.r .V7 5' )?Gb BLOT OCT THE STARS AND LEAVE THE STRIPES! WHY? E 440 .W75 Copy I THE CAUSES AND' REMEDIES OP ^IMPENDING NATIONAL CALAMITIES, gin glMi[ess SAMUEL R. WILSON, PASTOa OP THE FIEST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, CINCINNATI " The curse causeless shall aot come." Peoveebs. CINCINNATI, OHIO: PUBLISHED BY J. B. ELLIOTT, 51 FOURTH STREET, 1860. 4, THE CAUSES AND REMEDIES OF IMPENDING NATIONAL CALAMITIES, ^n ^M\[m BY SAMUEL R. WILSON, PASTOR OF THE FIEST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, CINCINNATI. " The curse causeless shall not come." Peoverbs. CINCINNATI, OHIO: PUBLISHED BY J. B. ELLIOTT, 51 FOURTH STREET. 1860. DEDICATION. The following Address, which was delivered in the regular course of the author's ministrations, on Sabbath, November 18th, and is given to the public in its present form at the request of a friend who has kindly provided the means for its publication, is now respectfully dedicated to the sons of those whose Pioneer hands founded these Central States, the borders of which are washed by the waters of the Ohio, and upon whom rests, in great measure, the ultimate decision of the question whether the Republic shall be preserved it its original integrity, or perish in the strife of contend- ing factions. S. R. W. Elm Street, Nov. 20, 1860. CAUSES AND REMEDY IMPENDING NATIONAL CALAMITIES. It should seem that we are upon the eve of Civil War. Already is the atmosphere murky with those clouds which hang like a funereal pall over the burning volcano. Already do we feel those strange vibrations which admonish that the pent-up fires are struggling to break over their accustomed barriers, and pour their lava tide over field, and city, and hamlet. The most thoughtless have ceased to laugh at the threatening calamity ; the wisest and the bravest feel their hearts beat slower as they look around for some means to avert the danger, or prepare bravely to meet it. In the North there is denunciation ; in the South there is menace. Everywhere the mingled sound of hesitation, preparation, action. The sea and the waves roaring, men's hearts failing, because of those things which seem to be coming upon the land. The immediate occasion and ostensible pretext for these revolu- tionary movements is the election, by a portion of the states of the Confederacy, and, perhaps, a minority of the people, of a Chief Magistrate who is the representative of that party which claims to be the peculiar antagonist of slavery, the friend of universal freedom and of the slave. This consummation has been styled by one cler- ical leader of the party, itself a Political Revolution ; and by another it has been announced, with exultation, as the first time the slave has chosen a President. It may be that both of these declarations are true, or both may be false. But, whether true or false, they indicate the animus of the party dominant at this moment, and whose momentary success has become the pretext for those movements which are to issue in a cutting asunder of our national bands, and plunging us into fratricidal strife. In such a juncture of affairs it becomes the duty of every citizen to study the things that make for peace, and of every Christian to m 4 CAUSES AND REMEDY OF entreat the God of the Covenant, in prayers, and supplications, and intercessions, on behalf of all that are in authority, that they may be restrained and guided so that the people may receive no damage, and the Church be left in quietness to pursue her work of love. It also becomes the ministers of Christ, embassadors of God, in such a time, to inquire after, and point out the moral causes of our national calamities, and to suggest the appropriate remedy ; if, peradventure, by timely and sincere repentance, the anger of God may be averted from us, and our tranquillity lengthened out. That there is such a call upon every one, to the prompt discharge of their several duties, at this time, can not, surely, be doubted. Telegraphic dispatches may be erroneous or false at times ; specu- lators may exaggerate the excitement, and demagogues may bluster; and due allowance must be made for all these elements in estimating the true state of affairs. But when every requisite abatement has been made, the sober and sad conviction of every friend of his coun- try and race must be, that there is a settled purpose on the part of a powerful faction, both in the South and in the North, to trample down the Constitution, to break up the national Covenant, and in so doing to brave all the inevitable horrors of civil and servile war. And even if in this judgment one should be really in error, over- solicitude for the security and peace of our firesides and altars dis- turbing the mental vision, and so creating unnecessary alarm, in view of imaginary rather than real dangers, still, better far the false alarm of the faithful sentinel, than the soothing flattery of the traitor, or the stupid indifference of the sluggard. I am not by natural constitution very well fitted to be the agent of a Non-resistance Society. Grace does not teach me the duty of passive obedience to the illegal and unauthorized demands of my fellow-man. If persecuted for righteousness' sake, I should rejoice, take it patiently, and commit my cause to him who has said, "Venge- ance is mine ; I will repay." If assailed in my civil rights, I should " appeal unto Ccesar," as a free-born citizen of a free Commonwealth. If attacked by a ruffian, I should repel force by force, and in the alternative of killing or being killed, should let instinct have its way. But even if it were so that a man ought not merely on his own account to resist wrong, and repel force by force, yet the obligations of society often rise above merely private or personal considerations. And the case may occur, and often has occurred, in which it is as plain a duty for a Christian to stand, rifle in hand, between his family and infuriate men, as if, instead of men, they had been less savage IMPENDING NATIONAL CALAMITIES. 