jzdS^U^^^Ji^ ^ /6i^'L!5^'?^yfeo^x/ Glass. Book. iJ :^4 / SPEECH 4-f' OP 7 ^ f HENRY CHAMPION DEIIM, Oir- COTSIIvrECTICXJX, President's ]P1 an STATE RENOYATION, DELIVERED FEBRUARY 27th, li;64. WASHINGTON, D. C. GIBSON BROTHERS, PRINTERS. 1864. 'T-r aiiaT SPEECH OF HENRY CHAMPION DEMING, OF CONNECTICUT, ON THE PRESIDENT'S PLAN FOR STATE RENOVATION, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES, FIRST SESSION, THIRTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS, Februabt 27, 1864. The House being in Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, Mr. DEMING rose and said — Mr. Chairman, I was induced to seek the floor when the House was last in Committee upon the present subject, because the two speeches to which I had listened upon the President's message paid but a passing gla.nce to what is to me its most important and most memorable feature ; I mean its plan of State renovation. As it is the first distinct inti- mation from an authoritative source that the war is not to be everlasting, and that States may yet be restored, and that the rebuilding of our dilapidated temple may yet be commenced, it deserves to be received with fuller ceremonies and with ampler honors. It is at least refreshing to those who have feared that between State secession on the one hand, and State annihilation on the other, the Federal system would be ground to atoms^, and not even territorial unity saved from the general wreck. In surveying the insurgent States we see at a glance that the elements which may create and inspire a new national life^ and those which may corrupt and destroy it, are now both floundering together in the great vortex of civil war, and that, unless this "tumult and confusion all embroiled" is to last for ever, these elements must be sum- moned to separate and recombine according to their respec- tive natures, and assert their appropriate functions, and work out energetically their inheriting aflinities of life unto life and death unto death. If the neutralizing of the ele- ments of order was the only evil of this unnatural combina- tioii, it would most pathetically appeal to all that can be done by executive interposition for its correction. But when we consider that by a stern implication of law, according to ■ its authoritative expounders, all distinction between guilt and innocence in the insurgent States is also confounded, and that the loyal Avithin the limits of this Civil War are subjected to the same pains, penalties and forfeitures with the disloyal, a case so pitiable is stated that it should appeal to heaven and earth for relief. It is to this precise anomaly that the President's plan addresses itself. It seeks to liberate order from this inert and paralyzing combination, to exempt innocence from being confounded with guilt, to separate loyalty from that un- wholesome contact which attaches to it the contagion, and subjects it, in the eye of the law, to the punishments of crime. The task essayed is one of infinite difficulties and em- barrassments, and no plan of restoration devised by finite wisdom could approximate toward completeness ai the out- set, because the facts upon which it should be based are to a great extent prospective, and because it must constantly modify and change itself according to new developments as it advances into the future. The President, therefore, has wisely abstained from proposing anything but a transitional plan^ adapted to the exigencies of tlie hour, and merely bridging the chasm between State anarchy and State restora- tion. It professes on its face to be temporary only, and not final or unchangeable; contenting itself with commencing the great deliverance, and by the necessities of the case restricting itself to such initiatory modes and such tentative processes for renovating the insurgent States as our present imperfect knowledge of their condition and limited control over them permits him to employ. In attempting to solve this most perplexing of political problems at the present stage of its evolution, no statesman who relies upon merely human observation and forethought could have adopted any difierent method. If you demand just now and here a thorough and perfect code and science of reconstruction, you must go to those who enjoy special revelations and inspired prevision of the future. Mere men must grope their way when dealing with what is beyond the limits of their knowledge, and it is by experimental processes alone that the race- has succeeded in reachin^r the certainties of science and in triumphing over the obstacles and mysteries which have beset it from infancy. While, therefore, in my judgment, the President's plan 18 not beyond cavil, it is as complete and comprehensive as the intricacies of the subject and its present development will permit, and it possesses also the rare merit of beino- just to the Government, just to the insurgent States, and just to tiie slave ; and it is to these three characteristics that I pro- pose to restrict my remarks at present.' 