LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 012 029 024 1 'HVklllYlfTA'M f**.. /2t Ctje Union! 1 1) e Constitution onb tl)c faros. SECESSION, A NATIONAL CRIME AND CURSE: DISCOURSE, DELIVERED IN THE TABERNACLE CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, BEFORE THE FIRST AND TABERNACLE BAPTIST CONGREGATIONS, National Fast Day, April 30th. 1863. BY DANIEL C. EDDY. PHILADELPHIA : AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY No. 530 ARCH STREET. 1863. s. ^7truggle, New England, with a few other Northern States, would be crowded out, and left shivering in the wind, while the new Union, republican in form, but despotic in character, with slavery for its corner- stone, and human bondage for its walls and bulwarks, should stretch from the Potomac to the Gidf of Mexico, from Washington to New Orleans; con- trolling that gulf, holding the keys of the Missis- sippi, circumscribing the commerce of the North-west, and taking in the gold shores of the Pacific coast. It was a beautiful dream from which those disloyal States /Jl awoke as in a horrid night-marc. It was a beatific vision which in twelve months was dissolved in blood, dissipated in tears and death. It was a popular phantasm which ended in bread riots, in the most odious conscription ever known to earth, and in a shadow on the wall of every household in the the once sunny South. Events have followed each other in rapid succes- sion. The boasted civilization of the South has been unveiled, and the world now sees it to have been but a gossamer robe covering the barbarism of slavery. Modern warfare has no horrors such as have been perpetrated by the infuriated people of the South. The sufferings of Union men have been indescribable. They have been dragged from their homes, despoiled of their property, denied the commonest civilities of life, and slaughtered without mercy. Mothers have sought refuge in the Federal camps, bearing their sick children from their sacked and burning houses ; husbands have come, leaving their dead wives where they had been shot down by remorseless cruelty. Old men have come with their flesh bruised and their bodies scarred by the lash and the torture. The Rebellion has been without the magnanimity of Justice or the dignity of Revolution. From the first it has been a thievish, murderous, barbarous out- rage, without cause, without justice, and God grant that it may be without success. As the younger Pitt 10 said of the Revolutionary War, " It was conceived in injustice, nurtured in folly, and its footsteps are marked with slaughter and desolation." And yet, our great Government, so magnanimous that it accords to traitors belligerent rights, and treats them with all the honors and courtesies of war ; so just that it has surrendered crime-dyed rebels taken on board British vessels with the emblems of treason in their hands, and given up pirate ships taken in acts of grievous felony, in compliance with the demands of international law ; so humane and merciful that the President has not yet signed the death warrant of a single traitor, nor banished those abettors of treason who have clogged the wheels of the Administration, crippled the energies of the nation, betrayed the secrets of the cabinet, and been a hundred fold more injurious and mischievous than they could have been in com- mand of pirate ships, or at the head of rebel regiments : — this great Government is asked to recognize the Southern Confederacy, lend itself to a scheme that would receive the scorn of all who love liberty through- out the world, and merit the denunciation of every coining age. "A Confederacy! A Confederacy!" is the constant demand. Peace will not satisfy. Concession will not answer. Compromise will not meet the de- mand. "A Confederacy! A Confederacy!" Let us consider who are asking for a Confederacy, and why the demand cannot be granted. /J4 11 1. Who demand a Confederacy? "Who want to have this Union broken up, this Government ruptured and the greatness of this nation destroyed? "We must look for such in different directions : 1. The aristocratic elements, and the despotic powers of Europe are saying, " A Confederacy ! A Confederacy !" However much we may appreciate the noble efforts of Richard Cobden and John Bright in the House of Commons, Baptist Noel and Newman Hall in the pulpit, the Star and the News in London, the Mercury in Leeds, the Examiner in Manchester, we cannot shut our eyes to the monstrous fact that the governing classes in England, where we should receive nothing but sympathy and assistance, desire and ex- pect the dissolution of the Union. And though we may be intensely grateful for the sympathy of Victor Hugo and Garibaldi, for the kind words and wishes of the down-trodden Italians, and the struggling Poles, we cannot be insensible to the fact that the powers now swaying continental Europe, — imperial France, and despotic Austria, Catholic Sardinia, and Protestant Prussia, would all rejoice in the downfall of this Re- public. If Russia is our friend, it is not from any inherent love of liberty, but because England and France are our enemies. The causes of this we do not discuss ; the fact is patent and palpable to all men. Royal aristocracies, privileged classes, hereditary nobility are all opposed to this nation, whose history 12 is the text-book of Polish patriotism, Hungarian revo- lution, and Italian nationality. The example of this people has been a contagion which has threatened all the nations of