orleans 
 to Richmond. In the ruin that has overwhelmed it, God 
 has written out in the eyes of all the world His just dis- 
 pleasure, His inevitable vengeance against sinners. In 
 dwelling upon this theme we are raised to the hights of the 
 divinest truth, where the dread vision of a sovereign God, 
 exercising His power in justly punishing willful, persistent, 
 and awful transgressors, stands forth before our awe-struck 
 eyes. The angels of His vengeance are flying in the midst 
 of heaven. The vials of His wrath are poured upon the air. 
 We see the fearful devastations ; we see the Lord, strong
 
 FALL OF CHARLESTON. 519 
 
 and mighty, sad, and solemn, and serene, quietly casting 
 His enemies into destruction. 
 
 Let us draw near this mount that burneth with fire, that 
 is enshrouded with blackness, that trembles, and rocks be- 
 neath the footsteps of a descending God. Standing afar off 
 we behold the fearful spectacle. As the shells drop bursting 
 upon the doomed town, it seems as if they were lightnings 
 darting from the very heavens. That cannon's roar is but 
 the muttering of the voice of God in angry thunder. As 
 Abraham, from the distant hills of Hebron, beheld the smoke 
 of Sodom go up as the smoke of a furnace, so may we be- 
 hold the smoking ruins of the haughtiest and wickedest town 
 that has existed in this generation on the face of the whole 
 earth. Nowhere has there been such sin, nowhere such just 
 and terrible punishment. 
 
 In considering this subject, let us study more closely the 
 sin and punishment of this city, and draw from this divine 
 act such lessons of national and individual duty as it is in- 
 tended to teach. 
 
 I. Its sin. The Seat of the Beast. No place in modern 
 history has achieved so infamous distinction as the city of 
 Charleston. Rome is supposed by many to be in the eye 
 of the revelator when he wrote this vision. That city has 
 truly been drunk with the blood of the saints. It has been 
 full of pride, and malice, and murder. Its inquisition stands 
 beside its cathedral. Tortures fill its walls with stifled 
 cries. Dungeons and death bury the victims of liberty and 
 truth alive in their ponderous and marble jaws. It has sent 
 its emissaries and influence throughout the world, and re- 
 peated its pride and cruelty in every clime and age. Yet 
 Rome has never equalled Charleston in crime. Paris is a 
 worldly, sensual, wicked town. It fosters vanity and vice. 
 It is the seat of a ruler who is subtle, comprehensive, active, 
 bold. lie marches forth his armies into Italy and Mexico 
 to subdue liberty in the name of Liberty. It is the seat of
 
 520 THE VIAL POURED OUT. 
 
 the most powerful foe of European rights that Europe con- 
 tains. Yet Paris is Paradise compared with Charleston. 
 
 London is a mighty mass of swollen wealth and pride, 
 poverty and corruption. She keeps millions of her natives 
 poor, ignorant and disfranchised, downtrodden and despised, 
 that bloated thousands may strut the lordlier. The crime 
 of London, as the centre of the ruling forces of England, 
 is written with the point of a diamond. It will, unless it 
 repents, assuredly feel the awful judgments of God. Yet 
 London is heaven by the side of Charleston. 
 
 The metropolitan city of America is far from being perfect 
 before God. It is given into the hands of wicked men 
 plundered by its officials, abandoned to pleasure, to avarice, 
 to crime. And yet New York is spotless before the little 
 city by the sluggish streams and amid the sultry marshes 
 of Carolina. She is preeminently the Seat of the Beast. 
 
 What is the pride of London or of Rome to hers ? They 
 boast, the one of its commercial, the other of its spiritual 
 supremacy. They despise others. Their population is 
 largely paupers or beggars. Their political prisons yet 
 immure or threaten the lovers of liberty with their hated 
 walls. But they do not forbid the lowly citizens from ac- 
 quiring the rudiments of knowledge. They do not compel 
 them to work without any wages. Their leading merchants 
 do not take these rewardless toilers to their centers of trade, 
 causing them to mount the auction-block, and, sitting haiigh- 
 tily around, despite the strong crying and tears of their vic- 
 tims, knock them down to the highest bidder. 
 
 The Jews' quarter at Rome is nightly shut with iron gates ; 
 but its occupants are not rung to their dens by the bells of 
 St. Peter's, nor is one of them who is found without seized 
 and cast into prison, horribly scourged, and more horribly 
 sold into bondage. They are not subject to unutterable 
 crime, boastingly wreaked upon them by their disdainful 
 lords and owners. They are not shipped in chains, or driven
 
 FALL OF CHARLESTON. 521 
 
 across the land to distant hovels, torn from loving hearts, 
 and cast into a fiery furnace, whose flames burn with intol- 
 erable fierceness, though the Son of God walks with them 
 in its midst. These horrors of horrors were reserved for 
 Protestant America, for more Protestant Charleston. One 
 third of her population have been subjected to these direful 
 cruelties. They walked by stately school-houses which they 
 could never enter. They were driven forth to daily tasks 
 for which they received no wages. They were compelled to 
 hasten to their huts and rags at the stroke of the evening 
 bell on pain of punishment and the lash. They were the 
 victims of immeasurable crimes, which God and hell can 
 only punish. They were marched through the central street 
 in the heart of the city, into a building with " Mart " 
 rightly stamped upon its front. It needed no prefix, as it 
 was the chief, in fact, the only trade of the city, all others 
 centering in this traffic in slaves and the souls of men. 
 Here they were driven up and down a platform, sixty feet 
 in length, to show ofl' their points to their critical buyers. 
 Here, in smaller rooms, they were blushingly exposed to 
 the unblushing eyes of their own fathers and brothers.* 
 Hence they tottered, trembling with anguish and despair, 
 to their new fields of toil, and terror, and most welcome 
 death. 
 
 What city has such a record ? "Where has the Seat of 
 the Beast been so clearly established ? We look abroad for 
 this fulfillment of the Book of Revelation. We find it at 
 our own door. The Bible is not a prophecy of Babylon x>r 
 Rome alone, but of America, of the United States ; not of 
 yesterday, but of to-day. Here and now is the vial poured 
 forth on the Seat of the Beast. 
 
 But though in distinction from European and even heathen 
 capitals, this city is' by merit raised to her bad eminence, it 
 may be asked, How is she the superior of her sisters in sin ? 
 Is not Savannah, or Mobile, or New Orleans, all flourishing
 
 522 THE VIAL POURED OUT. 
 
 depots of cotton and humanity, her equal ? Is not Rich- 
 mond, above all other places, the breeder and the seller 
 of human flesh and soul, from whose wharves and depots 
 hundreds went weekly to their living graves, is she not 
 deeper than Charleston in the gulf of transgression, and will 
 she not be in that of perdition ? Nay, these associates were 
 subordinates, not equals. 
 
 She was the chief in sin, because she threw around the 
 iniquity the threefold robe of civil, and social, and religious 
 character. She made slavery her idea. To it her ablest 
 minds devoted their ablest powers. By the pen, in the 
 forum, on the bench, from the pulpit, they justified, they 
 glorified, they deified Slavery. From the beginning they 
 exhibited this tendency. They erased from the Declaration 
 the words Virginia inserted that reflected upon the slave 
 trade. They inserted in the Constitution the words that 
 Virginia sought to erase, which gave Slavery the protection 
 of the national flag, and raised it from a local and limited, 
 and therefore dying crime, to a national and dominant insti- 
 tution. They avowed their purpose, despite these conces- 
 %ions, to destroy the Union that protected their demon, 
 because it did not promise to propagate it. They sought 
 to break its bands more than fifty years ago ; and more than 
 thirty, lifted the standard of revolt, professedly in the inter- 
 est of the tariff, actually then, as now, in that of slavery. 
 Failing in this, the State set about the nationalizing of the 
 accursed thing. She made her chosen son Secretary of State, 
 and through him declared, with the approval of the govern- 
 ment, that Slavery was the corner-stone of the American 
 Republic. In its interests her representatives wrought un- 
 tiringly, and wove the web they meant for her coronation, 
 but which has become her shroud. 
 
 She first saw the man-child of Abolitionism, and sought 
 its destruction in its cradle. She drove the gray-haired 
 representative of human rights violently from her doors.
 
 THE FALL OF CHARLESTON. 523 
 
 She gagged those who raised a voice in its defence in the 
 halls of the Union. She struck down with the bludgeon 
 its senatorial defenders. She challenged its representatives 
 to mortal combat. Her clergy rent every Church in twain, 
 that would not bow the knee to her Baal. She first leaped 
 up in revolt when the people had decreed that her infamous 
 reign should cease. She avowed her purpose to reopen the 
 slave trade, and to make the ocean a Styx, swarming with 
 worse than Charon's boats even those that conveyed none 
 to Elysium, all to Tartarus. 
 
 Well may she be called the Seat of the Beast. Well may 
 she stand forth in history beside, jiay, before, Egypt, Bab- 
 ylon, Rome, whoever enslaved the people of God and ex- 
 ulted in their hideous deeds. They sinned against little 
 light ; she against much. They were the children of dark- 
 ness ; she of the light. They fell from earth ; she from 
 heaven. They entered the grave; she hell. 
 
 But, if great is her sin, great also is her punishment. 
 The Vial is poured out on the Seat of the Beast. Such 
 destruction has visited no other center of the rebellion. 
 Her servile vassal, the capital of the State she controlled, 
 has fallen justly into a like burning grave. But she alone 
 of the rebellious cities has seen, or is likely to see, destruc- 
 tion. New Orleans lost nothing but her chains. Savannah, 
 Nashville, Natchez are unharmed. Richmond may share her 
 fate, but will probably remain entire, a monument of the 
 persistence of arms, not of ideas. Virginia, the seat of the 
 traffic in slaves, and Charleston, the seat of the influence 
 of slavery, have felt the heaviest the hand of God. Her 
 wharves are empty. Her palaces deserted, dismantled, and 
 torn from top to bottom with the plunging shell. Her own 
 sons, in the rage of their despair, turned their shotted guns 
 upon her,- cast the torch amid her inflammable cotton and 
 more inflammable gunpowder, and by one stroke destroyed 
 both of the props on which she trusted for success in arms.
 
 524 THE VIAL POURED OUT. 
 
 Her citizens cared nothing for the miserable poor that still 
 sought shelter there ; nothing for her ancestral name, noth- 
 ing for her still existing wealth. Like the progeny of Sin 
 and Death, whose kindred they are, they " gnaw her bowels 
 for repast." They even rejoice in her ruin. How their 
 hearts must have sunk within them as they fled trembling 
 and astonished, by night and by day, leaving the seat of 
 their pomp and pride to the foot of the conqueror. Surely 
 the bitterness of death cannot surpass, hardly can equal, 
 the agony of shame, remorse, and rage, every passion 
 but penitence that blazed in their yet haughty and hating 
 souls. " Their kingdom was full of darkness. They gnawed 
 their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven, 
 because of their pains and their sores, and most truly 
 ' repented not of tlieir deeds. 1 ' 
 
 How faithfully doth the seer depict her doom : "Her sins 
 have reached unto heaven and God hath remembered her 
 iniquities. In the cup which she hath filled, He hath filled 
 to her double." The potion she has so long poured down 
 her innocent children she is compelled to drink, even to the 
 dregs thereof. " How much she hath glorified herself and 
 lived deliciously, so much are torment and sorrow given her. 
 For she said in her heart, I sit a queen ; I am no widow, and 
 shall see no sorrow. Therefore have her plagues come in 
 one day. Death, and mourning, and famine, and she is utter- 
 ly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judgeth 
 her. Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles 
 and prophets, for God hath avenged you on her." 
 
 No such destruction has overwhelmed a sinful power 
 since the French nobility, gorged with the blood of their 
 people, went down in the night of terror. Nay, they fell less, 
 for they had sinned less. They have sunk like the angel's 
 millstone into the sea, and they shall be found no more at 
 all. Their mighty names have become titles of weakness 
 and dishonor. Their Barnwells, and Rhetts, and Hamp-
 
 THE FALL OF CHARLESTON. 525 
 
 tons, and Haynes, and Prestons, pipe and whistle in the 
 ghostly sound. Poor and fugitive, they apprehend the feel- 
 ings of those of their slaves who have fled in like fear and 
 trembling from their enraged pursuit. " With what measure 
 ye mete it shall be measured to you again," must sound 
 sadly in their painful ears. It is no bloodhound's cry they 
 hear, but the tramp of armed men, the roar of hostile cannon, 
 the crackling of burning roof-trees, the shouts of liberated 
 slaves. These make doleful music to their exiled steps. 
 They go a way they shall not return. They shall continue 
 powerless names. As the Tory rulers of Massachusetts, the 
 Olivers and Hutchinsons, fell into utter nothingness with 
 the fall of their State, so shall these be in South Carolina as 
 though they had never been. They shall wander, seeking 
 bread from the slave they have sold. They shall sink to 
 the bottom of the society they have ruled. Their glory has 
 vanished away. Thus has God poured out His vial on the 
 Seat of the Beast. Thus has its sin found it out, and its 
 fate overtaken it. 
 
 But this punishment had not been complete without the 
 instrument by which it was perfected were considered. 
 They were not captured by the Western troops marching a 
 hundred miles behind them, nor by white troops galloping 
 up to the town. Their own slaves were left to receive the 
 keys of the city, and to walk her streets as conquerors. 
 Through them alone can her mayor find access to the provost 
 marshal. They alone preserve its safety by night and its 
 quiet by day. The slave is the ruler of the land. A few 
 whites are associated with him, but he is the substantial 
 master. From his hands the impoverished tyrants must sue 
 for daily bread. How wonderfully is the Word of God ful- 
 filled ! His truth, His ways, His word, are the same yester- 
 day, to-day, and forever. " The sons of them that afflicted 
 Thee," yea, they themselves, " shall come bending unto 
 thee ; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves 
 down at the soles of thy feet."
 
 526 THE VIAL POURED OUT. 
 
 We pause, oppressed by the sacred lesson. What are its 
 teachings ? 
 
 1. It teaches us that no greatness is aught against God. 
 How these men once boasted ! How they defied the nation 
 that made them great ! With what insolent self-confidence 
 they paraded the streets of their slave metropolis ! Not the 
 patrician of Venice who stood beneath the corridors of the 
 Doge's palace, where no plebeian was allowed to walk, was 
 so contemptuous as the patricians of Charleston to their 
 white and black slaves. But as Austrian soldiers freely 
 tread those desolated pavements, so do the slaves of Charles- 
 ton march where late their masters rode. 
 
 Great and mighty are thy judgments, Lord God of 
 Hosts. Thou bringest man to destruction, and sayest, Re- 
 turn, ye children of men. His pride, as his years, are as 
 nothing before Thee. At Thy rebuke he flees. At the 
 breath of Thy nostrils he vanishes away. 
 
 2. It teaches us the regeneration of the earth. Charles- 
 ton is not to be destroyed. It is to be rebuilt in righteous- 
 ness. The church of St. Michael, so long perverted to 
 hideous uses of pride and sin, will become the ministrant of 
 truth and love. That name is not inapt. Michael, the 
 archangel, triumphed over the dragon. It was the favorite 
 picture of ancient and enslaved Christendom. It betokened 
 their deliverance from the grasp of their tyrants. So does 
 it those who have heard for generations its bells with horror. 
 To them Michael may mean their deliverer, the slayer of 
 the dragon of Slavery. He has fought with the devil for the 
 souls and bodies of these children of the Father, and has 
 won their salvation. 
 
 These freedmen shall renew that beautiful region in 
 righteousness. They shall not build and another inhabit. 
 They shall not plant and another eat, as they have for these 
 hundreds of years, but they themselves shall long enjoy the 
 work of their hands. Those excellent school-houses their
 
 THE FALL OF CHARLESTON. 527 
 
 children shall enter. In those spacious churches they shall 
 worship a God .who shall be well pleased with their humble, 
 happy offerings. Those marts shall flourish in legitimate 
 traffic. They shall be rulers where they have been slaves. 
 Happy, happy, happy day ! Already it breaks upon them. 
 They look on their deliverers as the Messiah himself. And 
 they are. Jesus is yet walking the earth incarnate in this 
 Republic, breaking these heavy chains, opening these prison 
 doors, and bringing to these, His children, the great and 
 acceptable year of the Lord. 
 
 3. Take warning from this awful punishment. If God 
 spares not these, no more will He spare you, though He 
 bear long with you. With these He has borne for two 
 hundred years. Their iniquity is full. The day of ven- 
 geance is come. And yet they are unrepentant. No sorrow 
 fills those sinners' souls for their dreadful guilt. Those 
 ministers, - Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Baptist, 
 Papal, are as bitter in their hatred of the first law of the 
 Gospel as when they flourished in power and authority at 
 the head of the community. We have seen no penitent 
 bishop of that apostate Church. We have heard no churches 
 moaning for their sins. They faithfully follow the words of 
 our text: " They gnaw their tongues for pain, and blaspheme 
 the God of heaven, because of their pains and their sores, 
 and repent not of their deeds/' Beware lest you fall under 
 like shocks, with like anguish and like impenitence. We 
 may sin as fearfully against God here as they there. In 
 your bodies, in your souls, in pride, in passion, in unbelief, 
 in carnal-mindedness, in pursuit of the world. You may 
 reject Christ, and be rejected of Him. As a church member, 
 you may fall into the lowest h^ll. Many of them were such. 
 So were the Israelites of the wilderness. So were Caiphas 
 and Judas. , So may you be. Watch, pray, strive, agonize, 
 or you will plunge into sin, into everlasting destruction. 
 Behold, the Judge standeth at the door !
 
 528 THE VIAL POURED OUT. 
 
 4. Remember that this great work is not accomplished. 
 The saddest, most solemn, most religious message ever 
 delivered by an American President, was spoken at his in- 
 auguration by the great and good man, who, for the second 
 term, has begun his arduous duties. Let me read to you 
 some of those weighty words. 
 
 " Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this 
 mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God 
 wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the 
 bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil 
 shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the 
 lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was 
 said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, The 
 judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 
 
 How they infold the past, the present, the future. How 
 they point to our only success God and duty. Our armies 
 in the field, our legislation in Congress, our principles at 
 home, our God in all of these, through them all, above them 
 all these are our salvation. Only by adhering to the 
 right shall we triumph the whole right. We must 
 uproot from our hearts that most unchristian and inhuman 
 sentiment which makes us distinguish between man and 
 man, between Christian brethren, on account of certain out- 
 ward traits. These must be swept away, or the wrath of 
 God will again rest upon us. t The Seat of the Beast may 
 be transferred from Charleston to Boston. We may feel 
 this outpouring of divine displeasure. May this fate be 
 averted by our earnest embracing of the whole truth as it is 
 in Jesus. May our victories speedily be consummated, the 
 greater victory of right be equally accomplished, and the 
 Holy Spirit renew every heart z and all the land, in the purity, 
 and peace, and brotherhood of heaven.
 
 JEFFERSON DAYIS AND PHARAOH.* 
 
 " AND THE LORD SAID UNTO MOSES, EISE UP EARLY IN THE MORNING, 
 AND STAND BEFORE PHARAOH, AND SAT UNTO HIM, THUS SAITH THE 
 LORD GOD OF THE HEBREWS, LET MY PEOPLE GO, THAT THEY MAY 
 
 SERVE ME. FOR I WILL AT THIS TIME SEND ALL MY PLAGUES UPON 
 THY HEART, AND UPON THY SERVANTS, AND UPON THY PEOPLE; THAT 
 THOU JTAYEST KNOW THAT THERE IS NONE LIKE ME IN ALL THE EARTH. 
 FOR NOW I WILL STRETCH OUT MY HAND, THAT I MAY SMITE THEE 
 AND THY PEOPLE WITH PESTILENCE ; AND THOU SHALT BE CUT OFF 
 FROM THE EARTH. AND IN VERY DEED FOR THIS CAUSE HAVE I RAISED 
 THEE UP, FOR TO SHOW IN THEE MY PO\VER ; AND THAT MY NAME 
 MAY BE DECLARED THROUGHOUT ALL THE EARTH." Ex, ix. 13-16. 
 
 ISTORY sometimes reproduces herself with pho- 
 tographic accuracy. Past and present then are 
 one. The very man who molded that dusty past 
 after his image and likeness, seems to be stirring 
 in the disturbed elements of the present, and fashioning 
 them after the same form. Plutarch sought for such a par- 
 allel between the chief men of Greece and Rome. The 
 present Napoleon has set up his great ancestor and the first 
 Caesar as of like lineaments, labors, and, he might have 
 added, fate. Yet none so strikingly in their rise, rule, and 
 fall resemble each other as Pharaoh and Jefferson Davis. 
 
 * A sermon preached in Boston on the occasion of the State Fast, 
 Thursday. April 12, 1865. 
 
 34 (529)
 
 530 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 Living thousands of years apart, under different skies, insti- 
 tutions, and religions, they have had a history and will have 
 a fame well nigh identical. Their resemblances and con- 
 trasts will be the theme for our consideration. 
 
 We may properly engage in such contemplations, because 
 the hosts of our Pharaoh are cast into the sea. On the tri- 
 umphant shore stand victorious our Aaron and Moses, 
 Lincoln and Grant ; with their hardly less grand associates, 
 Sherman and Sheridan, the Caleb and Joshua of the hour ; 
 while a rescued country, and the liberated millions for whose 
 especial deliverance God hath raised up both Pharaoh and 
 Moses, lift up glad hands in exultant hallelujahs to Him 
 whose right arm hath gotten Him the victory. 
 
 With overpowering emotions of thankfulness and praise 
 we crowd His courts to-day. Our fasting is turned into 
 feasting. The bridegroom is with us how can we fast ? 
 The bands of wickedness are broken why should we fast ? 
 
 " Let the hills clap their hands, let the mountains rejoice, 
 Let all the glad earth raise a jubilant voice." 
 
 With our eyes fixed upon the ingulfing waves, that have 
 drowned forever the great rebellion and its greater cause ; 
 fixed yet more steadily and gratefully upon Him at whose 
 command the waters disparted to let His people go over dry 
 shod, and then closed eternally over their mighty oppres- 
 sors, let us dwell upon the analogies our subject suggests. 
 We shall find in them fresh cause to adore the wisdom, 
 power, and goodness of Him who worketh all things after 
 the counsel of His own will ; who, never interfering the 
 least in the freedom of His creature, still holdeth the reins 
 of sovereignty, and guideth the affairs of the universe. 
 
 The proper way to contemplate the great struggle, which 
 seems so near its end, is to take our stand by the side f 
 God, and look upon it from His point of observation. We 
 have, as a nation, chiefly observed it from the side of Union.
 
 AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 531 
 
 To us it has been a struggle for sovereignty, for empire, for 
 integrity of the national domain. The Flag has been the 
 chief symbol of our sentiments and resolves. Nationality 
 the inspiring energy of our souls. Not so with God. Our 
 nationality is of small account with Him beside righteous- 
 ness. He has inaugurated and conducted the war chiefly, 
 we might almost say solely, in the interests of Liberty. He 
 allowed, He encouraged our passion for the Union, because 
 thus He could best work out His plan for emancipation. 
 
 Then, too, we have dwelt almost constantly upon the 
 rebellious leaders and their hosts. Their policy, their pro- 
 gress, their prospects, have absorbed our minds. It is as 
 if we studied the Mosaic deliverance from the movements 
 of Pharaoh, his ministers and his people. That we never 
 do. We look at it from its Mosaic, its divine, its slave side. 
 We study the movements toward emancipation. We see 
 Pharaoh not aggressive, but resisting the desires and decrees 
 of God. The slave Moses, not his master, is the center 
 around which those events are organized. So should it be 
 here. Not the slaveholder but the slave, not the rebelling 
 armies, but the organizing troops of Freedom ; not the stately 
 pronunciamentos of Jefferson Davis, but the prayers and 
 prophecies of the captive, should be now, will be the future 
 nucleus around which this Thirty Years' War will inevitably 
 revolve. The movements of abolitionism, political, social, 
 religious, military, from the rise of Garrison to the consum- 
 mation of Lincoln's election and proclamation, of Sherman's 
 marches and Grant's victories, as well as the hostile forces 
 in the Senate, society, the pulpit, and the field, all gather 
 around that Christian bondman. They are the chosen people 
 of God who for three centuries have groaned in their prison- 
 houses, and whose liberation and exaltation, not our Union 
 nor our liberties, are the great, almost the sole cause, of the 
 outstretching of His arm, and the more than Mosaic miracles 
 that pass before our half-observant eyes.
 
 532 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 Taking our position, therefore, by His side, and looking 
 on the war with His eyes, we see it to be, as all Europe sees 
 it, a war of God for emancipation. 
 
 Three difficulties stood in His way : the words and con- 
 struction of the Constitution ; the aversion of the North to 
 abolitionism, and the purpose of the South to prevent it. Each 
 of these seemed strong-. All must yield, or be crushed to 
 powder beneath His omnipotent march. How can they be 
 removed or reduced ? Only by strengthening the last. 
 
 The dread of touching the Constitution had become a dis- 
 ease. The people feared it, as our fathers did their idols 
 the work of their own hands. They said, The Constitution 
 forbids us to touch slavery where it is. We cannot, we 
 will not, violate that instrument. The slaveholders' will 
 alone compelled them to forget their idol and fear God. They 
 or it must die. 
 
 Behind and beneath this lay a horror of touching the 
 slave. " Emancipation ! haven't we opposed it from the 
 beginning? The black man will become our equal, our 
 master. He is a brute, an ape ; does not want freedom, 
 will not work, will not fight." Mr. Ten Eyck, senator of 
 of New Jersey, declared in the Senate, after the war had 
 begun, that if slavery was abolished in the District of Co- 
 lumbia, the slaves would be pouring down upon the North, 
 and his State would not take care of them. He has just lost 
 his reelection because he would not give them their rights 
 in his own State. This aversion was profound, was univer- 
 sal. How could it be overcome ? Only by the firmness of 
 the Southern purpose. The lesser evil can only be over- 
 come by strengthening the greater, and God gives it that 
 power. For this purpose He raised up their strong leader, 
 and endowed him with extraordinary nature, in order that 
 against His will these fears and prejudices of the nation 
 might be dashed to pieces, and our glorious end be sub- 
 limely accomplished.
 
 AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 533 
 
 The study of His character is, therefore, the study of all 
 this gigantic movement. It was said, a year ago, " The 
 rebellion is Jefferson Davis. His will is its sole support 
 and life." It was so from the beginning. It has been more 
 and more so to its ignominious end. 
 
 Consider then, 
 
 I. The resemblances between our Pharaoh and the one 
 who was the needful point of resistance in God's first war 
 for emancipation. 
 
 II. The end God had in view in raising him up. 
 
 The parallel is seen in their freedom, their character, their 
 work, and their fate. 
 
 1. They were alike in freedom of action. For this pur- 
 pose God raised them up, that He might show forth His 
 power in them. Yet they themselves freely elected the 
 course they pursued. Many theories concerning the condi- 
 tion of Pharaoh's will have been propounded by students of 
 his history. Some have ajgued that his freedom of will was 
 supernaturally suspended, so that he was a mere machine 
 worked by Almighty power for its own ends. Others have 
 thought that he expressed the ordinary relation of every 
 man's will to that of God, though under extraordinary cir- 
 cumstances of expansion. The last are right in this position, 
 though they err in saying that this relation is the actual 
 absorption of his volition into the volition of God. 
 
 The truth may be clearly seen in the parallel which is 
 before us. Jefferson Davis has freely resisted the most 
 pressing and repeated appeals of God. Never has he felt 
 that the mission he was set to do was one forced upon a 
 reluctant will, or one that constrained that will to any course 
 other than it freely and enthusiastically accepted as its 
 highest, strongest, only choice. In him, as in the great 
 Egyptian, the divine intent was directly the contrary of 
 his own. Their purpose was to aggrandize themselves, 
 each by retaining a mighty mass of slaves, the one to pre-
 
 534 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 serve and increase the glory of his kingdom, the other to 
 found an empire that should absorb the continent, and be, 
 as was that of Pharaoh's then, the leading power of the 
 world. God's plan was to liberate His enslaved children, 
 and to employ them in the extension of His kingdom through- 
 out the earth. Their wills, then, are and were precisely 
 like yours and mine like the humblest of their retainers, 
 the most degraded of their slaves. 
 
 God gave them this freedom of action, but gave it, as 
 He gives everything, subject to the laws of its constitution. 
 One of those laws is, that exercise, in whatever direction, 
 strengthens the faculty in that direction. Had they yielded 
 honestly but a little, they would soon have yielded all. Their 
 resistance intensified resistance, so that by the laws of their 
 nature, that is, by God the Creator and Sustainer of all law, 
 they both hardened their hearts, and yet God hardened them 
 also. He allowed those natural laws to work their perfect 
 work in them, because that thus the more fully could His 
 own ends be accomplished. 
 
 To go further than this, is to make God the Author of 
 their deeds, and so of their sins. It is to annihilate their 
 responsibility and their humanity. It is to make them ves- 
 sels of wrath fitted for destruction, with no more sin or 
 punishment in them than in the fire which has devoured the 
 palaces of Charleston and Richmond. Such is not the teach- 
 ing of Scripture. Such is not the feeling of every heart. 
 They are responsible, they have sinned, they are punished. 
 They are men of like passions with ourselves, who have 
 rejected the counsel of God against themselves. With their 
 own hands they bound themselves, they kept themselves 
 bound to the potter's wheel. Of themselves have they al- 
 lowed God to make them vessels of wrath fitted for destruc- 
 tion. As they have sown, thus do they also reap. 
 
 2. Their characters are alike. 
 
 This work is to be accomplished by human agents, acting
 
 AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 535 
 
 among men, and according 1 to the nature of man. It was as 
 easy for God to have taken up the children of Israel, their 
 wives and their little ones, in their beds, and to have trans- 
 ported them bodily into the land of Canaan, as it was to 
 work the wonders that He did for their liberation. He could 
 have slain Pharaoh at the beginning as easily as at the end 
 of the conflict. He could have so inspired the Egyptians 
 with terror, or whelmed them in destruction, that they 
 would thrust out their slaves as readily at the first as at the 
 last. But He never violates human nature while working 
 with or against it. He respects most carefully the freedom 
 of His creatures, whether He saves or slays them. He had 
 two ends to accomplish the development of manhood in 
 His people, so that they might become fit for the sovereignty 
 which He designed for them, and the destruction of Egyp- 
 tian pride and purpose, so that they should voluntarily let 
 His people go. To achieve these ends, the progress of 
 events must be gradual. They would not yield freely at 
 first, neither would the slaves assume their rights and duties 
 and burdens at first freely. Moses found this fact prevent- 
 ing his success, when "he supposed his brethren would have 
 understood how that God by His hand would deliver them ; 
 but they understood not." How precisely similar was our 
 conduct to our Moses. There must, therefore, be one man 
 whose nature is so firm, whose mind is so clear, that he 
 sees the possible and intended end of every movement in 
 the opposite direction, and who is set like the eternal hills 
 to resist their progress. Upon that rock shall the purposes 
 of the people be broken. Upon it shall those of God be 
 established. 
 
 The characters of these men are alike in three respects. 
 (1.) Their clear perception of the end from their beginning. 
 (2.) Their steadiness of purpose. (3.) Their power to de- 
 velop such strength and steadiness in others. 
 
 (1.) Pharaoh, like Jefferson Davis, saw that the first step
 
 536 ' JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 toward emancipation, if not resisted, would inevitably lead 
 thither. When Moses asks for a three days' camp-meeting 
 around the base of Sinai, an old and familiar usage of the 
 Egyptians, the quick-sighted king detects the whole scope 
 of the petition. He instantly answers, " Who is the Lord, 
 that I should obey His voice to let Israel go ? I know not 
 the Lord, neither will I let Israel go." And when they 
 humbly renew their request, declaring "The God of the 
 Hebrews hath met with us : let us go, we pray thee, three 
 days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto our God, 
 lest He fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword ; " 
 he savagely retorts, "Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, 
 let the people from their works. Get you unto your bur- 
 dens." And he instantly bound their burdens the heavier, 
 ordering their overseers to take away the straw, but not to 
 diminish the tale of bricks. 
 