6 bears and wolves. The maxim of the Christian is, "As much as in you lies, live peaceably with all men." But he who says to himself and others, "Peace, peace," Avhen there is no peace, becomes the miserable victim of his own delusion, and probably involves others, more innocent than himself, in a common ruin. I have not studied the Bible or human history to so little pur- pose, as to have adopted the absurd dogma of sentimental phil- anthropy, that war is the direst of evils. On the contrary, I am firmly of opinion, that there are gigantic evils, compared with which, war is as nothing, and for which the only practical remedy has been, and in this present evil world will continue to be, war, bloody, desolating, and, perhaps, exterminating; yes, even civil war, fratricidal, hateful, hellish. Better the horrors of the French Revolution, than the perpetual incubus of royal debauchery and tyranny, smothering the life of the people under its hideous weight. Better the fields of Austerlitz, of Jena, and of Marengo, than the Bastile and the Inquisition. Better Rome in flames, than the Ro- man people chained to the car of a ISTero. But if it be true, as all history attests, that war is not the Avorst of calamities, nay, that war itself may become the only practicable remedy for more per- manent and less bearable evils, it is also equally true, that it should be accepted only as a remedy, and as that of last resort. It is the easiest thing in the world to kindle the flames of war, and it is certainly the silliest and wickedest, except for the most substantial reasons. The pomp and circumstance of war, as it appears in holi- day dress, with sash, and epaulette, and gaudy plume, moving grace- fully to sound of fife and drum, over the soft green sward, its banners and bayonets flashing in the genial sunlight, is indeed a grand thing to behold. How it dazzles the eyes and stirs the heart of youth and beauty. With what zest, too, do we sit at home, surrounded by all the comforts and luxuries of refined and peaceful life, and pore over the blood-stained pages of history. How magnificent Achilles and Hector, and the Avarlike sons of Atrides look, as their heroic deeds are painted by the blind old bard of Greece. How stirring the story of great Cnesar's wars in Gaul. With what breathless at- tention do we listen to the thrice-told tale of Napoleon and his marshals ; of Washington and his patriot generals ; of Wellington and his grenadiers ; or Jackson and his pioneer riflemen. How the hot blood of manhood, yes, and the warmer but gentler blood of maidenhood, courses SAvifter and swifter through the veins, ns, with glowing pen, the historian recounts the gallant ch;irgc, the Avell-sus- 6 CAUSES AND KEMEDY OF taincd shock, the quick repulse, tlic victory, the flight. Flaxen- haired boyhood alread}' emulates in mimic war the deadly strife, and longs to be a soldier, while even soberer age grows restless at ■what seems inglorious peace. Indeed, the tented field of hostile hosts looks wondrous fine from a parlor window, and the curtain which the historic muse lets fall over the gory stage on which grim- visagcd war plays out his tragedies, is most gorgeously pictured. But lift that curtain, and how changed the scene. Become a spec- tator of the tragedy, and how soon the illusion vanishes. Leave your easy seat upon the divan, lay aside your velvet slippers and silken gown, and buckle on the knapsack and sword, and take your stand among the actors. Place yourself in the midst of the dead, the dying, the mangled human forms worse-doomed still to live. Stand with those grand marshals and that grand Napoleon, amid the scorching air and crumbling walls of deserted Moscow. Follow with the wolves and Cossacks the flying invaders across the track- less snow. Ride with the "Iron Duke" over the field of Waterloo, strewn with its myriads of shrieking and groaning wretches, crying out for " Water, water !" Go watch during the long, long winter nights with the shivering, barefoot sentinel, at the camp of Valley Forge ; or, with unrelenting heart and murderous hand, join in the hideous feud of Whig and Tory. Become a party in the burning of hamlets and the sacking of cities. Unsheathe the sword, that wives may become widows, mothers be made childless, and children orphans. And then you will know what war is — real war; not such as is painted upon canvas, or in soft rhetoric strains depicted upon the historic or epic page ; but gaunt, grim, reeking war, such as it is to the soldier on the battle-field ; such as those shall find it who now invoke its aid, no matter for what cause. And yet, it may become necessary at times to invoke this dread instrument as that which alone can redress intolerable wrongs, and. bring certain relief to oppressed humanity. Has our countrv in-' deed fallen upon such a time ? Arc the wrongs under which we groan so intolerable, as that there is left us no other means of re- dress ]jut this of the sword ? Must it needs be, that the brotherhood of white men should be torn asunder in the bitter strife of freemen over the prostrate body of negro bondmen ? It is but yesterday, as it were, that the best blood of the South was freely poured out at the Raisin, at Tippecanoe, at the Fallen Timber, and at New Or- leans, to secure our firesides from the tomahawk and scalping-knife. These fertile fields, whose wealth has built your city ; this beautiful IMPENDING NATIONAL CALAMITIES. 