Europe, and shaken every throne. The existence of this Government with its simple habits, its unostentatious institutions, its economical machinery, is a standing reproach to Kings and Courts. From the hour of the adoption of the Constitution to the bombardment of Sumter, the United States stood as a peaceful but sublime protest against the usurpations of crowned monarchs and the extravagance of royal families. And when the hour of our trial came, and it seemed probable that this great light of Constitu- tional liberty would be extinguished in blood, immense satisfaction was felt in almost every Court in Europe. England and France, Governments that have most power to harm us, have from the beginning acted a cowardly and treacherous part. The sympathy we have expected has been lavished upon our foes ; the assistance we should have received has been given to armed rebels; and everything has been done which those nations dared to do, to widen the breach and make reunion impossible. The position held by English statesmen, by Gladstone, Palmerston and Russell, is that the Union is already dissolved, that a plurality of Governments here, is now inevitable; and the most they pretend to do, is to maintain a neu- trality which will put them on good footing with both 13 fragments when the war is over. The duplicity of Great Britain is shameful. A pound of tobacco can- not get through an English port without detection and yet ships manned by a hundred men can slip out without being seen. Forgetful of the honorable course of our own Government in similar cases, England has connived at the building of pirate ships, and when they have been completed, they have been manned by British seamen and tracked the ocean under the British flag. The river Clyde has been the Confederate dock yard, resounding with the hammer, night and day, on the sides of pirate vessels; and British ports in our own waters have been arsenals, collieries, and merchandise depots for the outfit and refit of these outlaw ships. While the George Gris- wold was sailing along the English coast with a cargo of bread for the starving operatives of Lancashire, the pirate Sumter was being refitted at Birkenhead, to prey upon American commerce, and plunder our mer- chant ships. While Lord John Russell was toying with Mr. Adams, the privateer Japan ran out and escaped under the British flag. All that is needed now, is to give new titles to a few of these pirate ships and make them English in name as they are in fact — calling the Alabama, the Palmerstojst, and styling the Florida, the Roebuck. Candid Englishmen admit the wrongs done us by " perfidious Albion." At that great sympathy meeting held in Manchester, Goodwin 14 Smith, Regius Professor of History at Oxford, plainly said : " No nation ever inflicted upon another a more flagrant or a more maddening wrong. No nation with English hlood in its veins had ever borne such a wrong without resentment. The case of the Alabama bore no analogy to the case of sale of munitions of war. She was not, like munitions of Avar, exported to the territory of the purchaser. She did not go — she never was meant to go — into a Confederate port ; up to this moment she had never entered a port in the Confederate territory. Built and equipped in a British port, manned by British seamen, with the English flag flying, she went forth to cruise from an English port against the commerce of our allies." We arc in no condition now to use braggadocio language toward England. By all honorable means we must avoid war with that country, but war with her would be a boon and a blessing compared with a division of this land and the destruction of this Gov- ernment. In a war with England, a nation which has large North American possessions, and whose commerce whitens every sea, there would at least be compensation ; while the gigantic crime which Great Britain would have us commit, is fraught with no- thing but gigantic woe to the commerce, manufac- tures, industry and morals of both North and South. "We cannot misunderstand the debates in Parlia- ment, nor the utterances of the press, nor the action A: 15 of the Government. The idea prevails, and is openly expressed, that a dissolution of the Union would be better for the safety of the world, and the good of mankind. England that ought to be our friend is our enemy, and no intelligence would be received with greater enthusiasm by the aristocracy than that this Government had gone down in blood, and two or three weak, imbecile, guerilla States had risen on its ruins — States that would be customers, but not rivals to wave-ruling Britannia. Here then is the first demand for the dissolution of the Union, the dismemberment of the Government, and the ruin of the nation. It comes from selfish hypocritical England, that has its foot on the neck of Ireland, its grasp on the throat of Turkey, and that has India bound to the mouth of its cannon ! It comes from France, — ambitious, mysterious, paradoxical France, that wants to vie with England in dependent colonies, and that is looking through Mexico to 257,453 square miles of glorious territory in Texas. It comes from the ambitious statesmen, the corrupt Governments, the rotten courts, the besotted tyrants, the crumbling thrones of Europe. 