 So, when the public conscience had grown in this land 
 that it began loudly to demand of the slaveholders the abo- 
 lition of slavery, Jefferson Davis stood forth chief in audacity, 
 coolness, and firmness to resist its demands, and by the aid 
 of supple tools, among whom, alas! was our own great states f - 
 man, he bound upon the already heavily-burdened slave the 
 additional atrocity of the Fugitive Slave Bill. There was 
 a feeble ray of relief before. If they reached our borders 
 they were substantially free. Now the human blood-hounds 
 scented them through the streets of every Northern city, 
 and in the lanes and fields of our most rural communities. 
 A gray-haired minister of Jesus Christ, stationed close beside 
 us, was compelled to flee for his life, as were the African 
 bishops Cyril and Athanasius from Alexandria, and Paul 
 from Damascus. The cry rose yet more bitterly to heaven. 
 Gates hundreds of miles thick suddenly shut in upon them, 
 grating harsh thunder in their affrighted ears. 
 
 Each thus early apprehended the full significance of the 
 movement, and sought to stifle it in its birth. This per-
 
 AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 537 
 
 ception of the intent of the Hebrews was stimulated to 
 greater ferocity with every miracle. So, since the nation 
 put its authoritative word in the mouth of its Executive, 
 has the heart of our Pharaoh become the more hardened 
 against the liberation of his slaves. He saw its end when 
 Mr. Lincoln was elected, and avowed his purpose to resist 
 it. He seceded when as yet no overt act had been com- 
 mitted, and in spite of our protestations of faithfulness to 
 imaginary constitutional demands, that were like the beg- 
 gings of Moses before the Lord, unlike, in this respect, that 
 our President made his before Pharaoh ; a degradation Moses 
 never reached. He saw that allowing the Territories to be 
 free, was abolishing slavery. The little favor the Republican 
 party was constrained to beg, the occupancy of the wilder- 
 ness by Liberty, notwithstanding its profuse promises that 
 it would not harm the gigantic sin where it ruled and rev- 
 eled ; that the fugitive slave bill should be yet more firmly 
 supported ; that the four millions of captives should have 
 no hope of release, but should be given over to the extremest 
 cruelty of their oppressors ; that the coastwise slave-trade 
 should still go forward, and the slave-masters yet rule the 
 nation ; in spite of the promise to amend our Constitution so 
 as to prevent the Northern conscience from ever disturbing 
 the iniquity, the Pharaoh of the South saw the end. He 
 knew that wilderness inheritance insured the ultimate pos- 
 session of the whole land. He knew the recognition of their 
 political inferiority must end in their political annihilation. 
 He knew that acknowledging the black anywhere as equal, 
 as would be the case in the recognition of Liberia and 
 Hayti, would result in his universal equality. Therefrom 
 he instantly and resolutely ordered secession. lie visited 
 Richmond and Charleston, and the other chief centers of this 
 sin, and organized revolt. He gave the diabolic enthusiasm 
 the needful energies of his potent will. 
 
 (2.) In strength and steadiness of will they are alike.
 
 538 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 Pharaoh never actually yielded to their petitions. Several 
 times, when great reverses came upon him, he felt like re- 
 lenting a little. Once he got so far as to agree to let them 
 go, providing they went without their families and their 
 flocks ; but even that he repented of, and they left, at last, 
 without any direct orders from him. 
 
 So has it been with our Pharaoh. In some of the great 
 reverses that have befallen his arms, he has half inclined to 
 substitute a temporary system of serfdom for his pet horror 
 of slavery. To win the recognition of England and France, 
 to secure needful help to his armies, he has almost said, 
 " I will give these slaves a partial liberty ; " knowing that 
 after the crisis had passed he could easily rcsubjugate them 
 to slavery. And once, when the thick darkness of disaster 
 covered his whole land, save the cabins of the slaves, where 
 the light that shone upon Goshen was again shining, when 
 the Mississippi was lost and Georgia cleft in twain, and the 
 enemy lay around his capital, and darkness that could be 
 felt, that was fearfully felt, pressed down upon every rebell- 
 ious heart, then he partially relented. -Then he said, " Let 
 us arm the slaves, and free those we arm." Not free their 
 wives and children, but themselves. Let them go free for 
 a little season till this calamity be overpast. God repelled 
 the insulting proposal, and prevented the attempt. His 
 heart became hardened against even this compliance, and 
 he awaited in sullenness the blow that annihilated him. He 
 knew, military man as he is, that Richmond must soon fall. 
 He knew that the last stroke would soon be dealt. He had 
 seen these movements of the Delivering God become more 
 and more severe. Savannah had fallen, South Carolina had 
 been traversed, Charleston and Columbia were in ashes, the 
 enemy was gathering on every side of the doomed capital ; 
 still he stood firm. He received his death-blow in the 
 church of his idolatry, at the altars of a false god, whom 
 he had set up in the place of the true God and our Savior
 
 AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 539 
 
 Jesus Christ, and calling him by that holy name, was fer- 
 vently adoring the hideous idol. At these altars of a foul 
 and bloody Moloch did he fall. Here did the true and 
 eternal God of liberty and love smite our Pharaoh. Fitting 
 was the hour and spot of his destruction. As Caesar fell 
 under the statue of the rival he had slain, as Napoleon fell 
 on the fields most consecrated of all in Europe to the liberty 
 he had betrayed, as Judas fell in the very spot which the 
 price of his treason was to purchase, so fell Jefferson Davis 
 in the very church that for generations had set up a false god 
 as the true, and that had steadily and rapidly increased the 
 foulness and ferociousness of its idolatry ; on the Sabbath, 
 too, which had been so horribly profaned by him and his 
 with pretended worship of a Savior whose precepts they 
 had most fearfully despised and rejected. "Just and true 
 are Thy ways, thou King of Saints." 
 
 Yet here, as in his prototype, he remained unshaken. No 
 cry escaped those thin, pallid lips ; no quivering of that firm- 
 set mouth ; he leaves the church as calmly as he had en- 
 tered it. He leaves the city of his pride and hope with as 
 little outward tremor as when he rode in, triumphant, four 
 years before. He offers no freedom to his slaves. They 
 take it. Just as the Israelites took their actual liberty, 
 without the order of Pharaoh, who would have granted the 
 three days' journey, but not emancipation, so do ours 
 theirs. Their unbending tyrant gives no sign of submis- 
 sion. He falls, like Satan, upon his eternal ruin, unsub- 
 dued, unterrified. 
 
 (3.) Like Pharaoh, he possessed the power of infusing 
 his strength into others. That monarch often felt the will 
 of his subordinates failing him. Once and again they en- 
 treat him to yield to the demands of Moses. "How long," 
 they say, " shall this man be a snare unto us ? Let the 
 men go, that they may serve the Lord their God ; knowest 
 thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed ? " But Pharaoh's
 
 540 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 heart did not relent. He still refused to hear the voice of 
 God. He strengthened his subjects to endure the vials of 
 wrath which Omnipotence was pouring constantly upon 
 them. 
 
 Even so has our Pharaoh been entreated again and again 
 by his people to make terms with the enemy, even at the 
 sacrifice of slavery. Governor Brown of Georgia, Senator 
 Hunter, Vice-President Stephens, and not a few of her gen- 
 erals, have been advocates for peace and Union. But he 
 stood firm. One word he writes as his sole orders to the 
 embassy that met our President at Fortress Monroe but two 
 months ago " Independence." * And he inspires that 
 embassy with his resolution. Every one of them saw the 
 impossibility of carrying out that purpose. They were 
 ready to yield. Not so he. He compelled them to his 
 service ; he made Johnson, and has just made Lee fight his 
 battles, after they had acknowledged that even victory could 
 not save them. That sally upon Fort Steadman, that three 
 days' battle behind Petersburg, were all compelled by Jef- 
 ferson Davis. Like Pharaoh, he rallied his hosts for the 
 last encounter. Perhaps like him he will still make another 
 desperate assault upon God and Liberty. Perhaps the Red 
 Sea, where his hosts and his power shall perish, has not yet 
 been reached. The midnight cry in Richmond, and flight 
 from its mighty walls, may not be the last of this tyrant. 
 We shall see. But we shall see that if he gathers his le- 
 gions for a new resistance, and is again overthrown, he will 
 still die haughty, stern, defiant. His allies may cower. 
 He never. No such correspondence will pass from him to 
 President Lincoln as General Lee wrote to General Grant. 
 He dies as he has lived, with firm and steadfast mind, fully 
 set to do evil. These three qualities of far-sightedness, 
 steadiness, and power to inspire others with strength, are 
 striking counterparts of his great original. 
 
 * See Note XIX.
 
 AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 541 
 
 3. But their work is as analogous as their characters. 
 For what purpose did God raise them up ? To show forth 
 His power, and that His name might be declared through- 
 out all the earth. How remarkably do their histories com- 
 pare. The first has been famous throughout the earth and 
 throughout all generations. Other Pharaohs have ruled in 
 Egypt. Some built pyramids, some temples, some ran 
 through Syria and the East with their all-conquering armies. 
 Some erected gigantic statues, which still remain for the 
 astonishment of modern eyes. Yet all are forgotten beside 
 this otherwise unknown king. Some suppose he was the 
 great Ramesis, the Napoleon of his dynasty. But no proof 
 of this is extant. And if it is so, not for his deeds of war, 
 or government, or architecture, or piety is he famous. In 
 these he is utterly unknown. Only as the one whom God 
 raised up, by whom to free His people, is he ever heard of 
 among men. 
 
 Thus is Jefferson Davis to be known ; thus only. Men 
 knew him before as an astute politician, as a brave and 
 accomplished soldier, as a gentleman in culture and bear- 
 ing, as the easy master of his party and its administration 
 of the government. They have known him since his usur- 
 pation as one who is perfect master of himself ; who can 
 express the most abhorrent ideas in the calmest, strong- 
 est, and most elegant language ; who can organize armies 
 in every part of the vast region that recognizes his sway ; 
 who can make every State legislature and his Con- 
 gress, in spite of malice, and envy, and failure even, em- 
 body his will ; who can so influence the courts of Europe 
 that they covertly recognize his embassadors, and one of 
 their first statesmen can say, in an extorted admiration, 
 " lie has created a nation." It is not too much to say 
 that the accomplished, courtly, sagacious Davis has ap- 
 peared before the world to vastly greater advantage than 
 our rude, stammering Moses, who only utters a finished
 
 542 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 sentence by mistake, and stumblingly presents the demands 
 for which alone he too has been raised up. 
 
 Yet with all his abilities and his fame, Jefferson Davis 
 will be known in history only as the one through whose 
 needful resistance God wrought the liberty of His people. 
 For this purpose God hath raised him up. 
 
 How necessary it was that Pharaoh's heart should be 
 strong. Had he yielded early, the Israelites would have 
 made their journey and returned ; and so His purposes and 
 promises would have been defeated. He must refuse the 
 first pleas in order that the divine end shall be accomplished. 
 His people were not ready to go, The great and terrible 
 wilderness made them naturally affrighted. They still 
 loved the flesh-pots of Egypt. They feared the enemy be- 
 hind and before ; they had but little if any confidence in 
 the leader, and he as little in himself. The Egyptians would 
 not have aided their departure with the needful gifts. The 
 work must grow. It must grow around a point of resist- 
 ance as well as a center of resolve. Moses and Pharaoh 
 both developed gigantically in the long conflict a conflict 
 certainly of months, probably of years. So have Lincoln 
 and Davis. Had the usurper yielded, as most expected 
 that he would at the beginning of the war, the great pur- 
 pose of God would have been unaccomplished. That pur- 
 pose, be it ever kept in mind, was Emancipation. Nothing 
 short of this would satisfy His will. To bring us up to the 
 willingness to proclaim it, He must make that strong will 
 stronger in resisting every attempt at any other settlement. 
 He does not alter the will, he does not deprive it of its essen- 
 tial freedom. It chooses sin. He nerves it so that it per- 
 sists in sin. It would still prefer it. There would be no 
 inward conversion in him, as there is not to-day in the sub- 
 jugated aristocracy of Richmond, in Lee and Ewell, and the 
 imprisoned leaders of their armies. He allows its free 
 choice to continue, but gives its strength strictly accord- 
 ing to its law by which it abides firm in its free election.
 
 AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 543 
 
 Note how often this appeal has been made and resisted, 
 because God's ends would not have been attained in its 
 acceptance. 
 
 First came the Peace Congress, before the first inaugura- 
 tion of Mr. Lincoln, that offered to make the Crittenden res- 
 olutions the basis of settlement extending slavery to the 
 Pacific, and confirming it in the States where it existed, by 
 constitutional amendment. Four fifths of the South would 
 have accepted that. Davis said, " No : Independence." 
 Charles Francis Adams next offered like amendments in 
 Congress, with the cooperation of Mr. Seward and Mr. Lin- 
 coln. The firm refusal of Davis alone prevented the mis- 
 erable humiliation of their passage. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln next makes every concession and promise in 
 his inaugural ; still he is defiant. 
 
 We seek to relieve a starving garrison, taking bread, not 
 balls, to their help. He orders his men to fire upon the 
 merchant ship, and fire at the same time the Southern 
 heart. 
 
 The President issues the riot act, and calls upon them to 
 'lay down their arms, promising universal pardon. They 
 and their leader laugh him to scorn. 
 
 Bull Run follows, and they exult the more. A long win- 
 ter of pride and luxury succeeds, during which they rest 
 assured of victory. The spring opens with the fall. of Fort 
 Donelson and the capture and government of New Orleans, 
 in which events appear almost simultaneously before the 
 public eye, the three representatives of our naval, mili- 
 tary, and moral victories, equals in honor and in fame, 
 Farragut, Grant, and Butler. 
 
 Still Davis is unyielding. McClellari's defeats confirm 
 his confidence. Then we are forced to issue the Proclama- 
 tion. With how much hesitation that word of God was 
 uttered ; with how great hostility on the part of the nation, 
 history will painfully record. The President declares, just
 
 544 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 before he makes it, that it is like the Pope's bull against 
 the comet. He holds it back for a year, and would have 
 held it back till to-day, but for the bloody scourges of an 
 angry God. Even then it gave the rebels time to come to 
 their allegiance. Strong in his faith and purpose, their 
 Pharaoh ridiculed the offer and the threat. 
 
 Again the spring opens dark with disasters to our cause, 
 that he might be confirmed in his resistance and we in our 
 duty. Drafts are called for. Riots break out. The enemy 
 get the reins of government in their hands in New York 
 and elsewhere. Gold goes up. Business goes down. What 
 next ? " Arm your colored men ! " " Impossible ! " 
 " Arm ! " says God. " I will not ! " say you. " Treat 
 these niggers as men, as fellow-soldiers. ' Is thy servant 
 a dog, that he should do this thing ? ' " Arm ! " sounds 
 solemnly from the voice of God. And we most reluctantly 
 obeyed. Still we said we will arm them as servants, not 
 as soldiers. Ten dollars a month shall they have, and none 
 shall hold rank above the sergeant. They enlist, they fight, 
 they die, they compel our unwilling admiration. Still they 
 are not paid as soldiers. Congress refuses to pay them. 
 The President opposes it. In answer to our partial faith- 
 fulness God gives us partial success. Vicksburg falls, and 
 Gettysburg repels the invader. But Chattanooga is be- 
 sieged, .Louisiana is overrun, Fredericksburg is defiant. 
 The spring opens with Chattanooga ours. But Banks is 
 repelled with great slaughter, and the coast of North Caro- 
 lina largely retaken. Grant prepares to move out on his 
 campaign, now so triumphantly concluding. Before he goes 
 he demands of Congress equal pay for his soldiers. Some 
 of you will remember that I preached on the occasion of 
 his departure, on " Why he would succeed," and laid that 
 down as the corner-stone the making of all his men equal 
 in their pay.* More than his genius is that justice. Still 
 
 * See p. 393.
 
 AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 545 
 
 Davis hardens his heart ; and last summer, when his emissa- 
 ries plotted for peace at Niagara Falls, our President had 
 grown to the stature of the divine will. Never before. 
 Peace on the basis not of Union alone, this had always 
 been his previous error ; but also on that of Emancipation. 
 Then came success after success, at' Atlanta, at the polls, 
 at Savannah. 
 
 Still the chief was defiant. Till but two months ago it 
 seemed as if this divine demand might be sacrificed. Had 
 he said to his commissioners with Mr. Lincoln, " Peace and 
 Union," the country might have compelled the President to 
 submit to the ignomy. Leading abolitionists, like The 
 Tribune, were more clamorous for peace than for liberty. 
 But God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he said, " No 
 Union." Hence no peace. Even when Sherman had reached 
 North Carolina, and Grant was about to move on the enemy's 
 works, Davis proposes to talk of peace, but with no offers 
 of Union. Independence is still his cry ; to it he clings, to 
 the bitter end. Then comes his overthrow as in a night, and 
 with him is buried, in an eternal grave, not only disunion 
 but slavery. "For this purpose I have raised thee up, that 
 I might show forth My power through thee." 
 
 My children shall go free. Despite their timidity, despite 
 the unwillingness of the people of the North, despite the 
 hellish purpose of their masters, they shall go free. The 
 tyrant's firmness shall breed strength in the heart of his 
 enemy, until the word peace, in its mildest form, when pro- 
 posed by their chief general as the basis of his submission, 
 is carefully excluded by his conqueror. No terms, but mil- 
 itary ; not peace, but surrender. 
 
 Thus has Jefferson Davis been lifted up before all the 
 world. Thus has every eye in Europe, peasant's or prince's, 
 seen the strong-willed enemy of God steadfastly resisting 
 His divine decrees, and manifesting the very power of God, 
 because He thus constrains the further and full expression 
 35
 
 546 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 of that power, to its glorious accomplishment in the com- 
 plete deliverance of His long enslaved people. 
 
 4. Their fates are similar. 
 
 Whether Pharaoh perished in the Red Sea or not, he per- 
 ished from history at that hour of his overthrow ; so whether 
 Davis is caught and hung, or escapes and dies in exile, or 
 at home, his career as a leader and a man of influence is 
 closed. No longer will kings and emperors accept his min- 
 isters as their guests and friends. No longer will Earl 
 Russell answer respectfully and officially their formal notes. 
 No longer will the Pope send him letters, and the emperors 
 of Africa congenial tyrants their best blooded steeds. 
 No longer will his name make the theaters of Oxford and 
 Cambridge reecho with applause. No longer will parliament- 
 arians argue for his recognition, and all aristocratic Europe 
 envy him his dignities. No longer will commissions signed 
 with his name protect pirates upon the seas, and robbers 
 upon our borders. 
 
 Jefferson Davis is no more. The President of the Con- 
 federate States, head of a million soldiers, the pet and pride 
 of eight millions of supporters, is a panting fugitive, glad 
 to hide his diminished head in the depths of the forest, in 
 the huts of the slave. His name is cast out and trodden 
 under foot of men. Let him live. Napoleon at St. Helena 
 was a far bitterer pill to his European worshipers, than if 
 he had been guillotined on the Place de la Concorde. So 
 will Davis be in the obscurity of London or Paris. His end 
 is reached. The Red Sea of blood has drowned his hosts, 
 his power, his fame. Let him rot in a living grave. 
 
 Thus has God shown that He is the perpetual Master of 
 the world. Whether on the banks of the Nile or the Mis- 
 sissippi, whether thousands of.years ago or to-day, whoever 
 of His oppressed people calls upon Him, He will hear, He will 
 answer. He is the same God, visiting the iniquities of the 
 fathers upon the children to the third and fourth genera-
 
 AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. 547 
 
 tions of them that hate Him, and showing mercy unto 
 thousands of them that love Him and that keep His com- 
 mandments. 
 
 Consider, in conclusion, 
 
 II. What are the ends God had in view in this display 
 of His power. 
 
 1. The first, of course, was to release millions of His be- 
 loved children from the awful bondage under which they 
 had groaned. Of this we have no need of further words. 
 Whoever believes in God believes in His hatred of oppres- 
 sion and such oppression not the mere subjugation, but 
 the sale of His children ; not the sale only, but their sepa- 
 ration also ; not their separation merely, but their subjec- 
 tion to unlicensed lust. The only wonder is that He with- 
 held His arm so long ; that He could listen for generations 
 to their dreadful cries, and not appear on the clouds of 
 heaven taking vengeance on their oppressors. He has thus 
 appeared. Fire has fallen from heaven, in the curvetting 
 shell of General Gilmore, upon the Sodom of the iniquity. 
 Fire foas consumed its kindred Gomorrah with its destruc- 
 tion. He has avenged His own elect, who have cried day 
 and night unto Him. 
 
 2. But God's purposes in this redemption is to confer 
 great honor on this people. Many sneeringly ask, Is not a 
 white man as -good as a black man ? I am afraid we shall 
 be compelled to answer, " No." Were the Egyptians as 
 good as the Israelites ? They thought themselves much 
 the better, and treated with ineffable scorn, and shunned, 
 with what they thought, instinctive horror, their neighbor, 
 the Hebrew. Yet who were highest in the thought, and 
 love, and purpose of God ? Who in the history of man ? 
 Where are the Egyptians ? Where not the Hebrews ? So 
 with us. Which of our peoples has exhibited most of the 
 elements of goodness ? Which has the most faith, the 
 most patience, the most long-suffering, the most charity ?
 
 548 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 Which obey most strikingly those commands of the Gos- 
 pel, " When ye are reviled revile not again ; Bless them 
 that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you ; 
 Love your enemies?" I have talked with many a fugitive 
 and freedman, and never heard one breathe a word of harsh- 
 ness against his oppressors. When telling the story of 
 their sufferings, horrible as they were, no railing accusation 
 was raised, none was felt against those worse than murder- 
 ers. What does all this betoken ? It shows us where the 
 sweetest fountains of grace are in this land. It shows us 
 who are most like the apostles and martyrs of the primi- 
 tive ages. These did not surpass our martyrs in faith 
 and love, as they could not in suffering. They shall 
 be exalted into equal honor. God intends to make that 
 the choice blood of America. Not our proud Anglo-Saxon, 
 not the Celtic, or German, or any other of the representa- 
 tive races, shall climb to the top of American society, but 
 the African. He has the most of Christ. He is the nearest 
 God. If he maintain his piety in prosperity that he has in 
 adversity, if he grows in grace as he grows in culture, 
 then shall he be the leaven of our too hard and impious 
 mass. He shall season our worldliness, selfishness, and 
 irreligion with his heavenly salt. In humility shall he be 
 raised to sovereignty. 
 
 As the Israelites were delivered, not merely because of 
 God's hatred of slavery, and sympathy with its victims, 
 but because they were His chosen people, out of whom He 
 intended to make for Himself a name in all the earth ; so 
 has He delivered these from their house of bondage, that 
 He might set them among princes ; that He might make 
 for Himself a people humble, holy, faithful ; the best ex- 
 pression on earth of His divinest nature. 
 
 3. He has emancipated them in order that He may thus 
 reunite all mankind in one blessed brotherhood of blood and 
 love. A descendant of this same Pharaoh gladly accepted
 
 AX HISTORIC PARALLEL. 549 
 
 the hand and the throne of a descendant of these same 
 slaves, and lives in history only because of this alliance. 
 So shall it be in America. The daughters of these haughty 
 Southerners, who have shrunk from their touch as leprous, 
 shall yet gratefully accept the offers of the sons of their 
 father's slaves, and their parents and themselves shall feel 
 their house exalted by the alliance. That day is near at 
 hand. Not ten years may pass ere such marriages will be 
 frequent. So completely will society be reversed, and the 
 true relations of humanity appear in that clime. 
 
 In fact, their independence could have hardly delayed this 
 result, so ripe was that region for that change. It will be 
 precipitated with a rapidity that will astonish all scoffers 
 and infidels when once peace resumes her sway, under the 
 banner of Union and Abolitionism. Gentlemen and ladies, 
 as well as the poorer classes, will delight in such legal, 
 happy, God-appointed relations. And the despised blood 
 will become the honored and even enviable blood of all that 
 region. Thus will He who has delivered them crown them 
 with abundant honor. 
 
 Let us fear and praise the God of these Hebrews. Let 
 us be of those Egyptians who joined themselves to them. 
 Let us behold the clear revelation of His will and purpose 
 in the rapidly unfolding events of the hour. Those who 
 four years ago were slaves, are now free ; who were forbid- 
 den in Massachusetts to bear arms, now hold Savannah, 
 Charleston, and Richmond under their guns; who then were 
 shut out from the alphabet, are now the hungriest and most 
 progressive students in the land ; who then were not ac- 
 counted men, are now demanding their equal rights as citi- 
 zens, and will soon enjoy all the prerogatives of manhood. 
 
 Be valiant in this cause. Let not the mistaken policy of 
 our President, as revealed in his speech of this week,* 
 
 * The last address Mr. Lincoln made only advocated partial and very 
 limited negro suffrage. It was the indorsement of Governor Banks's 
 policy in New Orleans instead of Gene-al Butler's.
 
 550 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH. 
 
 become the law of the land. May he who will be always 
 known as the Liberator, be also known as the Regenerator. 
 Let not those rebellious States be reorganized without 
 conferring the right of suffrage on every loyal man. 
 Twelve thousand half loyal whites of Louisiana refuse the 
 petition of six thousand thoroughly loyal colored men to 
 give them equal suffrage. Shame on this nation if, after 
 having been led so far in the way of duty, when the mo- 
 ment of success dawns, it shall cast itself back into the 
 mire of its own sins. Shame on it, if having won its 
 triumphs by the valor of men of color, it shall refuse those 
 men that franchise which it bestows on any Northern 
 traitor who has done his uttermost to oppose the govern- 
 ment, and even upon the Southern rebel, on his taking the 
 oath of allegiance an act of easy and frequent perjury.* 
 
 Shame, too, on the Church that seeks to separate these 
 best children of God from their prouder but less pious 
 brethren. South and North, in Boston and Charleston, 
 there should be no such thing known as a white or a 
 colored Church. All should be knit together in love. All 
 must be, all will be. 
 
 Let us then, my friends, hail the future. Our Pharaoh 
 is perished. He steals, a homeless wanderer, through the 
 regions he so lately ruled. He is of the past. We are 
 of the future. The redeemed Israelites remain the re- 
 deemed nation. May we not, becaus of our unbelief and 
 unwillingness to obey God's most clear commands, be 
 compelled to wander forty years in the wilderness, as 
 we have for the seventy years that are past ; but may 
 we instantly recognize and obey His will, so that our 
 Canaan shall be speedily gained, and our rest shall be 
 glorious. 
 
 * This was the policy so persistently and fatally followed out by Lin- 
 coln's successor.
 
 THE UJSTITER AND LIBERATOR 
 OF AMERICA.* 
 
 " THY GENTLENESS HATH MADE ME GREAT." Ps. XVlii. 35. 
 
 "HE SAVED OTHERS, HIMSELF HE CANNOT SAVE." Matt. XXVii. 42. 
 
 " ALL NATIONS SHALL CALL HIM BLESSED." Ps. IxXli. 17. 
 
 
 
 HE appalling deed of the last Good Friday begins 
 to put on the fixed lineaments of the past. As 
 that face and form, then so full of life, are frozen 
 in death, so he who animated them is fast becom- 
 ing solidified and shapen in the unchanging marble of history. 
 Still standing in the horrible shadow, how can we carve 
 the features of the immortal dead ? The 'chisel shakes in our 
 trembling hand. The rain of sorrow blinds our eyes. In 
 the ghastly darkness, we but faintly discern the spiritual 
 form that has so suddenly and forever vanished from the 
 eyes of man. He, who but yesterday was the center of all 
 human observation ; whose every word, as he himself de- 
 clared but three nights before his death, was in no unim- 
 portant sense a national decree ; from whom were the issues 
 
 * A Memorial Discourse on the Character and Career of Abraham Lin- 
 coln : delivered in the North Russell Street M. E. Church, Boston, on 
 the Occasion of his Assassination, Sunday, April 23, 18G5. 
 
 (551)
 
 552 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 of life and death to the imperious leaders of the rebellion 
 and their too willing subjects ; upon whose course foreign 
 potentates fastened watchful eyes, and foreign peoples were 
 yet more intent ; the foremost man in all the world, now 
 lies he low in his shroud of blood. A nation weeps around 
 his bier. The world bemoans his fate. 
 
 Never before did so wide and bitter a cry pierce the skies. 
 Never before were the heads of so many millions waters, 
 and their eyes fountains of teai'S, weeping day and night for 
 tne slain of the daughter of their people. The great day of 
 the Church has become yet more solemn in the annals of 
 America. Let not the 15th of April be considered the day 
 of his death, but let Good Friday be its anniversary. For 
 then the fatal blow was struck. He died to the conscious 
 world ere the day had died. Wo should make it a movable , 
 fast, and ever keep it beside the cross and the grave of our 
 blessed Lord, in whose service and for whose gospel he 
 became a victim and a martyr. 
 
 That crime I cannot dwell upon in such an hour. The 
 criminal is not the object of my revenge. Justice will 
 demand his death, to whom no less would it be a mercy ; 
 for it would shut him from the sight of the race he had dis- 
 honored and the earth he had polluted. Not the awful trans- 
 gressor nor his crime, not even the gigantic abomination of 
 which this deed was the natural and inevitable fruit, shall 
 becloud the hour. Let us look the rather upon him whose 
 earthly work is done ; not upon his form, laid out in " long- 
 stretching death," that is slowly moving amid tearful myri- 
 ads, through mighty cities, by the side of inland seas, across 
 yet vaster seas of billowy or level green, to its beloved 
 home in the heart of the land, fit resting-place for him who 
 shall ever live in the heart of the nation ; but upon the 
 features of his life, that we may learn why he grew to such' 
 a hight, and how we may, in our humbler sphere, attain an 
 equal perfection.
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 553 
 
 The character and career of Abraham Lincoln will there- 
 fore be the appropriate subject of our mournful meditations. 
 These are harmoniously united. His career was but the 
 flowering of his character, his character the seed and 
 germ of his career. Extraordinary circumstances gave that 
 nature a fulness of opportunity for its development such as 
 has most rarely, probably never before, fallen to the lot of 
 man ; but they did not make the man. The most fruitful 
 ground does not create the character of the seed it multiplies. 
 It imparts a possibility of richness and fulness that inferior 
 earths cannot afford. Still their own nature abides, and the 
 oak is an oak, the ivy an ivy, in the richest as well as in the 
 poorest soils. 
 
 His character was as complete when wrapped in the vesi- 
 cles of his early privacy as in the grand uplifts of its wonder- 
 ful consummations. As a child, a youth, an industrious, 
 studious, obscure workman, a lawyer and politician of Illinois, 
 he displayed the peculiar qualities which in his higher sphere 
 bore such abundant fruit. His first speech was as brief, as 
 witty, as compact, as simple-minded, and as good-natured as 
 his last.* 
 
 For these traits he is not to be praised. He was created 
 in the frame of soul that he ever exhibited. For their 
 culture he alone merits eulogy. 
 
 God needs various workmen for his varied work. And as 
 a wise master-builder uses a great variety of material for his 
 manifold edifice, and works this material into a yet greater 
 variety of forms, that the whole may be a unit of perfection, 
 so does the Divine Master-builder in His infinitely grander 
 structures of soul, erected on earth for time and for eternity. 
 
 The stately cathedral has its massy stone, lying in huge 
 boulders under its visible foundations, rising in shapen 
 blocks to its roof and pinnacles, carved in daintiest delicacy 
 
 * See Note XX.
 