7 river, which bears upon its bosom your merchandise to the great Father of Waters ; the free use of that great stream itself, are all the purchase of the blood and toil of those brave men whose slaves kept watch for them at home, while they drove from the soil the " Red Sticks " and " Red Coats." And can it be, that so soon we have learned to forget to whom we owe the possession of this fair land? Shall the sons of sires who fought shoulder to shoulder in '76, in '98, in 1812, boast so soon that they have no need of one another, and to prove it to the world, turn their plowshares into swords, with which to destroy each other ? Shall the strangers who have come in to sojourn among us, and who have been welcomed to a share in our rich inheritance, be enlisted in this internecine war? Is it true, that an " irrepressible conflict " has begun, not between Slavery and Freedom, not between the oppressed and their oppressors ? No, no, no — not such a conflict at all — but between " Cotton Gins " and " Cotton Jennies ;" between Boston and Charleston ; between office seekers and office holders ; between pretended philanthropy in the North and ofi"ended pride in the South ; between slaveholders in the South and the men in the North and West Avho have grown rich upon the products of slave toil. Is it true that an " irrepressible conflict " between these parties has indeed begun, which is to carry fire and sword through this fair land, and not cease until one or the other has been crushed and conquered ? We are told by distinguished statesmen that this is the issue before us. A portion of the South- ern States of the Confederacy declare that they are about to with- draw from the Republic. " Let them go," say some ; " we can do better, or as well, without them." " Compel them to stay at the point of the bayonet," say others ; " they have no right to withdraw." And thus it does look as if our national compact was to be broken up, the Union annihilated, the Constitution torn to pieces and trampled in the dust. Toward this the Republic has been manifestly drifting for these many years. Can the fearful catastrophe be averted? What is the cause or causes of the present threatening move- ments in the country ? I have told you what the immediate occasion of them is : the election of a President and Vice-President, both of them living in the North, and by a vote of the non-slaveholding states exclusively. But this is not the cause; such an event of itself is unimportant, and totally inadequate to account for the conduct of those statesmen who are precipitating the country upon Revolu- tion. I will tell you the causes which have been gradually working out this so deplorable a result. Causes it is yet possible to remove; 8 CAUSES AND REMEDY OF but which, if not removed speedily, will plunge us in anarchy and ruin, by a law as inevitable as gravitation itself. Cause 1. Pride. — Probably no sin is more hateful to God than this. It is represented as that sin Avhich brought the Devil under condemnation. It was this that drew down the deluge of waters upon the whole race of man, and afterward provoked God to con- found their tongues and scatter them abroad over the earth. This was the iniquity of Sodom : " Pride, fullness of bread, and abund- ance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." To Petra, the strong- hold of Edom, the prophet Obadiah is commanded to cry, " The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rocks, Avhose habitation is high ; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground ?" It was in the very mo- ment when King Nebuchadnezzar, walking in the palace of the king- dom of Babylon, the report of whose splendor it has been left for our day to verify, " spake and said, Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power and for the honor of my majesty ;" it was " while the word was in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, King Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken ; the kingdom is departed from thee." And that other Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, was saying in her heart, " I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow," Avhen in one day her plagues came upon her, death, and mourning, and fire. But Avhy need I cite in particular instances of which the records of Providence are so full ; the plain and oft-reiterated declarations of God in his word are more than enough to satisfy the wise that everywhere and always Jehovah stands ready to resist and abase the proud. " Pride and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the fro- ward mouth, do I hate," saith the Lord. " Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord;'' and therefore it is certain that " Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." This is a sin which has always flourished under precisely those circumstances in which men ought to be most humble and thankful. It is when God has blessed a nation in basket and store, increased their numbers and riches, raised them from feebleness to power, and from dependence to empire, that, forgetting the rock whence they were hewn, and the hole of the pit whence they were digged, they begin to say, " Who is the Lord that we should obey him !" " I did IMPENDING NATIONAL CALAMITIES. 