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 137364 
 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 ENGLISH COLLECTION 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 JAMES MORGAN HART 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
 
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 „ 3 1924 031 749 587 
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The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031749587 
 
OIlA.TIOISr 
 
 EDWIN H. TENNEY, 
 
 ATTORNEY-AT-LAW, NASHVILLE, 
 
 AT ROME, TENNESSEE, JULY 4, 1859. 
 
 JOHN S. RAWLS & NATHAN FUQUA, PUBLISHERS, 
 ROME, SMITH CO., TENNESSEE. 
 
 Tmenty-fioe cents per copy. 
 E.V- 
 
BIGHTY-THIED ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICAN INDEPEN- 
 LENCE, AT ROME, TENNESSEE, JULY 4, 1859. 
 
 / / 
 
 Prayer by Rev. Ika W. King. 
 
 Reading of the Declaration of Independence by Hon. Alfeed L. 
 
 Bains. 
 Oration by Edwin H. Tennbt, Attorney-at-Law, Nashville. 
 The evening speeches by Messrs. Caruthers, Harlan, Elliott, Payne, 
 
 Robinson and others, from Lebanon, are not here reported. 
 
ORATION 
 
 EDWIN H. TENNET. 
 
 Venerable, my Fellow Citizens, on tlie brilliant cal- 
 endar of American Independence, is the day we cele- 
 brate. Venerable as the revolving epoch in onr anni- 
 versaries of freedom is this avalanche of time. Vener- 
 able as the abacus on the citadel of greatness, thou well- 
 spring of hope. Homestead of Liberty, we venerate thy 
 habitation. Monument of immortality, we adorate thy 
 worth. Pharos of ages, we hail thy glimmerings mid the 
 cataracts of life. Almanac of our country, we would 
 utter thy welcome with reverent awe. Our towers and 
 our battlements, our flags and our heroes, yea, garlanded 
 navies, decorated armies, and unfettered eagles, sleepless 
 at the approach of thy footsteps, have welcomed thee. 
 The clap of thy welcome booms. along tesselated lawns, 
 frescoed &,rl?ors, and lipping rivulets ; while the surges of 
 eloquence join the music of freedom. Visitor of nations, 
 we extend you this tribute, and may the legacy of seven- 
 teen hundred seventy-six 
 
 " Land us o'er the river Styx,, 
 And the blue sky overhead, 
 The free earth on which we tread, 
 And all that come when we are dead 
 Will witness too thy welcome." 
 
Eighty-three years ago to-day, and the spike which 
 riveted our national Congress was broken. Eighty-three 
 years ago and the chaotic emotions of saddening sensi- 
 bilities were soothed. Eighty-three years ago, on the 
 State-house balcony of an eastern city, was proclaimed a ■ 
 memorial which has terrified the world. Those cannon- 
 ades and cavalcades for those fifty-six names on that 
 Declaration of Independence, well betokened its arrival ; 
 yet that goose quill its sceptre cannot pencil its gems. 
 Its autographs may moulder and the parchment wither 
 while the willows of oblivion fan a Hancock's grave, but 
 you can never rub those sentiments from the memory of 
 time — for that disavowment of allegiance is noble — those 
 imprecations of vengeance are sacred — and that divesture 
 of vassalage was dear. Its type cost the world five hun- 
 dred millions in money, and its ink stains the tomb of 
 ninety tho'iiSand of our countrymen. Bleak as were their 
 prospects, they enlisted for their country — desperation 
 brooked their pains, for victory fed their agony — hunger 
 they endured, for their religion was their liberty. Ham- 
 mockless and tattered — jaded and homeless — forbearing, 
 yet intrepid like soldiers, they accepted their furloughs 
 from eternity. [Battalioned in gloom they were pen- 
 sioners for immortality. Circumspect in design they 
 were heroic in intrepidity. Schooled in stratagem they 
 were subtle in exigency — stately in mien they awaited 
 their destiny, and when wounded and in agony the 
 dew drops of death were chasing each other o'er the 
 insect's race-course — shroudless and coflBnless they are 
 jammed in the grave. Ravens croak their death knell 
 and buzzards chant their epitaph, yet the jargon of their 
 eulogiums cannot inumbrate their sepulchre. The worms 
 may have scattered as their bodies have frittered, and 
 earth hug the ashes of a tearless grave, yet the recollec- 
 tions of ages will embalm their fidelity and calify with 
 benedictions each passing generation. How redolent 
 then with gratitude should be the benefactions of their 
 
posterity, and yet how deceptive the mathematics which 
 attempts to calculate their worth. How pensive should 
 be our emotion as we biographize their memory and 
 baptize with festivities this monument of their blood. 
 Those festivities may be humble, yet fervid should be 
 their patriotism. Broils, hobbies, sectarianism and sec- 
 tionalities, the daily fodder of the passions which so warp 
 the judgment and blur the sensibilities, this day should 
 be forgotten, and the debt we owe our, fathers, our national 
 'dangers and prospects, accurately realized. Would we rec- 
 ompense that debt we must fabricate in our hearts 
 mausoleums to their memory. We must recount mar- 
 tyrdom and exposure, ignominy and sufferings, exigen- 
 cies and alternatives of privates and generals, of aliens 
 and kindred foiled and foiling, while reconnoitring and 
 breasting the battles of liberty. We must drop ourselves 
 upon the pallid margin of seventy-six, and emptied of 
 prejudice lean upon the gales freighted as they are with 
 cargoes of misery wet with tears from the battlements 
 of Canada to the batteries of Georgia. We must listen 
 to the floating wails and lamentations of orphans and 
 widows, of tories, and patriots, drifting through our val- 
 leys all bloating with the gout of oriental prostitution. 
 We must thread the motives and interests — the sacrifices 
 and desperation of that septennial conflict, not on selfish- 
 ness or emolument, not on teasings of fancy, or on lame 
 probabilities of instant gain, but on love for country 
 violated — upon frowns for justice desecrated — upon rift- 
 less flags, taintless names, and cloudless canopies, cosey 
 legacies for a posterity all shorn and frittered. We 
 must track them on their lonely rout from home to 
 enemy — from battle to immortality, crusading for our 
 liberties often with only swamps for hammocks and 
 dogs for hunger, and ask ourselves if (heir legacy has 
 paid for their pain. Could we have been at Long Island, 
 fellow-citizens, in seventeen hundred and eighty, and 
 stepped upon the scaffold of Captain Hale just before he 
 