 554 THE UNITEB AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 around its pillars, doors, and altar. This solid earth it 
 lightens with graceful forms of wood, as though the heart 
 of oak blossomed like the gentlest flower into fragrant 
 beauty. These are yet more relieved by tints that flush the 
 cold face of stone with life, and this vitality puts on its 
 highest expression in the scenes, sacred and divine, into 
 which the walls change under the touch of the great masters, 
 as the shapely face of death becomes radiant with life and 
 love under the inspiration of its Creator. 
 
 Thus does God build up the nation and the world. Thus 
 does He use every style of character, every quality of spirit 
 in His sublime cathedral of man, which He is patiently and 
 persistently erecting, in truth and love, out of a redeemed 
 and regenerated humanity, on the earth and in the heavens. 
 
 I. What, then, were the traits of soul which this eminent 
 agent in the plan divine received from God, and faithfully, 
 usefully, and rewardfully developed ? 
 
 1. We should only respond to the sentiment of every 
 heart, hostile or friendly, when we place at the foundation 
 of his character, honesty. This was his familiar appellation 
 in obscurity. It has been none the less so in the greatness 
 of his exaltation. Yet it fails to express the whole idea 
 which it strives to embody. It is the rude, ungainly trunk, 
 which, despite its rough exterior, is both the upholder and 
 the nourisher of all the attractions that rejoice above it. It 
 branches out in graceful boughs, with their rustling robes 
 of green. It turns under the smiles of spring into an orb of 
 odorous flower. It hangs in an autumn ripeness of golden 
 fruit. 
 
 Honesty in him was not the calculating wisdom of the 
 world as shown in its favorite and unworthy employment of 
 that word. It was not from selfish policy that he was honest. 
 Such honesty is really most dishonorable. It meant in him its 
 true and original signification. It was sincerity, simplicity, 
 impartiality, honor ; in fine, the scriptural conception of this
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN* 555 
 
 nature, guilelessncss. Look down as deep as yon may into his 
 profound nature, you will see that it is clear as a moteless 
 fountain. It may seem to be shallow, it is so pure ; and yet 
 a second sight convinces you that though your eyes are 
 sounding deeply, they touch not the bottom. As you look 
 skywards on a clear day, you first fancy that you sweep the 
 whole depth of the dome with your glance ; a second and 
 more penetrating gaze shows you that you have only 
 caught its lowest outlines. As it rises hights above hights, 
 you exclaim, 
 
 " The chasm of sky above my head 
 Is Heaven's profoundest azure, 
 
 an alyss 
 
 In which the everlasting stars abide." 
 
 Thus do you gaze into this pellucid nature. It is as 
 simple and open as a child's, yet you cannot penetrate it ; 
 not because it interposes barriers to your gaze, but because 
 your vision fails. It is none the less clear because it is 
 so deep. Could you look farther, you would find the same 
 nature, honest, unselfish, child-like ; "an Israelite indeed, in 
 whom is no guile." 
 
 The soul of this characteristic is absence of selfishness. 
 That is the root of guile. Though not without the tempta- 
 tions common to all men, he was remarkably free from this 
 propensity. This freedom from self-seeking is the more 
 noticeable in contrast with the characters of most great men. 
 Milton declares ambition "the last infirmity of noble minds." 
 This passion implies a subtle love of self, and frequently 
 mars the most exalted natures. Only one President before 
 him seemed almost utterly free from it. Jefferson talked in- 
 difference, but was a ceaseless schemer and mover of politi- 
 cal wires while professedly absorbed in his laboratory, study, 
 and farm. Adams, Franklin, Jackson, Clay, were men of 
 great parts, but a sense of their necessity to the movements
 
 556 THE.UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 of the nation gave to their strength the weakness of men. 
 Their personality was to them an essential element in the 
 events of their age. Not so with Washington and Lincoln. 
 They were the priests placed over the abyss divine. The 
 breath of God bore them onward in the accomplishment of 
 His purposes. They were His willing servants, but servants 
 only. They were not necessary to His success. Each 
 looked forward to the hour when he should repose peaceful- 
 ly in the quiet of their homes. Each felt that others had 
 greater wisdom than they. Each bent his ear kindly to 
 hear what their more creative minds should say. Each sin- 
 cerely sought the truth. Other men of might feel that they 
 possess the truth. They do not seek it. It comes to them. 
 It is an inspiration. They must declare it or die. " Woe 
 is me," cry Phillips and Everett, cry Sumner and Beecher, 
 " if I speak not that which I feel stirring within me." The 
 President had no such call. He waited to hear their words. 
 In sincerity of heart he deliberated, decided, acted. 
 
 This trait gave him that slowness of action, which was 
 not unlike the stammering of Moses. He must hear the 
 voice thrice ere he obeyed it. He must consider, as he can- 
 not create ; deliberate, as he does not divine. 
 
 2. But this guilelessness of heart and impartiality of judg- 
 ment were joined to great faithfulness in adhering to the 
 truths he had espoused. His step was as firm as it was 
 careful. Having done all, he stood. Hampden's motto 
 might properly have been his Nulla vestigia retrorsum. 
 No step did he ever take backward. Men of ideas often fail 
 when those ideas are born into actual life, and the Herods 
 rise up for their destruction. They are bold in the closet 
 and the forum, but timid in the field. Demosthenes was not 
 only the greatest orator of Athens, he was her greatest 
 democrat ; none of her men of might equalled him in courage- 
 ous defence of her central doctrine. And yet when she 
 must sustain her idea at Chseronea, he fled before the legions
 
 THE DEATH OF ABKAHAM LINCOLN. 557 
 
 of monarchy, and denied in shame the faith for which he had 
 so valiantly contended. Cicero was equally courageous in 
 words and cowardly in deeds, a Roman in the forum, but 
 not at the front. 
 
 So have been many idealists and reformers. Their shields 
 have been thrown away when the enemy assailed them. 
 Such are not the most renowned. They have the strength 
 of soul both to create and to sustain. Socrates, Huss, 
 Luther, Paul could fight as well as speak, die as heroi- 
 cally as they lived. Still this faithfulness is more sure to be 
 revealed in those who accept the truth in full view of the 
 perils it involves. Who takes the oath of allegiance before 
 the enemy's guns will be apt to abide by it in the succeed- 
 ing charge. Lincoln believed in these truths from the be- 
 ginning. But he did not embrace them as objects of duty 
 till he saw the whites of the enemy's eyes, as they were rush- 
 ing upon him to his evident destruction. Then seizing them 
 as if they were, as they were, loaded cannon, he henceforth 
 used them steadily and valiantly in repelling and discomfiting 
 his foe. 
 
 This trait was the more necessary in the tremendous 
 fluctuation of popular feeling and current events. When 
 the waves roared and were troubled, when the mountains 
 shook with the swelling thereof, it was well for the nation 
 that one held the helm who steered carefully, but calmly and 
 steadily ; who, if he did not hasten, did not go back ; if he 
 did not so soon as we prayed make the desired haven, never 
 ran his vessel back upon the breakers we had passed. His 
 faithfulness was one of his most admirable and most neces- 
 sary traits. 
 
 3. We should be unjust to his character if we shrank 
 from noticing his playfulness. In common with many 
 superior minds, he was as sportful as a lamb. He liked 
 a good story better than a great honor. No one ever more 
 enjoyed
 
 558 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 " Jests and youthful jollity, 
 Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, 
 Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, 
 Sport that wrinkled care derides, 
 And laughter holding both his sides." 
 
 A merry twinkle ever sat in his eyes. Ever when saddest 
 with sorrow, a ray of this sunlight played on their salt 
 drops. Napoleon, Luther, Socrates, Cicero, Caesar, Wesley, 
 Franklin, Webster, many great men, were of this nature. 
 A jest-book attributed to Cicero was current in Rome long 
 after his death. Caesar was ever pointing his speech with 
 these glittering specialties. Napoleon was full of mirth and 
 jokes, even on the night before Waterloo. Their bon-mots 
 were as brilliant as their battles. Lincoln, next to Franklin, 
 if next, was the most famous jester of America. Each of 
 these ever used a witty story to point an argument ; and 
 many was the laughable word uttered by the great diplomat 
 of the Revolution, that did the people of that sad hour good 
 like a medicine. 
 
 This playfulness was not unmanliness. It was the relief 
 of an intensely overstrained nature, the dimples of child- 
 hood dancing on the cheek of age, the reminiscence of the 
 past and prophecy of the future, that kept his heart green 
 and juicy amid the furnace of fire, heated seven times hotter 
 than ever before, where he was called of God to walk. It 
 was an important element in his career. Without it, neither 
 he nor the people could have walked erect. Those mirthful, 
 melancholic stories creeping out on the top of great dis- 
 asters, like light playing upon graves, relieved the people 
 in their terrific gloom. Not that he did not weep. No 
 President ever wept so much. Not that he did not soberly 
 gird himself to his fearful responsibilities. None ever 
 wrought so patiently and persistenly. But by a pleasantry 
 he lightened his and our bursting hearts, that would other- 
 wise have sunk like lead in the mighty waters.
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 559 
 
 4. His integrity was remarkable. In fact, all the traits 
 we have mentioned, save perhaps the last, may be summed 
 up in the one word Integrity. Here is his honesty, 
 his simplicity, his impartiality, his steadfastness. He was 
 an integer a unit. His soul was one. There was no 
 disunion there no conflict there. Its surface might be 
 tossed, not its depths. He had doubts as to what policy to 
 pursue, and often changed it with the changing moment ; 
 but never did he doubt his country, his cause, himself. It 
 was the spinal column, that supported not him alone but the 
 whole land. To it, as to a mighty tower, the people fled, 
 and felt that they were safe. Thousands of millions passed 
 through" his hand ; no itching palm caught the most soiled 
 fragment of the tiniest currency. He assumed the errors, 
 even the asserted peculations of his subordinates, as his own. 
 The country smiled, but laid not the assumed sin to his 
 charge. Its faith in his rectitude was unbounded. The 
 most envenomed shafts were never aimed at that mark. 
 Here, at least, his bitterest foes confessed that he was in- 
 vulnerable. 
 
 5. But even this was not the seat of his strength. That 
 lay in his love. His gentleness made him great. Sincere, 
 honorable, faithful, true, he might have been, and yet not 
 beloved. Franklin was as mirthful, Washington as incor- 
 ruptible, Adams as just, yet for none of them did the peo- 
 ple shed such floods of tears. Children and graybeards, man 
 and woman, slave and freeman, beggar and prince, all poured* 
 forth their tributary tides of woe. " Behold, how they loved 
 him ! " will all Europe say, as they hear this exceeding 
 bitter wailing. It was because he loved them. The condi- 
 tion of the highest love is essential here. We loved him 
 because he first loved us. He was the first President of the 
 United States who seemed to carry in his warmest heart the 
 heart of all the people. The pertinacious, cold-blooded leech 
 of an office-seeker did not feel that he was answered in the
 
 560 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 selfish spirit which inspired his zeal. There was a fatherly 
 affection even in the refusal. The bitter secessionist, even 
 the relentless rebel, found only gentleness and love in his 
 eye, and voice, and grasp. They were constrained to feel 
 that they had become prodigals from, nay enemies to, a most 
 tender and still affectionate father. 
 
 If these selfish or hostile men found such a welcome, how 
 much more did the loyal. The degraded slave felt the warm 
 clasp of that paternal hand as a benediction. The most 
 garrulous griefs were poured into a sympathetic ear. His 
 patient heart allowed every head to lie upon its broad, soft 
 pillow. The people felt the throbbings of that heart warm- 
 ly beating for them, and, like a tired child on its fnother's 
 bosom, sank trustfully to rest. 
 
 Far more than his sagacious judgment, incorruptible in- 
 tegrity, and playful humor, did his deep affection for the na- 
 tion support and carry us through the darkest night of our 
 history. It is not his mother's knowledge of what is best 
 for him, not her lightsome nature, not her unceasing faith- 
 fulness, that makes the sick child commit himself so con- 
 fidently to her arms. It is her love that makes him trust- 
 ful. Her judgment may err, strength may yield, joy may 
 flee, but love never faileth. Many waters cannot quench it 
 nor floods drown it. His greatest weakness only increases 
 its strength. His dying makes it live forever. 
 
 So has the nation rested in his loving arms. She knew 
 that his judgment was often at fault, however carefully he 
 exercised it ; that sometimes even his strength of purpose 
 almost trembled under the fearful pressure to which it was 
 subjected ; that his pleasant smile became sadness, and the 
 sunny wrinkles were channels for many tears. He had never 
 spoken confidently of success. The mighty struggle he 
 feared might result disastrously ; the sick nation might die ; 
 but dying or living, she felt that he loved her. That quality 
 of his soul was undiminished. Nay, it was the soul's self, 
 and grew the stronger when all else grew weaker.
 
 THE DEATH OF ABKAHAM LINCOLN. 561 
 
 Never did a great people so universally recognize and re- 
 pay such love in its ruler. Never did a ruler so love his 
 people. Cromwell loved religion first ; Wellington, duty ; 
 England was the second in their heart ; her people, last. 
 Napoleon loved himself, not France ; Caesar, power, not 
 Rome ; Washington, the country more than its people. All 
 the great leaders of the Revolution, all the great living lead- 
 ers, reformatory, civil, and military, are devoted to the idea 
 that controls them : this to liberty, that to union ; this, 
 America's glory, that, her destiny ; this, philanthropy, that, 
 piety ; this, justice, that, honor ; this, empire, that, pros- 
 perity. Not one of them can in a peculiar, profound, and 
 personal sense be said to love the American people. That 
 grace they want. Not that they do not love the nation ; far 
 from it. All have, all do ; but it is a general, not a special 
 regard ; an affection that reveals itself in other forms than 
 mere love. Not so with our great President. He held 
 every one in his heart of hearts ; he felt a deep and individual 
 regard for each and all ; he wept over the nation's dead boys 
 at Gettysburg as heartily as over his own dead boy at Wash- 
 ington. Their death, more than his own child's, was the 
 means of bringing him into an experimental acquaintance 
 with Christ. That sorrow wrought in him a godly sorrow, 
 which has become a joy forever. 
 
 Here then may we properly conclude his portraiture. It 
 arises, like that of Him in whose image he and all of us are 
 made, into the hights of love. Without profanity we may 
 say Abraham Lincoln is love. By that nature will the 
 future hail him. A John among the disciples, he, of all our 
 public men, the most truly possessed and expressed the 
 nature of his Lord and Master. Without revenge, without 
 malice, without hardness or bitterness of heart, he held 
 loyal and disloyal, slave and master, black and white, rebel 
 soldier and rebel leader, in his equal Ipve. Had his dying 
 lips been allowed to utter one sentence, we think it would 
 have been the dying words of Christ ; and for his assassin he 
 36
 
 562 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 would have prayed, " Father, forgive him, for he knows not 
 what he does." 
 
 It is for this trait that such mourning bows the land ; for 
 this are the streets of his funereal journey lined thick with 
 weeds of sorrow, thicker with mourning multitudes ; for 
 this do the subdued eyes of millions of strong, cool men, 
 
 "Albeit unused to the melting mood, 
 Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees 
 Their medicinal gum." 
 
 It is for this, preeminently, that the despised race, free or 
 slave, pour forth their most piteous lamentations. Their 
 tears of joy but yesterday are almost tears of blood to-day. 
 He was the first President that took one of them kindly by 
 the hand ; the first that acknowledged their equal right with 
 every other citizen to his official recognition. He was not 
 merely their military liberator, breaking their bonds only 
 because he could thus deliver himself from his enemies ; but 
 he was their friend and their father, carrying them in the 
 same paternal arms in which he bore the rest of his children. 
 AVell may they cry out, as they see him thus suddenly leap 
 into a chariot of fire and ascend to liis reward, " My father! 
 my father ! " Well may they bewail because of him ! 
 
 For this do ten thousand steeples knell their pathetic 
 minor, while all listening hearts, as never before, beat 
 responsive, 
 
 " Keeping time, time, time, 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 To the throbbing of the bells, 
 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, 
 To the sobbing of the bells ; 
 Keeping time, time, time 
 To the rolling of the bells, 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, 
 To the tolling of the bells, 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
 
 Bdls, bells, bells, 
 To the moaning and the groaning of the bells."
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 563 
 
 Thus stands forth the character of this great man : of un- 
 blanched and unbending soul ; without selfishness, yet full 
 of feeling; without pride, yet ever regardful of the dignities 
 of his position ; without ambition, yet ascending to the top- 
 most hights of sovereignty, and absorbing into himself more 
 than dictatorial, far more than imperial and kingly powers ; 
 without the least malice, yet waging the bloodiest of wars ; 
 without boastful bitterness, yet making myriads of his 
 enemies lick the dust ; whose most loving heart ever ir- 
 rigated, yet never drowned his wise brain, making that, 
 which is often in others a verdureless summit, in him a well- 
 watered garden full of choicest life. 
 
 " A laborer with moral virtues girt, 
 With spiritual graces, like a glory, crowned." 
 
 Such was the nature of him to whom the heart of the 
 people has gone out as never before to any ruler. They 
 revered Washington, they respected Adams, they believed 
 Jefferson, they admired Jackson, they loved Lincoln. God's 
 gentleness had made him great. 
 
 II. How this character revealed itself in his career, there 
 is no need that I should relate unto you. The details of 
 that life will be the theme for many a historian. Irvings 
 will yet arise who will devote their graceful pen to the 
 portraiture of this second Washington. Carlyles will make 
 the splendor of their genius glow around the head of this 
 greater than Frederick, or Cromwell. Napoleons will make 
 him a more faithful study and model than Csesar. With 
 every luxury of art and wealth shall the grand career of the 
 cabin-boy of Kentucky, the Unite r and Liberator of America, 
 stand in the libraries of kings and statesmen, in humbler 
 shape and larger love, on the shelves of all their people 
 whose future that life both illustrated and assured. 
 
 1. Two dangers threatened the land when he assumed the 
 reins of government disunion and slavery. The Scylla
 
 564 HE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 and Charybdis were on either side of the tossed and leaky 
 vessel when he took the helm. Fierce broke the waves on the 
 rocky Scylla of disunion ; more fiercely did the Charybdian 
 sands of slavery threaten to suck the ship in their shifting 
 and ceaseless maelstrom. Both, in influence, invaded the 
 whole land. A great party in the North supported disunion 
 under the specious phrases of State sovereignty and no co- 
 ercion ; while all the land alike hated the slave and his 
 kindred, and refused to touch, in the least, the iniquity or 
 its victims. The President shared the feelings of the last, 
 if not the sentiments of the first. His predecessor yet oc- 
 cupying the seat of government, if government it might be 
 called which had ceased to govern, was calling on the peo- 
 ple to fast and pray, that the wayward sisters might return. 
 Great men carried monstrous petitions wrapped in the 
 powerless American flag and laid them before Congress, 
 entreating that body to consent to the nationalizing of 
 slavery by giving it the best half of our territory and all our 
 Constitution. The most widely circulated paper in the 
 land declared for the Montgomery constitution, and had its 
 rebel rag all ready to fling to the breeze when Fort Sumter 
 should be attacked, the nation utterly cowed, the govern- 
 ment overthrown, and Jefferson Davis made President of the 
 twenty-seven Confederate States of America New Eng- 
 land alone being excluded from the general league. She 
 might be permitted, if she chose, to retain the belittled title 
 of the United States, with its plucked eagle and lowered flag, 
 the Switzerland of America, safe only in the contempt 
 of her tyrannous neighbors, wide ruling the continent. 
 
 Beneath all this turbulence was the crowded dungeon of 
 slavery. Its imprisoned millions toiled and suffered, sighed 
 and prayed, saw visions and dreamed dreams such as 
 the despised Galileans saw in Jerusalem when prelate and 
 Pilate, ignorant and scornful, were seeking, by reconciliation
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 565 
 
 and compromises, the union of the God of the Hebrews with 
 the idols of Rome. What cared we for these? "Touch 
 slavery where it is ? " " Never I" " Free the slaves ? " 
 "Hang him who dreams that dream." "Up with John 
 Brown and his crazy gang, who fancied himself the Moses 
 of this abominable Israel." How that first martyr but now 
 welcomed the last to the rest and reward of the faithful ! 
 Brothers in this service, they shall be brothers in heavenly 
 fruition and eternal renown. " Abolish slavery instantly 
 and forever ? " " Impossible. The slaves will cut their 
 masters' throats ; will invade the North, and expel our labor- 
 ing population ; will become the vagabonds of the con- 
 tinent." 
 
 Thus warred the elements. 
 
 " Who shall calm the angry storm ? 
 Who the mighty task perform, 
 And bid the raging tumult cease ? " 
 
 We pay no unwarranted eulogy to President Lincoln 
 when we declare that the peculiar qualities of his nature 
 adapted him to this especial work. We well understand 
 that God was beneath and above all this chaos, breaking the 
 grievous yoke of His children, and moving this unwilling 
 nation into higher spheres of life and duty. But He works 
 ever through instruments, arid as we properly study the 
 relation of the human nature of Moses, of David, of Paul, to 
 the work He laid upon them, so may we that of our leader 
 to what he was set to do. 
 
 (1.) We see how admirably that nature was fitted for its 
 first and most important work the uniting of the North. 
 Whatever other duties should arise ere the gigantic task was 
 completed, the first duty evidently was to make the loyal 
 States one. They were weakened by the severing of South- 
 ern ties. The whole structure rocked to its base. North- 
 western, Pacific, Central, and North-eastern confederacies
 
 566 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 were projected. Even cities threatened to assume their 
 independence. The Mayor of New York publicly declared 
 that no troops should pass through her streets, no cannon 
 leave her wharves for the coercion of the rebellious States. 
 Unless we could be united the whole was lost. There was 
 otherwise no means of staying the movement of disunion ; 
 no fulcrum upon which to plant the lever of emancipation ; 
 while to secure the Union was to destroy slavery, as every 
 rebel knew. Therefore this must be done. 
 
 His conciliatory character, joined with his perfect sim- 
 plicity and integrity, was the centre around which the 
 Union sentiment rallied. The people felt that they could 
 trust him with their liberties, for he would not abuse the 
 trust. The hostile party found it hard to complain of so 
 paternal a despot. They might rave at his acts but not at 
 him. They saw that the salvation of the country was his 
 first and last concern ; that he had no private, no party ends 
 to serve, but only those of God, his country's, and truth's. 
 He addressed them kindly and generously, as in his letter to 
 the Democrats of New York, being, we presume, the first 
 great ruler in this or any land who wrote letters to his peo- 
 ple as frankly as to his family. He thus brought many of 
 their leaders to his side, so that in his army and in his 
 cabinet, as well as in less prominent but hardly less impor- 
 tant fields, many of these earnest foes of his party became 
 his warmest supporters. General Butler and General Dix, 
 Senator Dickinson and Edward Everett, Secretary Stanton 
 and Senator Douglas, with thousands of others, gave him 
 their earnest and cordial support. 
 
 His conciliatory nature is strikingly seen in the composi- 
 tion of his first cabinet. It contained all of his rivals for 
 the nomination, with one exception, that of General Banks, 
 and he would undoubtedly have had the bureau for New 
 England, had he not taken up his residence in the West. 
 Such a combination of independent and leading minds, rivals
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 567 
 
 of each other and their head, has never been seen in this 
 laud since the first cabinet of Washington, which embraced 
 in it three rivals of each other, if not of him, three favor- 
 ites of the nation for his chair ; two of whom sat in it, and 
 the Constitution was modified solely that the third could 
 also, an event which might have happened but for his 
 assassination by Aaron Burr. 
 
 This course had the desired effect. The country rallied 
 round so gentle a leader, and the union of the yet undis- 
 membered fragments was secured. The feeling of the land 
 found expression in its chief, and the various orders and 
 mighty number of traitors yet with us were compelled by 
 popular sentiment, and sometimes by popular violence, to 
 conform to the general will. 
 
 (2.) Then came the second step, the conciliation of the 
 border. Each side essayed this work. Their sympathies 
 and their sins inclined them to the rebels, their instincts 
 and obligations to the nation. The presence of our army 
 constrained its eastern edge to our side ; the influence of 
 ideas, its western. The line swayed low in the center, 
 and Kentucky became the battle-ground of this sentiment. 
 Slowly and surely the truth prevailed there. Against their 
 prejudices, their education, their habits, their institutions, 
 they ranged themselves under the flag. 
 
 The openly rebellious region must be reduced only with 
 arms. How these fluctuated, and how they triumphed only 
 when fortified with the other and greater idea of the war, 
 history will faithfully show. Here his nature had no chance 
 to exert its influence. Generalship, not statesmanship, was 
 what that work demanded. It was, however, beginning to 
 do so when his career closed. He had other material than 
 a discontented North or a divided border to operate upon, 
 and might have failed as completely there as he had suc- 
 ceeded wonderfully before. Through his armies there, 
 through himself here, he had closed up the hideous rent
 
 568 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 secession had made, and beheld North and South, East and 
 West, again and forever, one. He was the uniter of 
 America. 
 
 '2. But a still greater danger, duty, and glory were before 
 him. We were an enslaved as well as a sundered people. 
 The sighing of the captive had upheaved the nation from 
 its foundations. The closing quotation of Mr. Sumner's 
 first speech against our national sin was being awfully ful- 
 filled: "Beware of the groans of the wounded souls; oppress 
 not to the utmost a single heart ; for a solitary sigh has 
 power to overset a whole world." We disregarded those 
 sighs, not solitary, but multitudinous and perpetual as the 
 heavings of the sea, and we were fast reeling to our down- 
 fall. To be set aright, this dungeon must be opened. Its 
 millions of innocent captives must go free This people 
 must be our people, their God our God. How terrible this 
 task ! It is ever easier to conquer our judgment than our 
 prejudice. We surrender our reason sooner than our heart. 
 The nation hated, despised, detested, the black man. It 
 preferred slavery, with all its horrors, to immediate and 
 unconditional emancipation. So did Mr. Lincoln. But God 
 is greater than man, and to our martyred leader's eternal 
 honor shall it ever be said, God found him willing in the 
 day of His power. How slowly these steps were taken, 
 how reluctantly, how unbelievingly even, we all know. Yet 
 taken they were. Like Jacob, having so many feeble ones 
 to carry, he must needs travel slowly ; yet he moved for- 
 ward. Every day found him further than before. 
 
 Conciliation was his favorite feeling and policy. But that 
 cannot be adjusted to this most embittering duty. It must 
 stand aside for a season, and deeper traits must be brought 
 into service. His sense of right, the backbone of his nature, 
 which alone made him strong in the fearful strife, saw that 
 there was no other path than this. His training and his 
 feelings shrank from the negro : his desire to shun distract-
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 569 
 
 ing elements made him shrink from him yet the more ; 
 but duty said, " Go forward ! Pronounce the decree of 
 emancipation ! Let my people go ! Take them by your 
 official hand, and recognize them as yours ! " And he 
 obeyed. 
 
 There was another great conciliator by his side, the head 
 of his armies, the worshiped of the land. He heard the 
 like voice, but refused to listen. Reconciliation and eman- 
 cipation he declared were impossible. He had the ear and 
 the heart of the President. He warned, he threatened, he 
 besought. Kentucky begged him to desist. He would 
 mar all her prospects of Union if he pursued that course. 
 The influential half of Missouri petitioned. Many wise 
 friends from the North entreated. He hesitated till dis- 
 . aster overwhelmed the chief adviser of this delay, till the 
 volunteer inspiration had gone out in blood, and the sug- 
 gestion of a draft was met with scowls and threats of defi- 
 ance from every quarter. The ship was lying on her beam- 
 ends. All God's waves and billows were going over her. 
 The rocks of anarchy were thrusting their sharp fangs into 
 her. Only the throwing overboard of this demon can save 
 her. He clung to the idol yet a little, and made one more 
 prayer to its worshipers to come into the ship and save 
 their god. They heard and jeered. They had a better 
 craft, built for the sole worship of their deity. They en- 
 tered no amalgamating vessel of freedom and slavery. He 
 kept his word. Slavery was tumbled into the bottomless 
 gulf. The waves roared, and hissed the fiercer. Secession 
 broke its bands among us, and raged in the streets of Nor- 
 thern cities. But all in vain. The Ship of State began to 
 right itself. The voice of Christ calmed the sea. The 
 rocks of disunion were submerged, and the quicksands of 
 slavery disappeared forever from the view. The slave be- 
 came a man, a warrior, will soon be a citizen, and, merged 
 in the currents of society, be lost in the indistinguishable
 
 570 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 throng that, from all nations and lands, rejoice in the com- 
 mon blood and name of American. 
 
 Thus will he stand forth in all coming time. To him was 
 decreed the greatest honor history has conferred on man. 
 His sole peer is the father of our country ; and he is not his 
 superior. Alike in many traits of character, alike in many 
 points of career, they will share together the reverent grati- 
 tude of succeeding generations. Their statues will rise in 
 every city, before every eye. The one delivered the nation 
 from the yoke of vassalage -to a once paternal, but then 
 tyrannical power ; the other released her* from the deadlier 
 grasp of a once fraternal, but then far more tyrannical domin- 
 ion. The one organized her embryotic communities into States 
 and a Nation. The other reorganized these belligerent re- 
 publics into a solid and perpetual Union. The one liberated . 
 three millions of his own hue from foreign despotism ; the 
 other liberated four millions of another color than his own, 
 from a despotism infinitely more horrible. The influence 
 of both shall go forth for the redemption and regenera- 
 tion of all lands. The whole world shall sit rejoicingly 
 at the feet of Washington and Lincoln. Happy, proud 
 America ! that from her soil sprang, over her soil reigned, 
 in her soil sleep the creator and the redeemer, under God, 
 of her land and of the world. 
 
 We will not dwell upon the defects in this character ; for 
 the service it was set to do, it was fully competent ; from 
 other service God has mercifully relieved it. As his proto- 
 type failed to see and to carry out the full workings of the 
 principle he inaugurated, as another Virginian was to be 
 the perfectcr of the doctrine of democracy which God in- 
 tended should here have complete expression, and the great 
 leader was removed so that his influence might not embarrass 
 this movement of Providence, even so may this second 
 Washington have been summoned to his reward, in order 
 that the perfection of that democracy may the more speedily
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 571 
 
 hasten forward. It could not, perhaps, have been done be- 
 fore. The country had been so reduced by previous theories 
 of State rights, and of long submission to an oligarchy of 
 human flesh, that it could not instantly know, much less 
 discharge its whole duty. The web of the new era might 
 have been rent, had it been then subjected to severer strain. 
 But this crime has made its lace iron, the Northern iron 
 and the steel, and we shall henceforth be strong enough, 
 we hope just enough, to confer equal citizenship upon all 
 the nation. We must not only nor chiefly punish the re- 
 bellious leaders. This may be our primary, though not our 
 principal duty. The loyal freedman must have his full rights 
 as a man. For this is the new President raised up ; not, as 
 most say, to be the juster judge, but to be the truer demo- 
 crat. The last involves the first. The conditions of the 
 rebel and his former slave, excepting slavery, may be re- 
 versed. No citizenship for the rebel leader ; perfect citizen- 
 ship for his slave. No land for the chiefs of the rebellion, 
 homesteads for his loyal bondmen. Expatriation, which 
 was urged upon the negro, not three years ago, may be en- 
 forced upon his master. The African had no rights these 
 would respect. These may have none the nation will respect. 
 Outlawed, homeless, exiled, these once mighty rulers of 
 the land may thus expiate their crime of treason, while their 
 victims take their homes and their crowns. The first shall 
 be last, and the last first. 
 
 Whatever be the fate of the rebel, the enfranchisement of 
 the negro alone can renew that land. We have found that 
 our salvation could not be effected without the aid of their 
 bullet. We shall yet find that it cannot be preserved with- 
 out the aid of their ballot. It is impossible to hang, banish, 
 or disfranchise the half a million former aristocrats of the 
 South. Neither confiscation of their lands nor emancipation 
 of their slaves can annihilate their power. They cannot 
 thus be prevented from vaulting into authority again. The
 
 572 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 white serfs who have so faithfully fought their battles will 
 assuredly honor their military commanders with civic power. 
 What can make and keep them powerless ? Negro suffrage. 
 Nothing less is needed. Set the four millions of the freed- 
 men over against the six millions of white peasantry, and 
 let them grapple. We shall soon see who are the real men 
 of that region. These loyal masses will see to it that the 
 disloyal tyrants do not trouble the nation further. They 
 will be the owners of the soil, and the masters of their mas- 
 ters. They shall rule over their oppressors, and preserve 
 thus the liberty, the unity, the peace of America. 
 