9 know thee m the wiklerness," says Jeiioyah to Israel, " in the land of great drouth. According to their pasture so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted : therefore have they forgotten me." And a thousand years before Hosea had recorded this as history, Moses had spoken this prophetic song concerning that people : " He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness ; he led him about ; he instructed him ; he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, flut- tereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings ; so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange God with him. " He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields ; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock ; butter of kine, and milk of aheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat ; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape. " But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked ; thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness ; then he forsook God who made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation." Is not our history the counterpart of all this ? Is not this a mir- ror in which we may look upon our own original — the feebleness of our beginnings ) the wanderings of our fathers in this so late a howling wilderness ; our exaltation, and our sin ? Let us hear, then, our doom, except we repent, " The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs." Pride ; National pride ; State pride ; the pride of the earth-worm, MAN ! Pride, which says, " With our tongue will we prevail ; our lips are our own ; who is lord over us ?" — it is a germinal sin, pro- lific of every vice and crime. " These six things doth the Lord hate ; yea, seven are an abomination unto him : a proud look ; a lying tongue ; and hands that shed innocent blood ; an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations ; feet that be swift in running to mis- chief; a false witness that speaketh lies; and he that soweth dis- cord among his brethren." Here are the root and the branches of this Upas tree of Pride, which strikes deep its fibres in the soil of wealth, luxury, and ease, and drops its deadly dew upon the bosom of the very earth that gives it nourishment. This sin of the Devil, the sin of Sodom, Egypt, and Babylon, the sin of Tyre and of Rome, the sin of God's own chosen Israel, has become our sin already ; a 10 CAUSES AND REMEDY OP republic scarce out of its swathing-bands ; a nation begotten of pov- erty and oppression, "whose birthday was but yesterday. Yes, I take you to record before that God in whom our fathers trusted, and by whose name they sware, "in truth, in judgment, and in right- eousness," that as a people we are become such as these : " Lovers of oui'selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, dcspisers of those that are good, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God ; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof." " We call the proud happy ; and they that work wickedness are set up, and they that tempt God are even delivered." Pride is then the first, great, crying sin against God of which, as a nation, we are guilty ; and this I put as the radical cause of all those evils of which we complain and wliich threaten our tranquillity. Cause 2. Oppression. — To be a slaveholder is not necessarily to be a tyrant; nor are the terms " freedom " a.nd " free soil," "'repub- licanism " and "justice " by any means convertible. It is not essen- tial to true liberty that a man should be endowed with the elective franchise ; nor are oppression and injustice only to be found upon the plantations of the South. To Northern legislators, judges, and jurors, to Northern manufacturers and money lenders, it may well be said by their Southern brethren, " And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye V * * * Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye ; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." And if I should confine my remarks to the colored race alone it would be no difficult matter to show that the laws of the free states, and the intense prejudice of the populace are more unreasonable and oppressive than are to be found in most of the slaveholding commonwealths. " I had rather live in Old Virginny than in Ohio, if I could only get back again," said an intelligent free black woman to me the other day. But the laws of Virginia, like the hiAvs of some of these North- western states, forbid the emigration of this helpless class of people into the State. In the South the negro is made to work when he is well : in the busy season, like