George W ashington Flowers 
 Memorial Collection 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 ESTABLISHED BY THE 
 FAMILY OF 
 
 COLONEL FLOWERS 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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 jl/XW\XJLJ 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 BY 
 
 COL. HENRY B. CARRINGTON, U.S.A., M.A., LL.D. 
 
 “ Disce, a priseis temporibus, solicitudinem pro futuro, habere.” 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 1878. 
 
Copyright, 1878, by Col. Henry E. Carrington, U.S.A. 
 
3 73.7 
 
 <2 3 t8C 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 IN MEMORY OF CONSIDERATE FRIENDSHIP, 
 
 THIS SUMMARY OF MORE THAN FORTY YEARS OF 
 EARNEST REFLECTION 
 
 IS DEDICATED TO 
 
 DR. JAMES M. LEETE, 
 
 OP ST. LOUIS, MO. 
 
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* 
 
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CONTENTS. 
 
 I. — The Hour: the Peril: the Duty. 
 
 Delivered at Columbus, Ohio, while Adjutant- 
 General of Ohio, April 11 and 17, 1861 
 
 PAGE 
 
 11 
 
 II. — The War: its Nature and Prospects, its 
 Moral and Social Evils, and its Ulti- 
 mate Result. 
 
 Delivered to the soldiers of Indiana, at In- 
 dianapolis, Indiana, February 22, 1863, 
 while Colonel Eighteenth United States 
 Infantry, commanding the Post . . 41 
 
 III. — Kind Words to Colored Citizens upon the 
 Religious, Educational, Social, and Per- 
 sonal Duty of their Race. 
 
 Delivered at dedication of church edifice for 
 Colored Citizens, while temporarily on duty 
 at Indianapolis, June 17, 1869 . . .79 
 
 5 
 

 
 . 
 
 ' 
 
 ■ 
 
 . 
 
 
EXPLANATORY. 
 
 It is more than seventeen years since members 
 of the Ohio Senate caused the first of these ad- 
 dresses to be repeated and published. It had 
 been solemnly inspired by the conviction, pub- 
 licly expressed, that “ a war was impending 
 which would outlast a presidential term, would 
 cost hundreds of thousands of lives and thousands 
 of millions of money.” Ho blood had then been 
 shed. The address was voluntary, and was illus- 
 trated by large maps of Pensacola and Charleston 
 harbors, and diagrams of fortifications and ord- 
 nance. It was twice repeated, and before its 
 last delivery Fort Sumter fell. Its republication 
 has been requested by those whose judgment I 
 respect. It was not at first the gush of a hasty 
 impulse. 
 
 In 1836 a stranger visited a boarding-school 
 at Torringford, Connecticut, which was con- 
 ducted by Rev. Mr. Goodman and Dr. Radcliff 
 Hudson, both of whom were afterwards mobbed 
 in Hew England, for expressing anti-slavery 
 opinions. The stranger explained to the class 
 in geography, the nature and history of African 
 
8 
 
 EXPLANATORY. 
 
 slavery and the slave trade. He asked his 
 listeners to stand up, if they were willing during 
 after-years, to pray and labor for universal 
 liberty. The stranger was John Brown, who 
 departed this life at Charlestown, Virginia. 
 
 The impression made by that stranger was 
 never effaced. 
 
 Certain violence at Farmington, Connecticut, 
 in 1839, and at Columbus, Ohio, in 1849, inci- 
 dentally referred to on page 83, only deepened 
 that impression, and indicated that ultimate con- 
 flict, alone, would solve the maturing issue. 
 
 In February, 1861, Senator Chase thus ad- 
 dressed the writer, then adjutant-general of Ohio : 
 “ Our most sober thinkers, and those best in- 
 formed, as well as conservative men from the 
 South, predict war. Our militia should be offi- 
 cered by the wisest and best men. How soon 
 they may be needed, no man can tell.” 
 
 Mr. Cass, Secretary of State, in writing to the 
 same officer, and referring to his own relations 
 with President Buchanan, said, “ We have indeed 
 fallen upon evil times, when those who should pre- 
 serve, seem bent upon destroying, the country.” 
 
 The later addresses, to the soldiers of Indiana, 
 on Washington’s birthday, 1863, and to the 
 colored people of Indianapolis, on the dedication 
 of a church edifice, in 1869, are parts of one 
 enforced sequence of convictions, which have 
 proper place with the first address. 
 
EXPLANATORY. 
 
 9 
 
 The first foreshadowed the struggle. The 
 second contemplated a crisis in its progress. The 
 third sought to win an emancipated race to right 
 appreciation of so costly a deliverance. 
 
 As grouped, they testify of the dangers of 
 political passion and the value of peace, at any 
 honorable compromise of non-essentials, and 
 appeal to parties, sections, and races “ to learn 
 from former experiences to have solicitude for 
 the future,” and thus unite, as did the Roman 
 Senate in its supreme hour of peril, to “ see that 
 no harm shall befall the republic.” 
 
 Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Ind., 
 
 July 4, a. H. 1878. 
 
 1 * 
 
 / 
 
■ 
 
 
 •• ■ 
 
 ' 
 
 ■ 
 
 ■ . 
 
 
 I 
 
 
THE HOUR: THE PERIL: THE DUTY. 
 
 DELIVERED AT COLUMBUS, OHIO, WHILE ADJUTANT- 
 GENERAL OF OHIO, APRIL 11 AND 17, 1861. 
 
 In an hour like this, when the nervous wire 
 thrills, each second, with some fresh note of 
 alarm, when men hold their breath as they wait 
 upon the electric flash, when minutes fulfil the 
 work of hours, and each day is more fraught 
 with issues vital to freedom and mankind than 
 were months or years in earlier times, it is pre- 
 eminently necessary that we meet each crisis 
 squarely, weigh well our several obligations, and 
 prove resolute for each and every duty or en- 
 deavor that may be forced against us. 
 
 Hor is any citizen or class of citizens exempt 
 from a share of responsibility at such a time. 
 Hone worthy the name will disclaim that respon- 
 sibility, or fail to testify their interest. The man 
 of daily labor pauses in his round of work to ask 
 for the “ last dispatch,” and all trades and occu- 
 pations, all crafts and callings, share in undefined 
 but real apprehension as to our national future. 
 
 Could we rise above the trammels of party 
 bias and personal concern, and, as lovers of 
 
 n 
 
12 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 liberty and lovers of justice, calmly review the 
 scenes which from hour to hour transpire wher- 
 ever civilized man is now the actor, all that 
 appears involved, or gloomy, would take order 
 and unity, and would fill its fit place in the grand 
 drama now being enacted, which will have as its 
 catastrophe the end of despotism, and as its 
 climax, the supremacy of liberty and right. 
 
 Could we rise to a still loftier height of obser- 
 vation, and perceive the hand of the Infinite, as 
 with magic art and plastic touch it moulds the 
 nations and bends the designs of men to the 
 development of a Kingdom of Peace, we could 
 even exult in all that now seems forbidding, or 
 fatal to the public weal, and could behold, with 
 all the assurance of prophecy itself, the dawning 
 of a better day. 
 
 But the finite mind, as it gazes upon the 
 swiftly-changing scenes, and traces the swelling 
 volume of the plot, and the startling issues that 
 boldly leap to view through each succeeding act, 
 wearies with the complex mechanism and the 
 confused purposes that mark the parts, until at 
 length we dread each shift of scene, as if the 
 Sixth Seal and the woes of the Apocalyptic vision 
 were presently to be ushered upon the earth. 
 
 FREEDOM ADVANCES. 
 
 If we prove dull to the voice of history, and 
 fail to see on all its records the signs of progres- 
 
REACTION BUT TEMPORARY. 
 
 13 
 
 sive growth, and the ultimate freedom of man- 
 kind ; if we perceive not the accumulated power 
 which Christianity herself has infused into each 
 advancing Commonwealth or State : we have at 
 least reached a period of human progress where, 
 with all the confidence of the intrepid Galileo, 
 we may exclaim, “ The world moves,” at last. 
 
 R"ot alone in science and art; not alone in 
 {esthetic culture and social growth ; not alone in 
 material wealth and power ; but in the freedom 
 of the State, and freedom of the individual man 
 himself, the world moves, onward, and upward. 
 
 REACTION BUT TEMPORARY. 
 
 Reaction, by a normal law of nature, may 
 assert its tendency for a passing hour ; and the 
 rebound of an active principle may beget a 
 transient pause in the onward sweep of Liberty 
 to its culminating triumph. The task-master 
 may, again and again, assert his divine right to 
 appropriate and use the unrequited toil of his 
 fellow-man. Legitimate revolution may seem 
 barren of fruit, and the counterfeit may put on 
 the mien of proud and defiant mastery. Liberty 
 may take the guise of License, and Anarchy may 
 usurp the name and garb of Liberty ! But Time, 
 which receives them all into her appropriating 
 charge, will try them in a fiery crucible, — will 
 evolve the pure and reject the false. 
 
 The world has been convulsed by dynastic 
 
14 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 changes heretofore. The l-ace has been con- 
 fouixcled by strange and unnatural conflicts here- 
 tofore. Right, Liberty, and Religion have been 
 the plaything or contempt of false friends and 
 still falser foes, and the tyrant has appeared only 
 to mature in strength in his struggle with the 
 down-trodden and oppressed, and to ride tri- 
 umphantly over the fairest hopes of the people, 
 heretofore. 
 
 Rome and Greece, Gaul and Britain, Poland 
 and Hungary, France and Germany, have passed 
 through the furnace, seven times heated, and 
 with unequal issue ; hut in all, and through all, 
 the advance of the people toward Liberty and 
 Peace, has been time to the promised destiny of 
 the race. Even where old organisms retain their 
 form and name, you will still behold a change 
 of feature. That which was once asserted in the 
 name of despotic sway, has put on the show of 
 serving the people, only through some time- 
 honored machinery of the State. From week to 
 week, and from hour to hour, through trial and 
 peril, and in all the changing phases of our social 
 life, we read the fresh assurance, that the cause 
 of Humanity and Right is drawing near its 
 crowning triumph. 
 
 SIGNS OF PROGRESS. 
 
 Ten years ago, and no mortal foresight could 
 have anticipated the momentous changes and 
 
ALL NATIONS PLAY THEIR PART. 15 
 
 brilliant trophies which now adorn and dignify 
 the advancing cause. Then, it had been mad- 
 ness to prophesy that which has already become 
 fruition. Then, hope deferred made the heart 
 sick, and it seemed as if all continental progress 
 was at an end. How, look at the contrast. 
 
 The press whispers, and thrones tremble. At 
 the dash of its pen, new policies are inaugurated, 
 and new codes enacted. Senates and Chambers, 
 Deputies and Congresses, and all other modern 
 types of representation of the popular will, simply 
 decline their sanction, or declare their enmity to 
 acts of a despotic scope, and that which once was 
 known only to the privy council, or some self- 
 reliant tyrant, until its crushing weight fell upon 
 the unresisting commons, now drops nerveless 
 and harmless before the breath of debate. 
 
 Magna Charta was but the forerunner. Every- 
 where the Proclamation, the Ukase, the Hatti 
 Sheriff, and the Edict, are letting down the 
 throne to receive upon its platform of power the 
 true sovereign, the People. 
 
 ALL NATIONS PLAY THEIR PART. 
 
 China stands open to the world. Binding 
 treaties pledge her to admit free speech, free 
 press, and an untrammelled conscience, as part 
 of her method and policy. Japan unbars her 
 gates, and accepts all nations as her neighbors. 
 India dissolves the restraints of caste, unites her 
 
16 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS . 
 
 boundaries by the railroad and the telegraph, 
 and the long-lived oppression of a selfish corpo- 
 ration gives place to the benignant sway of the 
 English constitution and laws. Even Africa, so 
 long the scorn of nations, discloses vast fields for 
 profitable culture, and welcomes commerce to 
 her new traffic in the cotton and the cane. 
 
 Turkey renounces the sale of man, and the 
 Christian becomes the equal of the child of Ma- 
 homet in the hall of litigation, the porch of the 
 mosque, and the bazaar of trade. 
 
 Russia enfranchises her servile millions, and 
 no longer dares refuse to the struggling Poles a 
 liberal code, a representative Council, and the 
 machinery of a healthy organization, to be 
 officered and directed by men of their own race 
 and language. 
 
 Austria, wellnigh bankrupt in name and 
 credit, flies from canons, and consistories, and 
 concordats, to find her only hope and life in the 
 organized representation of the people them- 
 selves. 
 
 Hungary calmly but firmly accepts the offer as 
 a matter of simple right ; while Transylvania and 
 Servia present the same demand with assurance 
 of success. France grows strong, but only in 
 the warmth of maturing freedom ; and all conti- 
 nents are agitated, or upheaved, by the impend- 
 ing issue, in which Liberty shall surely triumph. 
 True it is that the iron arm of despotism, wher- 
 
ALL NATIONS PLAY THEIR PART. Y] 
 
 ever and however energizing, still threatens the 
 well-being of every State and people, and this, no 
 matter how many disguises it assumes, that it 
 may protract the struggle and attain its will. 
 
 The Emperor of France is styled “ Emperor, 
 by the will of the French.” The new-horn 
 Kingdom of Italy, fair of proportion, and regal 
 in beauty, seats upon her throne a sovereign 
 “ King, by the will of the people.” Thrones 
 become insignificant, and titles are hut shadows ! 
 The leaven of liberty is at work, forcing itself 
 even into the presence-chamber of the Vatican, 
 and compelling Hapsburg and Bourbon alike to 
 bend with respect to its sublime and persistent 
 progress. 
 
 But a few more conflicts with the barbarism 
 of wrong, a few more lances splintered with the 
 champions of the worn-out systems of feudal 
 times, and freedom shall become the law of 
 nations as it is the law of God. Fair pledges, 
 specious guarantees, temporizing shifts, may 
 defer the day; but it surely draws on apace. 
 Soon, in politics as well as in religion and ethics, 
 it will not satisfy the honest searcher after truth, 
 to style evil good, and good evil, — to pronounce 
 the bitter sweet, and the sweet bitter. But truth, 
 simple and unqualified, uncompromised away by 
 refinements of clique or party, undiluted by 
 selfish sacrifice of principle for temporary ends, 
 will live and flourish. You and I may or may 
 
18 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 not survive the struggle that must usher in the 
 final scene ; but come it must, and come it will. 
 Even on the American continent, this agitation 
 has been recognized and felt. Mexico, and her 
 sister republics of Spanish pedigree, have been 
 turned upon the wheel of Fortune, until you can 
 scarcely distinguish the sway of the patriot from 
 the rule of the despot. 
 
 THE UNITED STATES NO LONGER A MERE SPECTATOR. 
 
 Heretofore, seemingly remote from these con- 
 flicts, our own beloved land has sympathized 
 with all oppressed nations, while her benefactions 
 have not been withheld, neither have any turned 
 from her charity away. Kosciusko and Bozzaris, 
 Bolivar and Kossuth, alike thanked God that 
 America had a being. Ireland and Madeira 
 were rescued in their hour of desolation and 
 wasting, and with glad hearts and voices sent up 
 their incense of prayer and praise to Him who 
 hitherto had blessed us. 
 
 But this proud republic is no longer before the 
 footlights, an eager but independent spectator. 
 Just as the head turns dizzy, and the eye wearies 
 with beholding nation after nation dragged 
 through the bewildering maze of characters and 
 conflicts, we, too, are hurled upon the stage, 
 forced to become the centre of all eyes, and to 
 be tested as to our loyalty to freedom, and our 
 right to the exalted post of her standard-bearer. 
 
ELEMENTS OF PRESENT TROUBLE. 19 
 
 Planted in the highway of nations, clasping 
 the continent with our arms, bounding, as at 
 one leap, to unparalleled culture, greatness, and 
 power, yet proud and zealous for a still wider 
 sweep of empire, even at the expense of principle 
 and others’ rights, we reach this dizzy pitch of 
 greatness, only to seem poised for a fall, the 
 more fatal if we prove recreant to our trust, as our 
 pre-eminence has been the more distinguished. 
 
 ELEMENTS OF PRESENT TROUBLE. 
 
 Nor will I pause here to analyze critically the 
 causes which have induced the peril; neither 
 will I impose upon any class of men or measures 
 the sole responsibility for the impending struggle. 
 F ew could relieve themselves from a share of the 
 burden, while all should feel that they must 
 gladly meet any sacrifice to regain the vantage 
 ground already lost. And yet, before I treat of 
 the issue which is most pressing, and express my 
 humble judgment of the path of duty, which 
 should he boldly traced, permit me to refer to 
 certain grave considerations, which have made 
 our present peril almost inevitable, while they 
 have also supplied the elements and accessories 
 of revolution and riot. 
 