 To this consistent and complete democracy the new Jef- 
 ferson is summoned. If true to his principles, and trium- 
 phant over the base prejudices of birth and breeding, he 
 will shine by the side of his forerunner, equal in service, 
 gratitude, and fame. We trust that he will be thus faithful, 
 and that we shall grow as steadily after the divine pattern 
 in the healthful sunshine of a hastening peace, as in the fear- 
 ful midnight of the most bloody of wars. 
 
 Let us not be blinded from higher duties by our just ven- 
 geance against the assassin. His sin will quickly find him 
 out. That sin no death can adequately punish. Yet Booth 
 is but a babe in iniquity compared with Lee. The assassin 
 never reigns in history by the side of the rebellious chief. 
 He has secured a horrible notoriety. With Clytemnestra 
 the assassinator of Agamemnon, king of men ; with Ravaillac, 
 who slew the best king that France ever knew, he shall 
 hang forever on the gibbet of infamy. 
 
 Yet he is but the dagger's point ; Lee is its polished 
 handle ; Slavery the force that drove it home. Shall we 
 wreak our vengeance on the bullet, and let him that fired 
 it go free ? The miserable felon assassinated our leader. 
 The yet unharmed general attempted to assassinate the na- 
 tion. We have been wrestling in his murderous clutch for 
 four years, and received innumerable stabs in our attempts
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 573 
 
 to prevent our destruction. Is the nation less than one of 
 its citizens ? Shall we fawn upon her would-be murderer, 
 and tear his, in our rage, into a thousand atoms ? Nay, he 
 too is a murderer. Not alone of the hundreds of thousands 
 whom he has slain in battle, but of the multitudes that he 
 has starved to death in his prisons. He has ridden daily 
 under the walls of these charnel-houses, where they were 
 perishing for a crust of bread, and never relented for an in- 
 stant at the piteous meanings that almost made the walls 
 to groan. When the bony arm of one of our boys is thrust 
 between the bars, he not daring to put his face thpre, know- 
 ing that the sentinel's bullet would strike him dead, and a 
 poor slave-woman thrusts a bit of bread into his hand, that 
 sentinel's bullet instantly spatters heV brains upon the side- 
 walk. And that guard was a soldier of Robert E. Lee, a 
 traitor colonel of the army of the United States, who, de- 
 spite his barbarities to our men in the field, our captured 
 soldiers, and these lowly creatures, whom we are, by the 
 command of God, especially required to protect, dwells 
 among its unharmed, almost in honor. What was the mis- 
 erable actor's crime to his ? We should do solemn justice 
 to the greatest traitors in 'our hand, as we shall to him if 
 Providence shall place him in our power. 
 
 But whether we are firm or feeble, God will make both to 
 praise Him. How marvellous are His ways ! Out of un- 
 speakable crimes He has revealed His glory. Out of the 
 violence of the slave-master has come liberty to all lie held 
 in bondage ; out of the attempted murderers of the nation, 
 a more perfect nationality ; out of the successful murder of 
 its head, a more thorough and speedy regeneration. Thus 
 has it been most strangely verified before all nations, in the 
 experience of these transgressors, that 
 
 " Power to the Oppressors of the world is given, 
 A might of which they dream not. 0, the curse, 
 To be the awakener of divinest thoughts,
 
 574 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 Father and Founder of exalted deeds, 
 
 And to whole nations, bound in servile straits, 
 
 The liberal Donor of capacities 
 
 More than heroic ! This to be, nor yet 
 
 Have sense of one connatural wish, nor yet 
 
 Deserve the least return of human thanks ; 
 
 Winning no recompense but deadly hate 
 
 With pity mixed, astonishment with scorn." 
 
 Such is the fate of Davis, Lee, and Booth. They have 
 the painful consciousness of having been the unwilling- in- 
 struments of the very ends they strove to frustrate. They 
 have united, liberated, fraternized America, and yet are and 
 ever shall be linked with Pharaoh and Judas, Caiaphas and 
 Pilate, the execrated of men. 
 
 Thus have all things* worked together for our good, so far 
 as we have loved God. From the beginning has He held 
 us in His hand. He has ever prevented our sins from de- 
 stroying us. Good and evil were in our earliest history, as 
 in our latest. Raleigh and the slave-trade gave their con- 
 trary impress to Virginia ; the Pilgrims and persecution to 
 Massachusetts ; Huguenots and slavery to South Carolina ; 
 the Dutch greed of gain and love of liberty to New York. 
 The wheat and the tares have grown together until now. 
 Yet always has He been guarding the wheat from utter 
 .spoliation. He has eliminated the evil, and educed the 
 good. He has made our sins and our sufferings go hand in 
 hand, our penitence and our progress. He has changed New 
 England intolerance into firmness for the right, New York 
 covetousness into rivers of beneficence. He will change 
 the Virginia slave-trade into righteous traffic, and South 
 Carolina slavery into the grandest liberty of this continent. 
 The conscientious contraries shall also become a harmonious 
 whole. The Huguenot of Carolina and the Puritan of New 
 England, the Roman Catholic of Maryland and Episcopalian 
 of Virginia, the Quaker of Pennsylvania and Dutch Protest- 
 ant of New York, the Baptist of Rhode Island and Methodist
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 575 
 
 of the prairies, shall yet form, not the broad, but the true 
 Church of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, on whose divine 
 foundation the nation shall stand in perpetual unity, holiness, 
 and love. Thus may we learn to more perfectly confide in 
 His guidance and grace who has so wonderfully revealed 
 His constant presence in our planting and our growth, and 
 who has shown here, as elsewhere in His kingdom, 
 
 " That many things, having full reference 
 To one consent, may work contrariously ; 
 As many arrows, loosed several ways, 
 Come to one mark ; as many ways meet in one town, 
 As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea, 
 As many lines close in the dial's center, 
 So may a thousand actions, once afoot, 
 End in one purpose." 
 
 Let us, then, show our grief for our loss by greater faith- 
 fulness to the cause for which he died. The grandeur of 
 this cause, in its past, present, and future, was remarkably 
 revealed in his most memorable word and most memorable 
 deed, with which his career was properly crowned. The 
 last inaugural is that word, the entry into Richmond, the 
 deed. That word is the most truthful, humble, and Chris- 
 tian, that a ruler ever addressed to his people. It contains 
 the clearest recognition of the divine will, the humblest 
 prostration before His offended goodness, the amplest con- 
 fession of the righteousness of His punishments, the largest 
 "beneficence to his own most deadly foes. 
 
 How sadly it prophesies his own fate ! His, too, must be 
 of the blood which God requires from the sword to repay 
 that drawn by the lash, for two hundred years, from the 
 shrinking flesh of His innocent children. 
 
 His dying speech from the national throne will be read 
 with Wet eyes by our children's children. If the farewell 
 address of Washington will ever be cherished by the nation, 
 much more will this more profound and pathetic confession
 
 576 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 of our sins, more resolute expression of our duty and pur- 
 pose to eradicate them, be admiringly read by remotest 
 generations. It lacks no element of perfection. So short 
 that he that runs may read it ; so simple that the most child- 
 ish can understand it ; so statesmanlike in its principles that 
 the rulers of the world can profitably study it ; so religious 
 that the most pious can find in it the holiest nutriment ; so 
 philanthropic that largest souls can grow larger in its air ; 
 so clement that the hardest heart cannot but melt in its 
 perusal, it is the consummate flower of executive orations. 
 Jeremiah could not wish it more penitential, Ezekiel more 
 resolute, John more affectionate.* 
 
 It was a worthy requiem. He sung his swan song, sad, 
 sacred, solemn, sweet. The voice of the ages, from David 
 to Christ, went wailing through the strain. It will yet be, 
 as it should be, the most popular and powerful word of 
 America. 
 
 But if the last inaugural was his litany, the advent into 
 Richmond was his jubilate. No picture of the war will be 
 so frequently painted. It was in extraordinary agreement 
 with his whole life and character, in extraordinary disagree- 
 ment with that of every other eminent ruler. Here was a 
 more than emperor, who for four years had waged severest 
 war with a portion of his own people, that had made this 
 their capital. Under many generals had he essayed its cap- 
 ture. Blood had flowed around it like water. Still had it 
 
 * The "London Spectator " truly says of him and it, " He lias per- 
 severed through all obstacles, without ever giving way to anger, or de- 
 spondency, or exultation, or popular annoyance, or sectarian fanaticism, 
 or caste prejudice, visibly growing in force of character, in self-posses- 
 sion, and in magnanimity, till in his last short message of the Fourth of 
 March we can detect no longer the rude and illiterate mold of a village 
 lawyer's thought, but find it replaced by a grasp of principle, a dignity 
 of manner, and a solemnity of purpose, which would have been un- 
 worthy neither of Hampden nor of Cromwell, while his gentleness and 
 generosity of feeling toward his foes are almost greater than we should 
 expect of either of them."
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 577 
 
 proudly resisted the whole strength of his armies. At length, 
 after bloodiest encounters and almost a year of siege, it had 
 fallen into his hands. How should he take possession of 
 his prize ? How have all conquerors exulted over such a 
 conquest ? When Charles the Bold captured Liege, he com- 
 pelled its citizens to batter down a new entrance in their 
 walls, through which he marched in triumphant pomp and 
 scorn. When Louis the Great's, and David's generals reduced 
 a rebellious city, they sent for their royal masters to take 
 stately possession. Our grand monarch is near by when 
 his great general, as great as their greatest, has won for 
 him the long-coveted prize, and all the country is aflame 
 with joy. Does he enter it in royal state ? He sends a 
 grand deputation to take formal possession of rescued Sum- 
 ter. He himself walks up the streets of the capital of the 
 rebellion attended by twelve marines and half a dozen officers 
 and friends, without music or banners, or military or civic 
 pomp. Thousand of unshackled slaves dance around him 
 in an uncontrollable ecstasy of delight. They look upon the 
 face of their deliverer. To them it shines like that of Moses 
 as he descended from the mount. Like the lame man un- 
 chained of his life-long fetters of infirmity, they precede and 
 follow this to them chief of Christ's apostles, walking and 
 leaping and praising God. They too have been unchained 
 of life-long fetters, that have made them sit at the Beautiful 
 gate of the temple of knowledge and liberty, powerless to 
 move, hopeless of salvation. 
 
 Their sneering master and mistress (such, thank God, no 
 longer !) scowl from their windows upon him and the tumul- 
 tuous crowd of beggared blacks that throng him, as Saul's 
 daughter did upon the rejoicing David, despising him in 
 their hearts. They do not mar his calm content nor the 
 delight o'f the noisy escort who guide the ruler both of them- 
 selves and of their former masters to the residence of the 
 fled usurper. He is indifferent to their contempt, and only 
 37
 
 578 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 regards the wonderful salvation of which he has been the 
 chosen instrument, but which Jesus of Nazareth has alone 
 effected. 
 
 As Christ entered into Jerusalem, the city that above all 
 others hated, rejected, and should soon slay Him, attended 
 by those, but now lame and blind and deaf and leprous, 
 whom He had cured, so did this, His servant, enter the city 
 that above all others hated and rejected him, and would soon 
 be the real if not intentional cause of his death, attended by 
 thousands who had been saved from worse maladies than 
 those bodily diseases, out of whom, in a moment, legions of 
 devils that had long possessed them had been instantly and 
 forever expelled by the same Divine Redeemer, through His 
 appointed word. " Behold thy king cometh, meek," is 
 most beautifully true here and now. The haughty tyrant is 
 gone, the loving father is come. Well may their glad hearts 
 dance for joy. Well may the air ring with their jubilant 
 hallelujahs. Well may the paternal President feel the com- 
 fort and strength of the hour. The blessings of those that 
 were ready to perish came upon him. His work draws near 
 its close. The nation is united, the rebel subdued, the slave 
 set free. His cup is full. He can well exclaim, " Now, 
 Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine 
 eyes have seen Thy salvation, and the glory of Thy people 
 Israel." 
 
 How near that departure was ! This was his Palm Sun- 
 day. Ten days elapse, his Good Friday comes, and he fol- 
 lows his Divine Master, through like bloody hands, to his 
 Savior's glorious eternity. 
 
 Thus did our king enter his strong cit3 r . Thus did he 
 triumph over his Philistia. The story will be wrought in 
 song and canvas, over the world and adown the ages, as a 
 most beautiful and most rare expression of a Christian tri- 
 umph. It will live with the last act of John Brown, his 
 kiss upon the slave-child's cheek, each the perfect flower-
 
 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 579 
 
 ing of his earthly life. With such a word as the inaugural, 
 and such a deed as this, we may truly feel that his life was 
 rounded to a perfect close. He could properly hear the 
 voice of the Master saying, "It is enough; come up higher! 
 Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee 
 ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy 
 Lord." 
 
 His work is done. Ours is yet unfinished. His place in 
 history, and, we trust, in heaven, is sure. Ours is yet to win. 
 We shall show our admiration for him more by completing 
 his work, than by standing too long gazing steadfastly into 
 the heavens whither he has ascended. 
 
 As he constantly moved forward with the advancing hour, 
 so must we. To pause where he stopped is to go backward. 
 Let us keep step with God in every path of Christian and 
 patriotic duty, enlarging the bounds and upbuilding the 
 walls of the kingdom of Christ by our faith, our zeal, our 
 love. Then shall we best express our sorrow over him who 
 fell so untimely, yet so timely, and become, if riot, like him, 
 a martyr, at least a witness for and a worker with our God. 
 Then shall we be a sharer of his labor and his reward. 
 What a reward it is to him whose most peaceful nature was 
 compelled to most stormy and repulsive service ! How 
 ineffably sweet must be the quiet and repose of the banks 
 of the river of life, after this dark and bloody night of earth 
 and time ! There he rests from his labors, and his works 
 how many and how mighty ! do follow him, and shall for- 
 ever follow. There he worships the Chief of the martyrs, 
 whose form like his was pierced by the murderous stroke, 
 whose soul like his was bowed with sorrows not His own, 
 whose life like his was given for the redemption of others 
 than Himself. Before that Savior does he, thoughtless of 
 self, bow in bliss and gratitude unknown to earthly hearts. 
 Through His infinitely greater service and sacrifice has he, 
 a poor slave of sin and hell, found everlasting redemption
 
 580 THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR OF AMERICA. 
 
 and equal citizenship with the unfallen angels of God. Let 
 us, like him, though with eyes dimmed by tears and time, 
 gaze, in faith, on the illustrious Martyr of the universe, our 
 Savior, our Redeemer, our God. Let us consecrate our- 
 selves, soul, body, and spirit, to that divinest purpose, for 
 whose establishment He poured out His soul unto death, 
 and to whose completion He has allowed so many of His 
 disciples to feebly but gratefully follow Him afar oif, in like 
 sacrifice of themselves upon the altar of their faith, as- 
 sured that, under His supervision, despite the seeming tri- 
 umphs of men and devils, that cause is steadily advancing 
 to its earthly and eternal consummation.
 
 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS/ 
 
 " THEY ARE DEAD THAT SOUGHT THE YOUNG CHILD'S LIFE." Mat- 
 thew ii. 20. 
 
 " THE LORD GAVE THEM REST ROUND ABOUT, ACCORDING TO ALL THAT 
 HE SWARE UNTO THEIR FATHERS J AND THERE STOOD NOT A MAN OF 
 ALL THEIR ENEMIES BEFORE THEM; THE LORD DELIVERED ALL 
 THEIR ENEMIES INTO THEIR HAND. THERE FAILED NOT AUGHT OF 
 ANY GOOD THING WHICH THE LORD HAD SPOKEN UNTO THE HOUSE 
 OF ISRAEL; ALL CAME TO PASS." Joshua xxi. 43-45. 
 
 jfjUT one Fourth of July has ever occurred that 
 equals the one which has just been celebrated 
 with tumult and joy unspeakable. That was the 
 first that came after peace was made, and our 
 independence was acknowledged by the parent government. 
 After eight years of wasting war ; after thousands of their 
 youth and men of years had fallen in death ; after their 
 prosperity had given way to long and fearful poverty, and 
 the national sovereigns, crowns, shillings, and even pennies, 
 that had been the stable and general reward of industry and 
 basis of wealth, had given place for years to a miserable 
 
 A sermon preached in Boston, Sunday, July 9, 18G5. 
 
 (581)
 
 582 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 
 paper, many dollars of which could not buy a British shil- 
 ling, and whose fluctuations, even on its almost worthless 
 base, paralyzed trade and defrauded labor of its due ; after 
 anarchy and hatred of brother against brother, such as only 
 our Southern section has lately, reproduced, had raged 
 through all the land, as violently in Boston as in South 
 Carolina, then came the gray flush of the approaching day. 
 Exhausted England rested long and longer between her 
 attacks, until at Yorktown, hemmed in by allianced France 
 and America, she surrendered her hold and hopes, and ac- 
 knowledged our independence. The following Fourth of 
 July was a day of widest and wildest delight. 
 
 Such has been the past anniversary. We have heard 
 the joy and praise that with bell, and martial march, and 
 music, and roar of multitudinous cannon, have shaken the 
 skies ; that with the voice of praise, and prayer, and dis- 
 course of reason, and passion of oratory, have lifted the 
 sotils of the people to Him whose right hand and whose 
 mighty arm hath gotten Him the victory. We, t6o, have 
 just emerged from a wide and wasting war. Our finances 
 have plunged into an abyss, which, but for the unexam- 
 pled confidence and strength of the people, would have 
 proved as fatal to our wealth as was the continental cur- 
 rency to that of our fathers. Our foes have been they 
 of our own household. Brother has wrestled with brother 
 in dying agonies. Half a million of our sons sleep in 
 their own blood. The cloud of sorrow has wrapped mil- 
 lions of hearts in the pall of the grave. For four years 
 has the terrific struggle gone on, until at last the sulphu- 
 rous cloud moves off, and the light of returning day glad- 
 dens every eye. 
 
 It is well to come together in the house of God, and lift 
 humble and grateful hearts to Him. It is well in the awak- 
 ening day, to consider the blessings and the duties with 
 which He is now crowning us. Let us then turn our eyes
 
 THE END OF THE WAR. 583 
 
 inward and heavenward, discerning the will of God and the 
 willingness of man. 
 
 I. The first great blessing which peace brings us is 
 Peace. She herself is a treasure worthy our warmest love. 
 War is ever horrible. Whatever grand disguises it puts 
 on, in pornp of dress, array, and melody ; in the excitement 
 of the strife, when men put on the action, and put within 
 them the heart of the tiger ; in the bloody feast of tele- 
 grams and pictures of the battle, on which the public appe- 
 tite feeds with a greediness of delight that reveals our kin- 
 dred to our cannibal ancestors, and shows that we are one 
 .with those who yet find their most exhilarating beverage to 
 be the blood of their victims, and his flesh to be their sweet- 
 est viand. Notwithstanding all these terrific uplifts of soul 
 which it creates, it is still a volcano of death and horror. 
 You may admire the armless, legless heroes that feebly move 
 through your streets. You would hardly wish to exchange 
 your soundness of body for their wounds and weakness. 
 You may seek to cheer the weeping father, mother, wife, 
 and child with your cheap phrases of duty, patriotism, and 
 glory. But you would not exchange your embodied love 
 for theirs, disembodied and unapparent. You would not 
 empty your house of its head or its heart, in order that you 
 might fill your desolate soul with memories of goodness or 
 greatness. Human hearts crave visible, embraceable be- 
 ings, on which to lavish their love. Heaven to the heart- 
 sore is desirable, because it will disclose the evanished 
 faces of the loved, and restore to our arms their long-lost 
 forms. 
 
 Those who, therefore, prate flippantly of the glories of 
 martyrdom for the right, are not those who bleed inwardly 
 and constantly in consuming sorrow. You never hear the 
 parents, whose son will brighten their aged eyes no more, 
 parade this theme in wordy eulogy. You never hear the 
 widow, cast into an outer and inner mourning, that only
 
 584 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 
 death can cure, by the dreadful disasters of battle, who 
 is ever crying out in the darkness of her home and 
 heart, 
 
 " O that it were possible, 
 
 After long years of pain, 
 To feel the arms of my true love 
 Round me once again ! " 
 
 You never hear such wounded souls discoursing on the 
 beauties and grandeur of war. That is well enough for 
 orators, and editors, and parlor knights, and dames ; it is 
 not the speech of these who humbly say, with firm-set lips, 
 and tumultuous, agonized heart, " I was dumb, and opened 
 not my mouth, because Thou didst it." " Thy will, not 
 mine, be done." 
 
 Nay, war is a horror of horrors. Thank God it has fin- 
 ished its direful course. Thank God that the marches of 
 our mighty legions have ceased ; that we no more sup on 
 such horrors as were served up to us on the dreadful night 
 of Bull Run, and by Ball's Bluff, and Chickamauga, and 
 Murfreesboro', and Fredericksburg, and the Wilderness, and 
 Spottsylvania, and Fort Pillow, and a hundred other like 
 fearful names. These telegrams, dripping, nay, deluged in 
 blood, are not served up as our daily food. And those 
 more horrible accompaniments of the bloody feast, Libby 
 and Belle Isle, Andersonville and Salisbury, they too are 
 gone, and gone forever. 
 
 Talk not of the glories of war. As well talk of the glow- 
 ing pageant of the Judgment, when the great day of 
 God's wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand. Some 
 may fancy that they will gaze with artistic eye on that 
 terrific spectacle. They have so dwelt upon it in earthly 
 imagination ; they have set their highest genius to depict 
 the scene. Rubens, Cornelius, Fra Angelico, and greatest 
 of all, Michael Angelo, have set forth its fearful splendors
 
 THE END OF THE WAR. 585 
 
 with sublimest pencil. Yet what are they by the side of 
 the unspeakable reality? the blazing- earth, the dissolv- 
 ing 1 heavens, the arising dead, the assembled multitudes, 
 the great white throne, from whose presence earth, and 
 heaven flee away, and there is no place found for them ; 
 the Judge severe, the wonderful Son of God, the enrap- 
 tured saints, the shuddering, flying, falling sinners. Ah, 
 why fancy that a Michael Angelo, by covering a narrow 
 wall of a little chapel with pigment, can body forth that 
 spectacle of spectacles ! 
 
 So dream not that your talk of war, or pictures of war, 
 embodies its realities. No tongue, no heart can. Its riven 
 frames, its ghastly dead, its unutterable groanings, its shock 
 of demons leaping at each other, all this is over, may it 
 be, forever. That blessing peace bestows. 
 
 But peace also gives us the blessing of ordinary law. 
 War not only destroys the happiness, it weakens the sta- 
 bility of society. We have lived for four years in fear of 
 losing our liberties as well as our lives. Those liberties 
 have been suspended. The ancient and essential landmarks 
 of human progress and protection have been submerged in 
 the deluge of blood. Our prime minister not only said 
 that he could, by touching a little bell, consign any one 
 to prison : he did it. Had he so chosen, he might have 
 consigned them to death also. Hundreds were thus, with- 
 out warrant or accusation, cast into jail ; others were ban- 
 ished from the land, and all held their liberties at the tenure 
 of the government. The Constitution as well as the laws 
 was suspended, and military despotism swayed the land. 
 The government professed to maintain some of its forms, 
 yet it claimed the power to disregard them all, and did 
 often disregard most. The President appointed generals, 
 who held commissions as members of Congress, contrary 
 to its direct, letter. He refused to execute laws which
 
 586 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 
 Congress enacted ; refused to remove those whom it ordered 
 to be cashiered ; and though carefully regarding their will, 
 when he could consistently with his own duties, he as care- 
 fully disregarded it when he decided that such disregard 
 was best. This lawlessness and super-Constitutionalism 
 have come to an end. The forms of law resume their 
 authority. The President becomes again the servant of the 
 Constitution. The little bell of his secretary can no more 
 be a knell, summoning its hearer to heaven or to hell. It 
 has lost its power over the liberty or life of man. The 
 courts resume their benign and calm control ; Congress can 
 legislate, supreme in its sphere. The people enjoy the 
 serene repose of liberty under law. Great, unspeakably 
 great, is this gift of peace. 
 
 II. But while peace in itself is thus blessed and bless- 
 ing, this peace witnesses, though it did not not confer, yet 
 greater blessings than deliverance from war and despotism. 
 It ushers in the morning of Liberty. What a contrast does 
 this national birthday exhibit in comparison with its late 
 predecessors. Five years ago this anniversary was cele- 
 brated with quaking hearts. For thirty years the great 
 iniquity had grown by the national principles, and policy, 
 and power upon which it had fed, until it domineered over 
 most, and threatened all the land. The nation rocked under 
 the Presidential conflict. Bitterest hate burned in multitu- 
 dinous breasts. The Union should perish if the candidate 
 of freedom was elected. Many hearts fainted with fear. 
 Others, and enough, were courageous despite their fears. 
 That Fourth of July was black and lowering. The next 
 was far darker. Our men lay in their intrenchments beyond 
 the Potomac. Bloody skirmishes in Baltimore, and at Alex- 
 andria where Ellsworth had fallen, betokened the coming 
 storm. Washington was surrounded with fortifications ; 
 the country was filled with armed men.
 
 THE END OF THE WAR. 587 
 
 "The steed, 
 
 The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, 
 Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, 
 And swiftly forming in the ranks of war." 
 
 Three hundred thousand soldiers were summoned to arms. 
 The white villages of Northern invaders dotted many a 
 Southern knoll, and the blue-breasted hosts trod defiantly 
 their hostile fields. Anxiously, tearfully awaiting the rising 
 of the curtain, and the opening of the great tragedy, the 
 people gathered to their birthday festival. What s'blemn 
 appeals marked that hour ! what stern resolves ! what 
 earnest declarations of duty ! what searching of ourselves. 
 Yea, what indignation ; yea, what fear ; yea, what vehe- 
 ment desire ; yea, what zea-l ; yea, what revenge. In all 
 things we were approving ourselves to be clear in the great 
 matter with which God was testing the sincerity of our 
 repentance. But the cloud lay along the sky black and 
 muttering, and shooting forth occasional shafts of death. 
 The storm broke soon in all its fury. Not twenty days 
 from that, Bull Run was lost, and panic and seeming national 
 dissolution swept the land. 
 
 The next anniversary was more doleful. We had gath- 
 ered up courage, plucked a young commander from the 
 Western mountains, glorified him with the title of the Young 
 Napoleon, put him at the head of two hundred thousand 
 men, and sent him down to sweep away the enemy. Mean- 
 time a hardly regarded officer had opened the gates into 
 Tennessee, and another had fought his way down the Mis- 
 sissippi, while a third had seized the harbors of North and 
 South Carolina, and still a fourth had taken possession of 
 New Orleans. But all eyes were turned from these lesser 
 lights of Burnside, arid Dupont, and Butler, and Farragut, 
 and Foote, and Grant, and gazed intently on the commander 
 of the Potomac. That Fourth of July saw him defeated,
 
 588 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 
 and after untold slaughter, driven from the eaves of the 
 rebel Capitol in irretrievable disgrace and ruin. 
 
 Again the nation was on its face, and sorrow and dismay 
 tore its soul. That Fourth of July covered a year of blood 
 and anguish. What multitudes had bit the dust ! Since 
 less than three weeks after the previous anniversary, when 
 Bull Run opened the sluiceways of blood, what channels of 
 gore had poured over the land ! And all seemingly in vain. 
 Their heart was yet unsubdued ; their resources mighty ; 
 their territory scarcely entered. 
 
 Another year rolls round : the great word of Liberty had 
 been spoken, but the more greatly longed-for word of Peace 
 had not been heard. So far from it, those three days pre- 
 vious the most terrible battle of the whole war had been 
 raging, and multitudes were lying unburied on the field of 
 Gettysburg. And though the Mississippi was opened, its 
 tidings did not intensify the morning pagans. War still 
 raged ; the conflict was yet uncertain. The foreign powers 
 looked scorniugly on; the breaking waves dashed high over 
 the laboring vessel. That Fourth of July was as sad as 
 any of its forerunners. The smile was enforced ; the cheer 
 hollow ; hope deferred was breaking the heart. Still the 
 nation stood firm to its principles. It went steadily onward 
 in its career of justice and righteousness. It grew higher 
 and higher in the divine stature. 
 
 Our last birthday was in some respects our darkest. Each 
 side had put forth all its strength for the final struggle. 
 Each felt that it was the last time. If defeated, it did not 
 seem possible that we could rally again. We had brought 
 to the head the best military talent at our command, and 
 had given them every soldier and weapon they could use. 
 The two who had risen by steady success to the highest 
 positions, were each held at bay by unsubdued armies. One 
 had already sacrificed threescore thousand even in his march 
 to Richmond, and was powerlessly battering its gates. The
 
 THE END OF THE WAK. 589 
 
 other was pushing slowly and painfully through the rocky 
 ramparts of northern Georgia, far yet, and seemingly hope- 
 lessly far, from the walls of Atlanta. No gloomier hour 
 has shut down upon us since the war began. The bells 
 almost tolled, ring them merrily as they may, so dismal 
 were our rejoicings. The whole head was sick, the whole 
 heart faint. The resolution of the Lieutenant General hardly 
 sustained the public faith. The mercury sank into the 
 bulb. Traitors stalked boldly through the land, and held 
 open conference with the armed rebels against the govern- 
 ment. The Presidential contest was beginning to agitate 
 the nation, and liberty and nationality were to be subjected 
 to a test such as they never before suffered, much less en- 
 dured that of a popular vote on the very question of the 
 national existence, in the hour when almost one half of her 
 children were in arms against her. 
 
 Dark, how dark, total eclipse, was that hour ! The sun 
 was turned into blackness, and the moon into blood. The 
 stars of heaven fell as when a fig-tree shaketh its untimely 
 figs. We almost saw the sheeted dead walk gibbering 
 through the streets. If we failed in the field and at the 
 ballot-box, if we failed in either, all was lost. Liberty went 
 out into returnless night. The rights of man disappeared 
 from the face of the earth. Free institutions were at an 
 end. Caesarism was the law of this, as of all preceding 
 ages. Democracy was 'a vanished bubble, man a slave, 
 humanity a delusion, Christianity a lie. 
 
 No one will ever forget that dreadful day. The guns 
 were almost minute guns, firing a funereal salute over the 
 dead empire of man. The orations were eai-nest and cour- 
 ageous, but plaintive and dreary. Congress issues a most 
 penitential confession and cry to fasting and prayer. The 
 nation put on sackcloth, and lay upon its face before the 
 Lord. 
 
 Thus similar in sadness, solemnity, and anxiety were our
 
 590 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 
 last five anniversaries. How different this ! Peace might 
 have brought us another kind of a gift. It might have 
 come with our armies overthrown, our land rent in twain, 
 our liberties gone, defiant and triumphant hosts lining the 
 farther bank of the Potomac and the Ohio, feuds raging 
 in every Northern State and city, our debt, currency, busi- 
 ness, and wealth alike worthless, while Slavery lifted her 
 crested head, and hissed her triumphs in the ear of an amazed 
 and ruined world. No blessing would such a peace have 
 won us, but misery and death. 
 
 Far otherwise has been the gift and goodness of God. 
 He bestows upon us a peace that is full of richest rewards ; 
 one in which the spirit of rebellion, rampant in the land for 
 thirty years, raging like an unloosed menagerie for four 
 years, has been disarmed, if not subdued ; in which the 
 fiercer demon of Slavery has been cast out of the nation at 
 once, and forever, and four millions of her long-suffering 
 children are sitting at her feet, clothed and in their right 
 mind ; one in which the nations of the earth that despised 
 us, and desired our destruction, are constrained to stand in 
 awe of the majesty of our strength and the greater majesty 
 of our continence, and behold their systems of restraint 
 and misgovernment crumbling like banks of mist before our 
 rising sun. 
 