started for eternity, and heard him beggi'ng for paper to 
 to B2ij good bye to mother — could we have witnessed his 
 magnanimity and loneliness as he was imploring from 
 the marshal a pastor or Bible, sweet cordials of the 
 grave, which he coldly denied him, and what is more, 
 lamenting, while the rope was tightening, that he had 
 but one life to lose for his country, even then we could 
 answer it — we ai-e not ashamed thus to answer it, though 
 he sleeps without a monument, for a pyramid in our 
 hearts is tougher than marble. But he thus sleeps not 
 alone. Samuel Adams lies unmarked under a Boston 
 sidewalk. William Wirt has not a slab, though he rests 
 in the embrace of a grave-yard at Washington. Baron 
 Steuben is hid without a rock, yet it bespeaks for New 
 York a reckless posterity. If we go to the heights of 
 Abraham we look for General Wolfe — but where ? If 
 we go to Kentucky we hunt for the comrade of Wash- 
 ington, faithfulest, truest, but not a willow to tell that 
 John Champe was ever there. If we return to New 
 Hampshire and sit by the remains of the hero of Ben- 
 nington, we revert with disdain, though not a worm now 
 parades around his desolated sepulchre. If we want to 
 see Ethan Allen, who did business for the " gre£ft Jeho- 
 vah and the Continental Congress," we find that a mound 
 of bulrushes and bullets is the last sad memorial of Ticon- 
 deroga. Three of our Presidents lie unhonored ; but we 
 will make but one more allusion to national neglect. 
 Yet traitorous should we be to the beatings of liberty 
 should we gargle this scene. We refer to Isaac Hayne. 
 It was at Massachusetts, in seventeen hundred and 
 eighty-one, that he bade adieu to his family and one 
 hundred slaves, to join the Charleston conflict. Victo- 
 rious in defeat he started for his home, but it was a ride 
 to eternity. Logy was despair, for they had skulked 
 along the rout to waylay their enemy. Twitched from 
 his saddle, throttled and tied, he lay in a dungeon in a 
 
British capital. He asked for a trial but to be damned 
 and denied him. 
 
 Oh, there is a serenity and loveliness in the solitude 
 of this tragedy which we will let General Marion delin- 
 eate. " His son, a youth of thirteen, was permitted to 
 stay with his father in prison ; who, beholding his only 
 parent loaded with irons and condemned to die, was 
 overwhelmed with grief and sorrow. 'Why,' said he, 
 'my son, will you thus break your father's heart with 
 unavailing sorrow ? Have I not often told you that we 
 came into this world but to prepare for a better ? For 
 that better life, my dear boy, your father is prepared. 
 Instead then of weeping, rejoice with me, my son, that 
 my troubles are so near an end. To-morrow I set out 
 for immortality — you will accompany me to the place of 
 my execution ; and when I am dead take my body and 
 bury it by the side of your mother.' The youth fell on 
 his father's neck, crying, ' Ob, my father! my father!! 
 will die with you. I will die with you.' Colonel Hayne 
 would have returned the strong embrace of his son, but 
 alas, his hands were loaded with irons. 'Live,' said he, 
 ' my son — live to honor God by a good life — live to serve 
 your country ; and live to take care of your brother and 
 little sisters.' The next morning Colonel Hayne was 
 conducted to the place of execution. His son accom- 
 panied him. Soon as they came in sight of the gallows, 
 the father strengthened liimself and said, 'Now, my son, 
 show yourself a man ! That tree is the boundary of my 
 life and of all my life's sorrows. Beyond that the 
 wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. 
 Don't lay too much at heart; our separation will be 
 short. 'Twas but lately your dear mother died ; to-day 
 I die — and you, my son, though but young, must shortly 
 follow us.' ' Yes, my father,' replied the broken-hearted 
 boy, 'I shall shortly follow you, for indeed I feel that I 
 cannot live long;' and so it happened, he died a maniac, 
 exclaiming, 
 
8 
 
 " 'Oh, God! let me the office long engage, 
 To rock his cradle in the present age, 
 With lenient hand extend my father's breath, 
 Make languor smile and smooth his bed of death, 
 Explore his thought — explain his asking eye. 
 Oh, keep awhile one parent from the sky.' " 
 
 Such in brief was Captain Hayue, on whose death 
 
 hangs a tale of earth's blackest dishonor. Yet no 
 
 . American chisel has ever sculptured his fame. But of 
 
 Ledwitz, the German ; of Schuyler, the Spaniard ; and 
 
 of Pulaski, the Poland, we are silent still. 
 
 " For with them, oh Paine, long, long thy fame shall rise 
 With democratic incense to the skies." 
 
 Not unbecoming, then, should we ask how we can 
 palliate in our countrymen this posthumous neglect. 
 True, the annals of life's history have a parallel. The 
 ashes of Julius Caesar entered the bung-hole of a beer 
 barrel. The heart of Napoleon was borne from the dis- 
 secting room of an Englishman to the mouth of a rat- 
 hole. Veturia saved Rome, and was the Washington 
 of her country, but her body was auctioneered on an 
 execution against her funeral. Xantippus was a La 
 Fayette among Carthaginian robbers, but they gave him 
 a shark for his grave and the waves for his sepulchre. 
 But these recitations of recklessness only debauches our 
 defect. 
 
 " Exegerunt monumentum acre perennius, 
 Begalique situ pyramydum altiua ; 
 Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotena 
 Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis 
 Annorum series, et fuga temporum." 
 
 There are those though whom monuments can never 
 honor. We will not mention Major Andre through 
 respect for the country that has sent for his ashes, 
 though the roots of two cedars have knit round his 
 skull. We will not speak of Daniel Taylor, of his de- 
 tection and stomach — of the emetic and bullet in whose 
 