 I. Moral Principle Rejected by Politicians. 
 
 The jirst disorganizing element that I shall 
 notice lies in the prevalent assumption that our 
 
20 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 historic prestige and our present destination, as 
 the experimental model of Republican institu- 
 tions in the world, absolves us from allegiance to 
 those laws and moral maxims, which we enjoin 
 upon dependent States, and which are, indeed, 
 the only solid basis of individual or natural 
 greatness. This may be traced in our arrogant 
 diplomacy with lesser States, our thirst for ex- 
 tended territory, our contempt for Indian trea- 
 ties, and our subjection of all political issues, 
 whether of a moral or economic nature, to the 
 behests of mere action, policy, or party. His- 
 tory records no instance of true national great- 
 ness achieved at such sacrifice of substantial, 
 genuine principle. 
 
 II. Tampering with the Union. 
 
 A second fatal assumption is, that the bond of 
 Union has become so permanent, peaceful, and 
 stable, that it can he tampered with at pleasure ; 
 that parties may even stake their existence or 
 success upon Union or Disunion issues, for merely 
 adventitious triumphs, and may at the same time 
 take for granted that the Union will suffer no 
 harm. 
 
 Threats of disunion have been made for many 
 years ; hut more threats have been made for mere 
 party effect than there are now disunionists in 
 the land. If the entire people could realize that 
 such a question can no more he trifled with, 
 
ELEMENTS OF PRESENT TROUBLE. 21 
 
 without injury to the State, than private virtue 
 or private character can hear a like freedom 
 without degradation or taint, we should he more 
 careful to guard this jewel of our national honor, 
 at whatever sacrifice of party or place. Besides 
 this, the United States have not been compelled 
 to fight their way to present distinction at the 
 cost of constant sacrifice and pain. Our fathers 
 did indeed prove their valor and achieve their 
 freedom by the ordeal of fire ; and they, at least, 
 appreciated and honored the freedom thus at- 
 tained. But for nearly half a century our country 
 has advanced, regardless alike of jealousy abroad 
 and any and all deliberate systems of develop- 
 ment at home. It has grown of itself. With 
 government and institutions apparently perma- 
 nent, with all the advantages of freedom in the 
 State, and a Christian civilization among the 
 people, and with unparalleled variety and rich- 
 ness of soil and mineral wealth, we have not 
 even developed our accumulating resources as 
 rapidly as Nature and Providence have brought 
 them to light. 
 
 We have come to consider our franchises, our 
 progress, and our destiny, as fixed quantities, 
 subject to such changes only as will perpetuate 
 and develop them. We disregard fundamental 
 axioms of national growth and unity, we despise 
 the idea of a higher law than passing expediency, 
 and rest upon the flattering conceit that nothing 
 
22 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 can rend or shatter the political fabric here 
 established. 
 
 Our strength, our wealth, our cultivation, and 
 our liberty have made us arrogant, self-sufficient, 
 and proud, and the fruit of this weakness we 
 now gather in an abundant hut baleful harvest 
 of dissension, discord, and threatened dismem- 
 berment. We forget that Liberty, like chastity, 
 is jealous of reproach, and can be conserved only 
 by an unblemished and unsuspected carriage. 
 
 III. Thirst for Office. 
 
 Still another element that depreciates and 
 defiles the body politic lies in the infatuation for 
 office, which has become more wide-spread, im- 
 portunate, and ruinous to public virtue than the 
 world has before witnessed, and is nearly as fatal 
 to the State as dissolution itself. It lies at the 
 base of party affinities, shapes its policy, fights 
 its battles, and demands its rewards. But woe to 
 that party which, when it rises into place, is led 
 to make mere party fealty the qualification for 
 preferment to places of trust, rather than the 
 intrinsic worth of the candidates themselves. 
 
 These evils — the banishment of moral principle 
 from political action, the trifling with our liber- 
 ties upon the conceit of their own inherent 
 perpetuity, and thirst for political office — have 
 grown with our growth, have driven thousands 
 of our most patriotic citizens from the public 
 
ELEMENTS OF PRESENT TROUBLE. 23 
 
 service, and now threaten to utterly demoralize 
 the people themselves, or to engender a morbid 
 indifference to all issues hut the party issues of 
 the passing hour. 
 
 When the good and virtuous feel it a degra- 
 dation to enter the political arena, it always 
 augurs ill for the public weal, even although 
 their isolation and neglect of duty cannot excuse 
 them for their share of responsibility for the 
 very consequences they deplore. 
 
 All these elements of mischief have had their 
 share in the palsy which has seized the body 
 politic and held it powerless at the feet of rebel- 
 lion or factious opposition to law. 
 
 IV. Failure to Appreciate our Peril. 
 
 But there is yet another element inherent in a 
 peaceful and law-abiding State, the operation of 
 which facilitates political treason, while it insures 
 the punishment of other crimes. Whatever may 
 be the daring of parties, all alike profess allegiance 
 to the fundamental law, and all good citizens are 
 reluctant to believe in a systematic endeavor to 
 overthrow it. This very regard for peace re- 
 strains them from stern preparatory measures 
 for the suppression of organizations, which, after 
 all, may show but the ebullition of hasty temper, 
 indulged through the legitimate organs of free 
 speech and a free press. The line is so narrow 
 that bounds the privilege and the treason, that 
 
24 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 the faithful citizen is only able to meet the evil 
 when the traitor casts off disguise, and stands 
 forth at an armed advantage, to overturn the 
 State. Nothing hut an immediate and over- 
 whelming rally of loyal citizens can prevent a 
 transient victory for the disorganizers, if the 
 ramifications of the plot have been extended, the 
 precautions ample, and the overt offence be, at 
 last, sufficiently bold. 
 
 These are a few of the leading elements which 
 have borne a significant part in shaping the 
 present national issues. It would not he hazard- 
 ous to predicate upon these those earlier disaffec- 
 tions which threatened the internal tranquillity 
 of the nation, hut were quelled for the moment. 
 Even as to those, it is a question whether the 
 hold vindication of law by the Government did 
 not accomplish more than the contemporary 
 compromises, so called, and whether, had the 
 latter been wanting, we might not stand to-day 
 at a point far more advanced in social and politi- 
 cal greatness, and be free from the peculiar issues 
 which, by those very compromises, were only 
 fostered, and thereby transmitted with an ac- 
 cumulated intensity and virulence of operation 
 and spirit. 
 
 V. Question of Slavery. 
 
 It would he violence to the subject not to 
 recognize the palpable fact that the elements of 
 
ELEMENTS OF PRESENT TROUBLE. 25 
 
 political prostration and decay, already alluded 
 to, have derived peculiar force and vitality from 
 the presence and operation of the abnormal 
 system of human slavery. Though the present 
 generation is not responsible for its introduction, 
 though the founders of the Republic deplored its 
 existence and erected their temple of liberty upon 
 foundations inconsistent with its perpetuity and 
 expansion, and though, like all other systems of 
 oppression and wrong, its doom is certain, it 
 does, nevertheless, exist, and affect the entire 
 social and political fabric of the State. Our past 
 career proves, however, that the nation can 
 prosper and advance, even under the weight of 
 this burden ; and that, with a genuine patriotism 
 diffused through all hearts and sections, we can 
 still labor earnestly and unitedly for the public 
 weal. But it is equally true that, in States which 
 entertain this domestic institution, the funda- 
 mental elements of discord, before adverted to, 
 have had peculiar force and sanction. Timid in 
 the presence of superior and controlling forces, 
 indebted to the law of toleration, rather than 
 that of nature or revelation, for its continuance 
 and power, it cannot fail to be anti-democratic in 
 essence, and aristocratic in manifestation and 
 tone. Religion and true loyalty to country are 
 indeed as purely and nobly cherished where 
 slavery has its foothold as elsewhere ; and when 
 these hold in subjection to their redeeming and 
 
26 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 ennobling work its operation and spirit, we may 
 hope for an end to all onr conflicts and its own 
 extinction ; but when tbe animns of human 
 slavery becomes the absorbing sentiment of any 
 ambitions clique or faction, and rules by its own 
 inherent demands and necessities, the confusion 
 of its advocates or the ruin of the nation are the 
 sole alternatives. 
 
 I say this much, not by way of party logic, 
 nor from failure to appreciate the virtue, self- 
 denial, and patriotism of the South ; nay, rather 
 because, knowing these well in their purity and 
 value, I behold their exponents silenced or over- 
 shadowed by the more daring and unscrupulous 
 manifestations of the turbulent and rebellious. 
 
 OUR PRESENT STATUS. 
 
 We have passed through a constitutional elec- 
 tion of a Chief Magistrate of the United States. 
 He received the electoral vote of a majority of 
 the States, representing two-thirds of the popula- 
 tion, material wealth, and physical power of the 
 nation. Those States accept the Constitution as 
 it is, and, further, avow their readiness to surren- 
 der all mere matters of construction to the author- 
 ity having the matter in charge. They would go 
 farther than this, and settle beyond reasonable 
 cavil all parts of the organic law which need 
 distinct explanation, if such there be, to render 
 the whole more harmonious and complete. 
 
OUR PRESENT STATUS. 
 
 27 
 
 The government, elected by the people, assumes 
 the reins of power. In their charge are placed 
 the care of the public property, the vindication 
 of the public honor, the assurance of the public 
 peace. Land, wherever situated, forts, however 
 located, treasure, wherever deposited, belong to 
 the entire people, and no section can, of right, 
 arrogate a claim to any specific or distributive 
 share, or legally alienate from the -Federal centre 
 its possession and control. 
 
 The obligation rests upon the government to 
 protect each and every citizen, wherever located, 
 from illegal arrest, and the destruction of his 
 constitutional franchise and rights. If he be 
 oppressed by few or many, it matters not. If he 
 be imperilled, or overawed in attempted self- 
 vindication of those rights by organized violators 
 of the public peace, his claim for full and ade- 
 quate redress is not impaired ; but, on the con- 
 trary, it is increased in proportion as he loses 
 all other methods of redress, and is forced to 
 look to the central power for any possible relief. 
 While, therefore, this government is powerless 
 to usurp undelegated authority, it cannot shrink 
 from that which it is sworn to exercise. It may, 
 and should, exhaust peaceful and conciliatory 
 measures with the offenders ; it may adapt its 
 policy, so far as practicable, to subdue excite- 
 ment and ensure reflection on the part of the 
 disappointed or rebellious; but it cannot extend 
 
28 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 such measures to abnegation of its own superi- 
 ority without becoming, in time, traitor to the 
 people and State. Acting under the Constitution 
 of the United States, and bound by its provisions, 
 the extent of any disaffection cannot change or 
 impair the duty, hut rather must enhance the 
 responsibility, at least until by other and legiti- 
 mate methods the existing relations of the parties 
 shall be determined, or shall he predicated upon 
 a new and different fundamental basis. 
 
 EXPEDIENCY AND SANCTION. 
 
 All questions of expediency and peaceful ad- 
 justment lose force and value as soon as they 
 cease to operate as remedies for the evils threat- 
 ened. The use of sanctions and the vindications 
 of authority must then be interposed at the very 
 risk of war itself ; nay, Avar exists before a bloiv 
 is struck, and the extent and nature of its mani- 
 festations must determine the appliances which 
 shall be rallied for its arrest. I arrogate to my- 
 self no special office as teacher or guide ; hut as 
 citizens, let us not prove blind to the issue that 
 is upon us. While we have for days, and weeks, 
 and months, plead for almost any relief from 
 war, it is nevertheless true that a greater evil 
 than war may befall us. I would that we could 
 seriously appreciate our exact standpoint, and 
 feel that Ave ought not, must not, simply look to 
 our own individual concerns, as a State, or sec- 
 
OUR NATIONAL PRESTIGE. 
 
 29 
 
 tion, but remember that we stand responsible to 
 millions, in the disaffected States as well as here 
 at borne, for the assurance to them of liberties 
 now in peril. 
 
 With this general statement of the case, let 
 me pass to consider very briefly our position as 
 a nation, under the Constitution as it is, the 
 nature and tendency of the disaffection as it 
 exists, and our responsibility, whether willing or 
 unwilling, for the perpetuation of that Constitu- 
 tion, and the liberty it secures. 
 
 OUR NATIONAL PRESTIGE. 
 
 Our national position is a proud and noble one. 
 Of all the European struggles for liberty since 
 our own Republic has held a place among the 
 nations, not one has originated, advanced, or 
 come to an issue, without a decided moral sup- 
 port from the United States. Its proud isolation 
 from external attack, and its matured power and 
 influence, have given shape to aspirations, and 
 engendered hope of ultimate freedom, the world 
 over. The policy of every maritime State has 
 been liberalized, softened, and to a large extent 
 modelled upon the assurance of our own expand- 
 ing greatness upon the sea. Interior powers 
 have learned to pay us the same respect. Our 
 position, midway between civilized Europe and 
 half-pagan Asia, has given us the locus in quo, 
 by which, with corresponding physical power 
 
30 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 and training, we can command the trade of the 
 world. The very treaties which now govern the 
 commercial relations of European States in times 
 of war, have been initiated by the hold declara- 
 tion of a more enlightened policy by the United 
 States. The surrender of the right of search, the 
 immunity of the goods of neutrals, the abandon- 
 ment by Denmark of her impositions upon the 
 trade of the Baltic, the independence of the 
 western continent from foreign control, have all 
 grown out of our own just demands, our asserted 
 power, and our commercial pre-eminence. The 
 title of American citizen has become a credential 
 of safety and honor, reverenced by struggling 
 commons, respected by governing tyrants. Peace 
 with America has become a desideratum, and 
 threatened war with America would derange 
 the finances, impair the prosperity, and imperil 
 the peace of all nations. American discovery, 
 American invention, American science, no less 
 than American power, wealth, and liberty, have 
 raised her to that fulcrum of force from which 
 to move and direct the world. Fealty to our 
 own boasted liberty, justice in dealing, and un- 
 swerving loyalty to principle, would secure us 
 the title and influence of the model State. 
 
 TIIE CONTRAST. 
 
 ETo pen of mine, nor imagination of man, can 
 portray the contrast, when dissolution, degrada- 
 
THE CONTRAST. 
 
 31 
 
 tion, and cowardice shall characterize the once 
 United States ; when, torn to fragments, bereft of 
 dignity and power, they shall become the prey 
 of internal discord and foreign license. A failure 
 in Hungary, with our example still bright and 
 illustrious, is less a failure than a temporary 
 check. A failure with us is signal, fatal, and 
 universal. It cannot but relax the restraints of 
 law, let loose the passions of the evil-minded, 
 undermine the confidence of the good, threaten 
 the integrity of personal rights and personal 
 industry, and dissolve all political relations into 
 anarchy and desolation, or breed some new com- 
 bination ; for, while that which is the fruit of 
 willing compromise may live and prosper, as if 
 no difference had once alienated the parties, that, 
 which the majority yield to the mere force of 
 intimidation and pressure, will prove the tunic 
 of hTessus, fatal only to the betrayer of virtue and 
 truth. 
 
 Such is our high position among the nations, 
 and such the alternative with which we are 
 threatened. What is our condition at home ? 
 We are even told that we must abandon the 
 old Constitution, or perish. Rebellion, growing 
 hourly, and with increasing violence and force, 
 can indeed point to no liberties which the Union 
 cannot preserve, no fundamental or practical 
 franchise w T hich the government of the Union 
 will not secure. It demands a positive surrender 
 
32 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 of Federal authority to the minority choice of a 
 restricted section of the country, or the issue of 
 civil conflict. It is not my design to ask by what 
 avenue this evil has thus matured and waxed 
 turbulent and daring. It is none the less press- 
 ing and actual, whatever its origin and growth. 
 It is enough for the honest man and patriot, the 
 man who loves liberty at the risk of offending 
 clique or party, that it exists, and that he has to 
 meet the duties it involves. 
 
 If the question were simply that of a willing 
 and legalized separation of free States, no matter 
 how my national pride might suffer, no matter 
 how much we should feel degraded among the 
 nations for such wilful surrender of our glorious 
 birthright at the behests of the institution which 
 would he the wedge of our separation, I, for one, 
 could trust Providence and the civilized world 
 with the reputation and destiny of twenty millions 
 of freemen. 
 
 THE PEOPLE DISCARDED. 
 
 But that issue, however and wherever mooted, 
 is not a practical issue in the matter that now 
 challenges our attention. The people at large 
 have adopted no authorized methods by which 
 even to consider the claims of so humiliating an 
 issue. More than that, I affirm that no man, 
 wherever he may live, and whatever part he may 
 hear in this struggle, can say with truth that a 
 
THE PEOPLE DISCARDED. 
 