 The salvation of other vital ideas is worthy of espec- 
 ial rejoicings. Peace has not only brought liberty, it has 
 secured the perpetuity of a free, and equal, and united 
 nation. They are dead that sought the young Child's life. 
 The best civil expression of the 'Gospel of Him of Bethle- 
 hem was in extremest peril. It was the youngest of politi- 
 cal forms, too often spoken of by ourselves as an experi- 
 ment ; always thus regarded across the seas. Against this 
 central necessity of a truly Christian state, against the 
 only possible system of permanent and righteous govern-
 
 THE END OF THE WAK. 591 
 
 ment, arose the mighty rebellion. It not only planted it- 
 self on human bondage, it allied itself with thrones. Mr. 
 Mason claimed the sympathy of the British aristocracy, be- 
 cause the idea and purpose of his government were one 
 with their forms and principles. He won it because of this 
 unity. The young child of a democratic Union was thus 
 fearfully assailed. It has survived its assailants. So far 
 as possessing any power of renewing their attack, they are 
 dead that sought the young child's life. The Gospel of the 
 Son of God can now grow in its civil and national expres- 
 sion, unalarmed by the foes of its own household. They 
 have become its footstool. They will yet be its faithful 
 servants and supporters. All the imperial powers that 
 joined in heart and lip in the murderous endeavor, will ac- 
 knowledge its triumph, and conform their institutions to its 
 ordinances divine. 
 
 Such are some of the gracious favors with which God 
 has been pleased to crown this hour and people. It is the 
 grand Sabbatic jubilee of the nation. She rests from her 
 painful labors. Her work of creation has greatly progressed, 
 if it has not attained completion. She can justly rejoice 
 in the propitious hour. 
 
 " Grim visaged "War has smoothed his wrinkled front." 
 
 The bells have rung merrily their sacred summons to the 
 altar of thanksgiving. Again, and as never before, can we 
 join in the psalm of peace and praise. 
 
 " Joy to the pleasant land we love, 
 
 The land our fathers trod; 
 Joy to the land for which they won 
 
 Freedom to worship God ; 
 For peace on all its sunny hills, 
 
 On every mountain broods, 
 And sleeps by all its gushing rills, 
 
 And all its mighty floods.
 
 592 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 
 " The wife sits meekly by the hearth, 
 
 Her infant child beside ; 
 The father, on his noble boy, 
 
 Looks with a fearless pride. 
 The gray old man, beneath the tree, 
 
 Tales of his childhood tells ; . 
 And sweetly in the hush of morn 
 
 Peal out the Sabbath bells." 
 
 Especially can we add the last verse of these lines, and 
 feel that the joy and peace are now truly attained. Then 
 the poet was constrained to add. 
 
 " And we are free but is there not 
 
 One blot upon our name? 
 Is our proud record written fair 
 
 Upon the scroll of fame ? 
 Our banner floateth by the shore, 
 
 Our flag upon the sea; 
 But when the fettered slave is loosed 
 
 We shall be truly free." 
 
 That fetter has fallen, that liberty secured, and calm is 
 complete. 
 
 III. But the Sabbath, though a day of rest, is still more 
 a day of work. Never do duties press more steadily upon 
 us than on these days of God. Never has the Creator been 
 more active than since He ceased from six days of creation, 
 and entered upon the present Sabbath of earth and time. 
 The grosser work is ended of forming sun, and moon, and 
 stars, and earth ; of bringing into being trees and plants, 
 fish, and bird, and beast ; even the highest of this material 
 handiwork, the fashioning of man ; but the spiritualizing of 
 that man, his preservation in purity, his growth into fami- 
 lies, communities, nations of holy ones, his restoration if 
 he falls, and by a long and painful path, which God Him- 
 self must build and traverse in sorrow unto death, his at-
 
 THE END OF THE WAR. 593 
 
 tainment of the beatific state of universal brotherhood, a 
 developed, happy, holy world all this is the work of the 
 seventh day, the Sabbath of God and of the world. 
 
 So we have accomplished the grosser work of physical 
 subjugation, and are called to enter the spiritual service of 
 regeneration. The armies are scattered, the forts possessed, 
 the cannon mounted by trusty soldiers, the flag respected 
 and obeyed, the whole land freed from open rebellion. This 
 work of creation is completed. 
 
 But a greater yet remains. The inward work is yet to 
 be done a work in us no less than in the region this sin 
 has so long made a hell, and God's judgments have made 
 an Aceldama. 
 
 That work is one in idea, though manifold in form. It is 
 this, and this only, and this entirely to erase from our 
 statutes, our tongues, our hearts, every recognition of color 
 as a badge of distinction or separation between man and 
 man. The outer work of this regeneration is accomplished, 
 the inner is yet unachieved; the material, or six days' work, 
 is done, the spiritual or Sabbath duty is begun. The outer 
 work was to break the chains of the slave, and put a mus- 
 ket in his hands, to fight for himself and his country. 
 These two acts accomplished, proved him at the least, and 
 at the most, but a physical man. The iiarness of slavery 
 had made him a brute. lie was like the ox and the mule 
 by whose side he toiled. I have seen one di'iving his team 
 afield, with a vivid scns.e of the slaveholding feeling that 
 they were substantially one. Both had been bought or 
 raised on the farm ; both had a market value ; both had 
 been or could be sold ; both were as much objects of prop- 
 erty as the plough which united them. The purchaser of 
 stock put them together in his bill, the assessor in his 
 schedule, the sheriff in his sale. The people spoke of so 
 many head of slaves as they did of so many head of cattle. 
 38
 
 594 PEACE: HEK GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 
 Until this yoke was removed no inward regeneration could 
 be effected. God might shine in upon him and sanctify him. 
 He might warm his heart with the breath of earthly love, 
 make him a devoted son, husband, and father, make him an 
 humble, joj'ful Christian ; but man could not recognize these 
 inner and spiritual gifts, as they were not marketable com- 
 modities. They must not interfere with their marketable 
 qualities. Suppose a steam engine should fall in love, and 
 awaken in his mate reciprocal emotion ; suppose they should 
 feel that they must go and keep together, irrespective of any 
 rights of corporations or individuals, what would the busi- 
 ness men say at such an intrusion upon their domain ? 
 They would declare this thing must be stopped, or all our 
 property vanishes. If the internal heat of locomotives takes 
 this amorous and self-dependent form, what may happen to 
 our stores, and houses, and fields, and cattle, even stocks 
 and gold? These coldest of creatures will feel the general 
 warmth with which Lucretius tells us all nature reciprocates 
 the affection of its Creator. 
 
 Two elephants, the papers said, last winter, hybernating 
 together at Pittsburg, fell in love. Their tender attachment 
 was the theme of much gossip and amusement on the part 
 of probably their more callous keepers. Spring came, and 
 their different owners said they must be separated. Grief 
 and rage extreme tore the hearts of the noble beasts at the 
 enforced decree. Alas, multitudes of men and women, 
 tender, deep, and true, whose hearts and lives God had 
 made one, have been torn apart by far more cruel hands 
 over half our land for hundreds of years. The wants and 
 wishes of their proprietors came between the feelings of 
 these legal beasts, and husband and wife, mother and babe, 
 have been as carelessly parted as dam and foal, or cow and 
 calf, a span of horses, or a yoke of oxen. 
 
 I had before me as I was writing this discourse the auc-
 
 THE END OF THE WAR. 595 
 
 tion bills of Charleston, in which are described the creatures 
 to be sold, with their names and ages. I read such names, 
 ages, and descriptions as these: "Cicero, 55, driver; Hester, 
 20, field-hand, prime, one eye lost by an accident." The ac- 
 cident that happened to this young lady and " prime field- 
 hand " may be easily imagined. It was probably not un- 
 like that accident which happened to Isabella Joyce, that 
 terminated her life in awful tragedy. " Maud, 16, field- 
 hand, prime." A pretty name, a Maud Muller, only with an 
 infinitely worse fate. " Infant, 6 mos." The creature had not 
 yet attained to the dignity of a name, save that name which 
 makes every parental heart throb in love a babe upon the 
 block, and no mother specified. One among the lot may 
 have been its agonized mother, and may not. "March, 35 ; " 
 who is described as "a field-hand, and A 1 cook." "Joe, 
 18, prime field-hand, two years at carpenter's trade," is 
 yoked, we trust lovingly and righteously, with " Julia, 16 
 years of age." This young carpenter and his youthful com- 
 panion, knocked down to the highest bidder, like a pair of 
 horses at auction, give you some faint idea of the horrors of 
 that hell of hells. Listen still further: " Flora, seamstress, 
 24," with "Jemmy, 30, and James and Charles, 5 and 1," 
 probably their children, James being the dignified title with 
 which she honors her husband in his boy. "Abram, 2 years 
 old," and " Binah, 2 mos.," are on the list. "Lucy, a crip- 
 ple, 60," " Lucy, a nurse, 58 ; " another carpenter, also 
 named "Joe, aged 25." Perhaps this name was given to these 
 artisans because the father of the Lord Jesus Christ was of 
 that name and trade. It was an appropriate title and call- 
 ing. No doubt their Lord and Master often toiled with 
 them at their task. This Joe had a little family, "Amcy, 27, 
 Louisa, 8, and Joe, Jr., 3." They all brought seven hundred 
 and fifty dollars, as a clerkly pencil writes on the paper. 
 Kate, a babe of a year, goes into the iron mill ; William, of
 
 596 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 
 the same age: Molly, standing alone, a maiden of 22 sum- 
 mers, brings the handsome figure of thirteen hundred and 
 fifty dollars. "May, 9 mos., Aaron, 6 mos., Lizzy, 1 year, 
 Emma, 3," pretty names are these ; pretty faces we doubt 
 not ; pretty souls, certainly, as they look weeping and ago- 
 nized up to the face of their like weeping and agonized Lord. 
 More than a hundred such names are on these three bills 
 of sale at The Mart, as this haunt of hell was by distinc- 
 tion called. How they point to the myriads whose fate 
 they shared ! 
 
 See you not, my friends, that slavery must be destroyed ere 
 the first step in manhood is taken. These sons and daugh- 
 ters of the Lord God Almighty must be taken from the list 
 of merchantable things and made into men and women. 
 
 Before this, not human feelings alone were disregarded, 
 the Divine Spirit was despised. He might renew them in 
 holiness. He might say to them, "Ye are no longer your 
 own ; ye are bought with a price ; ye are the servants of the 
 Lord your Redeemer." But these men step in, Christians pro- 
 fessedly, and say, " We hold them still as ours. What care 
 we for the Holy Ghost ? He may renew their heart. He 
 may make them free men in Christ Jesus, He cannot make 
 them free from us. Should a revival of religion break out 
 among our mules, would that spoil them for our fields or 
 markets." So they mocked the God of heaven, and he has 
 rained upon them fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest, 
 and this has been the portion of their cup. Beholding such 
 dreadful deeds committed by lordly merchants, supported by 
 eminent jurists and statesmen, sanctified by consecrated 
 divines, carried on for generations, against every pulse of 
 humanity, every call of conscience, even entreaty of God, 
 how could we expect any other doom ? It is only amazing 
 that God has borne with it as long as He has. His long 
 suffering is greater than when " He waited in the days of
 
 THE END OF THE WAK. 597 
 
 Noah while the ark was a preparing." His ark now has 
 been long- preparing. The North has been ripening in con- 
 science under the preaching of many Noahs until the nation 
 was ready to become the ark of shelter for these suffering 
 children. Then came the flood. Death has leaped into 
 their houses, while their slaves walk out in freedom. Their 
 sons perish by myriads, their prophets flee, their pride falls : 
 what pride and what a fall ! Their ruin is complete, while 
 those that they had stolen, and sold, and scourged, and 
 ravished, and treated with unutterable inhumanity, dwell 
 harmless amid their conquerors' desolation. Never was 
 there such a contrast in the same land at the same time. 
 The slave lost nothing for they had naught to lose. The 
 hatred and fear of the master prevented his employment of 
 them in battle, and so they have escaped the death which 
 has invaded every other class in all the land. They were 
 valueless as merchandise, and therefore their sale and 
 separation ceased. They were eased in toil and free from 
 the lash, for they found favor in the eyes of their masters 
 when it was seen that the families of those who fought for 
 their bondage must be intrusted to their keeping. 
 
 Thus has light been in captive Goshen, while darkness was 
 on Pharaoh's palaces ; thus have no death-wails broken from 
 their riven hearts, while in almost every other household has 
 there been lamentation and bitter mourning. 
 
 As we see this divine punishment and protection, we can 
 but exclaim, Just and true are thy ways, Lord God Almighty. 
 Thou hast cast down the mighty from their seats, and ex- 
 alted them of low degree. It has come to pass in this day 
 that the Lord has given them rest from their sorrow, and 
 from their fear, and from their hard bondage ; while those 
 who held them captive are themselves captured, and all their 
 pomp and power have become a burning and a desolation 
 forever.
 
 598 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 
 "The blood that they have shed could hide no longer 
 In the blood-slaken soil, but cried to Heaven. 
 Their cruelties and wrongs against the poor 
 Have quickened into swarms of venomous snakes, 
 And hissed through all the earth, till o'er the earth, 
 That ceases now from hissings and from groans, 
 Rises the song, How are the mighty fallen ! 
 And by the peasant's hand. Low lie the proud, 
 And smitten with the weapons of the poor, 
 The blacksmith's hammer, and the woodman's ax. 
 Their tale is told ; and for that they were rich, 
 And robbed the poor ; and for that they were strong, 
 And scourged the weak ; and for that they made laws, 
 Which turned the sweat of labor's brow to blood, 
 For these, their sins, the nations cast them out; 
 The dunghills are their death-beds, and the stench 
 From their uncovered carrion, steaming wide, 
 Turns in the nostrils of enfranchised man 
 To a sweet savor. These things come to pass 
 From small beginnings, because God is just." 
 
 1. These chains broken, the next step is to recognize the 
 slave as a man outwardly. This was done by putting the 
 rifle in his grasp. True, a soldier is largely a machine, but 
 he is a human machine. We use horses for riders, not for 
 fighters. The ancients employed elephants, moderns con- 
 fine themselves to men. Their valor, obedience, and skill 
 have tested this quality of their manhood. 
 
 The outer line is carried. The inner is yet to be won. 
 The country has been compelled to recognize the physical 
 manhood and brotherhood ; it must now their spiritual. 
 
 In this duty, as in the first, much is to be done here. It 
 was almost as great a deed to organize a colored regiment in 
 Boston as it was in Richmond. Governor Banks vetoed the 
 whole Revised Statutes, a volume of a thousand pages, 
 because it struck the word " white " from the militia law. 
 Had he been her Governor, Massachusetts had not led the 
 column in this onward movement. Governor Andrew faced
 
 THE END OF THE WAR. 599 
 
 a frowning- and a sneering- city when he called his neighbors 
 to arms. The President did not dare to march them through 
 New York. They would have met a worse fate than did 
 the Sixth in Baltimore. We hated and despised them as 
 much as we did Davis and his myrmidons. We have 
 partially, and but partially, overcome that feeling. 
 
 This chain must be dissolved from their necks and from 
 ours. On its various links I shall not erilarg-e. They are 
 evident to every man's consciousness. The right of suf- 
 frage may be won at the South only at great expense of 
 time and toil, and possibly of blood. Were there more 
 blacks than whites in this State, and you whites held the 
 whole power in your hands, would you admit them to its 
 privileges without a struggle ? No party holding such 
 power ever yet abandoned it gratuitously. There are more 
 blacks than whites in Mississippi and South Carolina, if not 
 in the other States. The present Governor of Louisiana 
 declares that to give him the ballot gives him the country. 
 But yesterday's paper reports him as saying to his white 
 hearers, " If after having taken this country from the red 
 man, and holding it for more than a century you have be- 
 come so charitable as to give it to the black man, I can only 
 submit and bow to .the will of the people." The people he 
 understands to be not the majority of 'its citizens, but its 
 former voters, four fifths of whom were and are rank rebels. 
 They must deprive their loyal fellow-citizens of equal rights, 
 or the State goes into the hands of the man of color. It is 
 something of an advance for him to call him man'; something 
 to say the people may, if they will, give the State into his 
 hands. The white people will not grant this, but God will. 
 They may shrink from such a complete overturn in their 
 society, but it is inevitable. The South must admit the 
 black, not to the supremacy, but to equality. Their blood 
 must mingle as freely in the channels of social unity as it
 
 GOO PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 
 has on the fields of carnage. They are at antagonism to- 
 day. Some event may arise, will arise, that will force them 
 into an indissoluble unity. 
 
 2. This future in the State is none the less the future of 
 the Church, and the duty of peace is to insure this future. It 
 is all comprised in one text. There is neither Greek nor Jew, 
 male nor female, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ 
 is all and in all. Its workings everybody feels, but few are 
 willing to acknowledge, fewer are willing to obey. That a 
 church can stand permanently on any other foundation is as 
 impossible as it is for God to lie. That brethren in Christ are 
 to be set apart because of their color from other brethren ; that 
 the ministers of Jesus Christ are to be forbidden from serving 
 in pulpits, to which their talents summon them, because of 
 their complexion ; not even because of this, but because they 
 happen to have a small portion of descent from one of God's 
 continents and peoples, is a scandal and offence, a stench in 
 the nostrils of the Almighty. Not their skin, but our pride, 
 is rank, and smells to heaven. Nay, more, " it hath the 
 primeval, eldest curse upon it, a brother's murder." For 
 he that hateth his brother is a murderer ; and we all hate 
 our brethren of this blood when we seek thus their segrega- 
 tion and degradation. The church of the South, the church 
 of the North, must be reconstructed on this basis. We talk 
 of reconstruction in the State, and negro suffrage. There 
 must be equal reconstruction in the Church. 
 
 To this work dedicate yourself. Ten years only are want- 
 ing to complete the first century of our national history. 
 What a century has it been. How grand in promises. How 
 far grander in fulfillment. Dr. Styles, of Yale College, in a 
 Thanksgiving sermon, preached before the Legislature of Con- 
 necticut, May 8, 1783, with the title, " The United States 
 raised to Glory and Honor," is lavish of his prophecies on 
 the future of America. Any but an American reading his
 
 THE END OF THE WAR. 601 
 
 words would have called them the ravings of fanaticism. But 
 they are more than fulfilled. His grandest dreams are trivial 
 by the side of the realities of history. Our last incubus is 
 cast off, cut away from us by the sharp knife of the Divine 
 Surgeon, with great loss of blood, and almost with loss of 
 national life. Yet we survive, and ere this century of our 
 Lord concludes its course such a progress is to be witnessed 
 materially and spiritually as we never yet imagined. 
 
 Europe, Asia, and probably Africa, will pour forth their 
 millions over the fat earth of the West and South; the mines 
 will cast their inexhaustable treasures into the national lap. 
 The negro will rise to posts of honor and authority in all the 
 land, will sit in Congress, will rule as governor where till 
 yesterday he toiled as a slave, will be settled as pastors in 
 the highest pulpits, will be partners in our largest houses, 
 guests in our most aristocratic parlors, residents in our 
 richest palaces, and men shall smile at the idea of distinc- 
 tion of color, as they now do at the divinity of slavery. 
 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ shall renew the land in 
 holiness and love. The Churches will melt into harmonious 
 oneness, each esteeming the others better than itself. Law 
 will everywhere forbid the sale of intoxicating drinks as a 
 beverage, will give universal education and universal pro- 
 tection. 
 
 Thus shall the regeneration of all the lands be perfected. 
 The Church shall rise to her true hights of divine brother- 
 hood, the State and society shall conform to her in all their 
 lower but powerful activities. The inward holiness shall 
 be wrought into outward virtue. The Sabbath work shall 
 crown with its ineffable glory the humbler labors of pre- 
 ceding generations. The earth shall rest in gladness and 
 laugh in harvests. The industry of man shall find full re- 
 wards. The unity and married calm of States shall be per- 
 fect and perpetual. The people of God shall be one people,
 
 602 PEACE: HER GIFTS AND DEMANDS. 
 
 none biting and devouring each other, but all moving- like a 
 mighty army of many battalions and many commanders, 
 under the Captain of our salvation, to the bloodless victory 
 of the human race and the consummation of a perfect 
 eternity. 
 
 " Then comes the statelier Eden back to man; 
 Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm ; 
 Then springs the crowning race of humankind, 
 May these things be."
 
 AMEKICA'S PAST AND FUTURE/ 
 
 " TO-MORROW SHALL BE AS THIS DAT, AND MUCH MORE ABUNDANT." 
 Isaiah Ivi. 12. 
 
 OW many weary years contribute to the triumph 
 of this hour. Standing on this summit, behold- 
 ing the glory that is breaking forth upon all our 
 land, feeling the joy that pervades every breast, 
 we can hardly fail to look back upon the steps that slowly 
 led, through indifference, hostility, storms of war, and streams 
 of blood, to these Delectable Mountains. One who hung 
 delighted over the peaceful Paradise, where Adam and Eve 
 in their fresh-created perfection walked in a garden of calm 
 and fragrance, could not refrain from vivifying the scene 
 by contrasting it with the previous elemental war, the dark- 
 ness and confusion of chaos, creatures fierce and gross of 
 nature, that filled the mighty carboniferous forests with 
 their roar, the whole abhorent, unelevating scene : 
 
 * A sermon preached at Medford, Massachusetts, on Thanksgiving 
 Day, November 26, 18G8, on the election of Ulysses S. Grant to the 
 Presidency of the United States. 
 
 (603)
 
 604 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTUKE. 
 
 " Wrapt in impervious mists, which ever steamed 
 Up from its boiling oceans, without form 
 And void, it rolled around the sun, which cast 
 Strange lurid lights on the revolving mass, 
 But pierced not to the solid globe beneath : 
 Such vast eruption of internal fires 
 Had mingled sea and land. 
 
 Earth to its center shook ; and what were seas 
 Unsounded, were of half their waters drained ; 
 And what were wildernesses, ocean-beds ; 
 And mountain ranges, from beneath upheaved, 
 Clave with their granite peaks primeval plains, 
 And rose sublime above the water floods ; 
 Floods overflowed themselves with seas of mist, 
 Which swathed in darkness all terrestrial things, 
 A world unfurnished, empty, void, and vast." 
 
 Out of this wreck of matter came the perfection of Eden, 
 and the blessedness of the holy parents of our race. As 
 the angels beheld the darkness and destruction, how could 
 they anticipate the coming light and life ? Only the con- 
 sciousness of an indwelling and overruling God of infinite 
 right, and love, and power, gave them the desired assurance. 
 Resting calmly in^ that knowledge, they beheld the prevail- 
 ing darkness, the baleful government of the Prince of the 
 Power of the Air, the mighty conflict, the ever increasing 
 signs of the progress of the kingdom of God, the subjuga- 
 tion of one foe after another, of fire and fog, of savagest 
 beast, huge, amorphous, with many a scaly fold, voluminous 
 and vast, whose presence, whether as lizard, mammoth, or 
 winged and web-footed monsters, would have made the 
 earth uninhabitable to man. They saw the conflict increase 
 in fierceness as it began to consummate itself in the final 
 victory ; the death-ocean of ice from pole to pole being the 
 last, and, to other eyes than those of faith, the complete 
 annihilation of all life positive and possible. But in faith 
 they still looked and labored. Conspiring with their Creator,
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 605 
 
 they aided in the resurrection of the earth from this sepul- 
 cher of being-, and again beheld it glowing in more beautiful 
 and more abundant life on the Paradisaic morn of the human 
 creation and their Edenic home . 
 
 I. So we can note the mighty war of spiritual, and even 
 of material elements, that has attended this new creation of 
 our land and people in the truth and love of God. We can 
 look back over centuries, and behold the beginnings of that 
 iniquity whose overthrow this victory completes. Nay, 
 centuries measure not its horrid life. From the first sin, 
 this principle has possessed the hearts of men ; from the 
 first sinner, it has found foothold in human society. " Thou 
 shalt rule over her/' was the estate into which one half of 
 the race was plunged by the first transgressor. " Thou 
 shalt rule over him," the first declaration made to Cain con- 
 cerning Abel, cast a large portion of the other half into the 
 same chains. The husband held his wife as property, and 
 beat, petted, or sold her, as his passions prompted. The 
 father owned his children, the eldest son his brothers. In 
 fact, the law of sin was a law of bondage. Slavery was 
 the first-born of Satan and the fallen pair ; slavery of mind, 
 and heart, and body. It is the favorite term of Scripture 
 to express the relation of the lost soul to its lost master. 
 
 This iniquity developed rapidly, and prevailed like the 
 flood over all the earth. Whole nations were made slaves 
 in an hour ; one mighty overthrow of its protecting army 
 by an invading host reduced every person in the realm to 
 property. Cities were thus changed from liberty to slavery 
 in a moment ; states were transformed in a day. All Israel 
 went into captivity after one battle. All Egypt was re- 
 duced to vassalage by one conquering hour of Persian, Gre- 
 cian, or Roman arms. India's multitudinous millions fell 
 thus beneath the victorious stroke of a foreign general. All 
 Northern Europe became the slaves of Ca?sar. 
 
 (i He hath brought many captives home to Rome,"
 
 606 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 is the praise for him that Shakspeare naturally puts in the 
 lips of Antony. 
 
 Whatever mitigation this law might receive through the 
 clemency of its executors,. or the difficulty in its execution, 
 it was still the law of society, and, as a whole, faithful- 
 ly adhered to through vast ages of degraded humanity. 
 Athens, in the hight of its power, had twenty slaves to one 
 freeman in its population slaves of the same blood, speech, 
 and nationality as their masters. Rome had an equal pro- 
 portion in her own walls, and far greater in her Italian do- 
 main. The whole world was one vast plantation, where 
 slaves toiled and suffered without recompense or hope. Only 
 Judea, in the time of Christ, had become a free state. It 
 stood alone among kingdoms, recognizing in its laws no 
 property in man. 
 
 It is an answer alike to all professed religious progress- 
 ives, and to all contemners of Jewish Christianity, that this 
 State stood solitary in its doctrine of the liberty of all men. 
 Why had not Grecian culture and philosophy, of which we 
 so loudly prate, effected a like amelioration for that beautiful 
 clime ? Pericles had ruled, Phidias carved, Plato written, 
 Demosthenes spoken, Socrates talked, Homer sung, and 
 the men of Marathon and Thermopylae had fought ; yet 
 Greece was still a state of slaves. India, too, the favorite 
 haunt of modern skepticism, where it is fancied the first 
 rising of modern thought and faith can be clearly seen ; 
 whose Buddha and Brahma it is pretended are the sources 
 of all religious truth where was India in its humanitarian 
 development when Christian Judea acknowledged every 
 man free and equal, and was practicing that " declaration 
 of independence" which we have yet failed to fully receive ? 
 India was the greatest slaveholding state in the world. A 
 few of a higher caste held hundreds of millions of their 
 kindred in chains hold them to this day in more than 
 adamantine fetters ; for these can be broken ; no power can
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 607 
 
 yet dissolve, only One can ever dissolve, these bonds of 
 caste and that is the power of Christ Crucified; to the 
 formalist and unprogressive Jew a stumbling-block ; to the 
 haughty-minded Greek, foolishness ; but to them that believe, 
 both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God and the 
 Wisdom of God. 
 
 This liberty the chosen nation lost by rejecting its sole 
 Author, and on its captivity, the human race was plunged 
 again into universal slavery. Out of this deluge that over- 
 whelmed mankind in a worse than material destruction, 
 society slowly emerged through the diifusion and energy of 
 Christianity. The Church broke these bonds. She abolished 
 slavery in Italy and the Orient. She tamed down its horrors 
 in Northern Europe, and swept it away in gradual centuries 
 from every European Christian country. Had she been 
 more faithful, her victories would have been earlier and 
 greater ; and long since she would have redeemed the world 
 to Christ and Liberty. 
 
 As it is, her work has been great and her progress steady. 
 Rome broke the chains from the body if she bound them on 
 the soul. Athens became Christian and free. Egypt, under 
 her bishops and other clergy, emerged from her idolatry 
 and her serfdom. England broke the yoke from our Saxon 
 fathers, and stopped the slave trade between Ireland and 
 England, that flourished even after the invasion of William 
 and the erection of Victoria's throne. Kingsley, in his 
 Hereward, or the " Last of the English," describes this 
 traffic in language not unsuited to the Charleston and Rich- 
 mond of our own generation.* 
 
 This emancipation was not completed till our own day ; 
 and the present Emperor of the Russias has the honor of 
 closing the list of European sovereigns who have released 
 from bondage European peoples. None of that branch of 
 mankind are now held in servitude, save such as Turkey 
 binds, or as on our own continent, in Brazil and Cuba, have 
 * See Note XXI.
 
 608 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 their blood tinted with the hues of a fraternal race, soon to 
 disappear from these dominions. 
 
 II. But while slavery was thus dying at the bidding of 
 Christianity, and at her bidding only, it still existed in 
 regiops unvisited by her rays, and intruded its baleful pres- 
 ence into lands that had been settled exclusively in her 
 interests. Driven from Europe, it took refuge in Africa. 
 Denied sovereignty of men of white complexion, it infamously 
 suggested to the carnal heart that abolitionism depended on 
 color, not on humanity : that it was wrong of course it 
 was, now that it could no longer be sustained to enslave 
 white people, Caucasians, the ruling race, the divinely ap- 
 pointed head of creation ; but that fact not only permits, it 
 requires, the enslavement of the antipodal race. The white 
 skin is emancipated because it is white. That logic neces- 
 sitates the enslavement of the black skin. So the devil feeds 
 our too susceptible hearts with the Satanism of caste, and 
 sweeps the whole Christian Church at least in America 
 into bondage to this opinion. He makes us look on our 
 brother with loathing. He makes us separate him from 
 ourselves as an abhorred thing. He makes us exclude him 
 from our table, our pulpit, our pew, our shop, our store, our 
 homes, our hearts. He diffuses such a murky mist of preju- 
 dice over society, that we inhale its miasm as our constant 
 atmosphere, and under its cloud work out his plans for the 
 perpetuation of his power over us and our victims as long 
 as he can keep us under his sinful influence. Expelled from 
 the white class, this iniquity begs permission to invade the 
 black and ruin it. Arid so a legion of evil spirits rush upon 
 the hapless victim, and drive him headlong into the abyss 
 of shame and agony. For three hundred and fifty years 
 has this abomination flourished. From the first modern 
 African slave-maker, stealer, and trader, Prince Henry of 
 Portugal, the first navigator of Western Africa, and the sea- 
 father of Vasco de Gama and Columbus, even until now, has
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 609 
 
 the Afric shore echoed with the screams of these victims, 
 the ocean been incarnadined with their blood. Before Amer- 
 ica was discovered, from six to eight hundred Africans were 
 annually imported into Portugal. The Moors were the chief 
 traders, and their horses their chief coin. They bought ten 
 to eighteen men for a Barbary steed. 
 
 Columbus deserved his end for his treatment of the In- 
 dians, who received him as a god, and to whom he became 
 a demon. He stole them by the thousand, and sold them 
 in Spanish ports. He offered to supply four thousand an- 
 nually to Ferdinand and Isabella, and estimated the revenue 
 to the crown, from their sale, at fifty thousand dollars per 
 annum. He was the father of all the Indian barbarities that 
 yet curse our government, and make our line of advance to 
 the Pacific Sea a red line of the red man's blood. But Co- 
 lumbus did not introduce the negro to save the Indian ; nor 
 did Las Casas, the emancipator of the Indian, as is too fre- 
 quently charged. He accepted him to his subsequent regret, 
 but he did not first' import him. The African was brought 
 over by the earliest traders as an item of commerce, when 
 as yet Indian slavery was flourishing, and bishops, priests, 
 kings, governors, and colonists alike flourished upon it. 
 He was a captive here as soon as his American brother. 
 He has outlived him as a slave, he may also as a free- 
 man. 
 