2. The Slaveholders of the South are shouting, " A Confederacy! A Confederacy!" This is the slave- holder's war on Liberty and the Government. There never has been anything to divide this land and destroy 16 this Government but slavery. As long as the South had political predominance and could control the legis- lation of the country, slavery was safe. But the rapid growth of free States gave to the North political power. But it was never used. The North did not lay its hand on any right or institution of the South. Slavery itself was protected and guaranteed by the laws of the land. But an extension of slavery was necessary to its existence. It was dying on its own soil, and new territories must be invaded, and new States made. And because the North would not al- low the monstrous crime against humanity, the insane idea of a new Confederacy ripened into this blood- guilty Rebellion. When men in a coming age shall read the history of this outbreak, slavery will be recog- nized as the only cause, and to future generations, the Rebellion will be known as the slaveholder's war. Four millions of blacks in the South do not want this Union destroyed. The poor whites have no in- terest in the establishment of the Confederacy, and if left alone never would have lifted a hand against the Government. The bloody hand that tore the Con- stitution to pieces in Virginia, once the mother of Presidents, was the slaveholder's hand ; the sword that pierced the flag of our country as it fell drabbling in the mire of South Carolina, was the slaveholder's sword ; the bullets and bayonets that have strewn the banks of the Potomac and the Rappahannock, and 17 filled the swamps of the Chickahominy .with dead bodies, were the bullets and bayonets of the slave- holder; the voice that has invited England and France to pour their legions down upon us, to bombard our cities and destroy our commerce, is the slaveholder's voice. But to perpetuate and extend slavery, no man from Maine to Georgia would ask the dissolution of the Union. Take out this curse from us and these States would lock their hands again in one perpetual clasp of fraternity. And the hesitancy of this nation to destroy slavery the cause of our woes, will be a matter of some sur- prise to us and to future ages. It has perjured our Judges, corrupted our Senators, dishonored our flag, and yet we hesitate to strike the blow which shall end its existence, even though now we can do it Constitu- tionally and in harmony with the laws. The whole genius of slavery is wrong. It is based on an out- rage against human nature. Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, five hundred years before Christ, said : " What you yourself desire not, that do not to others;" and one greater than Confucius has given to the world a golden rule, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them." Alci- biades twenty-two hundred years ago, declared that "Nature made no man a slave;" and Aristotle affirms slavery to be "an institution altogether unnatural." According to Blackstone it is " contrary to the princi- 18 pies of natural law ;" and Patrick Henry impulsively exclaims, "I will not justify it;" Wesley stigmatized it as the "sum of all villainies;" and in 1826 John Randolph said in Congress, " I envy neither the head nor the heart of that man who rises here to defend slavery on principle." "We must be rid of it. We cannot hope for success from God while we protect it, and try to rind " A license in this Holy Book, For brutal lust and hell's red wrong ; Give Heaven the credit of a deed, That shames the nether pit." Slavery has always ruled this country, monopolized the offices and emoluments, and shaped all the affairs of State. In the Congress that dissolved at midnight on the third of March 1861, the South had twenty-one representatives for its slave property. Lowell and Lawrence have large manufactories of cotton ; Penn- sylvania has collieries and foundries ; New York has commerce, but that kind of property is not represented. The mill, the foundry and the ships have no single representative in Congress, but slave property sends there twenty-one representatives. In the election of President under the census of 1850, the South had 120 electors, and the North 176, when if distributed according to population, the South would have had twenty-two less, and the North twenty-two more. Why should three men in Georgia, count as much as /Si 19 five in Pennsylvania in the election of President and Representatives in Congress \ The offices of the country have been largely held by Southern men. During the continuance of the Government, to the commencement of the present administration, the South has had the President twelve terms, and the North only six terms — the former holding the office forty-eight of the seventy-two years of the existence of the government. And the same disproportion will be seen if we consider the Judges of the Supreme Court, the office of Secretary of State, the President of the Senate, and the heads of the committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate. And the moment Southern supre- macy was endangered by the growth of free States, the bastard Confederacy originated. For the first time in human history, eight millions of people were dragged into a war to extend slavery ! For the first time since the world began, has a great community avowed its object in making war to be the oppression of mankind! For the first time in the annals of creation do we find that a continent must be drenched in blood to make slavery the corner-stone of an Em- pire ! Shut your eyes and there will come through the closed lids the ghastly light of this tremendous fact ! Close your ears and there will ring on them the thunder-truth of this amazing statement! This is the slaveholder's war on the Constitution and the 20 Laws, — on the Government and the flag, — on Union and Liberty. This is the second demand for dissolution. It comes from men who have fattened on the spoils of office ; from men who have enjoyed the honors and emoluments of office ; from men bound by oaths, and Constitutional obligations, and sacred associations. Slavery requires a separation from liberty, — it cannot live on the same soil: and to perpetuate that curse, your country is to be divided ; your Government be- come the sport of all men, and your flag that has been honored on every sea, be no more than an ensign of a power which has no means of avenging its wrongs, or of maintaining its honor. 