 33 
 
 single one of these thirty-four States has, by a 
 legal and fair method, or by any method what- 
 ever, obtained the deliberate assent of its people 
 to this rebellion. Not a single Court of Appeals, 
 even in the seven extreme States, could fail to 
 declare unconstitutional and void the acts even 
 of its own disorganizing convention, upon a fair 
 trial of its acts by its own fundamental law’, in- 
 dependent of that of the United States. In no 
 one State have a majority of the legal voters so 
 expressed a choice. Even in Texas, the vdiole 
 vote was comparatively limited and insignificant. 
 In no single State was the so-called election of 
 delegates permitted to reach the suffrages of the 
 remote tovmships and common people. Of the 
 choice of the remaining slave States, upon a free, 
 untrammelled expression, I think no man can 
 entertain a doubt. Even the wildest disunionist 
 in the border States trembles lest the people shall 
 be fully and freely heard. In Alabama, Georgia, 
 Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, there are 
 thousands who writhe under the swelling despot- 
 ism, and only need a sure support to vindicate 
 their rights. They need that protection which 
 is their right and safeguard. Many who cry 
 “ hands off",” wish peace ; but many, many more, 
 ask for peace, only to rally the hosts of evil and 
 ensure a more widespread desolation. 
 
 2 * 
 
34 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 FIRMNESS OUR ONLY SAFETY. 
 
 I ask, then, this simple question : Are we not 
 impelled by highest duty to stand by the loyal 
 and the true ? Shall we despise their cry and 
 neglect their liberation for fear of a contest with 
 their oppressors ? 
 
 Ho man doubts that early and firm support 
 would have given the Union men the control of 
 every State. The tide grew only because it 
 could grow unrestrained. If there had been no 
 Constitution, no courts, no law, no process, no 
 public sentiment, no religion, the usurpation 
 could scarcely have been more steady, high- 
 handed, and triumphant. Ho other government 
 in the world could, with open, unrebuked treason 
 in its legislative halls, have stood an hour, unless 
 the traitors assumed of it, as they seem to have 
 done, that it was respectable in mechanism, hut, 
 practically, fit only to be wound up quadrennially 
 for the distribution of spoils and office. 
 
 Human wisdom trusted in peaceful measures, 
 and if precaution and comity had gone hand in 
 hand, all would have been well ; but now the 
 issue comes on apace, and nothing is left hut 
 vindication of authority. I would go to the ex- 
 treme of honorable concession, hut when conces- 
 sion aggravates rebellion, when its announcement 
 is received as weakness, when the proffer of the 
 hand is disdainfully rejected, and the hours of 
 
FIRMNESS OUR ONLY SAFETY. 
 
 35 
 
 lenity are employed as a season of preparation 
 for a fiercer conflict, concession becomes mad- 
 ness : it only aggravates the demands of the 
 aggressor, and disheartens the real lover of honor 
 and country. 
 
 To say nothing of public credit, national honor, 
 and the vitality of the general issue, we are pressed 
 to the point of the sword. Tort Sumter has 
 been attacked and taken ;* Fort Pickens may he 
 stormed. But where does their change of occu- 
 pants relieve the body politic ? Since first their 
 surrender was mooted, the times have changed, 
 and to make the latter of these a voluntary pre- 
 cedent for similar withdrawals from other Federal 
 soil, if it can now he held, at whatever risk, would 
 be to hind the yoke upon the deserving and loyal 
 of the Southland render their emancipation from 
 that yoke the work of a more fearful struggle 
 among themselves. Regarded separate and apart 
 from the rights of the North, East, and West, in 
 and to the waters of the Mississippi and the Gulf, 
 and the unnumbered interests which are thereby 
 inwrought into the very national fabric itself, can 
 we do less for the South itself, in this exhibition 
 of its own status, than vindicate law, assert 
 authority, and leave the issue with the God of 
 battles ? 
 
 Such an issue, full as it is of sacrifice and hard- 
 
 * “ Fort Sumter may fall” (as first delivered). 
 
36 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 ship, is to be met with zeal and holy boldness. 
 Better, far better, that we should be hurled into 
 civil conflict than wilt under the scourge of a 
 despotism more severe, and a treason more vile, 
 than the world has ever witnessed. Tell me not 
 that you would spare the flow of fraternal blood, 
 and prefer rather the lash of the master and the 
 sway of a despot. War, my countrymen, is 
 indeed a vast evil ; hut there is a more fearful 
 alternative, the surrender of our dearest birth- 
 right at the behest of despots and traitors. 
 
 If the legacy of the Fathers be no longer worth 
 preservation ; if law be a bugbear, and obedience 
 a sham ; if the State owe nothing to the people, 
 and the people have nothing to expect of, or to 
 render to, the State : what a mockery has our 
 Union become, what a nuisance upon the face 
 of the earth ! 
 
 And yet, look at the elements which exist and 
 would to-day triumphantly vindicate our honor 
 if they could he brought into prompt and healthy 
 exercise. Education is more general and Chris- 
 tianity is more diffused, in the United States, than 
 elsewhere in the world. The principles of gen- 
 uine liberty and the maxims of universal freedom 
 are better understood, and more heartily cher- 
 ished, in the United States than elsewhere in the 
 world. The instrumentalities for their diffusion, 
 the range of their influence, and the field for their 
 application, are here pre-eminently displayed; 
 
THE PRACTICAL ISSUE. 
 
 37 
 
 and the interests at stake, in their firm and per- 
 petual establishment, are here more precious and 
 multiform than elsewhere in the world. The 
 moral power which underlies our institutions, if 
 brought into exercise and made the inspiration 
 of a just cause, would he invincible against the 
 world. When our existence is threatened, as 
 at present, these are the elements which should 
 spring into the issue, and bend all parties and 
 factions to their control. 
 
 And now to one more practical question before 
 I dismiss the subject. 
 
 THE PRACTICAL ISSUE. 
 
 All the grievances of which the extreme vio- 
 lators of law complained before the people a few 
 months ago, are ready of adjustment. No man 
 dare deny it. What more would they have ? 
 Absolute, unqualified revolution ! absolute, un- 
 qualified re-organization ! There will even be 
 found men before thirty days shall expire, and 
 such there are now, if they dare avow their 
 views — unless we burst from the chains that now 
 fetter us, and rush to arms to vindicate our im- 
 perilled liberties and rights, and strike down all 
 traitors, wherever found — I say, unless you do 
 this, and do it now , there will he found men who 
 would rather accept the code of the rebel league, 
 their governing system, and their leaders, ignore 
 the claims of the people and the heritage of the 
 
38 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 past, dissolve the government of the Fathers, and 
 accept the counterfeit, than spend one ounce of 
 treasure or risk one drop of blood to save the 
 Constitution as it is. The Union, purchased at 
 such a sacrifice, would be a hissing and a by- 
 word, a foul and loathsome thing, which it were 
 religion to trample on and annihilate. But, be- 
 cause there are always pests in society, desperate 
 robbers and constitutional thieves, we do not 
 despair of law and justice; neither because there 
 may be traitors to Liberty and the State at our 
 own hearthstones, will we abandon Liberty and 
 the State. Rather let us stand by the Constitu- 
 tion as it is, meeting with warm hearts and hands 
 those political brethren who, differing in non- 
 essentials, are true to the fundamental code of 
 our national being, and, at any risk, however 
 trying, or any sacrifice, however costly, execute 
 the law, protect the oppressed, vindicate our 
 honor, and perpetuate the State. 
 
 We may shrink from the encounter ; we may 
 dread the issue ; but no struggle for the right is 
 so hazardous as its betrayal ; no blood is so costly 
 as that which strangles the coward’s heart, rather 
 than be spent for life and honor. 
 
 We are fast enough already to spend blood and 
 treasure to seize the land of the stranger. Let us 
 now see if we have the nerve to maintain our own. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I advocate no 
 special party tenet in this extremity. I would 
 
THE PRACTICAL ISSUE. 
 
 39 
 
 use all the appliances that sound patriotism and 
 solid judgment can command ; but we are at war. 
 It is our own existence that is at stake. The 
 shedding of blood is a mere contingency in the 
 contest, neither commencing nor ending the 
 struggle. 
 
 And what is life to liberty ! What is the loss of 
 life to the sacrifice of all we prize dear ! WTien 
 the day comes that merchandise and commerce, 
 office and party, a venture for political change 
 for the sake of the transfer of political power, 
 and the matter of income and interest shall out- 
 weigh a high and holy devotion to country, and 
 defile its shrine by their consecration as the God 
 of America, let the earth lament and the land 
 cry out, for, surely, the heaviest of God’s judg- 
 ments shall be upon the people. 
 
 But we shall not fail. The age, which is an 
 age of struggle, will find America rooted to the 
 cause of Freedom. The Government may wither 
 for a time through the apathy of the people ; the 
 Union may be embarrassed, threatened, and ap- 
 parently dissolved, through the time-serving and 
 cowardly handling of the politician, the timid- 
 ity of the press, or the uninterrupted sweep of 
 high treason ; hut, though shame shall mantle 
 the cheek, and we hide the head, as we style our- 
 selves Americans, the remnant shall be faithful, 
 and all our struggles, however fierce, and all our 
 burdens, however vast, shall be as the refiner’s 
 
40 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 fire, to purify the cause, and push on the career 
 of genuine freedom to its ultimate supremacy. 
 
 The Hour which brings the Peril, already de- 
 fines the Duty and the Deliverance. 
 
 We shall not abuse our trust. The exalted 
 privilege of leading the nations will not lapse 
 from our control. Be not deceived ! The people, 
 prone to peace, and dreading the inroad of red 
 war more than Pestilence or Famine, are com- 
 ing with calm and deliberate minds to that 
 sublime hut solemn conclusion, that they will 
 offer their lives and fortunes, a free-will offering, 
 upon the altar of Country, Liberty, and Independ- 
 ence. I hear the shackles of party clang as they 
 are dashed upon the earth. I see the bonds part 
 that bind the devotees of self and mammon. I 
 see treasure offered without stint, or limit, to 
 purchase hack the rights imperilled. In the lull 
 which follows the fall of Sumter I see the pre- 
 sage of a tempest ! It will gather volume, and 
 roll from the East and Horth and West until you 
 shall rejoice in every sacrifice of treasure, and 
 glory in every drop of blood expended for the 
 public weal ; for the whole continent shall be 
 free, and the nations of the world shall pay you 
 homage. 
 
THE WAR: ITS NATURE AND PROSPECTS, 
 ITS MORAL AND SOCIAL EVILS, AND ITS 
 ULTIMATE RESULTS. 
 
 DELIVERED TO THE SOLDIERS OF INDIANA, AT INDI- 
 ANAPOLIS, IND., FEBRUARY 22, 1S63, WHILE COLONEL 
 OF THE 18TH U. S. INFANTRY, COMMANDING THE POST. 
 
 Soldiers of the Republic ! — I greet you, on 
 this anniversary day, with fresh assurance that 
 the memory of Washington retains its precious- 
 ness and power. His offices and trials, his -warn- 
 ings and his counsels, not only survive His de- 
 parture from the scenes of earth, hut their vitality 
 and force still energize the body politic and in- 
 spire the people he established with the senti- 
 ments of pure and substantial liberty. His 
 panegyric is written in our every-day history. 
 Observe its issues, and remember him. 
 
 True it is that the tide of civil prosperity which 
 has borne the nation on to unexampled wealth 
 and expansion since his departure seems checked 
 by the crosses of an unexampled war. True it is 
 
42 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 that the citizen has left the furrow and the work- 
 shop, the desk and the office, for the issues of 
 battle. True it is that war rages. From lake 
 to gulf, from ocean to ocean, men arm to fight. 
 A nation most free, a people most intelligent, a 
 community most richly endowed with intellect- 
 ual, religious, and physical virus, have directed 
 the forum, the pulpit, and their exhaustless wealth 
 of material power to the art of destroying life. 
 Invention writhes for grander results, that it may 
 vanquish or surpass results hitherto attained. 
 Sea and land groan beneath the weight of mon- 
 strous engines, designed to overthrow the labor 
 of the last. In proportion as modern skill had 
 gathered up the agencies for that higher type of 
 civil life inaugurated by the Fathers, so does 
 modern art surpass herself in the supply of 
 means to slay and waste. 
 
 Who are the people panoplied for the battle ? 
 What cause has called to arms a mighty nation ? 
 Why is treasure offered without stint, and blood 
 without measure? Why does the father send 
 forth his first-born, and his last-born, then follow 
 himself , while mother and wife bid them all alike 
 a hearty God-speed ? See ! All domestic ties 
 relax their grasp, freely to surrender the loved 
 ones to the embrace of the great destroyer ! 
 Marvellous spectacle in this advanced age of 
 human progress ! Strange tragedy, wherein a 
 nation acts the parts, and the astonished world 
 
THE OLD WORLD AND NEW. 43 
 
 shrinks hack from the real death which assails 
 each character and fills each scene ! 
 
 The people thus panoplied for battle are the 
 citizens of the United States of America. They 
 are citizens , — self-thinking, self-relying, self-gov- 
 erning citizens ! They are neither slaves, nor 
 serfs, nor subjects, hut co-equals in governing 
 and educating the State. Their will is law. 
 Their law is the crystallization of their concur- 
 rent will. Their country is the matured fruit of 
 many generations of self-denying toil. Blood 
 has before watered the earth, that they might 
 attain their present ability to war. The sacri- 
 fices of those generations have culminated in the 
 gift of this -wonderful faculty to destroy. 
 
 Their country has been the model and admira- 
 tion of the world, and no less the terror of all 
 -who scorn and oppress the citizen. The centre, 
 yes, the very heart of the new -world yields this 
 people life, and all its throbs so energize the 
 body politic that each pulsation, more subtle than 
 the electric flow, impels all other nations to a 
 higher mode of life and culture. 
 
 THE OLD WORLD AND NEW. 
 
 You whom I now address are citizens as well 
 as soldiers. You represent the mind as well as 
 the muscle and the martial spirit of the nation ! 
 Permit me, then, on this sacred day, to glance 
 still again at the proportions of this surpassing 
 
44 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 Commonwealth, and contrast it with other forms 
 of civil life, that we may better appreciate its 
 value, and may more courageously dare all sac- 
 rifices, to hasten that perpetuity which we feel 
 and know to he ordained of Providence for the 
 union of the States. 
 
 Its founders feared God ! He blessed them ! 
 Their sons erected the sanctuary in their villages, 
 and the altar by their hearth-stones. Wherever 
 in the desert or far-off islands of the sea you find 
 the word of God, and the praise of God, and their 
 blessed fruit, wherever civilization is freshest, 
 and human progress the best developed, you will 
 find citizens of the United States. Go out over 
 the world, if you please, to learn what you can- 
 not learn of this people. 
 
 Behold columns, porticos, and temples, now 
 in ruins, — ruins of the past. Will they develop 
 man ? There is no life nor real grandeur there ! 
 Behold the effete and time-worn dynasties that 
 faintly imitate the prestige of barbaric times, now 
 tottering under the pressure of the subjugated 
 people, who yearn and toil and pant for their 
 speedy overthrow ! Do they develop man, they, 
 whose sphere and fashion soon shall disappear 
 before the onward march of man, to assume his 
 rightful place upon the earth, as man ? 
 
 What is Art in the old world hut the childish 
 fondling of old-time fiction or the mythology of 
 the ancients ! What is science in the old world 
 
THE OLD WORLD AND NEW. 
 
 45 
 
 but a spasmodic struggle to attain a higher sphere 
 than the conditions of their civil life can justify ! 
 What is religion in the old world but the worship 
 of the mysterious and the old, for mystery’s sake, 
 and because it is old ! What is invention in the 
 old world but a desperate endeavor to rival the 
 progress of the new and keep in life the civil 
 state which is already overshadowed by the new. 
 What in the old world is old that does not find a 
 fresher, better type in the institutions of the 
 new ? What in the old world is new, that has 
 not been generated by some precious germ wafted 
 across the waters from the new ? What is there 
 from all those nations to engraft upon a fresh 
 and growing Commonwealth ? What have they 
 for your envy, what for your profit, beyond the 
 instructive lessons their histories impart ? 
 