 From that hour to this you see the strides of this giant 
 iniquity. How it overrun all the India Islands, the neigh- 
 boring shores north and south, crept down to Brazil and up 
 to Mexico, crossed over to the Pacific, and swept the coast 
 from its southern to its northern belt of ice and so-called 
 civilization ; how it struck at the Christian colonies of France 
 and England, and whatever their diversities and hostilities 
 of creed, compelled them alike into bondage to this crime. 
 The Puritans, Churchmen, Papists, and Quakers, the sons 
 of the martyrs of Holland and France, Huguenots and Sy- 
 39
 
 610 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 nodists of Dort, the followers of Cromwell and of Charles, 
 all creeds, classes, tongues and tribes, plunged into this 
 cruelty and crime. And to this day, those who bear this 
 mixed religion and national blood in their veins are the bit- 
 terest foes in the world of the negro and of emancipation. 
 They despise him in all the North, they hate his liberation 
 in all the South. Of one blood are we and our rebellious 
 brethren, in our near origin, and in our feelings toward our 
 long-enslaved kindred, the oldest of our race from the oldest 
 of our continents. 
 
 III. The controversy God has waged with us because o'f 
 this sin we all know by heart, especially its last and blood- 
 iest chapters. We know how our Constitution admitted 
 seemingly, and in the intent of its founders, this iniquity, 
 though it also enunciated principles that made it actually 
 unconstitutional. We all know how Washington violated 
 these fundamental principles in signing the first fugitive 
 slave bill ; how Monroe and Congress again violated them 
 in approving of the extension of slavery into free territory 
 beyond the Mississippi ; how the Church and the State 
 descended together to the pit of destruction, and sank so 
 low that the Church refused to listen to the testimony of one 
 of its sisters if she had been ravished of her virtue by her 
 owner, provided he was also a member of the same church; 
 while separate States inflicted upon these victims every con- 
 ceivable and inconceivable barbarity, and the nation forbid 
 any one from harboring those who might escape from this 
 den of lions, and even prohibited his refusing to assist in 
 their recapture under penalty of heavy fines and imprison- 
 ment. 
 
 Thus Church and State were married by and to the Devil. 
 Thus an offspring burst forth in all the land and in every 
 household of bitter contempt and malice toward God's 
 children and our own brethren ; an offspring of pride, and 
 passion, and avarice ; an offspring that made the minister of
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 611 
 
 Christ the minister of Satan ; that erected the auction-block 
 for human souls under the shadow of Christian churches ; 
 that made our flag protect cargoes of chained citizens on the 
 long ocean pathway from the Chesapeake to the Rio Grande ; 
 that filled thousands of pulpits with prayers and preachings, 
 to which God responded, " My soul hateth ; " that changed our 
 hearts to stone before the beseeching cries of our own brothers 
 and sisters ; that wrought evil after evil by the arm of the 
 State and the sinful blessing of the Church, until the line 
 forbidding slavery in millions of miles of territory was blotted 
 out ; the rights of the man of color, whatever the dimness 
 of his tint, declared invalid before any national court ; the 
 right to prevent his introduction as a slave into any free 
 State taken away ; and slavery had become, in the language 
 of its most eminent advocate, "the corner-stone of the Con- 
 stitution." 
 
 Against this prevalence of iniquity God raised up enemies, 
 in the Church and out of it, in the nation and abroad ; in the 
 principle with which he fired our hearts, and the scourges 
 with which he compelled our sins to chastise us ; everywhere 
 the forces of the Almighty were aroused and organized to 
 confront this gigantic sin. How His flag sunk and rose in 
 the varying conflict. How the hearts of His followers failed 
 them for fear, and inflamed them with hope, as alternate 
 failure and success attended their efforts and their prayers. 
 Especially did fear possess them as they saw the end of all 
 their preliminary battles ; as clear and more clear the deter- 
 mination of the slaveholder " to fight it out on this line " 
 became evident, and confidence in the "willingness of his foe 
 to meet him on the bloody field failed to be developed with 
 equal certainty. Many were the attempts made, not by the 
 slavocrat, but by his antagonists, to avoid this issue. We 
 offered to extend the Missouri line to the Pacific coast. We 
 offered to introduce an amendment into the Constitution for- 
 bidding the National Government from ever emancipating a
 
 612 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 slave. We kissed their hands arid feet in fear of the threat 
 of disunion which they constantly flourished over us. Many 
 went yet further, and advocated the dismissal of the slave- 
 holding section. Even some of our wisest leaders fell into 
 this snare. Phillips and Garrison, Chase and Greeley, ad- 
 vised this course. They did not believe the people would 
 endure the test to which the Union would compel them. 
 They feared slavery would subdue the North, rather than 
 the North abolish slavery. They dreamed that, cut off from 
 the North, the slave would soon compel his master to eman- 
 cipation. But the wisdom of God is wiser than men. He 
 allowed His enemies to most daringly defy our national prin- 
 ciples, organization, and even existence. He strengthened 
 His friends to meet defiance with defiance, treason with 
 faithfulness, hatred of the country and its principles with in- 
 creasing flame of devotion to every vital national idea. They 
 sought to extirpate its love of liberty. He excited it by 
 innumerable harangues. They denounced the Union. He 
 fed the sacred flame of devotion to this outward and essen- 
 tial body of the national soul. So, when the night of stag- 
 gering weakness and seeming dissolution came ; when men's 
 hearts were everywhere failing themselves with fear, and 
 with a looking for the things that were about to come upon 
 the earth; when the head of the nation threw up his imbecile 
 hands in confessed powerlessness, and allowed his chiefs of 
 State to rob his treasury and arsenals, to scatter his petty 
 navy and pettier army, while he, like a sick girl, cried " No 
 coercion," " I shall be the last President of the United 
 States," as he certainly will be the least ; when the Pres- 
 ident elect had to steal into his capital in disguise, and 
 foreign observers were writing home, " The Constitution of 
 the United States can be bought on Broadway for three 
 cents, and that is a higher price than the people set upon 
 it " even then the slowly-growing opposition was solidify- 
 ing itself for the coming struggle, and at the first word of
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 613 
 
 command from the authoritative source, sprang up in arms 
 as cheerfully, as enthusiastically, as multitudinously as the 
 angels leaped to the call of their Lord for the overthrow of 
 the rebellious host, and the unity arid liberty of the Heavenly 
 
 Kingdom. 
 
 " The mighty quadrate, joined 
 Of union irresistible, moved on 
 In silence, the bright legions to the sound 
 Of instrumental harmony, that breathed 
 Heroic ardor, to adventurous deeds 
 Under their godlike leaders, in the cause 
 Of God and his Messiah." 
 
 IV. That struggle gave birth to our coming President. 
 He was one of those who saw and felt the full force of the 
 conflict, at least in its material form. He measured the 
 greatness of the war before a soldier had been summoned to 
 arms, or a blow had been struck by the enemy. In that 
 doleful winter of our weakness he, the humble merchant of 
 a country town, was carefully studying the forces of the 
 rebellion. ' His minister spent an evening with him at that 
 time, and saw him as he rose up in the enthusiasm of his 
 discourse, and stood with form dilated, filled with the vast- 
 ness of his theme. When he left, he said to his wife, " Did 
 you notice how much Mr. Grant resembled Napoleon ? " 
 Little did his guests think how complete that resemblance 
 was, and how all the world, before three years elapsed, 
 would recognize him as the successor to this soldier in the 
 military annals of the century. 
 
 His wife had a clearer vision. To this same gentleman, 
 expressing on the morning of his departure hopes that her 
 husband would return in safety, she replied, " I hope he will 
 return major general, or something of that sort." She was 
 probably the only person in the country that saw this capa- 
 city or entertained these expectations. His father to this 
 day seems to have no apprehension of him. He still says, 
 " Ulysses accomplishes all he does through hard work,"
 
 614 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 having no perception of that genius which alone makes that 
 hard work create victory out of defeat, and a world of re- 
 nown out of a chaos of ruin. 
 
 1. Six years ago no man was more unknown. To-day his 
 deeds are written broadest of all our soldiers' on the pages 
 of our history. No general before him has an equal record. 
 He has made the fields of Trenton, Yorktown, Bunker Hill, 
 Buena Vista, and Cherubusco sink into insignificance beside 
 the names of Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Richmond. 
 His military power is sure. 
 
 But greater than his prowess is the cause he served. He 
 saved the best of nations ; he slew the worst of crimes. 
 Through his gift alone was the Republic of America pre- 
 served unbroken, preserved at all. No other general ap- 
 peared that seemed equal to the necessity. Sherman's gifts 
 were not such as could put squadrons in the field, nor con- 
 duct tedious and perplexing sieges. Sheridan could hurl 
 his forces like storm-driven waves upon the line of his foe, 
 scattering them like spray ill the swiftness and mightiness 
 of his blows. Thomas alone revealed powers that might 
 have won for him the chieftainship. But even he failed to 
 reveal the combination of organizing, steadfast, far-seeing, 
 daring, and impetuous qualities that tower in the character 
 of Grant. 
 
 He has kept intact our vast boundaries, and insured their 
 vaster expansion. He has changed the contempt of all 
 nations into respect, and implanted a dread of our prowess 
 and our ideas that is a sure precursor of a fast-hastening 
 change in all their states conformable to our triumphant 
 principles. He has insured the essential extension of 
 America over the world. Already the United States of 
 Europe are openly advocated in congresses from all her peo- 
 ples ; and that more distant and dubious title, the United 
 States of Asia, looms up mistily from the far horizon. Even 
 the United States of Africa will be born in due time into the
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GKANT. 615 
 
 family of republics ; while the United States of America shall 
 encompass the whole continent in her oceanic lines. Thus 
 from this victory over the rebellion will arise a fraternity of 
 nations, few in number, divided by no alienation of lan- 
 guage, government, or faith ; ultimately to become one with 
 each other, with Christ, with God. 
 
 To this consummation the man just elected to the head- 
 ship of the Republic has chiefly contributed. Joshua's arm 
 alone could batter down the walls of Ai, and Gath, and 
 Askelon. Moses, the Lincoln Liberator, must give way to 
 the conquering warrior. David's military genius alone 
 enabled Israel to complete its appointed boundaries, and 
 send its banners and its laws from the Euphrates to the 
 Nile. So the mighty foes of this nation mightier than 
 ever before arose from the heart of any State for its over- 
 throw, and failed in their undertaking could never have 
 been suppressed by any genius save one that instinctively 
 grasped the whole field of deadly debate, and as instinctive- 
 ly discerned the path to the mastery. 
 
 This ability may have included more than it had op- 
 portunity for exhibition. Had France succeeded in Mexico, 
 and proceeded thence to assail the Union, his acquaintance 
 with that territory might have been called into requisition 
 to smite this new foe in the farther South. Had England 
 followed out the instincts of all her ruling classes, and 
 engaged in the support of the rebellion, even to the re- 
 fastening the fetters on the neck of the slave, his military 
 genius would have reenacted the victory of Scott on the 
 field of Lundy's Lane, and the triumph of Wolfe on the 
 Plains of Abraham. The controversy of Nova Scotia would 
 have been settled by its absorption into our nationality, and 
 the ambition of Canada been more than gratified by becom- 
 ing an integer in the Continental Republic. 
 
 His administration may witness this Northern and South- 
 ern extension of our boundaries by the arts of peace, which,
 
 616 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 had France and England dared to enter our field of civil 
 debate, might. have been speedily accomplished by deeds 
 of war. 
 
 2. But while we thus linger around the services which 
 our General and President have rendered to our nation and 
 to all nations, and behold the pleasant visions of coming con- 
 sequences of his great victories, we should be forgetful of 
 his chief victory and its chief duty if we failed to dwell upon 
 the grandest results of his arms. Unlike all other great 
 generals, his military fame is indissolubly united with the 
 emancipation of millions of slaves. Alexander drove back 
 the Eastern powers, and put Europe for the first time where 
 England and Russia keep her to-day, on the neck of Asia. 
 But he gave no people their liberty. His triumphs were 
 military alone, or at the best political. Caesar, undoubtedly 
 the first of warriors in the ante-Christian ages, reduced free 
 nations to slavery, and added vast multitudes of bondmen 
 to the already glutted man-market of Italy. To no race nor 
 man did his powers bring liberty. He even put the dagger 
 to the Roman Republic, and was the acknowledged founder 
 of an imperial dynasty whose name is yet boastfully as- 
 sumed as their 'own by a ruling house of Europe, while his 
 spirit animates the most despotic of emperors. 
 
 Of every later captain the same sad fact is true. Napo- 
 leon reduced liberated France to bondage. Wellington tied 
 the English and European nations to aristocratic and despotic 
 institutions. Only Washington and Cromwell made their 
 arms deliver their peoples ; and they did not break such 
 yokes or bestow such liberty as it was given to our General 
 to achieve. His genius was employed not to enslave, but 
 to emancipate ; not to beat back aggressive tyrannies, but to 
 uproot them ; not to release from civil bondage, but from 
 human ; not to save states, but men. 
 
 This puts his name as far above his rivals as the deeds of 
 humanity surpass those of mere ability. The inventor of a
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT 617 
 
 needle-guu may show as great genius as the inventor of the 
 needle in the sewing-machine. But the latter has made his 
 talent relieve the toil and enrich the gains of millions of the 
 poor, while the former only increases the mimber of the 
 slain in the field of battle. The mere military genius, as 
 such, is often the least valuable gift of God to man. The 
 poet is of more worth ; the preacher a far better blessing ; 
 the inventor, and discoverer, and educator are his superior. 
 He is but a boxer on a bigger scale. He fights with others' 
 fists, as John Morrissey gambles with others' hands, as 
 every master works through his subordinates. He masses 
 force, and hurls it upon opposing force. If his force crushes 
 its contrary, it is but the gift of a thunderbolt, an earth- 
 quake, a trip-hammer. For what is his genius exerted ? 
 That alone decides its value. Byron writes as good poetry 
 as Cowper; perhaps better. But which serves God and his 
 generation with his heaven-given gifts ? Davis had as great 
 fitness for statesmanship as Lincoln. Whose talents are put 
 to divine using ? It is the end they serve that makes their 
 real value. 
 
 So Grant's genius was fortunately devoted to the highest 
 ends. His military skill, like Stephenson's inventive talent, 
 like Wesley's poetic, was employed by God for the best 
 possible service. lie struck down not only an army, but an 
 institution. He won not victory merely, but liberty. He 
 rescued not imperiled troops, but an imprisoned race. What 
 God might have done through others had he not arisen can- 
 not be told ; what He did do through him can never be told. 
 Every father then in chains who walks to-day a freeman ; 
 who meets his joyful family around his own thanksgiving 
 table ; every such mother who clasps her babe the closer to 
 her breast, as she feels that no power can snatch it from 
 her arms except He who gave it, and Ho always leaves it 
 on her heart, whether He holds it here or in heaven ; every 
 child of these' parents playing in the unconscious gladness
 
 618 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 of childhood, not knowing what wonderful brightness lights 
 up his path that never illumined their childhood these 
 millions owe their innumerable millions of blessings under 
 God to his military ability. Surely, never was a gift divine 
 more divinely honored. 
 
 V. What means this election ? 
 
 The past is past. The future is before us. No man, no 
 nation can go back. We must advance. The London po- 
 liceman's word in a thronged thoroughfare is the order of 
 the Creator to mankind " Move on ! " What is the path 
 on which he orders us to march ? What are the principles 
 which this election is designed by him to settle ? 
 
 1. It ordains order. The primal element of all progress 
 is peace. Crystals can only be formed in still media. Even 
 the fiery uprushings of the volcano make no gems until they 
 sink in repose. Grant's election assures that condition. He 
 has met the enemy on its last organized field. He has put 
 to rout the assassins as he did the soldiers. The ghosts 
 of rebel fighters, as the Ku Klux profess to be, revisiting the 
 glimpses of the moon with revolvers in their skeleton hands, 
 and murder in their fleshless hearts, will subside again into 
 their unquiet graves. Rest, perturbed spirit of slavery and 
 murder, rest. The man who subdued you living, will sub- 
 due your dead. Those that have dared to assume these 
 grave clothes for the indulgence of their own diabolical 
 malice, must cease their bloodthirstiness or join their dead 
 comrades. Through all the South shall there be as com- 
 plete peace and liberty as throughout the North. " Charley," 
 said our Presidentelect to one of his friends, " Charley, if I 
 am President) every man everywhere shall be protected in 
 the liberty of uttering his opinions." 
 
 That vow will be kept. Every rebel knows that it will. 
 He has seen the man who says it at Fort Donelson and 
 Shiloh, at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, in the Wilderness 
 and at Richmond ; an.d he knows that he always keeps his
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 619 
 
 word. In Kentucky, he made peace by driving out the 
 rebel soldier; he will again, by driving out the rebel assassin. 
 In Tennessee, and Mississippi, and Virginia he made peace, 
 sending " the great river unvexed to the sea," sweeping 
 away all armed hostility from Nashville around to its capital, 
 driving the enemy's cannon from the Rapidan to Richmond, 
 and from Richmond into our own victorious lines. They 
 fear his arm. They will crouch, and tremble, and obey. As 
 the devil and his angels fled and fell before the mighty 
 Michael, Prince of God, so will this new revelation of the 
 same evil spirit submit to this new revelation of the decree 
 of the Almighty. 
 
 It is a glad dawn for our loyal brethren. 
 
 The fugitive loyalist, black and white, has feared the 
 glance of a passer-by, as if it were, as it has too often been, 
 the glare of a murderer. He has trembled when the night 
 closed around his dwelling, lest the ghostly knock should 
 call him from his slumbers to the sleep of death. Never were 
 the lamentations of Jerusalem's prophet over the afflictions 
 of his land more painfully fitted to any people. " We got 
 our bread," must they say, " with the peril of our lives." 
 " They hunt our steps, that we cannot go into our streets." 
 " Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heavens ; 
 they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us 
 in the wilderness." Most sadly identical, also, is the cause 
 of all the misery of Zion and the South. " For the sins of 
 her prophets and the iniquities of her priests that have shed 
 the blood of the just in the midsf of her, they have wandered 
 as blind men in the streets, they have polluted themselves 
 with blood, so that men could not touch their garments. 
 The Lord hath accomplished his fury ; he hath poured his 
 fierce anger, and it hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath 
 devoured the foundations thereof." In this awful condition 
 of promiscuous massacre, the helpless ones have turned 
 despairing eyes to a hostile President and a powerless
 
 620 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 Congress. They have made every Christian heart exclaim 
 with the Christian poet, over like horrible barbarities in- 
 flicted by the Papal fiends on their Protestant brethren of 
 Vaudois : 
 
 " Avenge, O, Lord ! thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold." 
 
 On this darkness peace breaks. The cabin shall be sacred 
 as the castle, the laborer shall toil and travel unharmed. 
 Complexion shall not imperil life, but shall be a bond of 
 mutual affection. The impartial President shall fold all in 
 his protecting arms, and the South shall at last accept in 
 practice the motto of Massachusetts, as she has already 
 adopted her principles. Under liberty shall she enjoy calm 
 quiet through the sword. 
 
 2. But if order is heaven's first law, it is only the first. 
 Something must be done. "Quiet, to quick bosoms, is a 
 hell." Quiet is only a condition for life to work in. What 
 is the life that is to work in this condition ? 
 
 It has revealed its earliest stages. The universality of 
 suffrage and the equality of legal and civil rights. These 
 steps have been taken in the South in form ; but they are 
 not yet everywhere successful in spirit. They have not been 
 yet taken in all the North in form, though they are largely 
 successful here in spirit. In both regions form and spirit 
 must unite. The South must everywhere cease to forbid 
 the legitimate voter his suffrage ; the North must every- 
 where cease to forbid its citizens from becoming legal voters. 
 Georgia and Connecticut to-day are practically united. 
 Both exclude law-abiding and patriotic citizens from the 
 ballot. One does it with Colt's revolvers, the other with 
 Colt's workmen. Ohio is as wicked as Louisiana. She has 
 sunken from a hundred thousand majority for liberty to fifteen 
 thousand, because she refused to do this God-demanded duty. 
 She will go into bondage to the enemy, unless she is de-
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 621 
 
 livered from this crime. Universal suffrage must be enacted 
 and enforced by the National Government. If we make the 
 South allow her black voters their rights, we must also, 
 through a constitutional amendment, or by congressional 
 enactment, make the North do equal justice. It can only 
 be done by one of these causes. The intensity of prejudice 
 would to-day make almost every State that voted for Grant, 
 where this suffrage does not exist, vote against its bestowal. 
 Missouri cast her ballot for Grant and Slavery. She voted 
 down the rights of man, and voted up the representative of 
 these rights. She struck at her citizens while she struck 
 for the nation. All her sisters would do likewise. Iowa 
 and Minnesota would have no followers in this right action 
 to-day. 
 
 It must be done at Washington. The Constitution de- 
 mands it. The President should urge it Congress ordain 
 it. Only thus can the blot which stains this jubilee-hour be 
 wiped away. General Grant has not received all the votes 
 that legitimately belong to him in this election. Thousands 
 of brown hands would have gladly put his name into the 
 ballot-box, had not this wicked prejudice forbade. They 
 felt the insult and the ignominy all the more keenly as 
 those same hands have pulled the trigger in the hottest 
 of the fight, under the same great General, for the salva- 
 tion of the country. To-day they are refused the privilege 
 of serving in the bloodless battle, while it is now years 
 since they were allowed, or gladly hastened, or were in not 
 a few cases even compelled, to stand upon the fiercest 
 ridge of war. 
 
 How long shall this evil continue ? Every one must labor 
 and pray that the root of slavery shall be extirpated, and 
 that our President at his reelection may receive the vote of 
 every man who shall desire to express his gratitude for the 
 liberty which he has secured to them from this cruel fetter 
 of ingratitude and injustice.
 
 622 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 3. But equality at the polls is not the only work laid upon 
 the coming government. There must be such a disposition 
 of its patronage, such a steadfast expression of its convic- 
 tion, such an employment of its influence, as will tend to 
 the abolition of the whole mass of prejudice that still defiles 
 the national heart. I am aware that this evil cannot be 
 utterly abolished by any enactments. The leprosy lies deep 
 within. It dwells in our churches, in our souls, in our 
 education, in society. It still makes us look on many a hu- 
 man face with repulsion which is of the complexion of the 
 mother of our Lord nay, of the Lord himself.* It still 
 leads us to erect barriers between us and our kindred, and 
 to make us and them talk of " our race " as if they and we 
 had a different parentage, Savior, and eternity. It must 
 come to an end. It is coming to an end. This election is 
 a great advance toward that end. If the Administration as 
 faithfully adhere to its ruling idea, and put men into office 
 everywhere without regard to color and with regard only 
 to capacity, it will greatly prosper this great reform. Let 
 him make Frederick Douglass a member of his cabinet, and 
 the nation will commend and imitate his courage. 
 
 But under it, as well as through it, will the work go for- 
 ward. Senators and representatives will enter Congress of 
 the condemned hue. They have already become mayors, 
 secretaries of state, lieutenant governors; they hold no small 
 influence and office in the uplifted South; they must yet 
 more. Mississippi, with her half a million ; South Carolina, 
 with her majority of this tint ; Tennessee, where they stand 
 between the loyal whites and annihilation ; Louisiana, where 
 they have wealth, culture, and talents in their ranks these 
 must cast down all bars and gates, and let the tides of hu- 
 man, civil, social, and Christian life flow freely among all 
 the people. To this complexion shall we come at last. 
 
 4. Yet more : our feelings of aversion will change to feel- 
 ings of regard. The complexion at which we now profess 
 
 * See Note XXII.
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 623 
 
 to revolt we shall look upon with pleasure. Vice is not the 
 only thing that is at first hated arid afterward embraced. 
 Virtue is more frequently subject to this experience. It is 
 very rare that a real gift of God is fallen in love with at first 
 sight. How few behold in religion all the charms with 
 which she is divinely invested. How many turn with dis- 
 gust from her pleading, pleasing countenance. How few 
 are instinctively drawn to temperance, to study, to work. 
 The world beholds iu vice everything charming, in virtue 
 everything repulsive. But acquaintance changes this ex- 
 perience, and we cling to the good we at first disdained. 
 Nay, we usually are the more fond in proportion as we were 
 hostile. It is the law of our nature that we choose that 
 which we say we will never have. If you hear a person 
 declaring that he will never be a Methodist, be sure that he 
 will yet be of the most earnest type of that religion. If he 
 says, " I will be anything sooner than a Congregationalist," 
 you may mark him as fore-ordained to be a sober deacon of 
 that orthodox church. When the young lady says, " I'll 
 marry anybody but Mr. Simpcrton," she will soon be found 
 casting her most languishing meshes around that just de- 
 spised youth. When pompous young Jones says, "I hate 
 the very looks and even name of Miss Marigold," be you 
 certain he will ere long sa}'- to her, " Your face is angelic, 
 you name is sweeter than the lutes of paradise. I can only 
 live in the light of your affection." So shall we treat our 
 brethren and sisters of color. We shall " see Helen's 
 beauty in the brow of Egypt." We shall say, " What a 
 rich complexion is that brown skin." " It is Italian, Greek, 
 Oriental, perfect. How far it excels our chalky hue." We 
 already paint our houses after their color. Our girls crinkle 
 their hair after the natural curliness of their sisters' locks. 
 This is one of God's modes of curing us of color-blindness. 
 We shall see, as Mrs. Kemble says, that there are qualities 
 in the human skin superior to a pink and white tint, and
 
 624 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 that in velvety softness, in fineness of fiber, in richness of 
 tone, this despised flesh surpasses our own.* 
 
 We shall be attracted to this hue because it is one of 
 God's creatures, and a beautiful one too ; because it is a 
 favorite hue of the human race ; because, chiefly, we have 
 most wickedly loathed and scorned it. He will have re- 
 venge, and will yet compel us to discern the loveliness of 
 this most abhorred virtue, and to become enamored of it. 
 The Song of Songs will have a more literal fulfillment than it 
 has ever confessedly had in America ; and the long-existing, 
 divinely-implanted admiration of Caucasians for black but 
 comely maidens, be the proudly acknowledged and honorably 
 gratified life of Northern and Southern gentlemen. 
 
 But this law rests on no mere quip of the fancy, nor is it 
 a rebound of a vehement passion, as wrongfully right as it 
 had been wrongfully wrong. It is the grand undertone of 
 all marriage. It is the Creator's mode of compelling the 
 race to overleap the narrow boundaries of families and tribes, 
 into which blood, so called, invariably degenerates. 
 
 "Not like with like, but like with difference," 
 
 is the law of marriage. The light complexioned turns to the 
 dark, and the dark to the light, as day to night and night to 
 
 * These are her exact words : " Their skins are all (I mean of blacks 
 generally) infinitely finer and softer than the skins of white people. 
 Perhaps you are not aware that among the white race the finest grained 
 skins generally belong to persons of dark complexion. 
 
 "While I am speaking of negro countenances, there is another beauty 
 which is not at all unfrequent among those I see here. A finely-shaped 
 oval face and those who know (as all painters and sculptors, all who 
 understand beauty do) how much expression there is in the outline of 
 the head, and how very rare it is to see a well-formed face, will be apt 
 to consider this a higher matter than any coloring, of which, indeed, the 
 red and white one so often admired is by no means the most rich, 
 picturesque, or expressive." Journal of a Residence on a Georgia 
 Plantation in 1838-9, by Frances Ann Kemlle. Pages 41, 42. Harper 
 & Brothers.
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 625 
 
 day. The tall seek the short, and the short the tall ; the 
 small the large, and the large the small. Opposite tem- 
 peraments also thus incline to each other. Bishop Morris 
 says that he can select husbands and their wives in a large 
 company by this law of like and difference. Contrast whets 
 appetite. Dr. Holmes's ten lovers dangling in the silken 
 noose on the fatal trap of Cupid, being asked the color of 
 the eyes that caused their ruin, . 
 
 " Ten shadowy lips said ' heavenly blue,' 
 And ten accused ' the darker hue.' " 
 
 The last five of these victims were undoubtedly blue-eyed 
 swains, and the first of brown complexion. 
 
 By this law only will yellow-haired Germany and dark- 
 skinned France become one. Only thus will the mediaeval 
 feud between light-eyed England and dark-eyed Ireland 
 come to an end. Let their youths follow their instincts, 
 and the differences that now seem barriers of eternity, will 
 become magnets of eternity. Thus, too, will our dividings 
 cease. The lightest and darkest of the children of Adam 
 and Noah are divinely planted together in this land, that 
 they may, by obeying this law of God, work out the per- 
 fect oneness of the race of man. 
 
 Already, too, our romancers and poets, the imaginative 
 fore-flyers of the slower-footed fact, are putting this future 
 into their fascinating tales, and all the greedy crowd of novel 
 readers are finding their freshest morsels flavored with this 
 celestial truth. The stage makes an octoroon a heroine, 
 and wins thousands to the admiration of a color on the 
 boards, which they still falsely profess to detest in the par- 
 lor. Mrs. Child, in her " Komance of the Republic," gives 
 a vivid portraiture of the wrongs and rights of this married 
 life and love in conflict with the curse of caste. Anna 
 Dickinson waxes yet bolder, and, in her " What Answer ? " 
 shows how inevitable, how beautiful is this true affection, 
 40
 
 626 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 despite, nay, including this difference of color. And the 
 hour is not far off when the white-hued husband shall boast 
 of the dusky beauty of his wife, and the Caucasian wife 
 shall admire the sun-kissed countenance of her husband, as 
 deeply, and as unconscious of the present ruling abhorrence 
 as is his admiration of her lighter tint. Desdemona was as 
 deeply fascinated by Othello's visage, as was he by Desde- 
 mona's. That hour is not coming it already is. Not a 
 few of these marriages which God has made, and whose 
 legal validity man, in some instances, has reluctantly ac- 
 knowledged, are already filling homes with happiness, and 
 both prophesying and leading the way to the future unity 
 and blessedness of America. Amalgamation is God's word, 
 declaring the oneness of man, and ordaining its universal 
 recognition. Who art thou that fightest against God ? 
 
 5. But General Grant's peace opens the way for yet fur- 
 ther victories, if any in your minds can be further. The 
 suffrage of woman must follow that of the African. The 
 proudest female must march behind the lowliest negro. She 
 is a citizen already, frequently a tax-payer, always of equal 
 intelligence, often of superior virtue to man. She is our 
 mother ; and who believes he knows more than his mother, 
 or is better able to understand and exercise any duty? She 
 is our wife ; who that deserves a wife 'believes himself 
 the superior of that wedded soul ? She is our sister ; and 
 who does not know that when in school together she more 
 frequently led him in scholarship than he her ? She is 
 of the Commonwealth, having equal rights with every other 
 member. She is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. 
 Surely, all enforced exclusion of her from her just claims is 
 the greatest injustice. If we preeminently despise the man 
 who strikes a woman, how should we feel toward the State 
 who thus strikes down all its women, and robs them of all 
 power of defense from its blows ? 
 
 Above all, we need her help. Christ is seeking to estab-
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 627 
 
 lish His empire in the earth. It is an empire of peace, of 
 unity, of righteousness, of love. It is to be established in 
 good-willing men, in holy laws, in sacred institutions, in 
 purified society. How can this be done except by the co- 
 operation of the best and most numerous members of that 
 society ? Only by woman's vote can the kingdom of God 
 be completely established. Only thus can we save the State 
 from debauchery and utter demoralization. 
 
 That work will go forward. It is advancing everywhere ; 
 and when the next election comes may we see our sisters 
 sitting by us, and transforming the dirty, smoky atmosphere 
 of the voting-rooms into sweet and quiet parlors, full of 
 pleasure and peace. 
 