the freemen of the North, to Avork hard and keep at it ; he is well fed, well clothed, well housed ; to a very great extent he is taught in the saving knowledge of the Gos- pel; when sick he is well nursed and well physicked. If he is lazy IMPENDING NATIONAL CALAMITIES. H or idle he is sometimes well whipped; but not more frequently, perhaps, than Northern white men whip their wives, for which priv- ilege they pay five dollars. In New England, with the pseans of liberty sounding in his ears, the emancipated slave freezes and starves and sinks into imbecility; and the philanthropy of his boasted Northern friends, having exhausted itself in denunciation of his master, leaves him to the tender mercies of time and chance. In many respects I believe the black man in our midst is subjected to unjust disabilities, the removal of which neither imply nor require either social or civil equality. But it is not the degradation and oppression of this insignificant portion of our population — ^insignificant in point of numbers I mean — it is not their oppression that is calling down the judgments of God upon us, half so much as that galling oppression with which the pride, and covetousness, and luxury of society is crushing out the heart of the people. Crimination and recrimination are easy. Epithets of reproach, truthful, severe, irritating, may without much trouble be bandied between the one section and the other of this great republic of Christian freemen. The taunting finger may point to the slave-mart, the whipping- post, and the loose marriage-tie of the slave; and the taunt may be hurled back by an appeal to the pauperism, prostitution, homicides, and divorces of those who, in their philanthropic zeal, have forgotten the admonition of Jesus : "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Have done, I entreat you, with this vituperation of one another. Neither are so without fault as to be prepared to cast the first stone. Let this Divine counsel be received by all of every party and section throughout the land — my country as well as yours : •' Break ofi" your sins by righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor ;■' and so shall there be a healing of our past errors, and a res- toration of fraternal harmony, such as bound together our sires in field and counsel hall. Cause 3. Lawlessness. — It is one of the august titles claimed by .Jehovah that he is a Lawgiver. The universe feels the controlling power of those laws of which He is the Author. The majesty of law is recognized by angel and archangel, cherub and seraph ; by the " immortal star in its great course, and the little fire-fly in its insect flight." All sin is avofxta — lawlessness. No wonder, then, if rebel- lion should be accounted in the Divine judgment a heinous sin, and that spirit of false independence, which neither fears God nor 12 CAUSES AND REMEDY OF regards man, be the unmistalvablc forerunner of the most direful calamities. And yet is it not undeniably true that now, for a long time, this demon spirit has stalked abroad over the land, not only unchecked, but almost unrebuked — nay, applauded and caressed? It -were an unnecessary tax upon your time to detain you witli a rehearsal of particular instances in -vvliich this spirit has exhibited itself in every state and city of the Union, as an active, dominant spirit. A press teeming with the most atrocious calumnies against the highest functionaries of the government ; inventing, misrepresenting, and detracting ; schooling the people in contempt of their Chief Magis- trate by the daily application to him of the epithets, " traitor," " dolt," " old renegade," " fool," " granny," and others yet more vile ; charging him with complicity in the most infamous deeds or purposes ; and heaping upon him and all his associates all manner of abuse, so that a simple-minded stranger must inevitably conclude that the powers that be in this country never are ordained of God, but always are of the Devil ; and, therefore, it is a meritorious thing to despise and defy them. A judiciary, the only safeguard against oppression by prince or people, trailing its robes in the dirt, to be trampled upon by the mob ; and if 07ie, more noble, be found, who will not forswear himself at the bidding of the threatening crowd, then he must be ostracised for his integrity. A pulpit teaching the infidel doctrine of a Higher law than God's word residing in the instincts and rational consciousness of man's own soul : or exaltinor to an equal dignity with the holy martyrs of Jesus, one who, like Barabbas, was guilty of sedition and murder ; or fanning the flames of civil war under the pretense of advancing human freedom, and then presenting Sharp's rifles to those whose passions they have aroused, to be used in the unholy strife. CovENANT-BREAKix\G is lawlessness of the worst kind. It is espe- cially so in a government like the one under >vhich we live : a con- stitutional, federative, and popular government. Covenant-breakers are pronounced in the word of God to be worthy of death; and covenant-breaking always draws after this penalty in some form or other. It is this death-bringing spirit that prompted to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. It is this spirit that works in the hearts of every agent and supporter of the Underground Railroad, through the operations of which servants are enticed and conveyed away from their rightful masters. It is the same spirit that violently obstructs the master in reclaiming his fugitive ; that refuses in good faith to execute the law of the land, and by indirection renders it IMPENDING NATIONAL CALAMITIES. 