3. A few traitors in the North have joined the cry, " A Confederacy ! A Confederacy !" This is the most singular and humiliating confession of all. That the monarchies of Europe, and the aristocracies of decay- ing countries should wish this rival power dissolved is not a matter of surprise. It accords with poor fallen human nature, which we see so often painfully and fearfully illustrated in the history of men and nations. That the people of the South, heated with passion, warped by prejudice, influenced by ignorance and lust of power, should want a new Government, is not so surprising after all. They know that slavery cannot live in a free land, and their desire to have a Union / 21 without a free State, without a free press, without a free school, without a free pulpit, is the natural result of the state of society in which they live. But, here in the North, in the city of Philadelphia, are men who would see the Union wrecked, the Government with all the hopes of Constitutional lib- erty stranded, the flag with its associations and deathless memories dishonored and trampled under foot. Thev cannot plead ignorance, for they know the wickedness of this mutiny, and are well aware how causeless the outbreak of violence is. And yet they would have the Government say to the disloyal States, ' ; "Wav- ward sisters, go in peace." They would have the stolen forts and arsenals, and public lands, set off to the plunderers ! They would have the power of the Government broken, the unity of the nation destroyed ! They are ready to give up the Capitol, — surrender Mount Vernon, — put the mouth of the Mississippi into hands of a foreign power. They speak patron- izingly and complimentary of Davis and his rebellious crew ; they assail the Government with wild abuse ; they misrepresent us abroad and paralyze us at home. There is no name in the language to characterize such men ; there are no epithets severe enough for the denunciation of such crimes against humanity. Traitor, was a fitting word to apply to Benedict Arnold, but is w^eak and tame when applied to men who enjoy the protection of this Government, and yet 3 22 are trying to rend it to pieces ; who have been en- riched by our institutions, and yet would bury them in one common ruin. There are presses that are pouring out their venom on the Government ; there are pulpits that are dumb to every sentiment of loyalty, and ministers of religion who refuse to pray for the President of the United States, and the success of the Federal arms ; there are merchants ready to enrich themselves by supplying the rebels with con- traband goods ; there are politicians who hesitate not to hiss like serpents at the name of the President, and be jubilant at the success of the rebels in murdering your sons and brothers. They accuse the Government of inhumanity and violence, when they are all illus- trations of the forbearance and mercy of that Govern- ment. There is not one of them that may not stand up before God to-day, and say, " Here am I, a monument of the forbearance of this imperilled Gov- ernment, and the mercy of this abused President, for had the Government been vindictive, or the President a tyrant, I should have been hung long ago." That these men will meet just retribution in the end, we believe. Judas Iscariot met a deserved fate ; Benedict Arnold has gone down to a futurity of shame ; Gorgey will be execrated whenever the story of bleeding Hungary is told ; and there will come for these men who now are willing to destroy the Govern- ment under which we live, and which will yet become 23 /3fr glorious, an infamy such as no traitors ever inherited. These men will be swept away, and the Government will live. " Let him who opposes it beware," as Gen. Butler said in his. New York speech. " The mower mows on — though the adder may writhe, Or the copperhead coil round the blade of his scythe." These three classes — the aristocrats and despots of Europe, the slaveholders of the South, and the traitors of the North, are at war with the government and are saying, " A confederacy ! A confederacy !" Each in its place is doing its utmost to sever the ties that bind these States together, and cover the continent with conflicting Republics, among which there could exist nothing but perpetual Avar and bloodshed. "The bubble of Democracy has burst," says the European aristocrat; "the States never can be put together again ; the Republic is stranded, and unless the war is soon closed, we must step in to settle the dispute, and draw the division lines between you." "We have got all we can out of the General Government," says the Southron. "We have had our forts built, our harbors fortified, our