 The temperance movement must go forward. It has been 
 held back by the imperative demands of the cause of free- 
 dom. It met with a repulse from misjudging men, under 
 wicked leaders ; but it will rally and move on. It has a 
 grand foundation laid in the convictions of every heart, the 
 conclusions of every understanding, the decisions of courts, 
 the statistics of jails and almshouses, the annals of crime, a 
 generation of totally abstaining people, and the success of 
 the experiment of prohibition. Every good and evil inure 
 to its benefit. With the departure of the giant crime of 
 Slavery to its own hell, the movement against its hardly 
 inferior associate will be recommenced. We have exchanged 
 the slaveholder's ring for the whisky ring. The one elected 
 Presidents ; the other has preserved one of them in his un- 
 deserved seat. We have abolished the one ; we must the 
 other. To this reform every youth should consecrate him- 
 self. In every State it should be agitated. Congress should 
 be implored to establish it in the Territories and the District 
 of Columbia. The new South must adopt it to save her 
 new citizens from utter demoralization. Great will be the 
 happiness of the nation when no village shall be cursed with 
 a grogshop, when every city shall be as pure from this vice
 
 628 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 as the rivers of Eden, when our youth shall be untainted 
 with this appetite, and our men shall not err through strong- 
 drink. May that hour soon break upon the waiting realm, 
 and National Prohibition of all that can intoxicate deliver 
 our land from its last and heaviest burden. 
 
 Not a few other blessings wait on the coming hours. As 
 clouds of angel faces surround the heads of victor saints, 
 misty yet distinct in beauty, so do clouds of reforms, the 
 faces of the true angels, messengers of God to man, encom- 
 pass the victor President. 
 
 Black were the clouds about the head of Lincoln when 
 first he became the head of the nation. A winter storm of 
 darkness and death beat upon his head. How dark, how 
 dreadful that hour ! The flush of morning joy at his success 
 was instantly extinguished in the sulphurous folds, shooting 
 lightnings, rumbling thunders, portending ruin. How sad- 
 ly, wearisomely, patiently did he wade through the sea of 
 troubles, and by opposing, end them. A slightly brighter 
 cloud encompassed the last election. Still it was a dreary 
 mixture of light and darkness. Grant was still held at bay 
 before Richmond. Sherman yet lay in the heart of the 
 enemy's country, and the march to the sea was but a crazy 
 dream of those two generals, as it seemed to loyal and rebel 
 minds. Thomas had scarcely relieved Nashville of its be- 
 leaguered hosts. Gold still hung high above the hundreds. 
 Europe still believed and hoped that Jeflerson Davis had 
 created a nation. Mexico was still a principality of France. 
 Charleston was the same haughty hold of slavedom. Mobile 
 snarled defiance from all her forts at all our fleets. Lee was 
 still the bepraised general, far before Grant, in English and 
 in rebel judgments. Slaves were still held by the millions 
 in every State, from Kentucky, by way of Virginia and the 
 sea-line, up to Arkansas. Our poor boys were still rotting 
 to death by the thousands at Andersonville and in the Libby 
 Prison. Much had been done ; but all would be lost were
 
 ELECTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. 629 
 
 not much more done. His reelection was but a pledge, a 
 sign of pluck, a charge on the enemy's lines, a determina- 
 tion never to submit or yield till the victory, how far soever 
 distant, should be attained. To-day all this is past ; and 
 the new heavens open around us in abundant light. Amer- 
 ican ideas are breaking in pieces all nations. They have 
 invaded England, and elected the first People's Parliament 
 that ever sat in her realm ; they have overrun Germany, 
 and unified that long disparted nation ; they have entered 
 Spain, overturned the Inquisition, driven forth a ruler 
 whose seat had been held by her family for three hundred 
 years, and probably in some line of her blood for a far longer 
 time, and are even now discussing the establishment of the 
 Republic of Iberia. The British Provinces have organized 
 a nationality which is a precursor of their admission into 
 the greater nationality of America. Mexico has expelled 
 Napoleon, and sustains her own independence, preparatory 
 to her absorption into our domain. 
 
 In enterprise the world is also careering like a ship before 
 the wind. The girdle of the nation will belt her zone before 
 another year, and our President enter the Pacific cities 
 the longest journey ever made by the head of a nation 
 through its territory. The South will be filled with peace- 
 ful, loving, laboring populations. Emigration will set in 
 from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the islands of the sea ; and 
 the world make gigantic strides to the glory and calm of 
 the millennial year. 
 
 To this work, and honor, and reward may all be devoted. 
 Let Christ abolish sin from your souls, of whatever sort, by 
 His indwelling grace. Let your heart become His peaceful 
 realm, with its every passion, thought, and purpose subject 
 to His sway. Labor by every word and work to make all 
 other hearts equally perfect. Strive to bring the laws of 
 society into subjection to His control. Root up the gnarled
 
 630 AMERICA'S PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 tusks of prejudice. Toil cheerfully, hopefully, faithfully, to 
 bring in the Grand Sabbatic Year, the Jubilee of Heaven. 
 
 " The visions seen far off, and sang of old 
 By holy seers and prophets, grasped by faith, 
 And longed for, though the half could ne'er be told 
 In language, nor by hope itself conceived, 
 Will have accomplishment, a waking bliss, 
 The rest foreshadowed by the Church of God, 
 The golden dawn of Everlasting Day."
 
 NOTES. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL. (Page 1.) 
 
 AFTER a struggle of over seven months, the bill for the rendition of 
 fugitives passed Congress, September 13, 1850. It was the first act of 
 the national government in avowed support of the institution of slavery, 
 after the great debate had sprung up. Its previous laws of this sort 
 had been enacted in the state of darkness that had beclouded the pop- 
 ular mind concerning the duty. In the conflict that had been raging for 
 nearly twenty years, the slave power had met with sympathy from the 
 general government, in its refusal to receive petitions, in the attempt to 
 purge the mails of what were called " incendiary publications," and in 
 other minor expressions of hostility to abolitionism. But it had never 
 done anything in direct support of slavery. This act was of that char- 
 acter. 
 
 It immediately caused intense excitement in all the Free States, and 
 the question of the prerogatives of law was universally discussed. 
 Pulpits defended not this act especially, but the duty of obeying every 
 act of legislation, as the only foundation upon which society could 
 exist. They also in all cases apologized for, and in most cases defended, 
 the system of slavery. Among many others, two sermons, setting forth 
 this view with much acuteness, were published in the " Journal of Com- 
 merce." The public mind was made timid by these warnings and plead- 
 ings, and the cause of humanity seemed in danger of destruction through 
 fear of touching the sacred ark of law. 
 
 But God raised up many defenders of His imperilled cause. Pulpit 
 contended with pulpit, press with press. Out of the conflict the public 
 conscience grew to a clear perception of the principle, that that law only 
 can be law, in its true sovereignty, which embodies the conscience of 
 man and dwells in the bosom of God. 
 
 (631)
 
 632 NOTES. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE ASSAULT ON CHARLES SOMNER. (Page 57.) 
 
 The Nebraska Bill brought forth fruit after its kind. Conceived in 
 iniquity, it bred civil war. The seat of this war was in the southern 
 territory of Kansas, though the act that inaugurated it was known by 
 the name of the upper territory of Nebraska. As the compromise repeal 
 was not followed immediately by an enactment recognizing slavery as 
 existent in these dependencies, it was evident that if the North should 
 first settle the territory, she would have some chance to shape its char- 
 acter. Emigrant Aid Societies were, therefore, established, and every 
 appliance put in force to stimulate immigration. Bold leaders guided 
 bold followers to the first battle-field in America, where blood mingled 
 freely with the ballot as an arbiter in the strife. Heroes sprang up al- 
 most autochthonous. Men never known before became known forever, 
 of whom John Brown, the martyr of Virginia, was by far the chief. The 
 slave power poured in their men ; but, as in all the subsequent contests, 
 so then, they could not equal the friends of freedom in numbers. The 
 aid of the national government, and their savagery, made up for their 
 lack of numbers. The administration constantly favored their cause, 
 decided their minority constitution, which established slavery, alone 
 authentic, and endeavored to force her admission into Congress on that 
 basis. This was fiercely opposed, and by the A r igor and daring of the anti- 
 slavery leaders, was successfully resisted. May 19, 1856, Charles Sum- 
 ner, Senator from Massachusetts, delivered a masterly oration upon the 
 course of the government and the slave power. This freedom of speech, 
 it was felt, was harming the cause of the slaveholders. He must be 
 punished, and it suppressed. So with the knowledge and in the presence 
 of their leader, Senator Douglas, who was then expecting the nomina- 
 tion to the Presidency, on May 22 an assault was made on Mr. Sum- 
 ner, as he sat at his desk, writing, by Preston C. Brooks, a member of 
 the House of Representatives from Soutli Carolina. About fifteen very 
 severe blows were inflicted on his head. He pulled up his seat in his 
 endeavors to escape his would-be assassin. He was nearly killed, and 
 for several years was unable to do any public service. 
 
 The country instinctively felt that this was a new step in the march 
 of the iniquity. It had defrauded the Territories of their rights. It 
 now sought to extinguish all State equality. For if freedom of debate 
 in Congress was suppressed, all State rights were practically annihi- 
 lated. Only as the slave power allowed would any State presume to 
 act. The " United States " ceased to be, and an oligarchy became the
 
 NOTES. 633 
 
 sole sovereign of the country. The following resolution, adopted at 
 Faneuil Hall, is an example of that sentiment : 
 
 Resolved, That in this outrage we see new encroachments upon Freedom, new 
 violations of State rights ; that the attack is to be rebuked, not only as a cowardly 
 assault upon a defenseless man, but as a crime against the right of Free Speech 
 and the dignity of a Free State. 
 
 The Massachusetts legislature also declared, in its resolves, that it 
 was " a ruthless attack upon the liberty of speech, and an indignity to 
 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." She also demanded for her 
 Representatives in Congress freedom of speech, and announced her de- 
 termination to sustain them " in the rights of American citizens." 
 
 Thus the blows upon Sumner were the natural precursor of the shot 
 at Sumter. Both were against the Nation and Humanity. Both came 
 from Disunion and Slavery. 
 
 The act made the presidential campaign, then beginning, yet more 
 fierce, and greatly increased the anti-slavery vote. 
 
 The discourse on this subject was published in " The Westfield News- 
 letter," the newspaper of the town where it was preached, at the request 
 of a number of leading citizens. It is with pleasure that their note 
 of invitation is here reprinted, both as a memorial of old times and old 
 friends, of whom the greater part continue to this present, but some are 
 fallen asleep, and also as a proof that its words were only levelled up, 
 if even that were possible, to the hight of the hour. These gentlemen 
 of business, social and religious standing, by their indorsement, show 
 how deep and wide the tide of feeling flowed. 
 
 WESTFIELD, June 11, 1S56. 
 
 To RKV. MR. HAVEN. 
 We, the undersigned, having listened with the deepest interest to your discourse 
 
 of last Sabbath afternoon, and feeling that such wholesome truths ought, at the 
 
 present juncture, to have a widespread circulation, would respectfully request the 
 
 same to be published. 
 In making this request, we feel we are but expressing the unanimous sentiment 
 
 of the large audience convened on that occasion. 
 
 II. HARRISON, ELIJAH PORTKR, 
 
 SAMUEL Dow, T. P. COLLINS, 
 
 JOHN KNEIL, RALPH LAY, 
 
 GEORGE S. SAVAGE, P. N. WESTON, 
 D. N. DAY. ALBERT A. RAY, 
 
 B. R. LEWIS, E. A. RAY, 
 
 M. D. MOORE, A. P. RAND. 
 
 Messrs. HARRISON, Dow, KNEIL, and others. 
 
 Gentlemen : Agreeably to your request, I submit the remarks made last Sabbath 
 afternoon to your disposal, hoping that they may aid, though slightly, to a right 
 perception of the sin and peril of our beloved nation, and to the instant and earnest 
 employment of all the means approved by our Creator for our present and perpetual 
 salvation. Very truly yours, 
 
 WESTFIELD, June 11, 1866. G. HAVEN.
 
 634 NOTES. 
 
 III. 
 
 SLAVERY'S LAST TRIUMPH. (Page 87.) 
 
 The fiercest political battle that till then had been fought in America, 
 had resulted in the defeat of John C. Fremont, the candidate of the 
 anti-slavery forces, first known as the Republican party in this cam- 
 paign, and the election of James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. It was a 
 victory that ruined the victors. The strength of the friends of freedom 
 was made known. Their party had grown from 157,123 in the last pres- 
 idential election, to 1,340,514. They had elected a Congress, which 
 was so largely impregnated with the free sentiments, that it restrained 
 the Executive from his full and fell purposes. The discourse was there- 
 fore a declaration of the intent and scope of the triumphant party ; a 
 declaration that was substantially fulfilled in all the leading efforts of 
 the administration in respect to Kansas, Cuba, the Dred Scott decision, 
 which deprived every man of color of every constitutional protection, 
 and the decision from the same court prepared, but not declared, that 
 reopened the slave traffic in every free State. Lincoln's election alone 
 prevented that declaration. During its existence, and with its conni- 
 vance, the foreign or African slave trade was reopened, and invasions 
 of Mexico and Central America were carried out ; while its bequest of 
 the most terrible civil war in "history, far surpassed and more than an- 
 swered all the statements of its intent and effort, and showed that had 
 not our people been willing to die by the hundreds of thousands, this 
 roll of lamentations, mourning, and woe would have been more than 
 fulfilled. 
 
 IV. 
 
 "IT WILL BE DEMANDED OF US, DROP FOR DROP, BY THE GoD OF 
 
 JUSTICE." (Page 112.) 
 
 Eight years afterward, President Lincoln, in his last inaugural, thus 
 spoke : 
 
 Yet if God wills that the war continue until all the wealth piled by the bond- 
 man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every 
 drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, 
 as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments 
 of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
 
 NOTES. 635 
 
 V. 
 
 CANAAN'S CUBSE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE AFRICAN AND HIS 
 SLAVERY. (Page 124.) 
 
 The position was long held by abolitionists, that the curse upon Ca- 
 naan was a prophecy of his political subjugation to the children of 
 Israel, and that he was not the father of the African race, and his curse 
 had given no authority for African slavery. This was opposed with in- 
 tense vigor by the Southern pulpit and its Northern sympathizers. Even 
 so late as 1869, a lecturer could make " cursed be Canaan" a title for a 
 witty satire against slavery and caste. But how false it was, and how 
 thoroughly exploded, may be seen from the following extract from " The 
 Christian Advocate " of January, 1869, published at Nashville, the official 
 organ of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Its learned editor, 
 Rev. Dr. Summers, thus confesses the wrongfulness of that famous plea 
 for American slavery : 
 
 The descendants of Ham's fourth son, Canaan, were exclusively involved in 
 Noah's malediction; but they were not negroes, nor, so far as appears, any darker 
 in their hue than the Jews, to whom, as Shemites, they were brought into servi- 
 tude, as they were afterwards to the Greeks and Romans, the descendants of 
 Japheth. 
 
 We do not doubt that the black races of Africa, including all the negroes, de- 
 scended from Cush and Phut, two of the sons of Ham, with perhaps a little inter- 
 mingling from the descendants of Mizraim, another of his sons, who settled in 
 Egypt. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " ONE HALF THE FAMILY THE PROPERTY OF THE OTHER." (Page 132.) 
 
 A clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Rev. J. D. Long, 
 when travelling a circuit in Maryland, stopped at the house of one of 
 his congregation. After dinner they went to walk. 
 
 " Did you notice anything peculiar about my family? " said his host. 
 
 " Nothing especial," was the reply. 
 
 " Did you not see the girls that waited on the table? " 
 
 " I noticed that there were some." 
 
 " Those girls are my daughters, the children of my first wife, who 
 was my slave. I lived happily with her, and as honorably as the State 
 would allow. When she died, I married my present wife, a white lady, 
 whose daughters sat at the table. The older sisters are the slaves of 
 the younger." 
 
 "The elder shall serve the younger" was strangely fulfilled in this 
 instance. It was one of a myriad of examples of the mixed condition 
 of slaveholding families.
 
 636 NOTES. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE MOVEMENT AT HARPER'S FERRY. (Page 153.) 
 
 The seizure of the arsenal at Harper's Ferry was made on the night 
 of October 17th, 1859. It was arranged for the 24th; but Captain 
 Brown suspected a traitor in his band, and struck earlier to escape his 
 treachery. The consequence was, that many of his supporters, both 
 from the North and among the slaves, were not ready, and his plans 
 thus failed of connection and of success. 
 
 He intended to make his rendezvous in the hills, but delayed, fatally 
 for himself, all the forenoon in the arsenal which he occupied. He had 
 twenty -two associates, sixteen whites and six colored. When a workman 
 asked the guard of the arsenal by what authority he had taken possession 
 of public property, he replied, "By the authority of Almighty God." 
 
 The excitement of the nation was wonderful. No event of the war 
 produced such a startling effect on the public mind. Every one saw 
 that it betokened a new phase of the growing struggle. Only one of 
 the daily press, however, had the courage to avow the justice of the 
 act. " The Evening Post," on the day of its announcement, stood by 
 the principles involved in his action. Most Republican journals de- 
 nounced him. The country has not yet fully discerned the value of this 
 courageous and Christian deed. A complete history of the event has 
 not yet been written. It will be found to be far more wisely and skill- 
 fully arranged than is even now allowed. It was undoubtedly the needed 
 deed. The words and acts of the reform required this step. They had 
 done their work. A blow against it was the opening gun of the war. 
 The soldiers soon detected its value, and the famous " John Brown 
 song" became the most popular song of the army and the war. It 
 was first sung within less than three months after the fall of Sumter, 
 by the Massachusetts Twelfth, marching down State Street, under 
 the command of Colonel Fletcher Webster, son of Daniel Webster. 
 Captain Brown will undoubtedly stand forth as the John Huss of this 
 reform, one the most exalted of its many martyrs in the love and 
 honor of future generations. 
 
 VIII. 
 BUNKER'S HILL AND HARPER'S FERRY. (Page 195.) 
 
 The analogy between these two historic events has been suggested by 
 several speakers and writers. It has not been as carefully elaborated 
 as it deserves to be, and will be by future historians. It may not be
 
 NOTES. 637 
 
 amiss to state a few of the points of resemblance they will detect, both 
 in respect to the enterprises themselves, and their real leaders. 
 
 They are not unlike in rashness, viewed in the light of cool, sagacious 
 generalship. Consider the former. Fifteen hundred untrained soldiers, 
 with only four rounds apiece of cartridge and ball, planted themselves 
 behind a mere bank of turf and sticks, thrown up in less than twelve 
 hours, within a few rods of a ship channel, where the enemy's men-of- 
 war lay, and whence they could rake them on three sides, and cut off 
 their retreat on the fourth. Consider, further, that a great city was less 
 than a mile distant, full of ammunition and thoroughly trained soldiers, 
 and its nearest eminence, in hight and distance, commanded their site 
 as perfectly as though it had been perched over their heads but a rood 
 off. Is there greater military wisdom in putting such a handful of raw 
 militia into such a trap, than Captain Brown showed in his operations? 
 Wellington nor Washington would have never undertaken the former 
 any sooner than the latter. 
 
 If we look at each of them, as they appeared to the hopes or even the 
 dreams of Warren and of Brown, we shall find them not dissimilar. No 
 historian ever has clearly set forth the immediate practical good that 
 the encampment on Bunker's Hill was intended or desired to effect : 
 we doubt if they ever will. It could not have been dreamed for a 
 moment, that their position could be retained for any length of time. 
 Without shelter, without rocky ramparts, or means to erect them, with- 
 out ammunition or cannon, or provision, shut off from all communica- 
 tion from the main army as completely as if in a besieged fortress, they 
 could not have hoped for anything but a bloody battle, fruitless in its 
 immediate results even if successful, or a final submission of the whole 
 force by the slow, but, in this case, most certain process of siege. Had 
 not the British been rash with rage and pride, they could have had the 
 whole fifteen hundred in their hands in less than a week without the 
 loss of a man, as easily as the Virginians could have starved Captain 
 Brown into surrender, had they, too, had the grace of patience. It 
 may be said the Americans made a blunder, and located themselves 
 nearer Boston, and on a lower hill, than they intended. So the leader 
 of the Harper's Ferry enterprise said he made a blunder, and did not 
 follow any of his plans in entering the arsenal. History will give them 
 both the benefits of their claim, if she gives either. What then? The 
 hill they intended to occupy is just as completely shut off from the camp 
 as the one they fortified. It has only one advantage over the latter. 
 This one is overtopped by Copp's Hill in Boston, that one, not. It is, 
 however, within reach of its fire, as well as that of the fleet. The 
 mountains on which Brown said he meant to establish himself, are not 
 subject to like objection. The enterprise of Putnam, Prescott, and War- 
 ren has not any such claim to real necessity as must be allowed to the
 
 638 NOTES. 
 
 fight at Lexington and the fortification of Dorchester Eights. It was a 
 trial battle. It would have always been branded as criminally foolish, 
 but for the higher than strategetical, or so called practical reasons, which 
 incited it, and especially but for the wonderful fruits it brought forth in 
 the hearts of friends and foes. Will not the future historian of the great 
 conflict of slavery and freedom find like analogies in the events of Har- 
 per's Ferry ? In one respect we pray and believe they will totally differ. 
 The former was the prelude of a long and cruel civil war. The latter, 
 we hope, will prove to be the only bloody interruption to the peaceable 
 progress of this cause. It will certainly have this relation, if the slave 
 masters learn more wisdom from this event than our British masters did 
 from Bunker's Hill.* 
 
 We cannot fail to notice the remarkable resemblance of the real leaders 
 of these enterprises, both in respect to their own temperament, as well 
 as in their relation to their associates in the general movement. Warren 
 differed as much from the other great leaders in the cause of liberty 
 then, as John Brown did from those of to-day. His voice was fierce for 
 war long before the others considered the argument of peace exhausted. 
 His deeds were like his words. On the Lexington day, he was fighting 
 in the ranks, while Hancock and Samuel Adams, equally great patriots, 
 and esteemed by the king far more dangerous rebels, felt it their duty 
 to seek safety in flight. His rash courage almost sealed his fate that 
 day. For at West Cambridge a ball passed so near his head as to carry 
 away the pin that fastened his earlock. Had he been captured at Bun- 
 ker's Hill, as he undoubtedly would have been but for the fortunate 
 stab of a bayonet, he would most certainly have been hung within a 
 month on Boston Common, by the Governor of Massachusetts, for 
 "murder, treason, and inciting to insurrection." 
 
 There are only two points of difference between these transactions. 
 The first, that those who fought were, in the one case, themselves the 
 victims of the oppression, in the other, chiefly sympathizers with these 
 victims. This is not quite true, though constantly asserted. For col- 
 ored men, free and slave, were engaged at Harper's Ferry. Some were 
 slain, some escaped, some were captured and hung. It was planned 
 and perfected, theoretically, among the fugitives of Canada. Colonel 
 Washington's favorite slave was among the slain, and no one knows, no 
 one can know, till slavery is abolished, how great an army was pledged 
 to meet at the rendezvous in the mountains. 
 
 The second point of difference is, that much legislative and military 
 preparation preceded the former encounter, none the latter. It will be 
 noticed, in connection with this fact, that the ruling government of Mas- 
 sachusetts had allowed, for many years, mass meetings, congresses, peti- 
 
 * This note is printed as it was published in December, I860. The analogy has 
 grown more complete with the events that have since occurred.
 
 NOTES. 639 
 
 tions of its subjects, the collection of military stores, and, at last, permit- 
 ted fourteen thousand of these rebels to be encamped under arms within 
 three miles of its Capitol. Suppose Virginia had granted its subjects 
 such privileges, would they not have developed civil and military lead- 
 ers, and executed enterprises of great pith and moment, without the aid 
 of a foreign arm? Let us reflect that history, which is the voice of 
 humanity, never takes into account, in its ultimate and irreversible judg- 
 ment, immediate success or failure. The final cause rules here as every- 
 where. Warren and Bunker's Hill are still, and ever will be, the most 
 thrilling names of the Revolutionary struggle. Those to whose liberty 
 they are dedicated, have compelled all nations to do them reverence, 
 by their own unceasing, enthusiastic devotion. So the like, yet far 
 greater admiration of the Afric-American race, when they shall have 
 achieved their freedom, will compel all the world to revere the names 
 of John Brown and Harper's Ferry. Their representative shall yet 
 stand with the descendant of John Brown and the successor of Governor 
 Wise, in mutual amity and grateful reverence before a commemorative 
 monument at Harper's Ferry, as the descendants of George the Third * 
 and Joseph Warren lately stood with the representative of emancipated 
 Massachusetts, cordial and reverent, before the sacred memorials of 
 Bunker's Hill. 
 
 IX. 
 
 "THE OPEN SLAVE PEN." (Page 244.) 
 
 The following lines from the late poems of John J. Piatt, are a fitting 
 memorial of a vanished horror : 
 
 We start from sleep in morning's buoyant dawn, 
 And find the horror which our sleep oppressed 
 
 A vanished darkness, in the daylight gone 
 The nightmare's burden leaves the stifled breast. 
 
 Yet still a presence moves about the brain, 
 
 Some frightful shadow lost in hazy light; 
 And in the noonday highway comes again, 
 
 The loathsome phantom of the breathless night. 
 
 So, while before these hateful doors I stand, 
 I feel the bordering darkness which is past, 
 
 * The Prince of Wales and the President of the Bunker Hill Monument Associa- 
 tion, Hon. George Washington Wnrren. What connection of names and men could 
 be more significant? Governor Wise has since approved the abolition of slavery. 
 The Bunker Hill Monument, at Charlestown, Virginia, will as surely crown that 
 spot with its glorious memories.
 
 640 NOTES. 
 
 Or passing surely from the awakened land ; 
 The nightmare clutches me and holds me fast. 
 
 Back from the years that seem so long ago, 
 Keturn the dark processions which have been; 
 
 Lifting again lost manacles of woe, 
 
 They enter here they vanish, going in. 
 
 Hark to the smothered murmur of a race 
 
 Within these walls, its helpless wail and moan, 
 
 Which, for the ancient shadow on its face, 
 
 Called not the morning's new-born light its own ! 
 
 Imprisoned here, what unforgotten cries 
 
 Of hopeless torture, and what sights of woe, 
 
 From cotton field and rice plantation rise ! 
 
 These walls have heard, and seen, and witness show. 
 
 The human drove, the human driver, see ! 
 
 Hark, the dread blood-hound in the swamp at bay ! 
 The whipping-post reechoes agony ; 
 
 The slave mart blackens all the shameful day. 
 
 The wife and husband, see, asunder thrust ! 
 
 The mother dragged from her far children's wail ! 
 The maiden torn from love and given to lust 
 
 The Human Family in a bill of sale. 
 
 All sounds ree'cho, all sights reappear ; 
 
 (O blindness, deafness.! that ye cannot be!) 
 All sounds of woe that have been heard, I hear ! 
 
 All sights of shame that have been seen, I see ! 
 
 O sounds, be still! O visions, leave the day! 
 
 What thunder trembled on the sultry air ? 
 What lightnings went upon their breathless way? 
 
 Behold the stricken gates of old despair ! 
 
 The writing on these barbarous walls was plain ; 
 
 The curse has fallen none would understand ; 
 God's deluge ere another happier rain ; 
 
 His plow of fire before the reaper's land ! 
 
 The awful nightmare slips into its night, 
 
 With cannon-flash and noise of hurrying shell. 
 
 O prisons, open for returning light ! 
 The sun is in the world, and all is well.
 
 NOTES. 641 
 
 X. 
 
 FIRST ABOLITION PROCLAMATION. (Page 269.) 
 
 The first proclamation that declared for the abolition of slavery, was 
 read in Congress, Friday, March 6, 1862. In it Mr. Lincoln proposed 
 the following joint resolution : 
 
 Resolved, That the United States ought to cooperate with any State which may 
 adopt a gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be 
 used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconvenience, public 
 and private, produced by such a change of system. 
 
 He argued that this would " initiate emancipation," and prevent the 
 border States from going with the Confederacy in case the government 
 should be forced to acknowledge the independence of one part of the 
 disaffected region. 
 
 Congress and the country recognized the importance of the step. The 
 telegraph declared "the President's Message excited deep interest in 
 the House to-day. It forms the theme of earnest conversation." "The 
 Tribune," of March 8, said, "It is one of those few great scriptures 
 that live in history, and mark an epoch in the lives of nations and races. 
 The first era of the supremacy of the rights of man in this country 
 dates from the Declaration of Independence ; the second began on the 
 6th of March, 1862, with the Emancipation Message of President Lin- 
 coln." It was an unnoticed coincidence, that Webster's speech, sur- 
 rendering himself, and so far as he could, his party and State and section, 
 to slavery, was pronounced on the same day that this message was read, 
 March 7th. Twelve years to a day had reversed completely that fatal 
 descent of the North, and raised the nation to its true bight. Thence- 
 forward to the next and bolder step, universal and unconditional eman- 
 cipation, was easy and inevitable. 
 
 XI. 
 
 LETTER TO THE LONDON WATCHMAN. (Page 291.) 
 
 The circumstances attending the writing of this letter ought to ac- 
 company its publication in this form, as a defence for what might seem 
 to some an inappropriate intrusion of American ideas into a British 
 journal. Having a letter of introduction from Rev. Dr., now Bishop 
 Thomson, to the late and lamented Rev. J. A. Riggs, then editor in 
 chief of the Watchman, on calling upon him, a conversation ensued on 
 American affairs. It was remarked that the British public seemed but 
 little conversant with the questions involved in this controversy, and 
 41
 
 642 NOTES. 
 
 the position of the American government. The editor requested a com- 
 munication setting forth these points. It was suggested that a full state- 
 ment would not be acceptable to his readers. The reply was, that free 
 speech was always allowed. In Paris, a few weeks after, on the Fourth 
 of July, the letter was written. The proofs were sent to Paris, with a 
 note, asking if we wished it to publish treason, and if our American 
 editors would allow articles against a Republican form of government 
 to appear in their journals. It was replied that it " was asked to 
 publish nothing. Free speech was declared to be the law of all British 
 journalism. Any American editor would admit a defence of British 
 ideas, monarchy included, in his journal. The editor had full liberty 
 to accept or reject the article." 
 
 It was accepted, and one half published, [to the bottom of page 303]. 
 That portion caused so much excitement that a committee was called 
 of the managers, and the balance read, and forbidden to be published, 
 although it was already in type. The letter, as thus prepared and 
 printed, and half published, is here presented. Its only objection, as 
 the editor himself declared in a conversation afterward, was its state- 
 ment of the real cause of the anti-American sentiment in England. 
 He agreed as to the coming of democracy there, and said that " if they 
 had a king like George IV., they would be a republic in ten years." He 
 has since died; a true, Christian gentleman, whose heart was in sym- 
 pathy with our ideas no less than with our struggle. 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE ULTIMATE ONENESS OF MANKIND. (Page 350.) 
 
 The vision of saints and poets, the declarations of prophecy, and the 
 necessary triumph of Christianity, in bringing all the world to one lan- 
 guage and one heart, is well set forth in "Yesterday, To-day, and For- 
 ever," in the Millennial Year. The poet thus describes the unity of 
 language : 
 
 Babel's confusion was unlearned. And one 
 
 Melodious language, wherein every thought 
 
 Found utterance, overspread the circling globe, 
 
 A language worthy of the eons of God. 
 
 XIII. 
 THE MARCH OP THE DARK BRIGADE. (Page 369.) 
 
 The following editorial, from " The Independent " of that date, illus- 
 trates the feelings which the event excited. 
 
 "It is not often 'that the hub of the universe' shakes on its axle.
 
 NOTES. 643 
 
 But last Thursday it fell from its steadfastness. It was the Fifty-fourth 
 Massachusetts regiment which cast the shadow of its coming on our 
 last week's columns, that stormed and took the city. 
 