 And yet, how precious are the memories of 
 the Fathers ! Hoble souls were those, to rise even 
 in the middle ages, above the level of their times, 
 and breathe such holy fragrance upon the land 
 that throughout the vales of Italy and of France, 
 along the hill-sides of Switzerland and Germany, 
 on the plains of Poland and of Hungary, and in 
 unnumbered other lesser States, the tree of lib- 
 erty sprang up and lived in the very teeth of 
 frowning tyrants. Hay, more ! Let us do honor 
 to the long succession of hallowed names which, 
 from the earliest date of the Christian epoch, 
 maintained, in pure and glowing heat, the embers 
 
46 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 of the sacred fire, and preserved those precious 
 leaves of the tree of life, and those holy laws of 
 human conduct which made it possible, in after- 
 times, for civil freedom to emerge and culminate 
 with every passing age. It is not that other na- 
 tions could not have sooner hurst the bonds of 
 feudal power to revivify the earth with the light 
 of a pure, pervasive liberty, but that they did not; 
 and that this new world was made of Heaven the 
 fulcrum point, from which that liberty might work 
 back upon the struggling nations of the old. 
 
 And thus it is that this people, now sublimely 
 showing forth the greatness of their power and 
 the terror of their outstretched arm, can bear the 
 stress, and meet the issues here involved. 
 
 THE LOYAL ABE PROSPEROUS. 
 
 I said war rages ! It is the great American 
 Republic that is armed for battle. Even her 
 children mimic war, and employ for toys the 
 sword and. drum and trumpet. And yet, with 
 all the din of preparation — with all the munifi- 
 cence of expended treasure — with all the groan- 
 ing arsenals replete with instruments of death — 
 with all the array of marching columns and long 
 extended fleets, what strange facts are patent to 
 us all. The earth labors to outdo herself! The 
 granaries burst with plenty. The husbandman 
 has no need to garner up for future use, but 
 yields his surfeit to other nations that are fed by 
 
WHY THIS WAR. 
 
 47 
 
 this. The marts of trade are full of busy life ! 
 The loom hums on with undiminished zeal, and 
 the steam-sped car, or ship, goes out and comes 
 again, with ever expanding and multiplying 
 profit. Surely, such a nation has no common 
 mission to fulfil ! Surely, this war now waged 
 needs hut a high and holy impulse to place this 
 people on the pinnacle of the earth, a beacon 
 light to all, the deliverer of all. 
 
 WHY THIS WAR. 
 
 Why, then, this war ? I need not tread upon 
 party issues. I simply recite such pregnant facts 
 as point my lesson. It is the oft-told tale of 
 human struggle to he free. It is the earnest that 
 the citizen Republic will vindicate its origin in 
 its perfected destiny. It is the daring venture 
 of a great and mighty people to teach all nations 
 how T other nations failed, and, therein, to peril 
 even the national life itself, upon the pledge, to 
 make Freedom a fact, and Liberty a personal 
 and universal experience. 
 
 The fundamental cause no man denies. The 
 maxims of human pride, and the pretensions of 
 the few, to make the law for all, which bound 
 tight the chains about the patriots of earlier 
 times, began to exact their claims upon the 
 heritage of the Fathers. That which was abnor- 
 mal and strange, in a perfect state, but was 
 branded upon the national life at its very birth, 
 
48 
 
 CBISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 began to usurp the functions of the State it lived 
 upon. The exception, unfortunately induced, 
 and unhappily transmitted, assumed to become 
 the law , and to dictate the maxims of a Godless, 
 cruel age to an age of Christian truth and liberty. 
 Not content with the indulgence of the funda- 
 mental law which gave it tolerance, while antici- 
 pating its early end, this excrescence of human 
 slavery assumed to mould the public shape in 
 harmony with its own deformities. Exactions, 
 consented to, assumed the tone and place of 
 intrinsic rights. Resistance withheld, but tem- 
 pered its appetite for new demands. As its por- 
 tion of the national substance wasted, under its 
 baleful creed, it coveted the richer portion of the 
 Commonwealth, and cried, give — give — until the 
 nation, heedless of all former distinctions of 
 party or belief, cried out, with an united voice, 
 “ Thus far , and no farther , shall thou go. Here 
 shall thy proud waves be stayed.” 
 
 Then came outspoken, bold, and defiant asser- 
 tions of the true character of its mission, in a 
 land of liberty, to rule all or ruin all. The Con- 
 stitution, so long invoked as its protector, was 
 derided and despised ! Treason stalked in high 
 places, and rude arms were stretched out to 
 tear down the pillars of a nation’s pride. What 
 matter that the Republic outvied the world in 
 power and glory ! What matter that our com- 
 merce led all nations ! What matter that, stand- 
 
WHY THIS WAR. 
 
 49 
 
 ing between both oceans, we held the keys of 
 both oceans and the continents they laved ! What 
 matter that the world was fed at our hands, and 
 that American invention had furnished the mo- 
 tive power of all human progress, and the vehicle 
 for the electric flow of human thought ! What 
 matter that here was an asylum for the weary, 
 worn-out exile from despotic climes ; that here 
 Religion had her altars ; Education her throne ; 
 and Purity and moral health pervaded the civil 
 and the social life ! 
 
 All these (never so prosperous when freedom 
 is suppressed) were so many galling proofs of the 
 goodness and preciousness of the nation’s life. 
 These , all these, were living, breathing, speaking 
 warnings to forbear. But, no ! Even the pres- 
 ence of the nation’s flag, the garb of the nation’s 
 soldier, the ermine of the nation’s judge, the 
 footsteps of a brother, coming from a State 
 intact by the leprosy that was working in the 
 vitals of the weaker and offended part, was as 
 wormwood, to be cast-out.. 
 
 The vindication of authority, was miscalled 
 force. The issue of legal process, was an usurpa- 
 tion upon vested rights. The protection of the 
 nation’s flag, and giving sustenance to the na- 
 tion’s soldier starving in a beleaguered fort, was 
 considered war upon an independent State : until 
 Sumter — synonymous with the glory of our war 
 for National Independence, and to be known in 
 
 8 
 
50 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 future annals as the beacon spot from which 
 gleamed forth the fires of universal Liberty — 
 surrendered , but without disgrace. When, from 
 its ramparts, the flag of freedom disappeared, 
 Freedom herself mourned not! The earth, in- 
 deed, trembled as her sons rushed to arms ! Such 
 power as no monarch ever boasted responded to 
 lier cry ! But she, rising to the clouds, took new 
 inspiration from the Infinite, as the good Angel 
 of Providence was permitted to unfold the issues 
 of the coming struggle. She beheld a nation, 
 loving peace, give up the sweet luxury of peace 
 to fight for truth and liberty. She saw the bonds 
 of party untwine and estranged brothers harmo- 
 nize for the public weal. She beheld armies 
 marshalled, battles lost and won, the faithful and 
 the faithless alike to fall upon the field of strife ! 
 She beheld the sacrifice of noble souls and count- 
 less treasure ! She heard the widow’s wail and 
 the orphan’s cry ! She saw campaigns begun 
 and ended, and men’s hearts to fail them, while 
 still they struggled on ! She beheld new and 
 still newer sacrifices, hour by hour, and day by 
 day, through weary months or years, until a 
 nation, invincible against the world in arms, 
 seemed prostrate at the feet of the rebellious 
 few. She knew, full well, that Liberty must 
 surely triumph, and that every waste of life or 
 treasure would only prove the value of the prize 
 to be attained at last. And such will be the issue 
 
A WORD TO THE PEOPLE. 
 
 51 
 
 of the war we wage. Faint not! Doubt not! 
 Vast in expenditure, vast in its sacrifices, vast 
 in its desolations, still more vast and over- 
 shadowing in its results to the human race, 
 will be this present, this expanding war. 
 
 A WORD TO THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Soldiers, -were my voice to reach the people, I 
 would say, Statesmen , you who love the Constitu- 
 tion of your Fathers, and the institutions they 
 so dearly purchased, cheerfully labor with your 
 counsels and your hands ! Partisans, of what- 
 ever name, however you differ in minor points, 
 gird up your loins for the final issue ! Citizens 
 of the great Republic, you whose power is the 
 State, and whose will is the law of the State, 
 dash away all doubts, for you again shall be citi- 
 zens of a restored and undivided commonwealth. 
 Church, of Christ, praise God that you live in the 
 culminating age of human progress, when your 
 prayers and praises, your self-denials and your 
 labors, but herald forth the coming day when 
 Liberty and Religion shall govern the earth, and 
 prophecy shall be eclipsed by the glories of glad 
 fruition. 
 
 But that day has not dawned. You will he 
 called to meet many grave responsibilities first. 
 War, however just and holy, has its penalties. 
 While, therefore, you fight on, for a generation 
 if need be, to vanquish this unholy rebellion, you 
 
52 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 must not forget nor underestimate its tendencies 
 and dangers. 
 
 Peace is the true destiny of the American 
 people. 
 
 Your institutions are founded upon Peace. 
 Your industry and your learning, your philos- 
 ophy and your religion, all expand in times of 
 peace, and dwarf amid the alarms of war. The 
 social life will palsy, the currents of sin will 
 course more freely, and the dangers to the com- 
 monwealth are then more serious, because their 
 progress is overlooked or slighted amid the stir- 
 ring pageants of a great and overshadowing war. 
 Crime, that would shock the most hardened, 
 stalks boldly forth ! Vice, that would make of 
 man an outcast, becomes too common for notice. 
 Excitement breeds upon itself ; and the unwonted 
 stimulus of the public pulse draws new fever from 
 every source that can intoxicate the mind. You 
 wonder , tolerate , pardon, because it is a time of war. 
 Yow is the time for the good citizen and Chris- 
 tian to bestir himself, lest God in judgment shall 
 protract the struggle. Because restraint is re- 
 laxed and rein is given to appetite, never with- 
 hold your zeal to conserve the interests of a 
 peaceful life. You cannot, indeed, repress an 
 excited pulse ; you cannot stand still as the whirl- 
 wind wraps you in its folds ; hut you can do 
 better : anticipate its coming, that you may give 
 direction to the current and provide against its 
 
THE RESULT CERTAIN. 
 
 53 
 
 ravages. Strange as it may seem, your hearts, 
 once so keen to sympathize with human sorrow, 
 and so respectful to the passing hier, will grow 
 callous, and your ear will deafen to the cry of 
 human anguish. In the incessant call upon your 
 patience and your pity, you will often doubt the 
 merit of the suppliant, and turn away from the 
 wail of the desolate. But rise to the merit of 
 the pending struggle. Remember that you, as a 
 people, are an example to the race. You, your 
 sons, your brothers, and your friends, fight for 
 universal Liberty. Your sacrifices are for man, 
 as man, no less than for those who have gone 
 forth to the battle. 
 
 THE RESULT CERTAIN. 
 
 Sublime and grand will he the history of this 
 war, if, as now, with united prayers and energy, 
 the whole people resolutely, faithfully, and in the 
 face of no matter what disaster, still fight on. 
 But, faith in great principles, assurance of glad 
 issues, and anticipations of ultimate and conclu- 
 sive triumphs, will not meet the obligations that 
 belong to every-clay life. This war, so holy, so 
 inevitable, so indispensable, in the providence of 
 God, to the elimination of the gold from the 
 dross, and the establishment of a model civil 
 State, has practical duties additional to those 
 already referred to. 
 
54 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 YOUR ENEMY. 
 
 You war with no common enemy. They are 
 of your own blood, and they know how to fight. 
 Because they fight to destroy , and you fight to 
 maintain, the unity of the States, is no reason 
 why they should shrink from your steel, or wilt 
 as your flag flashes over your advancing columns. 
 They have passed that point, and fight more des- 
 perately than in a holier cause. You peril much, 
 but they not only peril all, hut destroy all rather 
 than your victory should find anything better 
 than their lands and streams for your recovery. 
 They gather old and young to feed the flame of 
 battle. They waste and ruin ! Yet they wither 
 under the despotism they establish, and are even 
 now on the verge of bankruptcy, utter and re- 
 morseless ; while their rulers still drive them 
 down the current. 
 
 This brings no joy to us ; but when we feel our 
 sinews stiffen, when we see the loyal States so 
 prosperous, when we realize that in no great 
 measure have we exercised our powers, we know 
 that a swift, hearty, and united outpouring of the 
 infinite resources at our command, by land and 
 sea, would end the struggle, and restore the 
 nation to a better and more enduring phase of 
 civil life. 
 
YOUR TRIALS AND DANGERS. 
 
 55 
 
 YOUR TRIALS AND DANGERS. 
 
 "With all the general prosperity and thrift 
 that surrounds and vivifies the loyal States, you 
 should not forget, as soldiers or citizens, how 
 many evils abound, nor how jealously you should 
 guard your character and life. You must prove 
 how a great Christian people can war, and yet 
 rise above the contingencies of war. You must 
 learn that you will endure and suffer, but that, 
 therein, may he found your grandest victories. 
 
 Let me candidly speak of some of those evils, 
 that we may meet them squarely face to face. 
 
 The ’Expenditure of Life not wasted . 
 
 And first : there must be great flow of human 
 life ! Youth, who are the sole representatives 
 of names and households, will perish with them. 
 Perish, did I say? Yo, never! Their blood 
 shall invigorate the tree of liberty, and their 
 comrades and friends will call them blessed. 
 But there will be great flow of human life. The 
 intelligent and gifted will fall, and their place 
 must be filled by others. The sick, the wasted, 
 and the down-broken will be so much prolific 
 life lost to the body politic, and a generation will 
 repeat the waste in unnumbered types and forms. 
 All this will try you as a people. 
 
56 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 Increase of Taxation a Test of your Patriotism. 
 
 Again. The burdens of civil life, in the sup- 
 port of the government you love, will press more 
 heavily upon those who survive the issue of the 
 war. Taxation will increase. The cost of your 
 franchises will be enhanced, and your patriotism 
 will he put to a sterling test. You may feel rest- 
 less under new demands ; for it is a law of your 
 nature, and you cannot help it. You will be 
 almost tempted to abuse the Providence which 
 has jarred the even course of a peaceful life, and 
 crossed your schemes of gain or comfort. But 
 no change, based upon discontent, or a faltering 
 love of country, under whatever sacrifices, can 
 improve your lot. The government which claims 
 your support is your government, and its interests 
 are yours. Perfection of administration or policy 
 belong not to man. Labor on steadfastly for the 
 common good, and many years shall not pass 
 by until every sacrifice shall be a theme of glad 
 thanksgiving. Compare your civil blessings, 
 under all these trials, with those of other nations, 
 and you will find no weight of obligation too 
 heavy for endurance, and no burden so vast that 
 you cannot survive its pressure. 
 
 There will be Suffering. 
 
 Other burdens, no less weighty, will he added 
 to those already referred to. Poverty and mis- 
 
YOUR TRIALS AND DANGERS. 57 
 
 ery will come to many door-stones to plead for 
 adequate relief. The willows, whose husbands 
 have fallen ; the mothers, who have consecrated 
 their sons to their country’s cause, and who, sad 
 and comfortless, bemoan their loss, will look for 
 some practical test of the nation’s estimate of the 
 rights their sacrifices secured. It would be a 
 burning shame, while any live in luxury, and 
 have means to spare, that such as these should 
 sutler, or have cause to regret the sacrifice en- 
 dured. In the high tide of an excited public 
 pulse sacrifice is light and easily endured. There 
 is a pride in being recognized before the world 
 as prompt to answer to the public call, which too 
 often carries away the judgment and the brains. 
 But when desolation comes to the lonely house- 
 hold — when the staff of support is broken — when 
 penury creeps in at the windows, and no com- 
 forting friend treads upon the threshold, the lot 
 is bitter and the home wretched. See, you, that 
 no such homes abound, if your hand can extend 
 relief. Food to the hungry, clothing to the 
 naked, solace to the mourning, and the sweet 
 balm of sympathy to the downcast and wasting, 
 will turn their lot into a lot of blessing; and 
 their hearts will rejoice in every drop of blood 
 vouchsafed to preserve the nation’s liberties. 
 Kind words cost nothing ! They are a solace 
 that no sorrowing heart rejects. They bless the 
 recipient. They soften and humanize and ele- 
 
 3 * 
 
58 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 vate the giver. They partake, in nature, of those 
 ministering spirits who soar above the earth to 
 bless the pure and holy in their sorrows and 
 their cares, and speed their flight, at last, to a 
 better land, where care and sorrow are no more. 
 
 Temptations of the Soldier. 
 
 But the increased weight of governmental 
 obligation, the waste of life, the increase of 
 poverty and domestic sorrows, are not the only 
 issues from this war that test your fitness to 
 transmit the inheritance of the fathers to those 
 who are to follow you. Already have I hinted 
 at a more melancholy result of the waste and 
 mischief of a protracted war. 
 
 War, which transforms the citizen into the 
 soldier, gives new scope and force to the human 
 passions. He who was an orderly, quiet man at 
 home, and who was loved for his goodness, gen- 
 tleness, and grace, becomes, of necessity, inured 
 to deeds of daring and blood. He who was 
 reverent, sincere, and pure, is brought in contact 
 with the profane, the licentious, and the vile. 
 He whose highest pride was to deserve the favor 
 of his household, his neighbors, and his God, is 
 overwhelmed by the inevitable associations of the 
 camp ; and, by the very force of continued press- 
 ure, is tempted to follow the lead of those who 
 scofl* and deride the holy and the pure. He, 
 whose seat was never vacant in the house of 
 
YOUR TRIALS AND DANGERS. 
 