debts paid, the Indians chased from our soil, and now we wish to set up a Republic, the corner-stone of which shall be human bondage. No compromise, no concession, nothing but disunion. We go off with all your public property." "O let them go," says the Copperhead. " The North which is 24 composed of working people, ; the mudsills of society,' ought to submit to their Southern masters. Let them go; give them all they ask; pay the debts they have contracted in trying to destroy the Government ; let them have the whole of Virginia, and what they want of Maryland; let them have the mouth of the Missis- sippi; say to them, ' Wayward sisters, go in peace.' " But with such demands as these, compliance is impos- sible. If our Government ever consents to disunion, it will be the darkest day the world has seen since the fall of man. If we are driven by our own want of harmony to this result, not America alone, but the world will be afflicted. We believe a dissolu- tion of this Union is forbidden by Liberty and Law, by Nature and Almighty God. " Say ye not, A Con- federacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A Confederacy." O God give us grace not to say it ! And why can we not say "A Confederacy" to those who demand it \ 1. Because a division of this country in the present Rebellion would be a crime, per se. Stripped of all its aggravating circumstances and its flimsy pretexts it is a sin against the Most High God. Governments are instituted by God. Law is administered by divine authority. A good Government is as necessarily sanc- tioned by God as are good family regulations. It is a crime to rebel against Government and Law, the nature /^0 25 of which the Bible clearly settles. The word of God positively states that " the powers that be, are ordained of God," and that " whoever . resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God ; and they that resist, shall receive to themselves damnation." This Rebel- lion, then, is a crime, monstrous in magnitude, and fearful in its enormity. It is not a Revolution where wrongs are to be redressed, reforms inaugurated, and blessings secured, but an outlaw invasion of the rights of society. It is a crime against all Governments, human and divine. The honor of law, the security of nations, the safety of the world, requires it to be put down and punished. The moment our Government admits the right of secession, and consents to a divi- sion of our soil, it becomes party to an act of lawless- ness that shocks the world. We have no more right to sanction such a crime against Law, than we have to abolish, by act of Congress, the marriage relation. It is not a matter of mere policy, but of principle as immu- table as God's throne. It is not merely a question whether commerce and manufactures and material prosperity would be subserved by a dissolution or a con- tinuance of the Union. It is a question whether Law shall be executed and vindicated, whether Governments shall be upheld and supported ; or, whether every ad- venturous spirit may become an Absalom and set up a standard of revolt, and summon the discontented ones to arms for the overturn of public order and security. 26 2. The principle of Secession is mischievous, impol- itic, and suicidal. The principle admitted, there can be no end to division. The separation of North and South would be followed by a separation between East and West. There would be an Atlantic Confederacy and a Pacific Confederacy, and the time would soon come when scarcely two States would be found to- gether. The absurd doctrine of State rights carried out, would break up the Union into as many inde- pendent fragments as there are separate States. If each is allowed to secede at pleasure, or nullify the acts of the Federal Government while it remains, the Union is at an end, the Government dissolved. It is a principle under the application of which no Govern- ment can long exist, and no society can be secure. If the Southern States are allowed to secede now, why may not some restless adventurer lead out the City or State of New York % Why may not some recreant son of the Pilgrims take off old Massachu- setts'? Why may not some false hand pilot Pennsyl- vania out of the Union \ The principle is Constitu- tionally wrong, the theory is rotten to the core, and in the storm and terror and blood of this hour it must be repudiated. We must swing back from this revo- lutary notion of State rights to the unity of the gov- ernment and the supremacy of the Federal Constitu- tion. It is as true now as when uttered by the patriot Pericles, that "no State can be respected if 27 fragment after fragment may be detached from it with impunity, if traitors are permitted to delude and dis- compose the contented, and to seduce the ignorant from their allegiance; if loyalty is a weakness, sedition a duty, conspiracy wisdom, and rebellion heroism."' The patriotism of Pericles, the wisdom of Solon, the eloquence of Demosthenes, the integrity of Washing- ton, cannot save a nation or give unity to a govern- ment that rests on the mischievous doctrine of State rights as interpreted by Democratic casuists. Under such ruling, the Constitution is not worth the paper on which it is written ; " E Pluribus Unum " is but a lie, and the nation nothing but a mass of discordant and heterogeneous fragments. The very principle of secession involves war and bloodshed. That profound statesman who now sleeps by the sounding sea, at Marslifield, comprehended it all when