1. It is just to the Government. It surrenders no power or jurisdiction which the Govern- ment has ever claimed; it maintains everv law which Con- gress has passed during the Civil War ; it abandons no exe- cutive measure which the exigencies of that war has evoked- It yields to armed enemies none of their insolent demands,' and to cold friends none of their temporizing expedients. return ^^^^^f ,^*^*^« '^'^^^ "Pon this plan, they will return acknowledging all the claims of the Government which they made the pretext of revolt, and abjuring the claims which they propounded as their ultimatum of peace ihey will return not only repudiating the glosses which, or more than thirty years, they have attempted to foist upon the Constitution, but also their darling policy of extending and propagating slavery, to which, for a longer period, they have attempted to make it subservient. They will return itlTfTli^'^^^^'f *' ^^ ''^'''''' ^^^' ''^'^'^' ^^^' clarified tselt by blood of all taint and stench of secession, and which a^^^^^^^^^ its self-existence by nearly devouring one ^aUof Its assumed creators. They will find that the fire llvtvTr'^' ""''' this District has not only burnt oft' tsel a;^ ;'^^.^^"^^^^ '^" '''' ^^^ '''^ ^f i* - the soil selt, and that since their Hegira from this Hall, the ques- B klTes^b^^' their Pryors, their Keitts, their Cobbs'Ind seSl and tHr f^^^--l«^d it has been definitely ettled, and that freedom is now securelv seated upon our riX JT^'^'^f '^^ *'^ ^''"^''^^ ^"^"-^ -ci t r: of f ee Ir "'^"' ""'" ^^^^^^^^ ^'^ P^^-ted the seed of fiee lepubhcs as near the setting sun as she is herself to his rising beams, so that when her choral hymn of rejoicing liberty sweeps over the Father of Waters, it can be caught up j)y younger voices and pealed in one continuous and un- broken strain until it is lost in the deep-toned anthem of the vast, peaceful sea. They will find that their old feudal Bastile, strong and impregnable though it once seemed, has been undermined by our armies, and blown up and scattered into fragments by those of their own kin who preferred the destruction of slavery to the death of the nation. They will find that military necessities, which they themselves created, have placed Springfield rifles into the hands of slaves, from which the same necessities had previously struck ofi" the fet- ters, and that a hundred thousand of these once groveling bondsmen, marshalled into the armies of the Union and trained in military skill and discipline, now defiantly hold the acres over which they were once tracked by bloodhounds, and domineer the plantations where they once toiled under the lash of the overseer. They will return finally with won- derfully increased respect for Uncle Sam, bowing obsequi- ously to him, as a respectable living thing, self-sustained, and not sustained by their sufferance, with a power and will of his own, and breath in his nostrils not breathed into it by them, with a right hand strong enough to bruise and break, and with a face that will hereafter be a terror to all his enemies. 2. The President's plan is just to the insurgent States. And first, are those excluded from amnesty and pardon justly and rightfully excluded? This question deserves n<> nicetv of discussion, for upon it there can be but little honest difierence ofopinion. The main conditions which the Preni- dent imposes upon those he restores to pardon are contained in an oath, and the virtue of an oath lies in its obligatory and binding force upon the conscience. He therefore justly excludes from pardon all who have demonstrated by mani- fest periury their contempt of its obligations. The forsworn judges who liave surrendered honor on our decorous bench for infamy on a judgment' seat reared by Civil War, the for- sworn officers, military and naval, who have prostituted to the rebellion the skill in arms which they acquired as wards and beneficiaries of the Government, are justly and right- eously debarred from amnesty because they have not con- science or honor enough left to be grappled by an oath. •7 Crimes differ in degree ; and the experience of mankind establishes that while some can be safely pardoned without detriment to the common weal, there are others which can- not go unpunished without its constant peril or its certain destruction. The high civil and diplomatic magnates of this most unprovoked rebellion, the military Molochs whose rank entitles them to guilty pre-eminence, are left to lie unshrived, unaneled, in the pit they have digged for them- selves, because among the crimes pronounced inexpiable by the consenting voice of all the ages, is that of those arch- rebels and arch-traitors who instigate and lead a civil war, the sum and expressed essence of every crime. The society which tolerates such parricides cannot exist a moment in safety. Rome could enjoy no repose while Catiline lived. France was drenched in blood until Robespierre was guil- lotined. Davis will convulse Secessia as soon as he is not allowed to reign, and if its bonds had been worth stealing, Floyd would have robbed it before he died. The miscreants who have violated the laws of war, and ostracized themselves from human sympathy by murdering and torturing disarmed and helpless prisoners of war, are justly left to work out their own damnation ; and why ? Because to forgive a Thug who maims and murders in the name of chivalry would be an outrage upon civilization. Secondly. Are the terms imposed upon those included in the amnesty just and right ? What are these terms? There are live of them : 1. An oath to sustain the Constitution. 2. An oath to sustain the Anti-Slavery legislation. 3. An oath to sustain the Presi- dent's proclamation. 