 " We gather from various sources the incidents of the march, and sub- 
 mit to our readers the raw materials for the future poets and historians. 
 The cars from the neighboring cities came in crowded, as at the Prince 
 of Wales' reception. Extremes meet. The heir of the proudest throne 
 and the most despised of mankind created like furore. The streets 
 were thronged. Nature smiled propitious. So did the citizens. 
 
 " About ten o'clock the cars landed the regiment, and the line of 
 march was taken up through the principal streets. Gilmore's band led 
 the column. A colored band that did not play, and a colored drum 
 corps that did, and well, followed. Then came the strange spectacle 
 a thousand black forms and faces. Some expressions looked hard, and 
 almost brutal, as if they had just emerged from their long prison-house, 
 and had only two ideas liberty and vengeance. Others, and most, 
 were refined and thoughtful, and full of high inspiration. 
 
 "They sweep along from curbstone to curbstone, with even, steady 
 tramp, their knapsacks and coats piled upon their shoulders, their 
 guns erect .against them. Nemesis is marching to South Carolina. Not 
 shod with wool, as Horace talks about. The wool was on her head 
 and will be a sacred fillet when those who wear it shall be sacrificed 
 upon the altar of their country's salvation. No doubt the slaveholders 
 in Richmond and Charleston heard the solid tread. 
 
 " They came to the State House. The Governor, Senator Wilson, 
 Adjutant-General Schouler, and other dignitaries, were received into 
 the opened lines, and the march was continued down Beacon Street. 
 The crme de la crtme crowded the aristocratic windows. Handker- 
 chiefs fluttered, and loud cheers rent the air. In one of the most aris- 
 tocratic houses, the residence of the colonel, colored ladies and white 
 stood in the parlor windows. 
 
 " How those soldiers must have felt at such an ovation ! Did they 
 remember their life-long degradation? Did they remember anything 
 else? Many had just been slaves. Their backs were hardl)' healed of 
 the scourge. What contrasts in their lives ! No novelist has dreamed 
 of such. 
 
 " The Common was crowded. The Governor and his staff marched 
 around the straight line of battle. Never did his Excellency seem to feel 
 and look so excellent. 
 
 " Then the troops defiled before him in company line, and with far 
 better precision than most new regiments and many old ones exhibit. 
 Thence they march out of the Common, down Tremont Street, down 
 Court Street, by the Court-House, chained hardly a decade ago to 
 save Slavery and the Union. Thence down State Street, trampling on
 
 644 NOTES. 
 
 the very pavements over which Sims and Burns marched to their fate, 
 encompassed by soldiers of the United States. 
 
 " ' Their sisters, sweethearts, and wives,' a familiar quotation in 
 the notices of previous departing regiments, but looking a little odd \ 
 in this new place, ran along beside ' the boys,' giving their parting 
 benedictions of smiles and tears, telling them to be brave, and to show 
 their blood! The crowds cheer even The Co urier office the soldiers 
 sing the John Brown song the boat is reached, and the sensation is 
 solidified into history of the United States. 
 
 " All attempts to express the feelings of the crowd or the soldiers seem 
 to read stale and flat. Yet, as Goldsmith said that the weakest jokes 
 were received as wit by the circle of the happy Vicar, so these attempts 
 were treated as successes by the happy crowd. One man said it was a 
 verification of Shakespeare : 
 
 Know you not Pompetj ? 
 
 You have climbed up to the walls and b"attlements, 
 To see Great Pompey pass the streets of Home. 
 
 " One fact should be chronicled. Their regimental banner, of superb 
 white silk, had on one side the coat of arms of Massachusetts, and on 
 the other a golden cross on a golden star, with IN HOC SIGNO VINCES 
 beneath. This is the first Christian banner that has gone into our war. 
 By a strange, and yet not strange providence, God has made this de- 
 spised race the bearers of His standard. They are thus the real leaders 
 of the nation." 
 
 XIV. 
 THE PAY OF COLORED SOLDIERS. (Page 393.) 
 
 Senator Wilson, in his history of anti-slavery measures in Congress, 
 narrates the long struggle to put the laws right upon this subject. It 
 lasted from January 8 to June 11, 18G4 ; and even then had to be left 
 optional with the Attorney General to say whether soldiers from the 
 Slave States should be reckoned as entitled to the same pay as white 
 soldiers. The President could not wait for this slow action of Congress, 
 and under the pressure of General Grant, who wished to get his army 
 into the best fighting trim before he started from Washington, he re- 
 versed the previous decisions of his Attorney General, and pronounced 
 all soldiers equal in their pay. Though this act of General Grant's was 
 inspired by military judgment, it was none the less excellent in its nature 
 and in its effects.
 
 NOTES. 645 
 
 XV. 
 
 DEPRECIATION OP CONTINENTAL CURRENCY. (Page 414.) 
 
 In the Annals of the American Pulpit, Vol. IX., p. 11, are two or three 
 items from General Muhlenberg's correspondence, which shows how 
 worthless the Continental currency had become. 
 
 On the 5th of January, 1780, he purchased a load of hay for 50 currency. 
 
 March 10, 1780, he bought a horse for a journey from Pennsylvania to Virginia, 
 which cost him 1025, or over $5009. The previous gold value of the horse was 15 
 to 20, or less than $100. That journey of himself and family cost him 10,000, or 
 $50,000. This was three years before the war closed. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 AMERICAN NEUTRALITY : ITS HISTORY AND ITS EFFECTS. (Page 450.) 
 
 These facts will show how baneful has been the sway of this doctrine 
 in our councils, both upon our foreign and domestic relations, and upon 
 the liberty of the world. 
 
 The French Revolution began in 1789. The Republic was established 
 in 1793. Every American, every European saw that both the Revolution 
 and the Republic sprang from our loins. It was our first born among 
 the nations the beginning of our strength. It had consummated itself 
 in the execution of the king ; a deed as necessary for their salvation as it 
 would have been for our fathers to have expelled the British sovereign 
 from our soil, and to have hung him had he persisted in demanding 
 his rights as separate from those of the people. Their execution of 
 Louis XVI. is as justifiable as that of Charles I. 
 
 They established a government based on the broadest principles of 
 democracy. The event was hailed with enthusiasm in every part of the 
 country. In Boston, an ox roasted whole, was carried through the city 
 and served up on State Street. Sixteen hundred loaves of bread were 
 distributed, and the fear of the Maine Law being then, unfortunately, 
 unknown two hogsheads of punch. Each child of the public schools 
 received a cake marked " Liberty and Equality." Balloons were sent up, 
 bonfires blazed, the State House was illuminated, and a public dinner at 
 Faneuil Hall was presided over by Lieutenant Governor Samuel Adams, 
 the father of the Revolution. Governor Mifnin presided at a like jubilee 
 in Philadelphia. Charleston was ablaze with the same enthusiasm. For 
 once, and for the only time till now, Massachusetts and South Carolina 
 struck hands in favor of universal liberty. They are coming together 
 again ! 
 
 Then came the practical test of their zeal. The Republic was instant-
 
 646 NOTES. 
 
 ly met with an offensive alliance of Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, 
 Sardinia, and New Netherlands. They declared war against it. They 
 mustered their forces for its subjugation. The terrific cloud of Ameri- 
 can independence and equality had moved across the seas, had broken 
 over their heads in the deluge of France. If they should remain quiet, it 
 would speedily drown their thrones in its mighty floods. They take 
 arms against the sea of troubles. France sees her peril, and well she 
 may. A mass of emancipated serfs, led by men who had been equally 
 despised and but little more privileged than themselves, what can they 
 do against the European world? They look to America, their nearest 
 friend, their only parent. Citizen Genet is sent as embassador by the 
 Girondist government, as noble and pure a body of rulers as ever failed 
 or triumphed in any land. Our first Congress that passed the Declara- 
 tion, our last that has just confirmed it by its corresponding acts, were 
 not more unselfish, broad-minded, sagacious, and honest than the govern- 
 ment that executed Louis and established the French Republic. 
 
 Genet landed at Charleston, and was welcomed with great rejoicings. 
 His entrance into Philadelphia was an ovation. His mission was public- 
 ly proclaimed and heartily indorsed. He said that his object was " to 
 draw the United States, as far as possible, into making common cause with 
 France." His government " desired to effect a true family compact on a 
 liberal and fraternal basis, on which to raise up the commercial and politi- 
 cal-systems of two peoples, all whose interests were confounded." Thus 
 did she look to us, her mother, in the hour of her first trial. She hastened 
 to us, she begged, she entreated us to aid her in maintaining her lib- 
 erties. 
 
 But while the people were willing, another spirit ruled the government. 
 It hastened, with equal zeal and alacrity, to identify itself with the enemies 
 both of the country and its principles. The doctrine of Neutrality was 
 then born into the political world a cup that has since been faithfully 
 commended to our unwilling lips, by the power that then won the chief- 
 est benefit from its creation. How perfectly the type and antitype 
 agree. England's course toward us is exactly copied after that which we 
 pursued against the French Republic. As soon as war was proclaimed 
 Washington called his cabinet together. Hamilton, an aristocrat, and 
 almost monarchist, proposed to them, in writing, certain questions, all 
 favoring the doctrine of neutrality, none of fraternity. He sought to 
 commit them to his side before they had assembled. Jefferson opposed 
 it, or sought for such a moderate and transient expression of it as he 
 hoped might be carried in the cabinet, and knew that the winds of popu- 
 lar feeling and the force of events would soon sweep away. Hamilton 
 prevailed, and Washington issued his proclamation, April 22, 1793, in 
 less than a fortnight after the news reached him of the declaration of 
 war by the allies, and while the embassador of the new republic was
 
 NOTES. 647 
 
 known to be on his way to the capital. How strikingly does the Queen's 
 proclamation, in less than a fortnight after the news of the fall of Sumter 
 reaches England, and while our embassador is on his way thither, pho- 
 tograph our own conduct, and hoist us with our own petard. 
 
 Citizen Genet was coldly received by the President. In the pressure 
 of his necessities, and relying on the enthusiasm of the people to protect 
 him against the decree of their government, he presumed to issue com- 
 missions and make spoliations of British commerce in our waters. This 
 brought him into conflict with our authorities and damaged his position, 
 though not enough to lose him the moral and hearty support of the peo- 
 ple. The country was alive with excitement. The word Democrat was 
 imported from France, and adopted by its sympathizers. Jefferson allied 
 himself so strongly with their cause that he was compelled to leave the 
 cabinet. Madison was alike its earnest and active friend. Monroe had 
 pledged his country to the Republic in Paris, and had been recalled by 
 the government for his ardor for liberty, only to be hailed everywhere by 
 the people. The next Congress, the first of the second administration, 
 was carried against the administration and neutrality. Frederick Muh- 
 lenberg, of Pennsylvania, was elected speaker on this issue. Albert 
 Gallatin was chosen senator from Pennsylvania on the same question. 
 Bache, Franklin's grandson, and the inheritor of his principles, was its 
 editorial champion. There never was a movement, in our political his- 
 tory, better officered, more popular, or more just, and yet it failed. 
 Selfishness, timidity, greed of wealth, opportunities, which increased 
 vastly with the prospective ruin of the English carrying trade, through 
 French privateers these moved us from the principles of brotherhood 
 and liberty by which we had become a nation. We not only refused to 
 do to others as we would that they should do to us ; we refused to do 
 as they had done to us. We had won our liberty solely though the help 
 of France. Now she may groan and die, while we look out for 
 ourselves. 
 
 The immaturity of our institutions, and their experimental character, 
 were pleaded as an excuse for our course. But we find as the result, 
 what we knew in our hearts at the beginning, that the only way for a 
 nation, as for an individual, to maintain their rectitude, is to work right- 
 eousness. He who saves his life shall lose it. We lost ours at the very 
 moment we sought thus sinfully and selfishly to save it. Most honor- 
 able as were the motives of Washington, his judgment failed him. The 
 enthusiasm of youth yielded to the fears of age. He shrank from war, as 
 well he should ; but he also shrank from confidence in the cause he had 
 so greatly assisted in establishing, and whose preservation might demand 
 war. He distrusted the people. He revealed his real feelings when he 
 told Jefferson that an American monarchy " was not what he Avas afraid 
 of: his fears were from another quarter; that there was more danger
 
 648 NOTES. 
 
 of anarchy being introduced."* The only right way to repress both 
 dangerous tendencies was to keep the Republic alive with its own spirit ; 
 to make it zealous for its radical ideas, and faithfully support them 
 wherever they were in peril. 
 
 This fearful spirit possessed the whole of the second administration of 
 Washington, and is the controlling animus of his most famous paper 
 the Farewell Address. In fact, the chief cause and topic of that docu- 
 ment are not the perils of disunion at home, but of union abroad. Its 
 strongest and most animated sentences are directed against this duty. 
 Its sentences so cold, and unworthy of the great soul that penned them, 
 are the very gospel of selfishness. How they contrast with the gospel of 
 humanity which Jefferson wrote, and Congress proclaimed, not twenty 
 years before, and of which Washington had been the military executor. 
 A few extracts will confirm our position. Far below the highest states- 
 manship is this statement of the relation of great powers to each other. 
 
 " The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in 
 extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political 
 connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, 
 let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let them stop." 
 
 For such an embargo on all intercourse but that of a mercenary char- 
 acter, he gives this reason : 
 
 " Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a 
 very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent con- 
 troversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. 
 Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by 
 artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary 
 combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities." 
 
 And yet, not long before, Merlin de Douay, the president of the con- 
 vention, which had overthrown Robespierre, and wiped out the blood 
 stains of his administration, in welcoming Monroe as Washington's 
 embassador, had used these words : 
 
 " The French people have not forgotten that it is to the American 
 people that they owe their initiation into the cause of liberty. It was in 
 admiring the sublime insurrection of the American people against Britain, 
 once haughty, now so humble, it was in themselves taking arms to 
 second your courageous efforts, and in cementing your independence by 
 the blood of our brave warriors, that the French people learned in their 
 turn to break the scepter of tyranny, and to elevate the statue of liberty 
 on the wreck of a throne supported during fourteen centuries only by 
 crimes and corruption." 
 
 Does this sound as if " Europe had a set of primary interests, which to 
 us have none or a very remote interest " ? Were controversies raging on 
 
 * Irving's AVashington, V. p. 113.
 
 NOTES. 649 
 
 such a field foreign to our concerns? Alas, Great Master, thy noble 
 heart forgot its inspirations in its fears. In truth, the only political 
 activity in all Europe, making her quake and rend under its mighty tread, 
 was the gathering and wrestling of armies, bearing on their several ban- 
 ners each but one sentence, learned in our school alone " The Rights 
 of Kings," " the Rights of Man." The first born child of America was 
 struggling in its cradle with the crowned hydras of tyranny ; yet its 
 mother refuses to hear and to help her throttled babe and that, under 
 the plea that these " controversies are foreign to her concerns." 
 
 There is much more in like vein. The Atlantic is spoken of as 
 separating us. It was forgotten that the Atlantic did not separate us 
 from our enemy and our allies in the great fight of the Revolution ; and 
 that Franklin's diplomacy at Paris, as much if not more than the sword 
 of Washington, had achieved our liberties. Yet with these clearest of 
 facts before him, he says, 
 
 "Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue 
 a different course [than to intervene.] 
 
 " Why," he exclaims, " forgo the advantages of so peculiar a situa- 
 tion? Why quit our own to stand on foreign ground? Why by inter- 
 weaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace 
 and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, 
 humor, or caprice ? It is our true policy to steer clear of all permanent 
 alliances with any portion of the world." 
 
 Is not this the gospel of selfishness ? Is this the true and eternal 
 principle of nationality? Is this rightfully reading our own history? 
 Had Holland, and Spain, and Russia, and France so treated us, he 
 would long before have been hung as a rebel, or have been a fugitive 
 and vagabond on the earth, while the people over whom he ruled would 
 still have been " born colonists, born slaves." 
 
 The farther history of those times is not without its painfully ap- 
 propriate lessons. Hamilton, sought in the spirit and intent of the 
 neutrality act, as England has, in our late war, to abrogate the force of 
 the treaties we had made with France, and on substantially the same 
 basis : 
 
 " Because she had changed her government she could not hold us to 
 the responsibility to treaties made with a view to a totally different state 
 of things, and which, if carried out, might impose obligations 'on us 
 and expose us to dangers never dreamed of when the treaties were 
 made." * 
 
 Again, the French Republic and the American began to quarrel on the 
 same grounds that we have fallen apart from England. They seized our 
 ships carrying contrabrand of war to their enemies. We claimed that 
 
 * Hildreth's History, IV. p. 414.
 
 650 NOTES. 
 
 free ships made free goods. They acknowledged the principle, but 
 plead necessity, as Mr. Seward said we might have done in the Trent 
 affair. We glowered, talked big, and insultingly demanded, as England 
 has of us, retraction under threat of war. It was precisely what John 
 Bright calls England's course with us, "a cold neutrality." Cast off by 
 us, who should have fraternized with her, she turned upon us in hate 
 and scorn, just as we have upon England. She defied us, and trampling 
 over her foes without our aid, despised us and proceeded to yet greater 
 lengths of impudent contempt for our claims. Our neutrality was push- 
 ing us into a war with our only child, our best and only friend. Wash- 
 ington's declaration that " our detached and distant situation" saved us 
 from all need of exercising the feelings of brotherhood and delivered 
 us from the toils of European ambition, interest, and caprice, had hardly 
 been uttered and he retired to his longed-for retreat, before he was sum- 
 moned forth to lead our armies against our ally, who had been made our 
 enemy by the principles and conduct that had animated that address. 
 The European complications of France alone prevented the horrid sight 
 of the only two republics in the world, neither of them ten years old, and 
 separated by a vast and stormy ocean, springing at each others throats 
 in mutual ferocity. How would the monarchies of Europe have rejoiced 
 at that spectacle ! Why did they not suspend their assaults upon France 
 and allow Washington and Lafayette to thus throttle and destroy each 
 other? Thank God, those powers by the swiftness of their own rancor- 
 ous hatred prevented that catastrophe. 
 
 Meantime, Massachusetts had been bribed into silence by giving her 
 son the Presidency, and Samuel Adams, closed the last of her truly 
 democratic rulers, not to be begun again till more 4han half a century 
 had rolled away. Governor Andrew was his first political son that reigned 
 his stead. Hers was a wilderness wandering of more than forty years. 
 
 When the Democrats came into power, the French Republic had 
 become far advanced towards a military despotism, constrained to it, by 
 our refusal to aid her in preserving her liberties. The influences of the 
 contrary doctrines of the late leaders, and especially our warlike threats 
 and preparations, conspired with these tendencies to repress our enthu- 
 siasm. Still Jefferson sympathized with France, reversed the current 
 that set so strongly towards England, and brought on a war with that 
 power, though too late to preserve the liberties of Europe. 
 
 Munroe, his pupil, and warm friend of the French people, made his 
 name immortal by declaring the doctrine that Republicanism should 
 possess this continent : a step exactly opposite to that which Hamilton 
 and Washington had taken, for, it could be maintained only by permanent 
 alliances with foreign powers and armed intervention in behalf of those 
 foreign republics. It is a step too that may yet lead us, as we have lately 
 seen, by the way of Mexico or some other invaded Republic, to the high
 
 NOTES. 651 
 
 table land from which they had descended the ground that our af- 
 finities and duties are limited by no oceans, tongues, or creeds, but that 
 where "Liberty dwells there is our country;" and where liberty is 
 struggling against armed foes to maintain its hold, there should our eye 
 melt in sympathy, our arm be revealed in salvation. 
 
 All the results of this doctrine are not yet innumerated. By the usual 
 movements of Providence, the evils it was hoped that it must have sup- 
 pressed have flourished the more for its enactment, while the good it had 
 hoped to win, turned to ashes on its lips. 
 
 Democratic ideas troubled the aristocratic tastes of Hamilton, Adams, 
 and Washington. Though not monarchists they were not Democrats. 
 They distrusted the people. The French Republic was a perfect 
 democracy. It struck at the vitals of their theories. They feared the 
 rising waves. They sought to sweep out the Atlantic tide with their 
 neutral broom. They were washed away by it. Hamilton and Adams 
 lived to see their power utterly broken, and themselves and their ideas 
 "in the deep bosom of the ocean buried." Washington, by a kind 
 Providence, was relieved from the mournful spectacle. A dread of 
 foreign war also troubled them. Our civil war with its streams of 
 fraternal blood flowed from that unbrotherly timidity. 
 
 Their third motive was the most honorable and most powerful, and 
 most dearly has it been paid for. The country must be unified. All dis- 
 tracting influences must be kept in abeyance. A new war with England 
 in behalf of human rights will breed distractions at home. So thought 
 these great and good men. Total mistake ! It would have condensed 
 the people as never before and never since. From the hour that neu- 
 trality was adopted disunion began. Charleston and Boston were 
 enthusiastically united in the cause of Freedom and Republicanism in 
 Europe. The young men who had been born and reared during the com- 
 motions that had preceded and accomplished their independence, were, 
 as the young devotees of a triumphant principle usually are, more earnest 
 in their defense and propagation than the men who had established 
 them. The young men of South Carolina, of Pennsylvania, of Virginia, 
 of New England vied with each other in their laudations of their brethren 
 in France. Munroe, Madison, Bache, Gallatin, Muhlenberg, Randolph, 
 the men who soon obtained and for twenty years retained the leadership 
 of the nation, represented these ideas. 
 
 Had they been heard, the two great evils of disunion and slavery had 
 never raised their snaky crests in the land, while the outside evil of 
 dominant monarchism and hostility to our existence, would not have 
 conspired with these inward foes to compass our ruin. He that saves his 
 life shall lose it. 
 
 Our present war is thus legitimately traced to that unmanly shrinking 
 from a just war. The most tyrannic and abominable of aristocracies
 
 652 NOTES. 
 
 ever known in the civilized or uncivilized world an aristocracy based 
 exclusively on the ownership of human flesh, sprung from this unjust 
 fear and dislike of popular rights ; and the very Union, to save which all 
 these sacrifices of principle and humanity were made, has been rent by 
 the hands of its children, and has only been cemented by rivers of 
 fraternal blood. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AMERICAN AND BRITISH NEUTRALITY. 
 (Page 452.) 
 
 In this analogy we would not be understood as granting to the British 
 and French governments the protection of our course for their own mis- 
 conduct. It shows that our error bred mischief to ourselves, not that 
 it approves their crime. They appropriated our invention to their own 
 use, and in directions that we never approved. Our neutrality was ex- 
 ercised between 'actual powers, with whom we had treaties of alliance. 
 We did not proclaim neutrality between the French throne and the 
 Directory, the throne was abolished, and a government unquestioned 
 exercised sway throughout the whole territory, It was between this 
 de facto, this recognized government, and foreign powers that we de- 
 clined to interfere. This we had a perfectly legal right to do. We 
 were under no obligation of international law to cast ourselves into the 
 arena. Our complaint has been based wholly on moral grounds the 
 higher law of amity and justice, which demanded of us the help that we 
 refused to give. 
 
 Not so with British neutrality. That was illegally as well as unnat- 
 urally exercised : that not merely refused to form compacts, it violated 
 those already formed; that practically and intentionally interfered in 
 favor of a rebellion in the interests of slavery against a power to which 
 it was bound by solemn vows of treaty. Washington's proclamation 
 did not invest the French Republic with nationality ; it had that already ; 
 Victoria did the Confederate. Washington was scrupulous to regard 
 British rights in our waters, to the extent of incurring the hostility of 
 France and of his own people. Britain was as unscrupulous in its in- 
 difference to American rights in British waters, although those rights 
 were supported by treaty obligations as well as the cause they repre- 
 sented. America proclaimed neutrality between recognized political 
 powers ; Britain between a nation and a rebellious faction. America 
 shunned alliance in favor of liberty and the rights of man ; Britain so- 
 licited one in favor of the vilest despotism and the most hideous bondage 
 the world has ever known. America adopted this perfectly legal course, 
 to preserve her infantile democracy from the risk of annihilation on
 
 NOTES. 653 
 
 European fields. Britain, her perfectly illegal one, that she might de- 
 stroy this matured democracy in its last national stronghold, and insure, 
 through the universal prevalence of Monarchism, the perpetuation of 
 her own political institutions. 
 
 While, therefore, we are justly blamable, morally speaking, for the 
 course we pursued, and have suffered greatly for that selfish fear; while 
 we have given our foes a word and an act that they needed, and have 
 hastened to use against us, we are not responsible for their mode of 
 using that word, which is, in every respect, novel, unjust, and in viola- 
 tion of solemn obligations and international law. Mr. Bemis, in his able 
 pamphlet, as well as Mr. Sumner and M. Gasparin, prove this conclu- 
 sively. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 AMERICAN INFLUENCE ON THE WORLD. (Page 460.) 
 
 Very forcibly is this put by M. Montalembert, in his "L'Eglise Libre 
 dans L'Etat Libre." What confession can surpass this: "La Societe 
 nouvelle, la democratie pour 1'appeler par son nom, existe; on peut 
 rneme dire qu'elle existe seule, tant ce qui n'est pas a peu de force et 
 de vie. Dans une moitie de 1'Europe elle est deja. souveraine ; elle le 
 sera demain dans 1'autre moitie." 
 
 A new society is in existence, called democratic. One can hardly 
 say that it exists merely, since it has no small strength or vitality. In 
 one half of Europe it is already sovereign. It will be in the other half 
 to-morrow. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 JEFFERSON DAVIS AND INDEPENDENCE. (Page 540.) 
 
 The persistency with which Mr. Davis clung to the idea of indepen- 
 dence was most remarkable. In the summer of 1864 he said to Messrs. 
 Jaques and Gilmore, an informal commission who visited Richmond, 
 "We are not fighting for slavery, we are fighting for independence; 
 and that or extermination we will have " After the meeting of his 
 commissioners, Messrs. Stevens, Hunter and Campbell, in February, 
 1865, with Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln, at Fortress Monroe, he said, 
 at a public meeting in Richmond, " Sooner than we should ever be 
 united again, I would be willing to yield up everything I have on earth, 
 and if it were possible, would sacrifice my life a thousand times." 
 Even at Danville, after he had fled from Richmond, he issued a proc- 
 lamation, in which he declared, " I will never consent to abandon to 
 the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the States of the Confederacy.
 
 654 NOTES. 
 
 No peace shall be made with the infamous invaders. If by stress 
 of numbers we should be compelled to withdraw from her [Virginia's] 
 limits, or those of any other border State, again and again will we re- 
 turn, until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair 
 his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved 
 to be free." 
 
 This was surely a strong will, surpassing even Pharaoh's. He yielded 
 when his land was filled witli his dead. Not so his antitype. Milton's 
 imagination of another enemy of God and man is exactly fulfilled in 
 the language of Jefferson Davis : 
 
 What though the field be lost; 
 All is not lost; the unconquerable will, 
 And study of revenge, immortal hate ! 
 And courage never to submit or yield, 
 And what is else not to be overcome, 
 That glory never shall His wrath or might 
 Extort from me ! 
 
 XX. 
 
 LINCOLN'S FIRST SPEECH. (Page 553.) 
 
 It is reported, on good authority, that when Mr. Lincoln was a candi- 
 date for the legislature, at twenty-three years of age, after returning a 
 victorious captain from the Black Hawk war, he made the following 
 speech : 
 
 Fellow Citizens .- You all know me. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. My 
 speech will be short and sweet like an old woman's dance. I am in favor of a pro- 
 tective tariff, internal improvement, and a uniform currency. If elected, I shall 
 serve you as well as I can. If defeated, I shall try to feel not very bad about it. 
 
 He failed in the district, though he received all the votes of his pre- 
 cinct but nine. That speech prefigured his presidential career. Its 
 three points were never so completely carried out by the national gov- 
 ernment as in his administration ; the highest tariff, the greatest system 
 of internal improvement, even to the taking possession and the running 
 of many railroads, and a remarkably uniform currency, were its charac- 
 teristics. The figure he uses is very humorous, and very like him. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 ENGLISH AND IRISH SLAVE TRADE. (Page GOT.) 
 
 In Charles Kingsley's " Hereward, or the Last of the English," one 
 of his characters, Martin Lightfoot, servant of Hereford, thus describes 
 his parentage. Its veri-similitude to Southern slavery is striking :
 
 NOTES. 655 
 
 I was born in Ireland, Watcrford town. My mother was an English slave, one 
 of those that Karl Godwin's wife, not this one that is now, Gyda, [the famous 
 Godivaof Coventry,] but the old one, King Canute's sister, used to sell out of 
 England by the score, tied together with ropes, boys and girls from Bristol town. 
 Her master, my father that was, [how perfectly Southern, this] got tired of her, 
 and wanted to give her away to one of his kerns. She would not have that, BO 
 he hung her up, hand and foot, and beat her that she died. 
 
 XXII. 
 WHAT WAS THE COMPLEXION OF CHRIST? (Page 622.) 
 
 "It still makes us look on many a human face with repulsion which is 
 of the very complexion of the mother of our Lord, nay, of the Lord 
 himself." 
 
 It is impossible, of course, to declare certainly the complexion of our 
 Savior. Our only guides are the people of the land where He lived. 
 Some fancy He was a white man. But this could not be, except in vio- 
 lation of every law of race. The natives of Palestine, Jews and Arabs, 
 except the few of the former, imported from Germany, are of a brown 
 complexion, almost the color of the bright brown mulatto. The women 
 of Nazareth, who still gather at the well of Annunciation^ are of this 
 dusky hue. The most beautiful lady we saw abroad, one of the love- 
 liest we ever looked upon, was a brown Bethlehem Jewess, who passed 
 us at the tomb of Rachel, on her donkey, with her brown, bearded, and 
 turbaned lord and lover walking at her side, a perfect type of the Rachel 
 and Jacob of four thousand years before. Just such complexions may 
 one see to-day in those who were but lately Southern slaves. A very 
 comely and attractive Bedouin, of a bright brown complexion, went up 
 the pyramids with us and stood under the sphynx. When asked to come 
 to America, he replied, " You will sell me." We had been selling mul- 
 titudes of his complexion for generations. Dean Stanley describes 
 Abraham as a Bedouin sheik. Except in the faith, he says, "In every 
 aspect the likeness is complete between the Bedouin chief of the present 
 day and the Bedouin chief who came from Chaldea nearly four thousand 
 years ago." One of these "aspects" in complexion, and the Arab of 
 Palestine and the Wilderness, is very like Frederic Douglass in this par- 
 ticular. Abraham and his wife were both of the present wandering race. 
 Isaac's wife was of his parents' parents' Mesopotamian origin and so 
 was Jacob's. Joseph's was an Egyptian lady of color. Moses married 
 an Ethiopian. Salmon married the Canaanite Rahab, Boaz the brown 
 Moabitess beauty, Ruth. David's Bathsheba was a Hittite, a wild slip 
 of the land, very comely, but as far from white as from black. Solomon 
 had a swarthy daughter of Pharaoh to wife. The later marriages were 
 no lighter ; and undoubtedly Mary was of the likeness as well as lineage
 
 656 NOTES. .. 
 
 of David and Bathsheba and Ruth and Rahab and Rachel and Rebecca. 
 Jesus Christ stood midway between the complexions of man, that lie 
 might lay His hand upon botli and blend both together in Himself. The 
 Asiatic is the solvent of the Caucasian and the Negro, and his color is 
 almost exactly reproduced in the mulatto of America, the amalgam of 
 the two opposite complexions. A light-haired, light-skinned Italian, or 
 a dark-skinned German, is far more natural than a light-skinned native 
 of that hot clime, and these are extremely rare. Every Arab, wild or 
 tame, is of one color, and that is almost exactly the hue of the mixed 
 blood of America, whom we so foolishly and falsely profess to naturally 
 abhor. "They are of the very complexion of the mother of our Lord, 
 nay, of our Lord himself."