he said in that never-to-be-forgotten speech: "He who sees these States, now revolving in harmony around a common centre, and expects to see them quit their places and fly off without convulsion, may look the next hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle against each other in the realms of space, with- out producing the crush of the universe. There can be no such thing as a peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great Con- stitution under which we live here — covering this whole country— is it to be thawed and melted away 28 by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun — disappear almost unobserved, and die off] No, sir! no, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the States ; but, sir, I see it as plainly as I see the sun in heaven — I see that disruption must produce such a war as I will not describe." That indescribable war has come. All the bloodshed and the crime, the waste and woe of the past two years, is the legitimate result of secession. What we have seen is but the initial letter of the horrid alphabet of secession lan- 3. The consequences of a dissolution of the Union upon the prosperity and happiness of the country would be disastrous. No one can imagine anything but constant strife between the two sections, which would prevent progress, absorb the means and re- sources of the whole land, and lead to the extinction of one faction or the other. Commerce would be paralyzed, manufactures discouraged, immigration stopped, and immense standing armies would create enormous national debts. Neither flag would have any respectability on the high seas, and the want of harmony here would invite warlike interference from abroad. It would be but a few years before England would have Maine ; and France would secure Texas and perhaps Louisiana. As to economy, it would be 29 better to make this war perpetual, than to incur the expenditures, risks, and uncertainties of the future of a divided country. A war lasting until the dawn of the next century would be less to be feared than a dismemberment of the Union. No man can tell how a slave Government and a free Government can exist side by side. No man can tell how peace could be maintained in the North West, if the mouth of the Mississippi should be in the hands of a foreign power. A division of this country reduces us to the condition of Mexico. 4. The dissolution of this nation would be a cruel blow to the struggling patriots of Europe, and a sad wrong to generations yet unborn. For seventy years this land has been a beacon to the downtrodden nations of the old world. The Declaration of Inde- pendence, the Creed of Liberty, has been ringing round the globe. That sacred sentence, "All men are born free and equal," has electrified the masses of humanity, and tyrants have been obliged to lift their iron heels from the neck of struggling patriots, who are demanding reformation and liberty. We, on whom the crisis has fallen, have no right to extin- guish the beacon light that is guiding millions to Constitutional liberty. God has placed us at the altars of freedom, and we have no right to extinguish the fires. The eyes of patriotism everywhere are 30 turned towards America ; the hopes of the world rest on this Government ; and he deserves all the execra- tion that falls on the head of coward or traitor who consents to have this hope of nations blotted out. 5. If it were not a crime, and if it were not mis- chievous to admit secession, and if no evil could come to the North through dissolution, the principles on which this Southern Confederacy is based, should forbid our consent to its establishment. We live in the nineteenth century ; in a Christian land ; we have the Bible, and the religion of Christ. But this Con- federacy belongs to the dark ages ; it is anti-Chris- tian and anti-democratic. Its corner-stone is human slavery; its avowed object is the enslavement of human beings. Can we become parties to any such iniquity \ Can we assist in laying that corner-stone 1 Four millions of slaves are now held by the South. The object of this Confederacy is to rivet the chains on these bondmen, and to open new territories in the Southwest, where these four million may be increased to ten million. Can we consent to that] What would be the verdict of posterity ? How should we stand before the nations of the earth'? What would be our attitude towards God ? Did we consent to such a Confederacy, our dead fathers might rise and curse us, and the silent heroes of the Chickahominy and the Rappahannock might come from their graves 31 and blush for us ! Well might the sun refuse to shine when this new crucifixion took place. For these, and other reasons that might be men- tioned, every loyal man and every Christian should say, " The Union shall not be destroyed." We turn to the despots of Europe and tell them, that though Woolwich bristles with preparation for war, and Cherbourg pours forth its iron ships, the nation shall not be dismembered. We turn to the South and say to the three hundred thousand slave-holders and their ignorant helpers, "You shall not commit this suicide." We look in the faces of the traitors at the North, and assure them that if they escape hanging, their names will go down to infamy. Twelve months ago we hardly dared say this. No man knew what was before us. But this hour is brighter. We have passed the Rubicon, and it would be madness and treason to yield now. The prospect of European in- terference