4. Slave property is withheld in gen- eral restitution. 5. Property, where the rights of third parties have intervened, is also withheld. The committee will observe that the first three of these conditions are in the form of an oath. Now, I agree mainly with my friend from Kentucky, [Mr. Yeaman,] who has spoken upon this question, when he says that great quarrels are settled by the fortunes of war and by the domination of great ideas and principles, rather than by the formality of taking oaths and recording them ; and that restoration is attained when the ideas and the forces of the nation have prevailed over the ideas and the forces of secession and 8 national disintegration. It appears to me, however, that this is an explanation of the method by which social' laws and influences, rather than political agencies, may reunite a divided society. The ideas and forces of which he speaks are embodied in human beings who, at the present stage of of our advance, must continue to be governed and directed ' by political administration and its appropriate machinery Sociology must wait for many decades before its sublime speculations can be applied to practical affairs. In political parlance, tlie elements which he represents as struggling for preponderance are loyalty and disloyalty. An oath of alle- giance may not be an infallible mode of discriminating between those who will faithfully and sincerely support a Government and those who will desert and betray it ; but who can at present propound a better test ? I can conceive of a stage in our future culmination when all the masks, disguises, and hypocrisies of mankind will be stripped off,' and their most interior motions and impulses stand revealed! I can imagine that the inhabitants of earth may yet become as perfect as the inhabitants of the higher spheres, who according to clairvoyant philosophers, are incapable of deceit and cannot speak at all without speaking the truth. But in the nineteenth century, and with our present imperfect means of penetrating men's real purposes, we must rely upon the old-fashioned oath of allegiance as the best criterion of their rectitude or want of it. It is the test which has been used in Government since the morning stars sang together ; it was used in the construction of our present system, and must be used in the reconstruction if we are to commence the work of renovation by separating the true from the false, the loyal from the disloyal, the wheat from the tares. It is objected to this plan that it pardons the rebel on con- dition of his doing a certain thing, and requires tlie loyal man to do the same thing before he can participate in a State government. The Supreme Court of the United States has unanimously decided that from the 13th day of July, 1861, the date of the approval of the non-intercourse act, there has been between 4he Government and the confederate States a civil territorial war ; and it is laid down as a principle in the same momentous decision that "the laws of war, whether the war be civil or inter gentes, convert every citizen of a 3 hostile State into a public enemy and treat him accordingly." From the outbreak of this rebellion to the present hour, on the Non-Intercourse Act, on the Confiscation Act, on the Con- scription Act, on every vigorous and earnest measure of leg- islation the gentlemen on the other side of the House have importunately invoked the Constitution and the laws, and here they have them, in full measure and running over; law certain, but law inexorable, as it was in Shylock's case; law not according to the Solicitor of the War Department, but law according to the supreme arbiter of mooted constitu- tional questions. Since the adoption of the Constitution the court has devoted itself almost exclusively to the study and interpretation of its peace side, and out of, it they have extracted power and authority enough for all the emergen- cies of peace and for all the operations and enterprises of a tranquil society. When the judges shall have given to its ivar side one tithe of the attention and study which they have given to its peace side, they will discover power enough for all the emergencies of war ; power enough for self-defense, whether the Government it organizes is attacked in the guise of secession or of revolution ; power enough to inflict full and exemplary punishment upon all who assail it, whether they are seceders, rebels, traitors, or public enemies. The decision in the prize cases is the first fruit of these new studies, covering by its vast sweep all the war legislation that has been so severely criticised and so savagely rebuked. Before the 13th of July it might or might not have been, according to the judges, a personal war. Before that time it might or might not have been that the only enemy the Government could recognize was the person engaged in the rebellion, as the opponents of the Administration have clamorously asserted, and that all others were peaceful citi- zens, entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizenship under the Constitution. But since the Non-Intercourse Act no such claim can be made, for the point is authoritatively settled by the agreement of all the judges that from that time the personal war became a civil territorial tear, giving to the United States full belligerent rights against all the