9 
 
 periphery lay his passage to another world, yet the pro- 
 digality of opulence looms big o'er his grave. Wearying 
 as is our tribute, we cannot pass without an allusion 
 which must gladden the scene. To those veterans eulogy 
 is preposterous and monuments unavailing, but a heart 
 soaking with gratitude is never bleak nor serene. Cold 
 calumny may chill it and life's icicles freeze it, but when 
 thawed by recollections blood leaps through its veins. 
 Could we learn from immortality their fame or presage 
 their memory, the priceless league — the serried rank — 
 the siren yell — the solemn march — the cracking bone — 
 the flying flesh — the clinic pang — the grilling wail — the 
 quenchless sigh and the clattering footsteps of that army 
 welding sympathy to ages and liberty to life, will float 
 like the dying groans of Calvary down the rapids of 
 mortality, and whistling salvation along the whirlpool 
 of nations, they will enter like their fathers a sea of 
 bliss. We might pauperize our intellect, but we cannot 
 dramatize their valor. We can historify the scenes of a 
 Potomac or a Hudson, of a Delaware or an Atlantic, 
 blushing and swelling with their blood, but we cannot 
 master a diction that can garnish one diamond or sully 
 one pearl in the coronated wreath of their rubific diadem.y 
 Awkward as were their vicissitudes it did not flurry their 
 serenity — sable as was their gloom it did not warp their 
 integrity — curbless as was their zeal it was a bulimia for 
 their liberty. Were their enterprises heroic, go to Tieon- 
 deroga. Was their equanimity bedeviled, step to the 
 plains of Bennington. Was their sagacity crippled? 
 Dorchester, with its blazing heights, now rattles through 
 the welkin of admiring millions. Was their magnani- 
 mity sustaining? Where is Valley Forge? Where is 
 Saratoga? The sublimity of conjecture outvies the 
 suggestions of our fancy and rifles the deductions of 
 our experience. Yet we love any transport of admira- 
 tion that may bedew our sensibilities or mantle their 
 memory. We love the God they loved, the cause they 
 
10 
 
 espoused, and the country they defended. "We love the 
 hills and the vales, the brooks and the banks, where 
 
 "Sometimes they passed an hour under a green willow, 
 That defends them from- a shower, making earth their pillow, 
 Where they may think and pray before death stops their breath, 
 And lands them o'er the river." ' 
 
 All had head-quarters on earth, though many had for 
 head-quarters the Almighty. AVith their knees as their 
 minaret, and Christ as their Saviour, their deific peals 
 stream along the jaded lines and flapping ensigns of the 
 army, and touching the angelic wires with telegraphic 
 flight, they dart through the labyrinths of other worlds 
 to be printed in italics in the newspapers of eternity. 
 Their message arrived and Jehovah answered it. That 
 answer is on the parchment in yonder capital ? He 
 answered it at York Town and at Lexington, at Stony 
 Point and at Trenton, at Concord and Bunker Hill. He 
 answered it in the triumph of freedom over despotism, 
 of truth over error, and he will remember it at the judg- 
 ment, for he will enroll the militia of America in the 
 orchestra of the universe. That day, Fellow Citizens, 
 how ecstatic must be their jubilee. "Were our intellect 
 a volcano we would redden its lava and widen its mouth, 
 as we contemplate the father of bur country leaping 
 from his grave and hailing the resurrection of his de- 
 parted comrades — as we see the snowy forms, the lurid 
 stare, the frantic yell, drifting towards the shades of 
 Mount Vernon — as we watch the tensive heart, the 
 telling look, the seraphic smile, crowding solicitude 
 with tears to play in the embrace of a "Washington — as 
 we picture the once noble forms and shiny equipages of 
 those now rued heroes gnawed with rust and digested 
 by insects, all polished for immortality — as we view the 
 martial step and prompt array of battalions and cavalries 
 marshaled by the drumsticks of another world, all eager 
 for his inaugural — as we listen to his last sad tribute to 
 the land which was the darling of his heart and septon 
 
11 
 
 of his bones, so eloquent mid their departure — as we 
 think of them headed with the feathered ensign of 
 America's pride streaming through milky ways, and 
 rainbow domes, for Jordan's banks, festive with che- 
 rubic songs, and crowdecT with the boats of paradise, 
 we would fancy parades and serenades mid its roral 
 gales, lepid glens, and truttaceous charms, and all 
 ticketed for glory, and chartering immortality's fleetest 
 steamer, they muster the army — they unloosen the 
 moorings — and pealing their last farewell from that hur- 
 ricane deck, they start lor Satan's landing, and hearing 
 from yon dismal cell Arnold and his traitorous gang 
 squirming raid the vises of retribution, they foil hell's 
 batteries and scale its parapets, and doxologizing along 
 the suburbs of that aristocratic city, they join the depu- 
 tation from heaven's artillery, to be hailed by the mayor 
 in the citadel. Our imagination thus travels, but it has ' 
 celestified their destiny ; for we believe that as trustees 
 of our liberty, Christianity was their embassy. "We be- 
 lieve it because we see it blossoming njiid dying despot- 
 ism, and brandishing the crucifix in the procession of 
 freedom. We believe it because it is sweeter and lovelier, 
 and because it brightens the prettiest mid withering gales. 
 Concede this fulfilment and our indulgence is no hyper- 
 bole, concede it and our reveries of their immortality 
 how shiftless, our charts of their elysian, how dim — 
 concede it and the discovery of Genet and of Taylor, of 
 Church and of Strong, in their conspiracy against our 
 country is solvable — concede it, and we will think of 
 them not as soldiers, but as patriots ; not as Americans, 
 but as Christians ; not as on earth, but in heaven. York 
 Island, Long Island, Redstone, New Jersey, White 
 Plains, and those venerated battle-grounds, stratified 
 with their ashes, we would love to geologize, was not 
 the sepulchre of their aspirations the monument of their 
 blood. We love to think how 
 
12 
 
 "That redress from stamp-act's dreary niglit, 
 O'er fair Columbia sheds its morniDg light; 
 How cheering rfl,ys through all her regions ran, 
 And grateful incense warmed the heart of man. 
 How each bright city from'Bostonia's shore 
 To southern Charleston joined i^ glad uproar, 
 Gilt with their streaming fires the shades of even 
 And bade the cannon tell this news to Heaven ; 
 They laid those English over at a blow, 
 And sent them bellowing to the world below, 
 And though sharp daggers to their legs did stick. 
 And while they fought did make them howl and kick, 
 Yet they at last a victory did obtain. 
 And o'er their tomb eternal honors reign." 
 