was never so small as at present. The hopes of the nation were never brighter. The foolish fears we had that the Treasury would be exhausted, and the country come to bankruptcy, have been dis- sipated. We are growing rich; we are feeling our strength; we are preparing for our destiny. True, we are spending enormous sums of money, but a few years of prosperity will sweep our national debt 32 away * and make us forget our stamps and income taxes. "We are pouring out blood like water; but freedom's tree will grow green in soil made rich with that blood. The lives sacrificed are very precious, but they are not sacrificed in vain. — " None die in vain Upon their Country's war-fields ! Every drop Of blood, thus poured for faith and freedom, hath A tone, which from the night of ages, from the gulf Of death, shall burst, and make its high appeal Sound unto earth and heaven." And now, to-day our duty is prayer and humilia- tion — humiliation for our national pride and vanity, for our avarice and ambition — humiliation that we have so long delayed justice to the oppressed, and that we have been so indifferent to the rights of man ; that we have so disregarded God. To-morrow, we shall be called to act ; to welcome conscription, taxa- tion, and perhaps new defeats; to set our faces against treason, North and South ; to hold up to honor men who fight our battles, be they of what creed or party they may ; and to hold up to scorn the men who, in this dark hour, would betray us. * The ease with which our national debt could be paid, is illustrated by a remark made at a meeting in Manchester, X. H., by a gentleman, who said, "Our women could churn our debt out in ten years," the product of our dairy being $125,000,000 per annum. 33 Through the clouds, darkness and blood of this day of battle, we are beginning to see the moral, political and commercial advantages of this war. We have found that the Union is more than a rope of sand, and it cannot be long before our Government shall challenge the admiration of the world. Slavery has received its fatal wound. Whatever may come, Unioii or disunion, war or peace, that system of wrong is within a few years of utter extinction. We are learning -our mission and finding out God's plan concerning us. We are becoming acquainted with our resources, gauging the depths of our mighty power. We are disciplining in fire and blood for greatness. Who would have this country rolled back to where it was on Thanksgiving-day of 1860, with James Buchanan in the chair of State ; John C. Breckinridge as President of the Senate ; and John B. Floyd, Secretary of War ; and Mason from Virginia, Slidell and Benjamin from Louisiana, and Wigfall from Texas, prominent and influential members of the Federal Congress % Who would have this nation put back where it was when the North was but the vassal of the lordly South'? For all the blood we have lost, and all the treasure we have expended, and all the sorrow we have had, we would not go back to the condition of 1860. This Union never was so great as now. The storm 34 which has torn its sails, and racked its sides, and strained its cables, has only embedded its anchors more securely in the earth. The question of its permanence is already settled. The close of the Rebellion is only a matter of time ; it will come, and the arch-traitor will exclaim as did Lord North, when he heard of the surrender of Cornwallis : " O God ! it is all over ! it is all over!" Be patient! Be hopeful! Let God work it out, for His hand is in this war as surely as His hand was in the deliverance of the Hebrews from Egypt. I said this was the slaveholders' war on Law and Government : I might have said it was God's war on national wickedness, on a slaveholding bar- barism ; and when the war is over the wickedness will be expiated in blood, the barbarism will have dis- appeared forever. As sure as the slaveholder's hand is seen tearing the Constitution to pieces, God's hand is seen breaking off the fetters of the slave. Peace will not come until freedom is secured. When the nation is right we shall be victorious. God will keep us in the crucible until the dross of this plague is burned off. Amen, so let it be ! Who would want this war closed until we get ready for a firm, lasting peace, until the viper that has been stinging and poisoning us is dead \ O, what a country ours will be when the States shall be reunited ; when the dear old flag shall wave from Maine to Georgia, from the Atlantic to the 35 Pacific ; when slavery shall have become extinct ; when the barbarism of Southern society shall have given way to a better civilization ; when those immense cotton-fields shall be worked by free labor, or cut up into farms for our brave soldiers ; when by those blood- dyed rivers shall rise huge manufactories ; when there shall be no cause of desolation and strife, but when all will be animated by one common interest, and in- spired by a common faith in Liberty and Religion ! That day will come. It may be away over some dark trials, beyond some fearful calamities, but it will come. It will be such a day as Washington and Hancock and Adams pictured and dreamed about, and prayed for. It will come with blessings, and be greeted with Hallelujahs, it will be the Millennium of political glory, the Sabbath of Liberty, the Jubilee of Humanity. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 012 029 024 1 L LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 012 029 024 1 trails ■*-!