inhabitants of the rebellious districts, and converting them all, in the eye of the law, into public enemies. It does not by any means follow that because the rebels 10 have forfeited all constitutional rights and constitutional guarantees, they have thereby absolved themselves from covMi- tutional obligation. They are " none the less enemies because they are traitors," says Judge Grier ; and he might have said that they have not ceased to be traitors because they are enemies. In other words, the President may elect to pursue them either as enemies or traitors, by the Constitution or by the laws of war. If he elects to pursue them as traitors, he must pursue them in accordance with the constitutional defi- nition of treason and by the mode and with the limitation it clearly indicates in the section devoted to that crime. If he elects to pursue them as enemies, there is no limit and re- straint upon his discretion but the laws of war. The Duke of Cumberland, when in 1745 he subdued the Scotch rebels, could have tried them all at a drum-head court-martial, or handed them over to the civil tribunals to be tried according to the laws of England defining treason. Here, then, you have it. It is "so nominated in the bond," that within that boundary *' marked by a line of bayonets," every citizen, whatever his conduct, whether Union or rebel, loyal or disloyal, is a public enemy, and liable to be treated as such. Now, is it not rather too late in the day to declare that all within that line do not need pardon before they can be restored to the rights of citizenship which they have forfeited as public enemies ? It is not, as has been stated by some, a '^superfluous boon" which the President tenders to the loyal man, nor has he adroitly blended together the conditions of pardon with qualifications for citizenship. It was with a full knowledge and under- standing of the effect and operation of this decision in the prize cases, and from his conviction that a man who had never swerved from his allegiance might be caught in the meshes of this legal implication that induced the President to disregard the broad moral distinction between the two classes, and to extend his clemency to all who in legal con- templation were public enemies. In the very opening sen- tence of his proclamation he offers it to all who have '^ di- rectly or bif w^ilication " participated in the rebellion. Let me now for a moment examine more in detail the terms of the President's plan. In the first place he requires that all who accept his clemency shall swear '' to henceforth faith- 11 fully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Union thereunder." That this is a just and righteous demand from all who have " directly or by implication " participated in the rebellion, the most scru- pulous and tender-hearted apologi^^t for our '^wayward sis- ters '■ will hardly venture to deny. In the second place he requires Yrom them an oath to abide by and support all the Anti-Slavery legislation of Congress during the existing rebellion, 80 long and so far as it is not abrogated by the national Legislature nor declared void by a decision of the Supreme Court. Now, inasmuch" as by the Constitution itself, the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance of it are declared to be the supreme law of the land, there is no great hardship in requiring both from the loyal and the disloyal inhabitants of the insurgent States an oath to support the supreme law of the land, so long as it continues to be valid and unrevoked. In the third place the President requires from the recipient of executive clemency an oath to sustain th^ proclamation emancipating slaves, so long and so far as it is not invali- dated by supreme judicial decision. Whether the Proclama- tions were constitutional or not is not here the question, for this is waived by the essential qualification of the oath, and left where it must eventually go, to our supreme judicial tri- bunal. If the Proclamation is pronounced by the judges un- constitutional, the oath is void ; if constitutional, it merely binds the conscience of the affirmant to sustain the Execu- tive of the United States, in a time of grievous national peril, in the exercise of his legitimate powers. In the fourth place the President's plan withholds slaves in the general restitution. And it is upon this point that in my judgment the most serious differences of opinion will arise. To those who hold that rebels who abjure the Constitution and wage war for its destruction are entitled to all the rights which it guaranties, and can only be pursued by constitutional penalties, both the emancipation of slaves and the refusal to restore them will seem the greatest of enormities. To those who hold that the inhabitants of the insurgent States have forfeited all their rights under the Constitution, and are public enemies in a state of war, with no rights but such as the law of nations accords to belligerents, the condition now under considera- tion w,ll be regarded only as the infliction of just and merit- ed punishment. Sn^^rt ti''' ''""^'"''^^S theories, from the firing upon Sumter to the present hour, proposition and reply, assertion and rejoinder, have raged and stormed as when- " From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leai33 the lire thunder." • It seems to me however, as I have