 Let US repair then to those scenes with memorative 
 gratitude, with nobler resolves in our country's service, 
 evidencing our sincerity by a cleaner life and tenderer 
 patriotism, remembering that they loved us and fought 
 for us ; that they suffered and died for ua, and that they 
 now sleep, and let posterity tramp o'er their grave. Oh, 
 avenger of their inheritance, how crimson is your de- 
 pravity ! Monster of ingratitude, how unforgiving your 
 guilt ! You wear the aegis of liberty but to canker it. 
 You feed from its table and quaiF freely of its lavender, 
 but you steal to the enemy crying meagre and lean. 
 You encamp under its awnings and ask the smiles of its 
 panopoly, but pander ' reason to justice, and honor to 
 gain. Cold, heartless and unrelenting as is this glimpse 
 at thy history, our niaety-two hundred adjectives can 
 never anglicise thy shame. Constantino ruined his 
 country, assassinated his father-in-law and his brother- 
 in-law, butchered his nephew, beheaded his son and 
 drowned his wife, but in our comparison we honor you, 
 for he expiated his ingratitude by reformation and pain. 
 Cleopatra married her brothers but to poison them. 
 Antony was love-sick, and died for her. A Cilician 
 Greek took her in his canoe a fugitive, labelled her as 
 merchandise, sailed for Alexandria, and unboxed her 
 with Csesar. She was an avenger of her inheritance, 
 
13 
 
 but slie fled from her country; yet remorse was in re- 
 serve for her, and she caressed in solitude the viper that 
 ended her life. Avenger of your inheritance, you are 
 not only poisoning your brothers, but you are poisoning 
 posterity — would, like Antony, a prostitute had no affec- 
 tion for you. Will you imitate her character? Then 
 stay not in America, but start for her death chamber, 
 for those walls and a viper may still sleep there for you. 
 You may be branded like Cleopatra, but your label is 
 " a traitor," and our Mediterranean steamers you can 
 call your canoe. Leave us, and from the Bay of Fundy 
 to the Pacific, the emboldened footsteps of liberty will 
 grace nobly our countrymen in the march of freedom, 
 and flinging anthems of deliverance over thirty odd 
 States, they will step as the pall-bearers and sextons at 
 the funeral of disunion. Leave us, and every star in 
 our national galaxy will twinkle sweeter with patriotism, 
 and the candle of our immortality need no snuffing when 
 you are gone, for 
 
 " Then will disunion quick resign her breath, 
 And kiolt life's bucket to the shades of death." 
 
 Harsh may be our allusions and feeble our encomiums, 
 but they are the fervid acclamations of an honest heart. 
 Should it as much green a recollection, rip up a pity or 
 fetch out a sigh, one arch in the fog will brighten, one 
 emotion of thankfulness will exhilarate, and one bud 
 red with patriotism bloom. We might still prolong 
 these reminiscences and try to tribute our anniversary, 
 but many a war worn veteran has repleted the scene. 
 John Adams well repleted it when he said, "to-day the 
 greatest question was decided that was ever debated in 
 America; and greater, perhaps, never v.-as or will be 
 decided by men. A resolution was passed without one 
 dissenting colony, 'that these United States are, and of 
 right ought to be, free and independent States.' The 
 Fourth of July, 1776, will be a memorable epoch in the 
 history of America. I am apt to believe it will be cele- 
 
14 
 
 brated by succeeding generations, as the great anniver- 
 sary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day 
 of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to Almighty 
 God. It ought to be solemnized with pomp, shows, 
 games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, 
 from one end of the continent to the other, from this 
 time forward, for ever. You will think me transported 
 with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the 
 toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain 
 this declaration, and support and defend these States; 
 yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of light and 
 glory. I can see that the end is worth more than all 
 the means, and that posterity will triumph." Three of 
 our Presidents have well repleted it, for this birthday of 
 our country commemorates their death. dies pulchra, 
 venerabile, laudande! Thirty-three years ago, four 
 o'clock to-day, John Adams died, and "independence 
 forever," with a farewell gasp, was his dying phrase- 
 ology. Thirty-three years ago, ten minutes before one 
 to-day, JeflFerson died, and with patriotic benedictions 
 he swapped us his smiles for a personal application of 
 his mathematical theology. Twenty-eight years ago, and 
 pale on his couch Monroe could have been found beatific 
 with the hope that he might bequeath to his countrymen 
 life's last valedictory ! Fifty-one years ago, Fisher Ames 
 left the bar of that court-house, in Dedham, Massachu- 
 setts, to plead for his country at the bar of his God ! 
 Tes, 'twas on this day that 
 
 " From their pains a kind release was given, 
 And up they went by night express to heaven." 
 
 We pay thus our dues to seventy-six ; but we see in 
 this assembly the Mexican soldier. You have a mort- 
 gage on our sympathies, for your cerebellum has been 
 steeled at the bellows of liberty. This gray-headed flag, 
 the genial proffer of a Carthage 'heart, once splendid and 
 significaut, wiping so often with the limber neck of its 
 
15 
 
 gentle bird, your cTiameleou forehead, stitched with 
 glory, and hemmed with magnificence, eloquent with 
 Webster's great sentiment, mid the stars and stripes that 
 now flap the gales of a grateful country, — Ah ! its history 
 from the old training day, now sorry with scars, airy from 
 bombshells, and bored with bullet holes, all redolent of 
 victory, hued with blood from Palo Alto and Monteray, 
 is your eulogy. Heroes of Tennessee ! Champions of 
 Mexico ! That old silk flag — powder-burnt, shot-worn, 
 its eagle sleeping, and its stars still twinkling, can you 
 ask for a better eulogy ? 
 
 Secondly, our national dangers and prospects should 
 be accurately realized. Danger is the concomitant of 
 power, the damper of enthusiasm and the attendant of 
 vicissitude. Preachers work with it, statesmen and poli- 
 ticians feel of it, rogues and rascals tamper with it. 
 Fancy is its workshop ; the passions are its playhouse ; 
 steel, lead, coffins and gunpowder, are its nicknacks. 
 To hierarchies, it is safe and vitalizing ; to principalities, 
 it is ruthless and nauseating; but to democracy, lurking 
 and desultory, it spawns politicians like tadpoles, and 
 mounted with their regimentals, sly and slippery, it 
 lubricates sensibilities with pity, braces despondency 
 with enthusiasm, pays despair with hope, bridging 
 gulleys with alternatives all big with disunion, and 
 when the last lonely lane of expediency is travelled, 
 and the last drawbridge of desperation cut, floundering 
 on the brink of agony, sinewless and beaten, croaking a 
 nation's death-knell, it . rivets its doom on typo and 
 stump, rips from anarchy its grave clothes, sews them 
 with muscles of liberty, but to swap regimentals for the 
 tomb. 
 
 "Then riots the blood-crested worm on its dead, 
 And the yellow skull serves the foul toad for its bed, 
 
 And snakes in the nettle weeds hiss, 
 The ravens of night flap their wings o'er its grave, 
 'Tis the vulture's abode — 'tis the wolf's dreary cave, 
 
 Where they tear up the dead with their fangs." 
 