 59 
 
 prayer, forgets there is a Sabbath. He, whose 
 party or social fealty was but a synonyme with 
 unconditioned patriotism and truth, too often 
 takes up the law of license, and ignores the 
 rights of all, if he but acquire the power. Ac- 
 countability for his acts, as a soldier in the field, 
 is recognized, because the law of his new life is 
 inexorable and straight. -But accountability for 
 his social life is too often deferred until he shall 
 return again to social life. He, who was sober, 
 chaste, and temperate, takes up the social dram, 
 becomes the prey of monsters in the human 
 shape, degrades himself, destroys his better na- 
 ture, and ruin is his portion. 
 
 Even here, surrounded by the associations of 
 well-ordered, social life, how soon the enlisted 
 man is tempted to put oft* the manners of the 
 citizen, and don the independence of the soldier. 
 They who have visited this Capital, at fair, festi- 
 val, or party jubilee, now feel free to engage in 
 pleasures which would have shocked their moral 
 sense a year, or even a few months, ago. This 
 is not strange. The soldier is habitually gener- 
 ous, sharing all things in common with the com- 
 rades of his mess ; exposed to like dangers, and 
 assimilated in daily habit by the identity of pur- 
 pose and pursuit, they are no less one in all that 
 relieves the routine of daily duty, and cheers the 
 monotony of a garrison or campaign life. 
 
 You see a citizen staggering on the street, or 
 
60 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 feel an offensive thrust, or become the object of 
 a sneer, a laugh, or insulting word, and you are 
 disgusted or incensed. But, to the soldier, you 
 involuntarily extend your charity and sympathy. 
 In him, it is treated as the explosion of a little 
 surplus spirit, which expends itself in objec- 
 tionable forms, hut only lasts until the bugle 
 calls, or the drum recalls him to his post. The 
 citizen you look upon as ruined. You half par- 
 don the soldier, and feel meanly if you take 
 offence. And let it be remembered, that the 
 mean and sordid do not go to war to risk their 
 lives for others, or others’ rights. The prompt- 
 ings to the field have not the stimulus of fortune- 
 hunting, and few men enlist to better their pecu- 
 niary lot. The impulses that have filled the 
 ranks in the present war, have, for the most part, 
 been such as do honor to the human heart. 
 Heart-rending partings have been fewer; gen- 
 erous, free-hearted surrenders of loved ones to 
 their country’s call, have been more abundant 
 than in any war since the sacred wars of Israel, 
 generations before the birth of Christ. And yet, 
 the elements of a free and open-handed nature, 
 no less prove the soldier’s danger and the mag- 
 nitude of responsibility devolved upon every 
 citizen. A kind word may subdue the ruffled 
 temper. A sweet whisper of home may curb 
 the excited passion. A hearty assurance of 
 earnest wishes for his highest good may re- 
 
YOUR TRIALS AND DANGERS. 
 
 61 
 
 establish the yielding spirit, and restore that 
 trembling moral balance, which, once lost, is too 
 often lost for ever. 
 
 Yon know, and I need not remind you, how 
 one short year ago even the firm man of business 
 dropped the tear of unexplained sympathy, when 
 the first train of armed young men went forth 
 to the untried field. You remember how they 
 were followed with substantial tokens of your 
 sympathy and respect ! Are the fountains ex- 
 hausted by that overflow ? Are the sources of 
 your plenty dried up by those generous benefac- 
 tions ? Or, rather, in your safe and quiet homes, 
 have you become indifferent to their departure, 
 and so familiarized with the steady tramp and 
 the martial strains that you forget their dangers 
 and their destiny when the battalions turn upon 
 another street ? There is homely truth in this 
 belief. It takes a strong nature, thoroughly im- 
 bued with the grace and love of God, or with no- 
 ble sympathies and a ceaseless flow of patriotism 
 and love for your fellow-man, to maintain this 
 protracted draft upon the human heart. 
 
 Have I colored the picture too highly ? Hay, 
 deepen the color^ intensify the outlines, and you 
 shall never overestimate the sad tendencies of 
 an extended, protracted . war. It is easier to 
 yield to a current of human pleasure than reso- 
 lutely to stem it. To yield has the prestige, and 
 is grateful to the natural heart. To resist requires 
 
62 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 philosophy, courage, principle. Many a youth 
 has fought a gallant fight against his country’s 
 foes, who lacked the courage to control himself. 
 Many a youth whose cheek once mantled at the 
 ribald song, and who staggered, at the heaven- 
 defying oath, has learned to hear with patience 
 and without rebuke, if not to join the chorus, or 
 repeat the oath. If such prove the tendencies of 
 service in the field, what shall we say of their 
 reflex influence upon the State. How strong is 
 the impulse of the disabled, discharged, or de- 
 serted to re-live, in social and civil sphere, the 
 form of life they led when free from their re- 
 straints. How strict the restraints of home and 
 law must seem to those whose interior and 
 external life alike (beyond the range of military 
 rule) have been so different from the ethics of a 
 well-balanced, peaceful State. But when thou- 
 sands multiply by tens, and the million of men 
 now clad in martial vestments shall return to the 
 homestead and the ballot-box, how supremely 
 wise and well-ordered must be the common- 
 wealth which shall reassimilate their natures to 
 its peaceful sphere, and soothe their redundant 
 passions with the flow of overmastering goodness 
 and moral force. 
 
 OUR NOBLE ARMY. 
 
 True it is that no army ever stood in battle 
 so doubly armed with a cause so just. Ho 
 
A WORD TO PARTIES. 
 
 63 
 
 country hitherto sent forth so many of her 
 choicest sons to her defence. Never were so 
 many of the good, the holy, and the pure, found 
 battling with a nation’s foes. Never did so many 
 blessings attend, never did so many prayers fol- 
 low an armed force, as have accompanied and 
 followed the soldiers to this war. Thousands 
 will return to enjoy with zest the luxuries of 
 peace. The sanctuary will he thronged by 
 kneeling forms blessing the God of battles, who 
 hath given them their victory, and brought them 
 out of all their troubles. But thousands more 
 will gain no purification by the ordeal of arms, 
 and society itself must he their restorer before 
 they can again become her blessing. 
 
 A WORD TO PARTIES. 
 
 Keep, then, the social state alive with your 
 most unselfish, earnest efforts. Let parties, 
 ■which must always exist, and whose very vari- 
 ance is the balance-v T heel to give steady motion 
 to the civil mechanism that moves the State, 
 base all their zeal upon the fundamental laws of 
 righteousness and truth. Let learned and un- 
 learned, all crafts and callings, combine to con- 
 serve those sacred laws which, under God’s 
 blessing, will make even of war a refining fire, 
 as it is the most trying test of a people’s liberty. 
 
 Undaunted by the future, hopeful of results, 
 strive together while your brethren are in arms 
 
64 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 to deepen respect for religion and for law. Let 
 the returning thousands be cheered by the con- 
 trasts, so that crime shall shrink before their 
 martial footsteps, and under your goodly offices 
 they shall rejoice in the fruit which the well- 
 nurtured tree of liberty so generously bestows 
 upon all who respect her laws. 
 
 And you, who are so exposed to temptation of 
 such varied forms, how shall I here warn you to 
 guard the beginnings of the evils that assail the 
 soldier’s life ? Believe me, that vice is not made 
 honorable by its repetition or the number of its 
 votaries. A soldier swearing — and, alas, how 
 common ! — presents the most fearful specimen 
 of this offence against good taste and the laws of 
 God. He, whose support alone protects him in 
 the field of strife, is insulted and defied. The 
 heart is hardened, the manner brutalized, and 
 the manhood degraded. You never knew a man 
 honestly 'proud of his proficiency in swearing. 
 Never try anything in which it is not a cause of pride 
 that you become expert. Keep your self-respect , and 
 you never xvill be a coward. Be chaste and tem- 
 perate, and you will be sound and courageous. 
 In personal habits and every form of the interior 
 life of man, as man, adorn your character, as a 
 soldier, with all the best attributes of the peaceful, 
 genuine, honored citizen. 
 
GENERAL ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL EVIL. 65 
 
 GENERAL ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL EVIL. 
 
 A great war tends to centralization of power, national 
 arrogance, and the absorption of civil rights in the 
 necessities of a military rule. 
 
 A war which directs the mechanical and in- 
 dustrial arts to its support, a war which, by its 
 great expansion, appeals directly to the national 
 love of ascendency over other nations, a Avar, like 
 the present, which, Avhile internal in its cause 
 and operations, is nevertheless general in its 
 physical effects upon the industry of all nations, 
 is fraught with substantial dangers to the com- 
 monwealth itself. 
 
 In the first place, you become the object of 
 widespread jealousy, if not hate. While good 
 men and lovers of liberty the world over rejoice 
 in all that develops liberty, it is far otherwise 
 with those powerful dynasties which habitually 
 suppress the gush of free instincts, and use the 
 State for individual aggrandizement alone. 
 
 Your institutions invite assault. Their very 
 existence doubles the guard of half the continental 
 powers. Your living example speaks to all 
 nations of a future for themselves. For nearly 
 one hundred years the popular revolutions of the 
 old world have found sympathy in the United 
 States, and have been vitalized and refreshed by 
 the assurance of your success. Within a single 
 year your inventive genius has wellnigh dis- 
 
66 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 armed the naval fleets of Britain and of France. 
 They will do for transports. They may he recon- 
 structed and adapted to some of the purposes of 
 war. With most desperate energy the machine- 
 shops and dock-yards of those great rival States 
 are laboring, night and day, to make them useful 
 in some such forms. That naval duel upon the 
 waters of Hampton Roads, which sank the Cum- 
 berland and Congress, had wider range of scope 
 and mischief than you at first supposed. The 
 balls of the Monitor which glanced from the walls of 
 the Merrimac , penetrated the hulk of every European 
 fleet. The sloping sides of the Merrimac, which 
 deflected the halls of the Monitor, at the same 
 time resisted all projectiles that European skill 
 had yet devised. The Merrimac, doomed in the 
 charge of traitors, went to her own fate. The 
 Monitor has also passed away, hut her many con- 
 sorts float on, the fear of traitors and the spectre 
 to disturb the sleep of despots. 
 
 Europe flies to new expenditures of treasure to 
 restore her naval power and prestige. But this 
 involuntary tribute to your skill is not a gracious 
 tribute. The admiration it inspires is not affec- 
 tionate nor fraternal. It is the sentiment of the 
 fencer or boxer, who finds his rival to he en- 
 dowed with more cunning skill and more endur- 
 ing muscle. He strives the more to improve 
 himself that he may have better chance of future 
 victory. 
 
GENERAL ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL EVIL. 67 
 
 The leading European nations, constantly on a 
 war basis, and wasting the bulk of their annual 
 revenue in preparation for uncertain war ; those 
 nations, so faithless of their own position that 
 they must prop up the State by a continual pa- 
 rade of armaments and arms ; those nations, so 
 suspicious of each other that continued peace is 
 never the assurance of a new-year’s birth, are not, 
 cannot be, your sincere and disinterested friends. 
 While you only advanced in the arts of peace 
 and domestic virtue ; while you fed them, clothed 
 them, and supplied them with newly-invented 
 arms and skilful forms of mechanism, of which 
 you were slow to profit, they could easily endure 
 you. Hot so, when the} 7 must warp all their best 
 resources from other channels to hold even pace 
 with you in physical power and progress. Hor 
 upon the sea alone has the descendant of the 
 Puritan, the Cavalier, and the Huguenot equalled 
 the modern European in the art of war. Hearty 
 two millions of well-armed men have stood pan- 
 oplied for battle upon American soil within a 
 period less than half the duration of your last 
 war with England. And, even that force, so 
 vast, could be renewed, and still the nation would 
 survive. Do those foreign States suspend their 
 blows in the faint hope that the opposing sec- 
 tions will lash each other until they will become 
 an easy prey, or too insignificant and feeble for 
 fear or envy ? How long will their affected for- 
 
68 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 bearance last? And will not the unnumbered 
 taunts they burl, and the menaces they periodi- 
 cally repeat, stir up a spirit on this side the waters 
 that will need firm restraint, if you would avoid 
 the issue of a world-wide war ? . 
 
 True it is that a world-wide war may flow from 
 the issues of this. The principles for which we 
 contend have their leaven deep down in the or- 
 ganism of every social State, and ultimately must 
 triumph in every State. But let us not hasten 
 the general conflict, but wisely await our coming 
 destiny. 
 
 DANGER FROM EXCESSIVE MILITARY DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 The attainment of military power, and the 
 promise of military ascendency, develop in any 
 people a strong tendency to use that power, and 
 assert that ascendency over neighboring States, 
 and to rush heedlessly into extended wars for 
 selfish aggrandizement and glory. Military at- 
 tainments, titles, and stations become fixed, and 
 afford new avenues to place and power. Means 
 are looked upon as ends, and this very military 
 capacity, which should operate only as a subord- 
 inate instrumentality to insure security in the 
 pursuits and habitudes of peace, is loved for 
 itself and the honor it is supposed to impart. 
 Of all lessons to be recognized and felt, the most 
 difficult is this, that all force which society em- 
 ploys for its perpetuation or support, is identical 
 
EXCESSIVE MILITARY DEVELOPMENT. 69 
 
 and subsidiary, not paramount to, the civil in- 
 terests of the State itself. Many a leader has 
 started out, as did Rienzi, the last of the Roman 
 Tribunes, with holy aims and patriotic zeal, who 
 could not lay his armor down at the feet of the 
 people, Avhen the legitimate work was done, but 
 has made of the people’s confidence a throne to 
 mount upon. Not so, Washington. 
 
 While the ability of a nation to defend itself 
 is a substantial preventive against a needless war, 
 its excessive development of a military taste is 
 no less fraught with incentives to such a Avar. 
 
 As for the United States, it should be remem- 
 bered that you have warded off attack when you 
 had neither armies nor navies that would afford 
 adecpiate defence. The best defensive armor of a 
 just and mighty people is their justice. They stand 
 serene amid the shock of arms, envied by all, re- 
 spected by all. A on e wish to add them to their 
 list of foes. All feel that the existence of such a 
 State is large security to all against the assaults 
 of each. Rations, armed to the verge of insol- 
 vency and ruin, pause before they hurl the gaunt- 
 let and wage battle for uncertain issues. And, 
 besides this, so intermingled are the commercial 
 relations of modern nations; so subtle are the 
 Ihavs of affinity, language, education, and re- 
 ligion, that already the world seems tacitly con- 
 formed to the idea that war must be the last 
 resort. But for the fear of the people, and the 
 
70 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 emancipation of the people, armies would dis- 
 solve, and only a sufficient force would be main- 
 tained to insure respect and give force to the 
 civil arm. 
 
 Ambitious men love power for power’s sake, 
 as often as to secure a higher stand-point for 
 doing good; but America should never be the 
 prize or plaything of such as these. Her funda- 
 mental law is the law of peace. Religion, the 
 true basis of our institutions and our progress, 
 teaches us her SAveet lessons of peace. Her con- 
 quests are the purest and most complete, and the 
 social fabric that rests upon her maxims will be 
 immovable as the mountains, and its glory will 
 pierce the heavens. Under peaceful sway the 
 sanctuary and the school-house, the work-shop 
 and the warehouse, the desk and the forum, and 
 every type of human advancement, alike develop 
 their intrinsic capacity to bless the nation and to 
 work in full harmony with man’s nature, and 
 with a just adaptation to his better destiny. 
 
 To restore our country to such a peace, and in 
 a new and more lasting union to draw fresh life 
 from the institutions of the Fathers, we wage 
 this war. The vastness of the outlay is only 
 equalled by the priceless good to be attained. 
 The sacrifices we endure, measured in the flight 
 of coming years, will seem as nothing when com- 
 pared Avith the mercies that shall be in store for 
 us, if we push forward in the fear of God, meet 
 
EXCESSIVE MILITARY DEVELOPMENT. 71 
 
 Ws requirements, and prove equal to our assigned 
 position among the nations of the earth. 
 