13 null and void. It is the same spirit that, setting more value upon a horse than a man or the authority of law, suffers a murderer to live, but hangs, without judge or jury, the horse-thief to the nearest tree. Which, entering into the women of some Northern town, breaks into a man's store, and breaks open his casks, and threatens, if he remonstrate, to break' his head ; and Avhich, taking possession of the men in some Southern village, sets them upon treating to a coat of tar and feathers some unfortunate peddler or lecturer, whose zeal has outrun his discretion. It is that spirit which has been so long fostered in the land by negligent parents and a licentious press, that boys laugh in the face of their mothers and fathers, and men laugh in the face of the laws, courts, and judges. In state affairs it is called nullification. It had its birth in the Northeast, somewhere about the year 1812, and has gradually spread over the land, until scarce a state or city that is not infected by it. And now its legitimate fruit seems about to be gathered in a harvest of lamentation, and woe, and death. For what is seces- sion but nullification in its consummation ? Must it, indeed, come to this ? God of our fathers, avert, in thy mercy, the fearful doom ! And yet it must and will come to this ere long, unless there is Christian humility and manhood, the magnanimity of noble minds, enough in these free states to say, " We have verily sinned in this thing, concerning our brethren,'' and the true spirit of that ancestry from whom we received this common inheritance, restore to the national covenant its original integrity and force. Repeal our nul- lifying laws ; cease our nullifying acts ; return the slave to his master, as we are bound to do by the Constitution ; and give up offenders to the states against whose laws they have offended; in short, act out the true meaning of the rule, " All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them ;" and no longer demand or expect that any other principle of equity should be recognized in the South toward us than this, " With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged ; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." If at once, and in that spirit by which, I am sure, every true friend of his country and the human race ought to be actuated, such a course of justice be taken, then my hope is that God would smile upon the endeavor to repair our breaches, and bring back the whole land to unity and peace, and, under a new reign of justice and fraternity, the ultimate happiness of all classes be attained in the highest degree of which man is capable in this sin-stricken world. 14 CAUSES AND REMEDY OF Let this, the State of the beautiful river, eldest-born of these Northwestern sisters, daughter of A^irginia and Kentucky, take the lead in a movement so honoring to her wisdom and patriotism. But if another spirit shall rule in the hearts of the people and in the halls of legislation, then, indeed, will it be manifest that the cup of our iniquity is full ; that tlic unatoned blood of a thou- sand murdered innocents, in these Northern states, is to be avenged ; that our sins as a nation have reached iheir climax, and await their just punishment. Then will God have given us up to that infat- uation which is the premonition and fir.st-fruit of a terrible doom. For think not that these calamities are the mere outgrowth of personal ambition, or the devices of a few designing men, or the result of inevitable blind fate or cliancc. It is Jehovah, God of heaven and earth, who sits Judge among the nations. It is His voice that gives command to plant and build a kingdom, and it springs, as if by magic or miracle, or by slower degrees, to life, and greatness, and power; and it is his voice that pronounced against a nation for its evil deeds, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it. "Jehovah sitteth upon the flood; yea, Jehovah sitteth King forever." His almighty hand lifts the floodgates of human passion and sends the desolating scourge over a guilty land; and his nod alone can still the noise of the waves, the tumult of the people. He it is that teaches the hands of man to war, and his fingers to fight, so that one can chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight ; and the swift fail in the race, and the battle be lost by the strong. It was well and cuttingly said by a king, in olden time, to a boasting foe, " Let not him that putteth on his armor boast himself as he that putteth it off"." It may be wise for these Northern States to heed the admonition. Such language as the followino-, with which our daily journals are filled, on this subject, sounds very defiant and confident : "We have jrot nearly as many people, and if you count activity and enter- prise, we arc actually alu-ad of Hontli Carolina in the scale of pro;;ress. "It is trne, South Carolina has, besides, [her -wliite citizens,] a slave popu- lation of 3S4,'JS4, or ahoiit 110,000 more than her free inhabitants. But this black element, so far from l)ein