16, 
 
 Too much danger drives reason from its m-oorings 
 and consistency to a pitfall ; too little throws circum- 
 spection and policy off their guard; a sufficiency rectifies 
 excesses, brushes our morals, and prognosticates our 
 doom ; a deficiency smokes our fticnlties, torpifies our 
 enthusiasm and lullabies our fears. Passively in our 
 national ethics, it is a prudential policy, stoic but coer- 
 cive in diplomacy and in the politics of its virtue and 
 honor, just and philosophic. Its presence then is as 
 essential and indispensable to a nation's happiness and 
 prosperity, as its absence would be to its ruin. Omni- 
 vagant as air, without one single leakage in humanity 
 but death, tied to its identity with a Cyclopean knot, 
 sirenizing its perceptions with a harpy touch, and weav- 
 ing nests for politicians simply to burrow and hatch, 
 that preachers may cackle disunion and woe, it now 
 broods o'er America. In these lights we must examine 
 it, for 
 
 " Who dares think one thing and another tell, 
 Our heart detests him as the gates of hell." 
 
 One danger as a prelusive to disunion, that haunts 
 and stunts us in our national growth, is the dissonance 
 of sections. To record all the process of its workings, 
 even in the complexity of its embryo, would cause the 
 drainage of a paper mill. The tattle of the quilting — 
 the carols of the hag — the lubricity of the tongue — the 
 tete-a-tete of firesides — the persuasiveness of conversation 
 — the credulity of jealousy, and every avenue in humanity 
 generates it. 
 
 At first dictation irritates, and trifles opinionate, then 
 prejudice, fretting censure to contention, festers — favor 
 courts compromises, and wrangles split them — breeches 
 multiply, latitude widens, incredulity is halter-broke, 
 and principles are harnessed, and victims ride them, 
 spurring dogmas with policies, and politics with religion ; 
 politicians give birth for platforms are coined and fana- 
 
17 
 
 tics join them, ignorant of principles, often delusive and 
 phrenetic, clinging to appellations all gilded but to 
 decoy. The inclemency of campaigns, the stubbornness 
 of suffrage, with all the dynamics of its stratagem, 
 racks the passions and churns the sensorium, slivering 
 churches and daggering families; and what is last but 
 not least, theologians and theologasters quit the sinner's 
 complaint and the costly Calvary to marry applause, to 
 vent predilections, or perhaps destitute of material to 
 bewail from pulpit or rostrum national wrongs and de- 
 generacies, negligencies and indispensables, pulling the 
 north from the south, picking flaws in our polity, piling 
 maledictions upon necessities, bending myriads to sec- 
 tions, and almost saucing the Almighty, and all this for 
 disunion ; but darker, still more typhoid, and pitiable, 
 they claim to be guardians of philanthropy, of souls and 
 palates, of niggers and gin ; they rant and sputter, scare 
 credulity, alter affections, thrashing doubt and whipping 
 prejudice, with Treasons wrecked, fancies foundered, and 
 Bibles ransacked — they lunge into society, mould the 
 youth, tinker the heart, nurse the sceptic, ravish inno- 
 cence, lamm the conservatist, woo the enthusiast, 
 cenaenting, every victory with prayers — handling the 
 weapons of Calvary as commission merchants of Im- 
 mortality — they hunt the sick-room, doctor the dying, 
 analyze prospects, wheedle hope, and with liniments 
 from Gethsemane, ease and lenify an eternal plunge. 
 This last is duty, this last is Christianity to any engi- 
 neer of that dark valley ; but they make it a Cireean 
 cup, a Hellenaan bowl, with which to win sympathy, 
 captivate confidence, and rivet regard, as capri-<je may 
 float upon the unwary and innocent; in elections, too, 
 the fulcrum on which rests the lever that lifts votes — 
 heats frenzy and moves, the world — in a canvass, the 
 machinery that plows souls, gravels brains till hearts 
 are turnpiked — where fanatics, lymphatics and clergy 
 tend toU-gate — patronise the rout or even ask a vote, 
 
18 
 
 and you will see looming over each ventricle, in great 
 big letters, the following charge : " Disunion is the fine 
 for apy ' democrat,' or ' opposition,' to drive faster than 
 a walk over this most precious of turnpikes during this 
 campaign;" beat them in the run, or knock their aims, 
 and you will see them work the longitude of muscle, 
 of lip, of eye into a holy look, enter our pulpits like 
 pompous peacocks, strut under its awnings, and starting 
 compliments heavenward, chant disunion, that doleful 
 tune, sharp, trying, boisterous as the crows round the 
 death-bed of Tulley ; they read metal, strength, tempera- 
 ments; and on weak spots, on themes unthought, 
 feelings unwrought, holes untravelled and eloquence 
 unravelled, they brace their foothold mid all the bustle 
 of an eternal world, sowing sentiments venal and shabby 
 as their hearts are pusillanimous. The pulpit was once 
 the rendezvous of piety and immortality, but it has be- 
 come the speaking trumpet of prejudice, and the blood 
 of Calvary is below par — once it rung with the eloquence 
 of a dying Saviour and supplied the sinner with a torch 
 for the grave, now it greens the luxuriance of political 
 warfare — once a book of eleven or twelve hundred 
 chapters crammed with love, with reproof, almighty 
 affidavits, all medicines of depravity was thought not 
 insignificant or inadequate to blast as the batteries of 
 Jehovah's love — the time has been when it would not 
 have distressed the imaginations of a now to be pitied 
 clergy to show the impenitent a path to heaven without 
 frying at the scabs of a political world — once we loved 
 to haul ourselves a wreck upon the altar of our nativity, 
 sinful, needy — and having listened to that best of all 
 stories, the cross, to the good old talk, to the lone tolling 
 bell, to the old fashioned prayer, and; to the same sober 
 melody, we could step with a bolder beat o'er our friends 
 in the cemetery ; but how changed ! the old hymn book 
 is gone ; the old tunes, the maternal and the old prayer 
 meetings have vanished ; another hymn book is there, 
 
19 
 
 and at the bottom of the ^j leaf, we read in sorrow the 
 following : " Published by such a church North, all its 
 lines being metered to the popular tunes of American 
 Slavery ;" and we tell it with pain, for we love dearly 
 that home, that the peaked look, the crimped up brain, 
 and the wrangled mess have gnawed oiF the best liga- 
 ment of a noble and once conservative aristocracy. 
 Such is the dissonance of sections. Were it confined to 
 any party or sect, we would blush even to whisper it, 
 but it is tied to none alone — it is a upas tree in too 
 many a bright healthy glen, from pious Boston to the 
 Colorado, and from yelping Kansas to Florida, to be 
 passed otherwise than as the workings of a foul hot 
 pulse, and of a cold, damaged intellect. 
 