 All this waste of life, these financial burdens, these 
 bereavements, this social disorder, and their tenden- 
 cies to ignore the normal laws that give the State 
 its being and its value, will only prove the value 
 of the State itself and purify its functions for a 
 wider range of efficiency and blessing ! Selfish- 
 ness, or indifference, jealousies of party antago- 
 nism, may protract the struggle. New disasters 
 may try your faith, and you may almost despair 
 of safe deliverance out of these woes. You and 
 I may not survive the struggle. Our fathers 
 fought seven years for Liberty and Independ- 
 ence. You may be called of Providence to 
 serve a double term of trial. Hecatombs of vic- 
 tims may be offered upon the same consecrated 
 altars, and every household may wither as the 
 blast of storm sweeps on ; hut in the day when 
 men’s hearts fail them, and desolation and bar- 
 barism seem to dawn upon this most blessed age 
 for man to live and labor in, the remnant shall 
 he faithful and they shall find a sure deliverance. 
 
 Go out, then, and take courage. Bind up the 
 wounds of the bleeding; comfort the fatherless 
 and the widow; pour the oil of gladness upon 
 the sick and wasting heart. Deal gently with 
 the erring. Cast him not off* an outcast ! Re- 
 member how much he has suffered, how much 
 he has been tempted. Remember the absent 
 
72 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 soldier ! lie fights and bleeds for you ! This is 
 no sentimental fiction. His arm has kept your fire- 
 sides intact of the enemy. Your fields have not been 
 sicept by fire or consuming armies. Your lands are 
 not exhausted of their products. Your rivers are 
 not closed to commerce, nor your shops to the 
 busy life of trade. Your sanctuaries are open. 
 Your Sabbath is sacred. Your halls of learning 
 are only closed that their votaries may give their 
 energies to the great struggle. 
 
 Thank God, and move on ! True, you have no 
 great and boasting allies to share the task you 
 have commenced ; but, by the memory of the 
 Fathers, whose spirits hover in the air, to bless 
 your last great struggle for independence and 
 the rights of man, move on ! True; blood flows; 
 treasure disappears ; moaning and wailing abound 
 in the land ; but, blood it was that redeemed man , 
 and by blood shall the nation be purified and exalted to 
 her rightful place among the nations. 
 
 INDIANA. 
 
 If I have said anything to inspire the tempted 
 soldier with new sentiments of self-respect, to 
 stimulate his pride of country and his courage, in 
 this great battle for freedom, I shall be content. 
 All this seems superfluous to Indiana troops. 
 If I were disposed to commend you, I could 
 say, that although a stranger here, six months 
 ago, I am already knit to you by many grateful 
 
INDIANA. 
 
 73 
 
 ties. Indiana ! where else is there so much just 
 pride in those who have left their native State to 
 battle for the Commonwealth ! Indiana ! where 
 else have legions sprang forth so promptly at 
 each successive call ! Indiana ! where else has 
 a name become a synonvme of victory ! 
 
 Is it where the mistress of waters spreads wide 
 her robes to greet the waters of the gulf? Is it 
 upon some narrow island on the coast, where 
 floods and tempests have wellnigh submerged 
 the valiant band, or, where, floating across the 
 adjoining waters, an island fortress is to be 
 stormed and captured ? Burnside, son of Indi- 
 ana, pauses amid the tempest, and smiles amid 
 the flight of unnumbered bullets to greet his 
 Indiana boys, and bid them on to concpiest ! Is 
 it before the walls of Yorktown or the heights of 
 Richmond ; at Sharpsburg , Manassas , or Antidam ; 
 at Rich Mountain , Camifax , or Cumberland; at 
 Columbus , Donelson , or Shiloh ? Ah ! yes ; it is 
 there , everywhere ! East, West, North, South! 
 Wherever Indiana sends forth her sons at all, 
 she sends them forth to tight and conquer. Her 
 banners are shattered and ragged ! Her battal- 
 ions are thinned out and wasted ! Her name, 
 which is legion, is everywhere resounded, yet 
 never will retreat or dishonor. 
 
 But I am not here, now, to congratulate Indi- 
 ana. She has done well, and deserves more than 
 I can render. 
 
 4 
 
74 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 I talk to you to-day upon sad and solemn 
 themes. Overwhelming responsibilities are on 
 us as a nation. Unexampled sacrifices have 
 been, and will be our lot. We shall pass through 
 narrow straits, where overhanging dangers prom- 
 ise ruin on either side. But look — He who notes 
 the sparrow’s fall ; He who cares for the mi- 
 nutest organism that deep down in the caverns 
 of the earth has had its life and its enjoyment; 
 He who guides the path, and guards the destiny 
 of the minutest created thing that floats in the 
 water-drop, or peoples the air we breathe as 
 truly as He wheels the universe of worlds in their 
 appointed course, has never failed, and will never 
 fail, to bless the highest order of created things 
 — Man — in His own image born, when he boldly 
 pursues the path that leads to virtue, truth, and 
 liberty. 
 
 I see, coming, foretold by Him who cannot lie, 
 a time of Peace; and, still beyond, a time of un- 
 exampled peace and righteousness ! The earth, so 
 long the stage where every unholy passion has 
 been expressed, and where the ravages of sin 
 have made a charnel house of Paradise, and of 
 this round orb, once shaped for the blissful resi- 
 dence of an unsinful race, a spot for angels to 
 look upon with tears of pain and pity, shall be 
 redeemed. The price, most precious, has been 
 paid! War shall put otf her vestments, and 
 convert her means of torture to the happy uses 
 
INDIANA. 
 
 75 
 
 of a perpetual peace. Peace shall multiply her 
 mercies, until the earth shall wonder that her 
 reign has not always been a universal reign. 
 Joy and gladness shall fill each heating heart, 
 and man shall appear again, as in the Eden of 
 the past, the companion of his Creator and the 
 Angeis. There shall be music then. Banners 
 shall float from every hill-top, and wave over 
 the heads of the blessed ; hut the music shall be 
 the outburst of pure and happy hearts, and the 
 banners that wave over that restored and ran- 
 somed people, shall he the banners of an un- 
 wasting and perpetual love. 
 
 One word more before I close. I have spoken 
 of this war in its extent , its dangers , its sacrifices , 
 and its future. I have glanced at your position 
 as a nation among the nations, and your illimit- 
 able resources for good to the race. I have 
 drawn upon that distant future for the glorious 
 issues that shall flow from all these present ills. 
 I was tempted to pause, and draw a picture of 
 the nation at the feet of the rebellious States, and see 
 how that vision would meet your favor and sup-port. 
 What a spectacle that would be ! The Missis- 
 sippi closed at any whim of a hostile power ; the 
 Ohio lined with forts and alive with fleets ; the 
 border, a chain of custom-posts, and you indebted 
 to & foreign State for leave to travel to the Gulf; 
 an ever-widening breach of interests and aims ; 
 doubled armies, and ever-increasing cost, that 
 
76 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 you might not become the prey of sudden inroads 
 or unprovoked assaults; the Gulf, itself, an inland 
 sea, in another’s grasp, to cut you off from the 
 Pacific and its infinite range of wealth and power ; 
 the natural outlets of your commerce the sport 
 of any who should chance to take offence at 
 your principles or your polity ! But no l The 
 absurdities of anything less than a straightfor- 
 ward fight to restore the Union of the Fathers, 
 at any cost, is never dreamed of, except in the 
 brains of those who, having nothing to gain of a 
 free and united people, would risk your ruin to 
 make some capital of your dissensions or your 
 fall. 
 
 Soldiers ! Citizens ! ! you know no such word as 
 fail! You know no such article as disunion! It 
 has no market here at any 'price ! 
 
 Lexington and Bunker Hill belong to Indi- 
 ana ! Yorktown and Yew Orleans belong to 
 Indiana. You will cherish them, and cherish 
 them for ever! You will not deal tenderly with 
 the burglar while he assails your throat ! You 
 will not buy your own peace, if he will only take 
 your family and your all ! They, who have ruth- 
 lessly assailed the nation’s life, will not find you 
 more facile and placable, until they renounce 
 their arms and return with penitence and new 
 allegiance to the once honored union of their 
 love. 
 
 I close. God Almighty fights for those who 
 
INDIANA. 
 
 77 
 
 fight for Him. If it be for His glory, and the 
 glory of the race ; if it be the spirit of His teach- 
 ings and His law; if it he the choice of angels 
 and the spirits of the blest ; if it be the prayer of 
 the Fathers who bend down from heaven to mark 
 the issue of this war; of Washington himself; 
 that a thorough and pervasive civil liberty, a pure 
 and life-imparting Christianity, a general and 
 well-diffused intelligence, the cultivation of the 
 highest type of manhood through the head and 
 through the heart, shall perish, and the world 
 recede for centuries, to he restored only through 
 new sacrifices and oceans of blood; then, and not 
 till then, will you fail in this struggle. 
 
 You will fight on. Be true to your flag ! You 
 fight for liberty. You will triumph. 
 
 Then, when the war shall he over, there shall 
 he no household in the land of which it shall he 
 said, with the finger pointed, that its name was 
 not represented in the great war for Independ- 
 ence ; and no cheek shall tingle with shame when 
 it be said his name is borne on no battle roll ; 
 but at every even-tide, in every home and ham- 
 let, there shall he joy and glad thanksgiving, 
 that to it, in 'part , belongs the Restoration of 
 American Liberty and the Deliverance of Man. 
 
KIND WORDS TO COLORED CITIZENS UPON 
 THE RELIGIOUS, EDUCATIONAL, SOCIAL, 
 AND PERSONAL DUTY OF THEIR RACE. 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION OF A CHURCH 
 EDIFICE FOR COLORED CITIZENS, WHILE TEMPORA- 
 RILY ON DUTY AT INDIANAPOLIS, JUNE 17, 1869. 
 
 In accordance with the desire of these colored 
 citizens who are erecting a new house for Divine 
 worship, and who believe that a few words of 
 counsel from me will aid the enterprise and stimu- 
 late their aspiration to grow strong, in all the 
 elements which give value to personal character, 
 I have so far departed from a settled repugnance 
 to speak publicly upon any subject, since the war, 
 as to consent to this familiar talk upon themes 
 that press immediately upon your condition and 
 your prospects for the future. 
 
 My profession, as you know, does not occupy, 
 nor aspire to occupy, the field of party politics 
 or general oratory ; and yet no calling whatever, 
 can entirely absolve any Christian man from the 
 ever present obligation to use influence and 
 
 79 
 
80 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 strength, at all proper times, in giving impulse 
 ancl sanction to such moral and religious agencies 
 
 o o 
 
 as are material to the well-being and advance- 
 ment of others. 
 
 I can well see that to the colored people of the 
 United States the present is a transition period 
 of great importance. It is a period wherein they 
 have much to learn and much to do. Upon the 
 spirit, courage, ambition, and purity of motive 
 with which they labor, will largely depend the 
 public estimate of their fitness for enlarged fran- 
 chises ; and, on the other hand, it is certain that 
 if they accept national blessings with passive in- 
 difference, they will go backward, instead of 
 forward, in all essential elements of civilized 
 growth and culture. 
 
 There have been recent statements in the public 
 press that in some parts of the South, where the 
 restraints of the former social condition have 
 passed away, there has been a partial revival of 
 superstitions and usages which are essentially 
 grovelling, brutish, and heathenish. While you 
 cannot hut regret, with others, any such tendency, 
 it is no less certain that some such reaction was 
 natural, and that there is laid upon you, and upon 
 the whole American people, peculiar obligations 
 at times like the present. You have, at home, in 
 the midst of an advanced civilization, the more 
 cause to make your whole life conform to the 
 highest rules of moral action, in proportion as 
 
KIND WORDS TO COLORED CITIZENS. 81 
 
 you enjoy privileges and mercies which those 
 just, freed do not possess, and can only gradually 
 attain. You know that the arm is strengthened 
 by exercise, and is weakened by disuse. The 
 blacksmith’s muscles are hard and tough as his 
 sinews. The student and the idler — the one from 
 exclusive brain-work, and the other from no work 
 at all — are useless for almost all physical endeavor. 
 So with many of your race. They need the 
 exercise of the best qualities of manhood, and 
 they need advice and encouragement from others 
 in order that the large number just emerging 
 from the pit of slavery may find support and 
 countenance from the conduct and good behavior 
 of their brethren who have enjoyed the blessing 
 of freedom for years. There are few fields for 
 the missionary and philanthropist where more 
 good can be done than among the colored people 
 of the South ; and I have undertaken this address 
 to-night because I feel that you should not depend 
 alone upon your own counsels, but seek from 
 those who have had more learning and experi- 
 ence all possible help in the improvement of your 
 race. I know that the clergy of this city, not of 
 your color, are interested in your welfare, and 
 that you will gain strength, knowledge, and wis- 
 dom by occasionally inviting them to your 
 pulpits, and by gradual growth into their habits 
 of life and thought. 
 
 I speak plainly and familiarly , hoping to quicken 
 4 * 
 
82 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 your desire, your industry, and your faith, in the 
 dawning future. 
 
 I shall not treat of education (as has heen 
 announced) in the common acceptation of that 
 term. The word is from the Latin language, and 
 one part means leader , and was applied to great 
 generals or commanders. The word “ education” 
 might almost literally be rendered in English 
 thus : “ To lead out from ignorance, and establish 
 the life of knowledge, happiness, and safety.” 
 'When you are led old from temptation, you are 
 being educated for a better life. As you are led 
 out from ignorance, so you acquire knowledge. 
 Schools and books are not entirely within brick 
 walls and muslin binding. The whole world is 
 a school-house ; every fact in daily life is designed 
 as a lesson ; and all Nature is a book of study in 
 the progress of education. 
 
 The end of American slavery has brought upon 
 your race, which so long suffered under its fearful 
 oppression, new responsibilities and duties. That 
 rescue has been so recent, that you hardly realize 
 the fact and do not yet understand fully how to 
 turn to the best advantage the freedom attained. 
 
 Many here present can remember years of 
 struggle, during which the best of Christian 
 ministers endangered life by advocating emancipa- 
 tion, and when the only channel through which 
 benevolence could liberate the black man from 
 slavery was to secure his exportation to Africa, 
 
KIND WORDS TO COLORED CITIZENS. 83 
 
 there to begin life anew. I remember very well 
 that thirty years ago the Rev. ISToah Porter, at 
 Farmington, Connecticut, had the windows of 
 his lecture-room stoned, because of prayer for 
 the slaves captured on the Armistead, who were 
 being cared for on a farm near the village. And 
 in 1849, when Frederick Douglass attempted to 
 speak at the Ohio State House, fire engines were 
 brought to the ground, to drown out the audi- 
 ence. And yet times changed so rapidly that, 
 in 1861, I had the pleasure of delivering a flag 
 to Mr. Langston, for the 58th Massachusetts 
 Regiment (perhaps the first flag so presented), 
 from the terrace of the new State House, near 
 where Mr. Douglass had been mobbed. 
 
 The cowardice of State and Church had alike 
 protracted the torture of the black race, multi- 
 plied the horrors of the dungeon, the lash, and 
 the halter, and trained up a blood-hound class of 
 leadei’s as merciless as the trained dogs of the 
 Southern planters. 
 
 Year by year the nation increased its debt to 
 justice and humanity, until God, in His mercy, 
 instead of sending fire from heaven, as He did to 
 consume Sodom and Gomorrah, only sent the 
 greatest war of human history, and in the blood 
 of a million of men, in the wasting of half a na- 
 tion, in the tears and groans of countless widows 
 and orphans, wiped out that generation of slave 
 owners and redeemed a race to liberty. 
 
84 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 If ever a curse came home to plague its in- 
 ventors, it was slavery. The inventor of the guil- 
 lotine is said to have had his own head cut off by 
 his own ingenious machine. So, blazing cities, 
 burning mansions, prostrate industry, and deso- 
 lated plantations, felt the wrath of God through 
 the march of the once despised Abolitionist. As 
 if to make the justice more signal, exquisite, and 
 complete, the “ colored troops fought bravely,” 
 and, with arms in their hands, marched side by 
 side with their co-deliverers to the enfranchise- 
 ment of their people and the rescue of the im- 
 perilled Republic. 
 
 The boasted liberty which had taken refuge 
 from the tyranny of Great Britain, and, embark- 
 ing on the Mayflower, had landed in Hew Eng- 
 land, thence to overrun a continent and become 
 the light of the world, had fattened itself upon 
 human blood and become the agent of the vilest 
 outrages upon man. It was righteous and just 
 that, in the sequel, Horthern blood should also 
 be spilled ; for Horthern timidity, avarice, and for- 
 getfulness of the God who had delivered them 
 from their oppression through the war of the 
 Revolution, had hardened their hearts, and they 
 refused to let the people go free. 
 