already stated, that the Supreme Court of the United States has closed the high de- bate and pronounced judgment to which we are all bound deferentially to bow. The judges have unanimously agreed in affirming that a civil war between the Government and the confederate States has existed for two years and a half, and that a civil war carries with it all the legal consequences of war. Now, what are these legal consequences? They are gat^iered together from Vattel, Phillimore, and Whea- ton and compendiously summed up in the opinion of Justice JSelson, in th^ prize cases, 2 Black, 687 : '• The legal consequences resulting from a state of war between two countries at this day are well understood, and will be found described in ever, approved wk 21 T ^'f ^"f «-' '-'■ ^^^ People of the t.o counJiesZZeL^t them unla. ful-all contracts existing at the commencement of the war suspended and all made during Us existence utterly void. The insurance of enemie nro- remi.s.on of bills or money to it are illegal and void. E.xisting partnerships be- :::::;; :r::d 'T''' "''v-'' ^°^^'"^^' ^^^ dissoh-ed,and. in?ne iird l: .on of trade and intercourse, direct or indirect, is absolute and complete by the llTw , w H " r ' '" "^'"" ""' '"''■'''"'''' 'y ''' a<}.erse party as enemies' Z d'^urtlf Tr "?"'''r^""^" '' ''''''''''' P^'^P-'^^- - 1-d, (Brown... nulled. The ports of the respective countries may be blockaded, and letter^ of ZZ TJv '""■^' " ''''''' °' '''-' ^"^ ''^ '- °f P-- - nd,re tl^ , though they take no part in the contest, but remain neutral. m the ehations of all her citizens or subjects, external and internal, from a sUte of peace, is the immediate effect and result of a state of war." If this be so, if, in the language of the court, - all the property of the people of the two countries, on land and sea, arc subject to confiscation and capture by the adverse party as enemy's property," I do not see how the conclusion can 13 be evaded that tlie slave property of the insurgent States was lawful spoil and prey of war, and that the President, as Commander-in-chief and sole judge of military necessities, was authorized in taking the services of the slaves from their masters, in the only efficacious way it could he done, by an edict of emancipation. He found back of the heavy legions of armed rebels, back of the bayonets and artillery which, at Corinth, at Murfreesboro', at Richmond, were aimed at the nation's life, back of Lee and Jackson and Beauregard and Bragg and the whole multitudinous host, four million men pressed into the hated and loathsome business of feedino- clothing, and sustaining their enemies and ours. He found in the slave the bone and sinew and muscle of the social state that was hurling upon us death and destruction, the body of the grim Colossus that was clutching the nation's throat/the forage, the subsistence, the transportation, the labor,' the architect, the operative, the intrenching tool of the foe. ' To the slave it was due that a remorseless conscription could skin the land of white men, and drive all, from the " whin- ing school-boy" to the "lean and slippered pantaloon," into the fighting ranks of the rebellion. And must the Commander-in-chief of the Federal Army withhold his hand from this immense arsenal of strength and power and vic- tory? What! not break the bone, not sever the sinew, not rend the muscle, not seize the subsistence, the wealth', the material, not tear out the heart of the rebellion, when they were all at his mercy by the laws of war ? What folly, what imbecility, what treachery to the people, what perfidy'to the Government, would such a refusal imply ! Military necessity ! Why, at the time of the proclamation we were reeling and staggering under well-delivered and repeated blows. * The elections were against us. The public sentiment of the world was cold and menacing. England stood ready to avenge the defeats and jealousies of a century by pouncing upon us in our weakness, and an alliance with the Confederacy was a part of Napoleon's plan of transatlantic aggrandizement. Name tiie nation that was ever more severely pressed at home and abroad ; name the instance in the tide of time where such a necessity was more paramont, when a measure was more unavoidable to save a realm from everlasting over- throw, on the one hand, and upon the other to secure for it 14 a glory unsurpassed, a progress without end, a triumph of humanity, such as was never seen before. Fortunately for the country, fortunately for the world, the President was equal to the emergency ; he did not refuse ; he manumitted the slaves ; and in doing this but followed the example of those master States who make the laws of war and give them authority. England has by three of her military commanders turned this formidable engine against us as an unquestioned martial right. France has freely dis- tributed rescripts not only of emancipation but of enfranchise- ment, and Spain has added the weight of her authority to the same rule. When in the South American republics hos- tile factions have dashed together, they have had no scruple in liberating slaves as a legitimate mode of crippling an an- tasronist ; and it will be hard to find a modern war carried on in territories of slavery in which emancipation has not been used as a legitimate belligerent right, and used without protest. As