 Another danger that threatens the disunion of these 
 States is the corruption of the press. It would be a 
 curious marvel if, in a country with twenty-five millions 
 of dailies, with two hundred millions of weeklies, and 
 over twenty-one millions of monthlies to thirty-three 
 millions of men, where expression is unchecked and 
 ideas are at wholesale, if honor wasn't cheap and in- 
 tegrity at a discount. It would be a marvel if, when 
 all the church-routed hypocrites, all the slick-brained 
 preachers, oily-mouthed demagogues, and sly ripe ras- 
 cals, who blot our editorials and scuffle with conserva- 
 tism, are forced to knuckle in the wrestle to a large, 
 sound sentiment, did they fail, in their vengeance, to 
 cackle disunion and peddle out their lies at three or five 
 cents apiece. All this we have borne, much of this we 
 might expect from such a motley clan of Grecian Ante- 
 nors ; but the old, stanch gazetteers are vanishing, and 
 the same spirit that has stemmed the wave on which 
 this nation has rocked, ever since our first* paper left 
 the Pilgrims, in 1700, is fiagging, political diseases are 
 lowering, and we have often thought that the backwater 
 of dissolution had rose so high, that soon the wet gales 
 * Boston Weekly News Letter, 
 
20 
 
 of death would drift us as a country, with all the flood- 
 wood of our fanaticism, upon the common bottom of a 
 lonesome eternity. This is but the sequel o^ a freshet 
 which we cannot stand, and we can but regret that there 
 is a sentiment which aches to be fed by a set of pen 
 sporters, whose integrity is lighter than hydrogen and 
 blacker than Erebus, who squeeze out a livelihood by 
 pounding up rags and daubing them with lies, to palm 
 ofl' as literature upon a deluded world. We can but 
 regret that there are honest editors who wear pious 
 titles, and really mean to do good, but who read only 
 one side, and that, too, through the lens of ancestral 
 prejudice, who take hearsay for probability and sym- 
 pathy for interest, buckling conjectures and belief to the 
 lying loquacity of drifting sentiment, blockading reason 
 with garbled views and hacknej'cd sayso's, thus swaying 
 innocence and indifference among rural homes and 
 thoughtless firesides, where a paper once a week is the 
 novelty of a neighborhood, which fathers and mothers 
 read over and sigh, thereby. making it in the end the 
 arbiter of their votes, and the Mecca and weathercock 
 of their political devotions. These are the empirics 
 who cluck and crow at every petty election, folding 
 black coated pills to drive out the bile from the ducts of 
 humanity; yet^hey have some honesty of purpose, and 
 we commit them for this to the poverty of a sentiment 
 that awards them an encomium rather from the whisper- 
 ings of sympathy than from the barkings of disgust. 
 
 There is another gang of ink users whose passions 
 are fickle as quicksilver, and more inflammable than 
 phosphorus, who hide behind philanthropy, and pretend 
 to fly the right flag, who play second fiddle to a set of 
 wire pullers, who swim on the bladders of a heated 
 fancy, and whose only means of subsistence is in curry- 
 ing the whimsicalities of a capricious world, which they 
 do by snivelling over trifles, and recommending Sharp's 
 rifles as the safest religion for the soul of that being 
 
21 
 
 who thinks our "peculiar institution" a divine necessity 
 for man, by painting salt and red pepper vinegar, and 
 howls, as the finishing touch of the southern lash, 
 thereby manufacturing sympathy and whetting revenge 
 for these tools of their stratagem to print for their 
 bread, and humbug their countrymen by thus feeding 
 the avariciousness of a mercurial sensibility. These are 
 the editors who, like political hyenas, are prowling and 
 snarling round the crib of our liberties — who are so 
 polite to the passions and kind to the appetites, bending 
 every propensity to adoration, willing, like Theramenes 
 of old, to hitch to any party that chances to be upper- 
 most — who, with all the eyes of an Argus, reconnoitre 
 and analyze the public pulse, multiplying prejudices and 
 sentiments with all the fecundity of brain and press, and 
 deluging humanity with all the pressure of an accumu- 
 lating infamy, thereby perpetrating upon our union its 
 rascality and woe. These are the desperadoes who are 
 picking out the mortar from the citadels of freedom, 
 fancying and intruding ten thousand ills, evidently so 
 sad and ominous as to require the publication of separate 
 policies, to suggest and alter, thereby displaying per- 
 sonal skill in palming and maintaining a disgusting 
 paradox. These are the monopolists who, instead of 
 adapting remedies to home abuses, and healing the 
 ulcers within the circuit of their pen, dress in mourning 
 white paper, with antic schemes and raw delusions, 
 harping and scrawling quid sit pulcrum, quid turpe, 
 quid utile, quid non in remote parts of our Union, 
 thereby grinding foibles to reproach and preferences to 
 obldquy, wiilning friends and coining foes, thus widen- 
 ing the Mason and Dixon separatrix — 
 
 " Oraculum nOn curabunt sine toto capite, 
 Nee caput sine toto corpora, 
 Nee totuni corpus sine anima." 
 
 Once the temperance cause was in market as a poli- 
 tical hobby, and answered at home very well to. glut 
 
22 
 
 their howls, but the patronage of sixty-five million gal- 
 lons of whiskey that wet our throats annually, was con- 
 sidered too big an item in circulation to pay to keep up 
 their rantings, though they acknowledge that as Cauca- 
 sians we love " Old Bourbon" too well. 
 
 Once we wore upon our frontiers the regimentals of 
 Jesus, and never dreamt of disturbance but from the old 
 red foe, but they have become the Golgotha of carcasses, 
 cut with bowie-knives and bored with cartridges, aye, 
 mints of villainy that coin so profusely those three cent 
 editors who profess such a friendship for the shaded four 
 million, who perhaps may have delegates on their new 
 won soil, whom they nicknanie "aggressors," and. with 
 whom they pick fusses and hubbubs, till there is told 
 the sad tale which, with all the diapason of savage 
 agony, they commit to the mercy of twenty-five thou- 
 s'and miles of telegraph, to be scattered through our 
 country fifteen thousand miles a second, to be reprinted 
 to feed the hankerings of hungry fanatics, who, with 
 
 " Iron tongue and hideous yell 
 Try to distance all these hounds of hell," 
 
 as though telegraphs were inefficient as slow ox teams. 
 