 As if to assimilate to the example of the chil- 
 dren of Israel who, when they were hurried out 
 of bondage, took the jewels and treasures of their 
 task-masters, so houses and lands, and all the 
 
KIND WORDS TO COLORED CITIZENS. 85 
 
 supplies of the Freedman’s Bureau that were 
 taken from the oppressors, were converted into 
 blessings to aid and comfort the ransomed. The 
 scourge of human slavery had so long sounded 
 in the land that the Hand of High Heaven turned 
 it upon Forth and South alike, and the wail over 
 the death of the first-born was heard in every 
 house, as years before it appealed in vain from 
 the cabin and the negro quarters. Serfdom had 
 ceased, though Slavery lingered. England and 
 France had advanced in the right direction ; but 
 America kicked against the pricks, and would 
 not hear the voice of Providence or the groan of 
 the sufferers. 
 
 Before the fall of Fort Sumter, in April, 1861, 
 in words to the people of Ohio, and before blood 
 was shed, I was impelled to declare this sentiment : 
 
 “We are at war. It is our existence that is 
 at stake. The shedding of blood is a mere con- 
 tingency in the contest, neither commencing nor 
 ending the struggle. We shall not fail, for the 
 age, which is an age of struggle, will find Amer- 
 ica rooted to the cause of Freedom. We shall 
 not abuse our trust. The exalted privilege of 
 leading the nations will not lapse from our con- 
 trol. Be not deceived. The people, born to 
 peace, and dreading the inroad of red war more 
 than pestilence and famine, are coming with calm 
 and deliberate minds to that sublime but solemn 
 conclusion that they will offer their lives and for- 
 
86 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 tunes, as a free-will offering, upon the altar of 
 country, liberty, and independence. I hear the 
 shackles of party clang as they are dashed to the 
 earth. I see the bonds part that bind the devo- 
 tees of self and mammon. I see treasure offered 
 without stint or limit to purchase hack the rights 
 imperilled. I see the presage of a tempest. It 
 will gather volume, and roll from the East and 
 North and West, until you shall rejoice in every 
 sacrifice of treasure, and glory in every drop of 
 blood expended for the public weal, for the whole 
 continent shall be free, and the nations of the 
 world shall pay you homage.” 
 
 Fort Sumter fell ! The rest you know. Had 
 I declared a dream ? The countless thousands 
 of fresh blossoms that so lately exhaled their 
 grateful odors from tens of thousands of hon- 
 ored graves are fresh testimony that I did not 
 then, as one never can, overestimate the grand- 
 eur, the scope, the sacrifices, and the issues of 
 that struggle. 
 
 The war came, was prosecuted and ended, and 
 with it came the end of human slavery. Slowly 
 hut surely, the bad blood that remains is being 
 purified by the application of beneficent laws 
 and the persuasion of the necessary constraint, 
 so that no long period will elapse before recon- 
 structed States shall involve regenerated hearts, 
 and the whole nation shall prosper and flower in 
 the luxuriance of a better life. 
 
KIND WORDS TO COLORED CITIZENS. 87 
 
 Neither have I recalled the past and brought 
 hack bitter memories, with the purpose of stir- 
 ring your passions, or unworthily triumphing 
 over misguided countrymen, enemies in arms, 
 but a°;ain to be brethren at heart. 
 
 The South is rescued from her worst enemy. 
 Capital and manufactures and emigration are to 
 build-up her bulwarks as never could have been 
 realized in that former unnatural life. Weights 
 are cast off, and she runs with the North an even 
 race of peaceful industry, in which each section 
 shall rejoice and glory in the triumphs of the 
 other, and find in the other the complement of 
 itself, together, to make the “ unit,” our common 
 country. 
 
 The colored people of the United States should 
 look upon the past as the rescued mariner re-lives 
 the sufferings he experienced when floating help- 
 less upon a sea of unknown peril, that he may 
 find new and more abundant cause for gratitude 
 to the Giver of all mercy, and he better fitted 
 for the realities of life. 
 
 The white man should often look hack upon 
 his career of power and its wrongful uses, to 
 learn how much he owes to a race that so long 
 suffered at his hands. 
 
 Hear what I have now to say, with an earnest 
 purpose to so live that you will convince the 
 world that you are worthy of freedom, and 
 worthy of a country which not long hence will 
 
88 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 know no limit to human privilege hut the per- 
 petual obligation to do right and deserve God’s 
 blessing. 
 
 You have different capacities, tastes, and em- 
 ployments. You have many chambers in your 
 brain, like the rooms of a house. All should be 
 occupied by the right tenants. Hate must be 
 expelled and Love must be admitted. All • must 
 work in harmony, so as to secure the best results 
 in every phase of daily life. 
 
 YOUR RELIGIOUS LIFE. 
 
 This is fundamental and will shape all life. Not 
 alone in the free Northern States, but while 
 chained to the wheels of Southern capital and 
 power, it has been a peculiarity of your race, 
 that respect for some religion has been almost 
 instinct and constant. If, for want of other 
 friends, a sense of dependence upon the Creator 
 drove any to that love of religious worship which 
 became so characteristic, it was certainly very 
 natural; but behind that was another fact, ac- 
 cepted as true by most African travellers, and 
 the best writers upon the character of the race. 
 The African, even when heathen, is enthusiastic 
 in his devotion to some Supreme Being whom he 
 accepts as the source of life and blessing. His 
 thoroughly innate capacity for music finds the 
 highest themes for jubilant praise and melodious 
 chorus, in worship. However restricted in senti- 
 
YOUR RELIGIOUS LIFE. 
 
 89 
 
 ment, or novel in execution, there is an overflow 
 of zeal ancl genuine gladness which indicates 
 some melody of soul. The Mississippi steamer, 
 the plantation, the cabin, and the forest have 
 resounded with his songs, when all that he 
 seemed to possess, to give thanks for, was mere 
 life and the chance of its continuance. Whether 
 trudging to the cotton-fields, grinding the cane, 
 or driving his team, the ever-jubilant refrain told 
 of his capacity for happiness, and how keen were 
 his susceptibilities to enjoy. 
 
 Few scenes were more full of wild and thrill- 
 ing interest than a visit to some colored church 
 at the South on the Sabbath, when a great as- 
 sembly, relieved from the pressure of week-day 
 duty, made the very walls tremble with the 
 volume of their song, and when a strange delight 
 and delirium of gladness in the worship of the 
 Great Master, seemed almost to separate soul 
 from body, and take the spirit into the presence 
 of the Invisible. This religious feeling has not 
 abated with the rescue of the race ; but, with the 
 increased latitude for its indulgence, there must 
 be a wise direction given to its fervor, in order 
 that it may prove a genuine element in elevating 
 and purifying life. It must he refined, method- 
 ized and instructed, through intelligence and 
 wise counsels. Other conditions of life, pre- 
 eminently that of systematic labor, must be 
 allied with it, and this is to be accomplished only 
 
90 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 through your own improvement and correspond- 
 ing effort to improve others. 
 
 Your Sabbath-schools vie with any in their 
 outward prosperity, and the generation which is 
 now coming to maturity, untrammelled by the 
 sneers, the contumely, and abuse of other races, 
 can look up and around, and as you address the 
 Creator of all things as your God, so you can 
 shout and sing, 
 
 “ My country, 'tis of thee, 
 
 Sweet land of Liberty, 
 
 Of thee I sing.” 
 
 Well was it for your race while in bondage, 
 that, instead of simply grovelling like the cowed 
 brute under the lash of oppression, there was 
 music in your nature that buoyed up your soul 
 and gave you access to the Throne. To be an 
 African was to be at least a natural musician, 
 and hut for that ever-present agency, the power 
 to sing, how could the race have been saved from 
 blindness and degradation too deep and utter to 
 have been rescued for generations ? 
 
 Wisely do you cultivate that faculty. It is 
 hard to find a spontaneous , cheerful singer , icho is 
 either wholly rogue or brute. Where song flows as 
 the stream, from a constant fountain, there is 
 almost always affection, fraternity, and reverence. 
 It has been the outlet for the joy of worshippers 
 through all ages, and it is the glory of countless 
 
INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 
 
 91 
 
 angels and archangels about the great White 
 Throne. It is the happiest outflowing demon- 
 stration of purity of heart, and it rises like grate- 
 ful incense to the Author of all that blesses man, 
 upward, to that God who has given to the rust- 
 ling leaves, as well as to the birds, a share in 
 the ceaseless song of Nature, and whose entire 
 universe is full of melody in sweet accord with 
 His matchless love. 
 
 The stoniest heart is reached by music. Cul- 
 tivate it for yourselves and your families, and 
 when the hour shall come in which to dedicate 
 your new sanctuary to the service of Almighty 
 God, let not praise alone abound, but make it 
 a sacred temple, from which, with a truly conse- 
 crated life, you may go forth into the world, and 
 as men see your good works they shall know and 
 testify that you walk with God. 
 
 Shouting and singing are not all of religion, but 
 when your music flows from the joy of a peaceful 
 spirit and a consistent, pure, and useful life, you 
 may rejoice that you can sing, and may well sing 
 as you rejoice. 
 
 INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 
 
 Next, and handmaid to religion, and essential 
 to an intelligent dew of religious obligation and 
 duty, in the peculiar position of your race is the 
 acquisition of knowledge. There are old and 
 gray-headed men and women among you, and 
 
92 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 some of them may not live to see the completion 
 of your new church edifice. How painfully have 
 the slow years dragged, as they waited for the 
 Year of Jubilee ! How has faith wavered, and 
 how has it seemed as if the right hand of Jehovah 
 was shortened, that it could not save, until, when 
 deliverance comes as on the wings of the morn- 
 ing, they can almost say with Holy Simei, of old, 
 “ Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace, 
 for mine eyes have seen thy salvation !” 
 
 They were youth when — to strive to read — was 
 to suffer. You, their children and grandchildren, 
 no longer a despised race, hut maturing in the 
 work and franchise of freemen, have great induce- 
 ment to bring every child and youth into the 
 speediest and best cultivation of the head as well 
 as the heart. Lead out every good faculty you 
 possess. Help educate yourselves. France has 
 repeatedly given the honors of her National 
 Academy to the colored man. The President 
 of the United States has acted in the spirit of 
 the American people, by introducing worthy men 
 of your color into places of trust and honor. 
 The ship yards and printing offices of the United 
 States no longer make complexion a test of fitness. 
 Moral progress is ever onward and upward. 
 There is no back-track for a revolution against 
 iniquity. They who do not see the advance of 
 Right are the greatest sufferers, whatever their 
 profession, trade, or calling. To be deemed 
 
INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 
 
 93 
 
 worthy as any, you must deserve as well as any. 
 It matters not wliat may he your occupation, so 
 that it he honest and useful ; but it does concern 
 you that you acquire knowledge, that you read 
 the history of your country, that you read of its 
 past so thoroughly as to understand the demands 
 of the future, and that every child shall be early 
 taught the principles involved in a fair common- 
 school education, and thus he able intelligently 
 and successfully to keep an even way with those 
 who for generations have been in your advance. 
 Thus, and thus only, through this constant etfort 
 at self-improvement, will your field of influence 
 enlarge, so that your people will command re- 
 spect, and you will be able, in turn, to assist in 
 the development and improvement of those hun- 
 dreds of thousands at the South who have not 
 had the privileges which you enjoy. 
 
 Thus will you lay the foundation for filling 
 your pulpits with well-read and successful preach- 
 ers of the gospel. It will not answer that they 
 have simply the fervor of warm hearts. They 
 must, with you, and more than you, cultivate the 
 head, as well as the heart. Thus also will lawyers 
 and physicians spring from your midst, who will 
 honor noble professions. Thus will you rise to 
 the platform of true manhood, and the finger of 
 scorn will only rest upon the ignorant and un- 
 worthy, whether black or white. 
 
94 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 POLITICAL LIFE. 
 
 The embers that now and then flash in the 
 extinguishment of the rebellion will soon he as 
 dead as the ashes about them. Sooner or later 
 you will go to the polls, and as you now pay 
 taxes, so will you take part in selecting the men 
 who collect and disburse those taxes. As there 
 were those who denied in 1860 and in the spring 
 of 1861 that a war was coming : as there were 
 men who had no faith in its success and the has- 
 tening end of slavery, so there may possibly be 
 those who will not see the position you are to 
 occupy as men. 
 
 Temporary opposition and the discussion of its 
 prudence or safety cannot long delay the consum- 
 mation, if you are faithful to manhood, and be 
 careful to deserve that which the nation tenders. 
 Prepare yourselves for the coming duty. ISTearly 
 every institution of vice in the land retains life, 
 only because honest, patriotic, and Christian voters 
 do not unite for the best men and the best cause. 
 Your votes will be wanted by everybody. You 
 will find before long that you are thought a great 
 deal of, and will be surprised how suddenly the 
 idea came to light. Become fully Americanized ; 
 that is, identify yourselves with the welfare of 
 the entire people. Inspired by religion, endowed 
 by education with the discrimination you require, 
 come squarely up to the standard of earnest, 
 
YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 95 
 
 honest, and independent freemen, and your 
 country shall have cause to be proud of you, as 
 you will be proud of your country. 
 
 Already you have your color in the army. No 
 American officer need feel ashamed to own him- 
 self “ an officer of a colored regiment.” Colored 
 regiments meet their duty on the plains, or else- 
 where, with credit to themselves and the nation. 
 Clad in the panoply of right, fill up the measure 
 of recurring daily duty, so that when you vote 
 for the first time, and have a country in fact, you 
 may feel like shouting, as I trust you may, when 
 you exchange an earthly home for the heavenly, 
 “ home at last!” 
 
 I am no politician, and seek none of its noto- 
 riety or honors. I assume a fact which I know 
 to be assured; and, as a fellow-man, I give you 
 counsel upon principles of life and conduct, 
 which, being those of Christian manhood, pre- 
 dicated upon the laws of God, govern us all, what- 
 ever our calling or color ; and I speak under the 
 conviction, that had I declined to meet you in 
 the spirit of your assurance that my work would 
 do you good, I would be unworthy my profession 
 and my citizenship. 
 
 YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 It is possible, my friends, for a freeman to be 
 an educated, Christian man, and still to lack 
 many qualities of person, or habitudes of life, 
 
96 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 that impart completeness to character, and dis- 
 tinguish an eminently useful life. 
 
 Good manners, neatness, and the outward 
 refinement of the gentleman are by no means to 
 be despised or neglected. As a people you have 
 some natural aptitudes for other social qualities 
 besides that comprehended in taste for music. 
 The white man has, in fact, made money from 
 crowded houses for years, by calling many most 
 pathetic, joyous, or spirited airs “ Ethiopian Melo- 
 dies” and has complimented you thereby. If he 
 borrows or imitates your music, see to it, that in 
 your imitations from him, you select only that 
 which is refined in manners and inures to your 
 radical and permanent improvement. 
 
 A clean, tidy cabin, however humble, if suited 
 to your means, can be a home that will speak to 
 every passing stranger of thrift, taste, and happi- 
 ness. 
 
 We have abundant social feeling, and no 
 people are more addicted to those neighborly 
 reunions which develop the impulse of mutual 
 support in affliction no less than that of sympathy 
 in all rational and substantial pleasures. 
 
 Home is the first place to make happy. Let the 
 gambling den, and all indulgence that wastes 
 time, energy, or money, without imparting sup- 
 port or happiness to your family, or benefit to 
 your head or heart, be shunned as you would 
 shun a viper. Slavery of the body and soul to 
 
YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 97 
 
 vicious indulgence is worse than the slavery from 
 which your race has been redeemed by blood. 
 It is the immediate curse of this nation, and a 
 heavier burden to hear than the national debt, 
 that physical indulgence and extravagance gene- 
 rally are dulling moral perception, and running 
 the people after that which satisfieth not. 
 
 But, my friends, the best personal and social 
 life involves labor. Work is the law of our being. 
 All work will not be alike in worldly dignity or 
 income. Life, in every sphere, has its methods 
 and values ; but the obligation of labor is ever 
 present. Nature gives her examples. From the 
 bursting seed, ambitious to come out to the air 
 and breathe life with us, to the forest tree which 
 by slow struggle has attained a power to resist 
 the tornado and put to fault all human resistance, 
 there is still found this law of patient, earnest 
 work. If you look for a man whom you would 
 trust, it is not the comer-loafer ; but it is that man 
 who, day by day, has something honest to do, 
 and does it perseveringly, and, therefore, does it 
 well. Women work; and in the sphere of home 
 they toil with a faithfulness and devotion that 
 does not alone impart to the life of man its solace 
 and consolation ; but when the care and culture 
 of children have had their due attention, woman, 
 by her intuitive perception, comes in until her 
 counsels to strengthen and fortify man for duty, 
 just as her gentleness, trust, and love make of 
 
98 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 home a heaven in contrast with the turmoil of 
 out-door life. 
 