property, it was the duty of the President to confiscate them by the only efiectual mode ; as persons in duress, unv>^illiugly contributing to the strength and resources of the enemy, it was his duty to break up the duress by the only effectual mode ; as loyal subjects panting to rush to the defense of their imperiled country, it was his duty to re- move all restraint from the free exercise of their volition by the only effectual mode ; as disloyal subjects rendering vol- untary service to their masters, it was his duty to take that service by the only effectual mode. 3. Just to the slave. Shall these once slaves but now freemen be remanded back to bondage? No: ''personal property once forfeited is always forfeited." No : slaves once legally free are always free. No, no ; thrice no, by the ashes of our fathers, by the altar of our God ! The " chosen curses," and the "hidden thunder in the stores of heaven" will forbid the rendition: a crime to them, a malediction to their masters, a shame to us, and a disgrace to the age. If these children of wrong and oppression are the lawful spoil of our victorious arms, give up to ihe enemy your proudest national memorials — the sword of Washington, the stafi' of Franklin, that time- worn but immortal parchment which first authoritatively published your independence to the world — give up to him 15 the blood-stained flags and trophies which, upon the brist- ling crest of battle, our heroic defenders have wrenched from his desperate grasp ; give up to him this Capitol itself, and throw at his feet the President's head, before you give up the most abject of these bondsmen disinthralled ; for in surrendering them you will squander one of those priceless moments, big with the future, worth more than a whole generation of either bond or free, the rare and pregnant occasion placed in your hand by the fortune of war of wiping forever African slavery from the American continent. If this deliverance is ever vouchsafed, then shall we be purged for ever of the sole source of our weakness and dis- sension in the past ; then will pass away for ever the sole cloud that threatens the glory of our future ; then will the American Union be transfigured into a more erect and shining presence, and tread with firm footsteps a loftier plane, and cherish nobler theories, and carry its head nearer the stars ; then will it be no profanation to wed its redeemed and unpolluted name to that of immortal Liberty ; then Liberty and Union will go OU;, hand in hand, and, under a holier inspiration and with more benign and blessed auspices, will revive their grand mission of peacefully acquiring and peacefully incorporating contiguous territories, and peace- fully assimilating their inhabitants ; then from the Orient to the Occident, from the flowery shores of the great southern Gulf to the frozen barriers of the great northern Bay, will they unite in spreading a civilization, not intertwined with slavery, but purged of its contamination, a civilization which means universal emancipPvtion, universal enfranchisement, universal brotherhood ; then shall we have done for the United States what Richelieu is said to have, done for France: "He found France rent asunder," » S 6( « fit * "Brawls festering to rebellion, and weak laws Rotting away with rust in antique sheaths. He re-created France ; and from the ashes Of the old feudal and decrepit carcass, * Civilization, on her luminous wings, Soared, Phoenix-lilce, to Jove. ' ' Despair not, then, soldiers, statesmen, citizens, women, who are fighting energetically for a nation's life. The cloud which now shuts down before your vision will yet disclose 16 IS surer h„,ng Peace shall be born from war, and out of chaos order shall yet emerge. We shall dwell together in harmony and but one nation shall inhabit onr sea-girt bor- der,. We seem sailing along the land, hearing the ripple that breaks upon the shore, where our recreated and regen! orated Kepubhc, after it has passed through this fiery fur- nace of war, these gates of death, shall be permanent y in- tailed. We shall yet tread its meadows and pastures green trade .n Us mart.,, hve in its palaces, worship in it. temple,' and legislate m Us Capitol. The providence of God mo^s' throngh great cycles of time. If we could onJ>- .t-.'-na. noin* m the future that commands a su"'.iently comprehensive" retrospect, all the mysteries of our historic evolution would unfold then- meaning. We should learn why our iournev to this "more perfect Union" was so long and wearisome ; ;.hv the morn was so long in breaking; why diverse races w-er"e at the outset planted on this continent ; why we strn^-led through Indian, Spanish, French, and English wars tTpo- U.cal independence; why just as the uew-born nation was hardenmg mto the bone of manhood" it was suffered to divide 1 self into hpstile armies, that have crossed each other s track, and intersected and rushed and crashed to- gether, as the planets would, if the forces which hold them in their orbits were once suspended ; why religion and knowledge and law were too feeble to bind together repelaut societies ; why bigotry and intolerance were but half-cruci- fied in our best men ; why slavery was ever generated ; whv It di, not die in the womb, and why it so long impeded th'e march of the American people to national unity and domes- tic tranquility. 1