 Once the press was to our country what the hellebore 
 was to Hercules, but it is now to the politician what 
 sulphuric acid is to the chemist, the cleaner and the 
 distiller, the inflamer and the corrosor, the heavier and 
 the deadlier the longer it stands. Once it gave goodness 
 its merit and rascality its due, now it ties them to the 
 same whipping-post to be bled by the same lash, re- 
 minding us of what Scaliger calls Pliny, "mendaciorum 
 patrem," the father of lies, the bane of our national 
 grandeur, and the Charybdis of our happiness. A 
 Vulcan at his forge, it is a Jupiter with his thunderbolt, 
 a Labienus in abuse, it handles like Lichas poisoned 
 shirts for pay, tickling our passions and sporting with 
 our wrath, like ^olus in his cave, flashy and explosive 
 as bubbles of phosphureted hydrogen. But dire as is 
 
2g 
 
 Its rlietoric and licentious as is its machinery, it was 
 designed to glean and to glitter a brighter hue, to stand 
 in the orbit of our glory, not only an apogee, but a 
 perigee, to explore cur needs, virtues, and failings, feed- 
 ing pockets and solicitudes, gluing rectitude and har- 
 mony to sympathy and strife, and scattering "glad 
 tidings" that teach us how to live and for what to die, 
 thus easing us down life's hard track to the grave, rather 
 than mauling and abusing us. 
 
 A free press, which is the pride and underpinning of 
 our republican institutions, was given us to recompense 
 virtue rather than to propitiate fancy — to distribute 
 encomium by merit, and reprehension by desert, rather 
 than to amalgamate them for the analysis of caprice and 
 prejudice. The sweaty wrecks of the past, the eloquent 
 fossils of the present, and every cloudy background in 
 the galleries of time told our fathers, mid the heaviness 
 of servitude, that it was valuable. Rome, sick three 
 hundred years wading in parchment to the grave, told 
 them it was valuable. Thebes, Athens, Sparta, dying 
 in infancy, rioting in the lore of despotism, told them so 
 too, and when we realize the seven long years they 
 fought for it, the two million four hundred thousand 
 pounds of blood, to say nothing of tears they spilt for 
 it, we ask not how many barges could float in it, but we 
 would ask if the powdering bones of '76 hav'nt phos- 
 phorus enough or their blood iron enough, to deoxydize 
 the acids of its fanaticism. We would ask if this crowding 
 van of enthusiasts are thus victoriously to hoist their 
 raggy flag on the breast works of conservatism — if our 
 political landscape is so dark or our moral light-houses 
 so dim that we must wallow in a literary licentiousness — 
 we would ask if the tickets to a better world have got 
 to be so cheap, or the human heart so clean, that editors 
 must resort, in tying to their press a thirteen starred 
 flag, to the popularity of Calvary — if the documents of 
 salvation are so flat, or the editorial orbit so thin, that 
 politics and religion must become synonyms — synonyms 
 
24 
 
 though literature turns up its tawny back of fickleness 
 and infidelity — though the warning wrecks of church 
 and state, once one, tell its destiny. 
 
 That destiny waylays us if we fail, as a nation, to halt 
 in our procedure : 1st. Because a press which is bigoted 
 sways th(3 masses; 2d. Because it cramps truth and 
 feeds the ignorant and indifii'ercnt with falsehoods ; 3d. 
 Because it works with excitable and sympathetic mate- 
 rials; 4th. Because these materials are multiform, and 
 from poverty and prejudice, are local ; 6th. Because it 
 has bred in our countrymen a spirit of distrust and 
 malevolence; 6th. Because in political issues it calls on 
 religion and preachers to side with politics, and v/hen 
 the dark cloud of defeat lowers, to draw up in thfeir cam- 
 paign the hero of Gethseraane as a conspicuous character. 
 These are the siroccos that are fanning the cancers that 
 are digging our grave ; and is there uo remedy ? Oh ! 
 could we assemble those two hundred patriots of '7(5, 
 who still remain, and ask them for one, what could 
 they say for us ? They would tell us the following : 
 We can't do but little for you, for we are stopping on 
 the beach of death, and expect every day that the 
 steamer of immortality will call for us. Our wasted 
 cheeks, our absent limbs, and our pitted fiesh are evi- 
 dences that we have done for you all we can. We wei'e 
 in the " heyday" of life, and when our fathers told us 
 that our country needed us, we resolved to go ; we 
 kissed that mother for the last time, and with watery 
 eyes we entered the battle ground. We stood there a 
 good while ; fought well as we could, and when Wash- 
 ington told us good bye, we returned for a mother's 
 embrace again. She wasn't there, for, like father, she 
 had been used as a target for despotism. Then we were 
 orphans, but we were orphans for your liberties. Once 
 we were sound, had the, caresses of home, now we are 
 helpless mendicants of national charity. Oh, it is hard: 
 b,ut we have borne it for you, we have borne it willingly, 
 we have bprAC it th^t the cause of Christ, nsijght begowe. 
 
25 
 
 dearer and your love of country deeper, and is it asking 
 too much of you to keep it ? Oh ! just keep it while we 
 live. Soon we shall be gone, for we can almost hear 
 the whistle of that boat that is to take us thither ; but 
 remember, when the plank is out, and we are on board, 
 that there lies on that crapy deck those who have ten- 
 dered you this remedy : Let preachers work for God but 
 politicians for liberty; keep church and state separate; 
 down with journals that work for votes, professing part- 
 nership with heaven ; don't electioneer with heavenly 
 materia], for' Paul* says " that the Lord hath ordained 
 that they who preach the Gospel should live of the Gos- 
 pel;" then breaches will be healed and pews won't be 
 vacated ; then disunion will be what was, but not an 
 afterwards. Oh ! hug what we've given you ; remember 
 that liberty, like money, is easily gone. Call up your 
 children, and picture to them that melting scene of part- 
 ing with Washington; learn them our old war beat on 
 their little drum ; painlfour blood-stained flags on their 
 handkerchief; write "old '76" on bayonets, and give 
 them guns ; tell them what it means, and that soon they 
 may be called to seal your destiny ; then will you be 
 safe, for you have imbedded in their affections the worth 
 of liberty ; safe, for then lying editors can't deceive you 
 nor designing preachers hurt you, and instead of briers, 
 white roses will bud o'er our grave. 
 