 Life, as a rule , is all work. Pleasure is hut a 
 style of rest to body or brain, and is the balm 
 which soothes the strain of labor, and not only 
 refreshes the worker, but gives new zest to the 
 work itself. Therefore, man and woman, rejoice 
 in your ability to work. The drone of a hive 
 must die. So the idle man or woman starves, 
 and no willing companion is found to give re- 
 freshment earned by the toil of others. The old 
 proverb, that “ man is the architect of his own 
 fortunes, ” is a good one. Buildings do not 
 grow, as does the mushroom, in the night, to be 
 given to man in the morning, without labor. 
 Even the mushroom worked, though man did not 
 help it grow, and though he slept while it labored. 
 The problem is simple, and the humblest have 
 their appropriate field of labor. The whole law 
 of human progress is embodied in the question 
 of personal respectability and individual duty. 
 
 A symmetrical life is not one which has plac- 
 idly and evenly developed, undisturbed by, or in- 
 different to, its surroundings, but one that has 
 surmounted obstacles, and has realized complete- 
 ness through struggle and victory. 
 
 I have seen plaster casts that at first seemed 
 true to the original marble statue which they 
 were designed to imitate. How differently were 
 they fashioned ! The copy could have been made 
 
YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 99 
 
 by any common worker, without the expenditure 
 of much brains or genius. The original has been 
 cut from the stone itself, by countless thousands 
 of strokes, and when the earnest worker under- 
 went wellnigh infinite anxiety lest in delicacy of 
 touch, perfection of outline, or development of 
 expression, contour or feature, he should so fail, 
 that the failure would be signal and complete. 
 
 Thus, a well-developed, perfect life, has felt the 
 chisel and hammer, and has attained complete- 
 ness, not by the passive acceptance of a compress 
 into some established mould, which was only 
 mechanical and without the ethereal spirit to 
 give to the result the highest success, but has 
 been the sequel to struggles and blows. 
 
 In a small attic room, under a sky-light win- 
 dow, surrounded by all the circumstances that 
 indicated indigence, isolation, and struggle, there 
 was heard the click of the hammer upon a fine 
 chisel, as it took from the marble block such del- 
 icate fragments that they fell as dust before the 
 worker. The eye and face of the sculptor were 
 almost those of an insane man. The suspended 
 breath was followed by sighs of relief, only as 
 now and then some partial success seemed to 
 bring a single feature into harmony with the 
 ideal of the brain. 
 
 Hours passed, and the man worked on. In 
 the next garret a cobbler pegged away at his 
 honest work, wondering how a man could thus 
 
100 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 be bothered, day by day, and week upon week, 
 simply to cut a stone to shape. The sculptor died, 
 and few followed him to his humble resting- 
 place. His statue, the achievement of a life of 
 struggle, lived on, and gave to his memory the 
 savor of an honored name, and it became the 
 model for copyists and worshipping admirers so 
 long as time shall render tribute to art. Such is 
 the memory of a faithful life, and in that devo- 
 tion to work is epitomized the law for your strug- 
 gle and mine. As the river, that bears great 
 ships, and is tributary to the commerce of the 
 world, is the aggregate of unnumbered minor 
 streams, so its history is peculiar. It was not 
 always the perfect, majestic moving agent of 
 commerce. Some of its feeding tributaries 
 gained birth in little springs, whose fountains 
 had barely life enough to overflow their basins, 
 or trickle from the mountain side, to strengthen, 
 drop by drop, the nearest little brook. Sands 
 absorbed and suns dried out much of their first 
 expenditure of moisture. Summer showers, or 
 the early meltings of the winter snow, rendered 
 timely contributions, so that at last, all combined 
 with other streams, alike of humble birth, to 
 make that river. Work, progress, and the com- 
 bination of all small agencies toward a common 
 end, secured the result. 
 
 Thus began the struggle to achieve freedom 
 for your race, and that noble man, Chief Justice 
 
YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 101 
 
 Chase, who adorns the seat of Chief Justice 
 Marshall, attained his place by earnest work, 
 and, above all, that earnest work that endures 
 forever — consistent, constant work for Liberty 
 and Right. 
 
 Our individual life, from its beginning, has 
 been a struggle. We came into the world cry- 
 ing, wailing infants, as if conscious of life’s trials 
 yet to come. The first struggle for a pair of 
 boots, for marbles, tops, or other hoy-time toys 
 or amusements, was representative of the fact 
 that all acquirement was to be gained through 
 desire, labor, and struggle. 
 
 The ambition and competition, the quarrels 
 and jealousies of boyhood, youth, and manhood, 
 whether in study, amusement, or work , have all 
 had their natural place in this sphere of struggle. 
 There have been historic periods, characters, and 
 emergencies, when the distinctness, boldness, and 
 results of struggle have given names to dynasties, 
 characters, or issues, which for a time have re- 
 tained their prestige as memorable examples for 
 the information, warning, or encouragement of 
 other generations. 
 
 But, as a general law, as with the river, so it 
 is with States and races. The general result is 
 regarded by the world without regard to the in- 
 dividual elements that secured the result, until 
 Time’s Avenger, the Judge of all the earth, shall 
 declare, before the assembled universe, the exact 
 
102 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 measure of honor due even to the humblest of all 
 Ilis creatures. Individuals are smothered in the 
 rubbish of the past, but the Omniscient Father 
 has in keeping the record of every thought or 
 deed that has advanced His glory. 
 
 If the islands of the Pacific, delivered from 
 the bowels of the earth by mighty upheavals of 
 the volcano or earthquake, have been fertilized 
 and planted through the visits of the birds of the 
 air, and from seeds borne across the ocean by the 
 winds of heaven, how much more certainly are 
 the small matters of daily duty to be traced for- 
 ward and shaped by well-timed estimate of their 
 value, so that they may intelligently work to 
 the perfection of character and the blessing of 
 life. 
 
 One thought more just here. 
 
 The great victories of the battle-field have 
 almost always turned upon something so slight 
 that any other contingency would have lost the 
 issue. How did the spade and pick-axe of plain, 
 honest farmers , ninety-three years ago , this very day, 
 give to Bunker Hill its glory ? How uncertain were 
 the waiting hours that, with Blucher’s arrival, 
 gave to England her Waterloo ! How, above 
 all strange, was that madness of passion which 
 evoked the American rebellion, and out of its 
 suppression perfected American liberty, and 
 gave to the world, at last, the example of one 
 free republic. That vast expenditure of blood 
 
YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 103 
 
 and treasure was made up of individual struggle, 
 most of it unheralded and unhonored by man; 
 hut in and through that struggle, there sprang 
 forth in fresh beauty and glory, the secret of 
 success for all individual or national endeavor, 
 “ Devotion to Duty” 
 
 To your young men, I say that you are all 
 sculptors, chipping out your fortunes. No man 
 of any spirit, whether black or white, and having 
 any just idea of his capacity and destiny, -will 
 he passively cast by others from any mould, nor 
 will he accept, as satisfactory to himself, any 
 result for his life that lacks the endurance of the 
 real marble. 
 
 You are all, likewise, contributing your share 
 to the momentum and volume of that great cur- 
 rent of life which represents the republic, and 
 which, flowing out over both oceans, bathes the 
 shores and receives the out-flowing streams from, 
 other lands and people. You fight the battle of 
 life and share a part in the great warfare that 
 must culminate in victory for every faithful 
 heart, and will realize its complete glory in an 
 enfranchised world. 
 
 Take my well-intended counsels to your homes 
 and to your daily work. You will get some im- 
 pressions from what I say. You will have new 
 responsibilities because of this interview. You 
 cannot walk a rod and breathe the air you live 
 in without receiving some impression upon your 
 
104 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 health and physical being. Not a drink of water 
 passes your lips that has not its humble place in 
 the economy of your active life. Yet a thank- 
 less soul regards neither with any proper regard 
 for the Author of daily mercies, just as those 
 who live on that belt of our earth beneath which 
 the molten lava sways and surges, rebuild their 
 frail habitations just so soon as the foundations 
 cease to tremble from the earthquake, or the lava 
 from the volcano has cooled sufficiently for their 
 work. 
 
 You may go away to-night and forget, for the 
 present, all I have said. Some who have not 
 fully understood all will neglect to ask of others 
 who did. The time will come when you will 
 remember every wasted opportunity and every 
 slighted counsel. It will be your fault, one and 
 all, if you do not go away with some thought, 
 some new purpose, some fresh resolve to be better 
 and more useful planted deep down in your 
 breast. You are responsible for the improve- 
 ment of good advice just as much as for the 
 proper use of hands that are given you for labor, 
 and for obedience to that conscience which is 
 established in your hearts to declare the right 
 and reject the wrong. Many of you, I know, 
 will treat this hour as a social occasion, quite 
 pleasant as it passes, forgetful that every hour 
 has its lesson and its duties, and that there is no 
 escape from responsibility for the improvement 
 
YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 105 
 
 of every occasion in which to gain fresh incentive 
 to become stronger, purer, and better. 
 
 Remember that you are bound to take part in 
 daily struggle whether you do or do not wish to 
 do so. The winds of heaven are ever in motion. 
 When you think all is silence, far above you there 
 are ceaseless currents that affect your being, and 
 nothing in the Universe of God is at rest. 
 
 When men do not praise Him, the bursting 
 seed, the lifting grain, the speeding waters, the 
 forming crystals, the absorbing leaves which live 
 on dew and air, and those past generations of 
 shells and vegetation, which have been so long 
 maturing into limestone or coal for the use of 
 man, are all lively at work, and unceasingly join 
 in glad tribute to the Great Creator for His wis- 
 dom, goodness, power, and love. 
 
 Thus you must work and struggle, if you 
 would attain any good thing. To he sure,, it will 
 not always be easy thus to work. There is no 
 struggle and nothing gained when there is no 
 opposition or resistance. Hence reward is held 
 Out to entice labor forward. There is no pursuit 
 of an object in hand. There is no climbing of a 
 mountain after the summit is reached. But you 
 have not reached the end of life’s pursuit, and 
 every hour wasted is loss irreparable. There- 
 fore, work on. Every passion, purpose, or desire 
 of man only works toward its object through 
 struggle. It is for each one of you, for me, and 
 
106 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 for every human soul to determine on what to 
 expend effort ; and to each soul is left the more 
 solemn responsibility to see to it that he does not 
 spend his strength for bubbles that burst in the 
 grasp. 
 
 I have sufficiently occupied your time. By 
 forthcoming provisions of the Constitution of the Re- 
 public you will come into new spheres of activity and 
 duty , and corresponding responsibilities will devolve 
 upon you. 
 
 In meeting you on this occasion, I cheerfully 
 say that I hail with gladness the coming day of 
 your matured freedom. I have felt it to be my 
 duty, however feebly, to attempt to touch, here 
 and there, some chord that would so vibrate as 
 to leave a happy cadence sounding in your souls. 
 Have you ever thought a moment how far little 
 things travel, or how vast the range of mischief 
 which single acts embrace ? The disobedience 
 of our first parents, the murder of Abel, the dis- 
 grace of Ham, have each and all swept down the 
 stream of time regardless of the flight of ages 
 and the death of generations, and still these 
 memorial sins rest heavy upon all who are now 
 called upon to profit by the lessons those crimes 
 inculcate. Let your acts and lives come so nearly 
 to the requirements of duty that, through the 
 blood of the Great Redeemer, you shall do your 
 life’s work acceptably, and he spared the curse 
 that awaits the unprofitable servant. 
 
YOUR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 107 
 
 It will soon be no novelty to have white men 
 appointing places at which to meet and address 
 yon. I am here, casually, on duty as a soldier, 
 and, I hope, a soldier of the Cross, as well as of 
 my country. To refuse to address you upon the 
 presumption that the soldier has no interest in 
 your welfare which he could express, would have 
 been to stultify my conscience, and refuse utter- 
 ance to the hopes and expectations of thirty 
 years, which are no longer matters of faith, but 
 of speedy experience, as Freedom achieves its 
 crowning triumphs in equal franchise for all. I 
 have, therefore, in the spirit, as I believe, of the 
 great religious interest which now pervades this 
 people, told you plainly what seems to me to be 
 a noble path for your steps to trace. 
 
 Though in a very few days I shall complete the 
 duty which called me here, and I shall certainly 
 never meet you all again, it is my earnest hope 
 that He, whose temple you build, may meet you 
 as you first assemble within its walls. Build it 
 with open hands and willing hearts. Giving to 
 God will enrich and not impoverish. When 
 completed, let it be consecrated with the best 
 gifts you can render, the gift of hearts. 
 
 So shall your life, when ended, go not out like 
 some fading taper ; but, catching radiance from 
 the Heavens opened to receive you, the spirit 
 shall quickly pass the skies, to shine afresh and 
 forever in the transcendent effulgence of the Sun 
 
108 
 
 CRISIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 of Righteousness. Your franchise there will he 
 the liberty with which Christ shall set His people 
 free. Your country there will be a Heavenly 
 country. Your home there will be that prepared 
 for you from the foundations of the world. The 
 Temple wherein your offerings of praise and 
 thanksgiving shall he rendered there will he a 
 temple not built with hands, but that which 
 fadeth not away, eternal in the Heavens. So 
 may you struggle. So may you, so may we all, 
 attain ! 
 
A HIGHLY INTERESTING WORK. 
 
 .A. IB - S _A_ - HRj _A. - DEC .A.. 
 
 (LAND OF MASSACRE.) 
 
 Experiences of an Officer’s Wife on the Plains. Third Edition. 
 Berised, Enlarged, and Illustrated. By Col. Henry B. 
 Carrington, U.S. A. Large 12mo. Extra Cloth, & 1.50. 
 
 Published by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Philadelphia. 
 
 This edition of “ Ab-sa-ra-ka,” in addition to the narrative of the 
 original occupation of the Big Horn Country, in 1866, contains the 
 following matter: I. Revised Maps, giving New Forts, Camps, and 
 Agencies. II. Outline of Indian affairs, 1865-7, with personal con- 
 ferences held with “ The Whistler,” “ Pawnee Killer,” “ The Man that 
 stands alone on the Ground,” “ Spotted Tail,” and other chiefs. III. 
 Outline of negotiations and military operations from 1867 to 1878, in 
 that region, including the massacre of General Custer’s command. 
 IY. In memoriam. 
 
 “ The whole work is one to be commended.” — Indianapolis Neius. 
 
 “ No reader who wishes to he really informed concerning Indian life, man- 
 ners, and customs should fail to procure this most interesting volume.” — St. 
 Louis Post. 
 
 ‘'The individual who wishes to get down very near to the kernel of the 
 Indian problem, will find that Mm. Carrington can help him while she gives 
 h : m very pleasant entertainment.” — Philada. Evening Bulletin. 
 
 “It is interesting to the young, and instructive to all." — Indianapolis 
 Journal. 
 
 BATTLES 01 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 
 
 By COL HENRY B. CARRINGTON, U.S.A., M.A., LL.D, 
 
 With 40 Maps. Cloth, $6.00 ; Sheep, $7.60 ; Half Calf or Morocco, $9.00 ; 
 Half Russia or Full Morocco, $12.00) Full Russia, $15,00. 
 
 Published by A. S. Barnes & Co., New York, Chicago, and New 
 Orleans ; London Depot, Hodder & Stoughton, No. 27 Paternoster 
 Row; Liverpool Depot, Wir. Howelt,, 26 and 28 Church St. 
 
 “ To me, at least, it will be an authority.” — Ex. Prest. Woohey. 
 
 “ Fills an important place in history not before occupied.” — Hon. W. M. 
 Evarts, N. Y. 
 
 “ Will find a place in all public and private libraries.” — Hon. A. F. Perry, O. 
 “ The maps themselves are a history invaluable.” — Henry Day , Esq., N. Y. 
 “An entirely new field of historical labor. A splendid volume.” — Hon. Geo. 
 Bancroft. 
 
 “ It is an absolute necessity in our literature.” — Benson J. Lossing, Esq. 
 
 “ The maps are just splendid.” — Adj. Gen. W. L. Stryker, N. J. 
 
 “ The book is invaluable.” — W. L. Stine, Esq. 
 
 “ Will give to the author enduring fame.” — Hon. B. Gratz Brown, Mo. 
 
 “ It is a monument of national history.” — A. Rochambeau , Paris , France. 
 
 “ No man can comprehend the American Revolution without it.” — Chas. E. 
 Pearce , Esq., Mo. 
 
 “ The most accurate and impartial criticism on military affairs in this country 
 which this century has produced.” — Army and Navy Journal. 
 
 “ Fills in a definite form what has been a somewhat vague period of military 
 history.” — Col. llamley. Queen's StajT College , Eng. 
 
 “ The descriptions ol battles are vivid. The actors seem to be alive, and the 
 actions real.” — Rev. Dr. O' Crane. 
 

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