 The two great problems of our duties and dangers 
 and destiny as a republic, are before us, and its remedy 
 or its corollary are ours. We may choose which we 
 will, but religion and the Union, or irreligion and dis- 
 union, are the dilemma. The one, like the banyan tree, 
 blossoms, reroots and feeds us with figs, the other is as 
 sober as the coffin and blacker than the tassels on the 
 ]auggy of death. The one tells us to take the old rout 
 of conservatism, pay the pikeage and enjoy its solid 
 bridges and levelled roads, the other to cut to glory 
 
 * 1 Coiinthians, iz. 14. 
 
26 
 
 cross-lots, and run the risk of breechings breaking, and 
 bogs, and rogues. The one tiring type lulls rancor, and 
 heals gaps, sacrificing popularity and position to the 
 great principles of the Union, and demands our sup- 
 port; the other spurs malice and chafes revenge by 
 broaching whims and churning doubts for converts. 
 Whether we rally our ensigns, ethical and democratic, 
 which are our grand national props, or hitch to factions 
 and phantasms, and reap nothing but fee-simples of the 
 hot world, is discretionary — but one thing is certain, if 
 we expect to garner the blessings won, the factories of 
 caprice must be shut, and we must tame the snakes and 
 tough the gales if we would till the prairies of freedom. 
 To efl'ect this in a day or in a month would be like 
 draining the Niagara with a hand-pump ; they have been 
 long enough coming, and they will be long enough 
 going, for they are hid in the clover of orthodoxy, and 
 in the Saharas of infidelity, and when the least trifle 
 pesters they curl for the fight and lash with their tongues 
 like deluded abolitionists. Their virus nauseates us to- 
 day in northern cities and hamlets, in flashy periods and 
 wilting sentiments, the bugle of fanaticism marshals it, 
 a hot eye mellows it, and to-morrow's mail will grunt 
 with studied wrongs and fabled occurrences of an Iflsti- 
 tution this day ignorantly represented and wofuUy belied ; 
 the good rustic reads, believes it, and justly grieves at it, 
 for it is dressed in his religion, and his salty glands play 
 their interlude, but ofBce-seekers are at the bottom of it, 
 using bibles as a pawn for the lesions they apostrophize, 
 worrying his doubts and blistering his solicitudes ; thus 
 they shufile their cards, euchering the honest country- 
 man out of his reason and his preferences, and having 
 traded off their lies he centres southward his hate, and 
 is as submissive in their charms as a wren by a rattle- 
 snake. This is a trick they play upon those unguarded 
 laborers of the free States in every campaign, and from 
 it starts and on it hangs all the agonies of dissolution. 
 We must stem this flood by marching in one close pha- 
 
27 
 
 lanx in support of that northern sentiment that sticks 
 by the Union ; we must stem it by scouring our press 
 and rinsing it with a fresher patriotism ; we must stem 
 it by strengthening our lines, starting home manufac- 
 tures, stretching wires to Cuba, and cars to the Pacific ; 
 but quitting our extravagancies or it is all day with us, 
 for we shall find ourselves in Charon's boat without an 
 oboli to pay our ferriage. If we forsake that sentiment 
 and build new parties at home, we are weakening our 
 lines, and we are gone; the pick, though, is optional, 
 for all the curses or the blessings in the 28th of Deu- 
 teronomy ai-e in store for us. Disunion is fanaticism's 
 whetstone which sharpens the blade that is whittling 
 conservatism ; the thread of national familiarity it has 
 badly cut, ere long it may be severed, but sooner may 
 the vermin of the valley have sucked mj^ cheek and the 
 chemistry of the grave have eat my bones, than my eye 
 shall ever drop upon the bleeding joints of a dismem- 
 bered confederacy. What Nero said of the day of judg- 
 ment very well expresses it, "non me vivo fiat." There 
 is another danger, which though uncommon to allude to 
 on occasions like this, which we cannot pass, and that 
 is,_we neglect God: we neglect him at home; we neglect 
 him at bed time ; we neglect him in closets vacated and 
 pulpits desecrated; when we've done wrong, when our 
 sky is dark and our eagle is shivering, when our national 
 tendons are nearly off and our old standby's look failing ; 
 that same God who was with Warren at Bunker Hill 
 and with Gates at Saratoga, who drove back the British 
 lion, who has eyed us in the dark and gave the plant of 
 liberty its carbon. Do you doubt it ? Look around and 
 weigh your apathy; think how you have answered the 
 call of 25,000 missionaries ; how unpopular are cate- 
 chisms and decalogues, and songs of the Pilgrims; enter 
 our seminaries and learn out of our 15,000 how many 
 use that book that cheered the prayer-meeting on the 
 May Flower, Hayne in the rope, and George W. on the 
 
28 
 
 Delaware ; spy the desperadoes who are working upon 
 religious, philanthropical and conservative counterfeits ; 
 watch the piety they've gulled, the troubles they've sired, 
 and the wrongs they've perpetrated, and then say for 
 yourselves if we are not rather hard stock and a poor 
 investment of divine complacency. Christianity, with 
 its train, and a free press unabused, are the vital juices 
 of a Republic ; and when we throw open the human 
 heart and find 33 per cent, of humanity at best but 
 monomaniacs wrapped in meat riding hobbies to the 
 grave, we are not much surprised that some should fly 
 the right track and betray their best friend to pioneer 
 the territoi'ies of a dissipated fancy, especially when 
 Europe, aching at our luck, with as many independent 
 States as we have signers of our Declaration, winks at 
 it. She has neglected him too long, and no doubt hates 
 to be all alone, staying on the skirts of a Pelonian whirl- 
 pool. Poor Hungary has gone ; and we weep at it, for 
 she opened blood-vessels and graves to be one with us, 
 but her intimacy with the God of '76 wasn't long enough 
 — ^perhaps not long enough with America — only 366 
 years ago last October she was born ; she slept cramped 
 for over 200 years in her cradle, then she wanted to 
 rise, but the milk of despotism couldn't raise her, though 
 her pulse beat slow and her visage looked pale, those 
 physicians entered the old Hall, and Hancock took the 
 pen and with twenty-nine good reasons gave a remedy ; 
 that is the platform of our libertiesj but it is poised 
 upon compacts and the blessings of heaven. God was 
 certainly with us then. He was with the first bullet 
 that left the gun on the old dirt-road to Lexington. He 
 has been with us in smoky and damp weather. He is 
 with, us flow, but how feeble is his welcome ; feeble, 
 though we- are jolting between spirituality and world- 
 liness, dead broke — with fanatical trains and reckless 
 conductors — feeble though at our peril, for tornadoes 
 are ahead of us, and nothing but the artillery of Jesus 
 full blast, with its steady aim and holy shot, can save ua!