aass__L4iJ_ Book > E 5 I ^^^^^^^ HEASOXS Foil THANKSGIVING. DISCO XJ±iSE Coiigrcgatiaiial C^urc| an^ ^orietg, sto(;kbridge. mass.. ON THE DAY OF A N N U A L T H A N K S G I V 1 N G, NOVEMBER 21, BY NATHANIEL H. EGGLESTON. PITTSFIELD, MASS. HI':nRY ClIICKKKING, PRINTKR. 1861. I / REASONS FOU THANKSGIVING. DISCOURSE C0iigrcgation;il C|nKJj mi^ ^ocielg, STOOKBRIDGE, MASS., ON THE DAY OP ANNUAL THANKSGIVING, NOVEMBER 21, 1861. / ^^^^Ih;^' BY NATHANIEL H. EGGLESTON. PITTSFIELD, MASS. HENRY CHICKERING, PRINTER. 1861. .1 £73 Stockbridge, December 2, 1861. Hav. Nathaniel H. Eggleston, Dear Sir : — The undersigned, having listened with great interest and satis- faction to the appropriate and patriotic discourse delivered by you on the day of QUI ;a-,e annual Thanksgiving, would respectfully request you to furnish them with a copy for publication, that wider circulation may be given to th« important sentnnents therein contained, and a fresh impulse, based on religion* principle, be imparted both to our love of liberty and to our patriotism. Respectfully yours, DANIEL KIMBALL, D. R. WILLIAMS, ■ C. M. OWEN, WILLIAM WHITNEY, JARED REID, WILLIAM DARBE, EGBERT SEYMOUR, MARSHALL' WARNER, E. H. OWEN, THOS. O. HURLBUT. Stockbridge, December 2, 1861. SEKtIiEMEN : — Yielding to your judgment as to the desirableness of publishing ray dis- •ourse on the recent day of Thanksgiving, I submit it to your disposal. Sincerely yours, N. H. EGGLESTON. Messrs. Kimball, Owen, Williams, and others. REASO^sS FOR THANKSGIVING. 1 CHRONICLES 29: 13. NOW IIIERKFORE, OUK GOD, AVK THANK THEE, AND PRAISE THY GLOUIODS NAME. From the earliest times, the people of this Common- wealth have been accustomed to devote one day in the year to the remembrance of God's goodness to them, and to special thanksgiving to Ilim therefor. It has naturally fallen too at that season of the year, when the gathered harvests offer their unmistakable proofs of the reward that has attended the labor of men, in the chief and most essen- tial calling of life, that of Husbandry. Even less than Puritan or Pilgrim piety might be moved, as Autumn wheels her loaded products into the storehouses provided for them, to lift up the heart with special thanks to Ilim who givetli seed-time and harvest, and who measures out the rain, the sunshine and the dew. And never, perhaps, had we more urgent reasons for ob- serving a day of public and general thanksgiving than now. Let me lead your thoughts to the consideration of some of these, that, so far as possible, I may help you to makt; the da}^ what it should be. 1. I need but to mention, what your minds will all be likely to dwell upon as a matter to be grateful for, the gen- eral HeaUhfuliiess which has characterized the past year. Sickness and death are the attendants of human life in this world. They are visitants of our households year by- year. We cannot hope wholly to escape their dread pres- ence. And in this particular community, we may perhaps mourn the loss of a more than usual number by death. The seats of some precious ones will be sadly vacant to-day by the household hearth and the household table. Let us take care that we do not allow our griefs to hide God's many mercies and favors. Our sorrows will not make this day of joy and thanksgiving unwelcome, if we remember that " whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." But ia our Commonwealth and in the country at large, the year has been one of healthfulness. No epidemic, no special sickness has anywhere prevailed. And this, if we consider it but for a moment, will appear as an ample cause of thanksgiving to Him who holds our being in his hands. What exemption from suffering, what relief from anxious care and watching on the part of friends, what augmented ability to engage in the various pursuits of life and to en- joy the results of life's manifold activities is implied in this fact of a year's general Healthfulness? ''^ 2. Another manifest occasion of gratitude is found in the fact, that we have had Propitious Seasons for the Husband- man. Agriculture, as it is the first, so it is the most essen- tial employment of man. As the inspired Preacher says, "The profit of the earth is for all : The king himself is served by the field." Agriculture is that occupation upon which we are all dependent. There is no one so high ia station but that he must acknowledge his need of the ser- vice of the ground. Royalty itself, not less than the plain- est and roughest cultivator of the soil, is dependent for daily bread and for the material comforts of life, upon the vulgar earth. The white hand of delicacy or of aflPected refinement, that wears its kids on all occasions, and never feels its way beyond the porfmiicd atmosphere of fashionable sak)oiis, is only one remove, whenever its owner sits down to eat and drink, from the bronze-faced husbandman who " drives his team afiehi," or the veriest Milesian who digs his ditches. And all arts and trades, all industries, all traffic, are based upon Agriculture. Without it they would not, could not, be. It is only as man is first able to gain from the ground a surplus of that which will support life, that there is time or room for the arts to arise which bestow comfort and refinement upon that life. So also it is the exchange of the products of the soil in different climates which gives origin to commerce. The swift ships that whiten every sea, tly upon this errand. * The rail-ways that shoot their iron threads over kingdoms and continents, are built to bear the accumulating products of agriculture, or are built, as is sometimes the case, where as yet there are almost no tillers of the soil, because of the assured possibilities of agriculture. The great rail-way system of the West, is preeminently the creation of Agriculture. The surplus of the wheat fields and corn fields of that region, is what is to throng those highways with cars and make the prairies echo w^ith their almost continuous roll. It is this surplus of the husbandman's work which is to call for the return of manufactured goods from the workshops of New England and of Europe. And it is this in the main, which is to send the throng of human beings, from day to day over those lines of travel. The husbandman goes to market his grain or his stock. The grain-dealer, the for- warder, the dry goods merchant, the grocer, the manuflic- turer, the banker, all find business and occasion to travel, because the earth yields her increase, and all are hastening on their various errands as fast as steam can carry them, because the husbandman has first been prospered in his work. And so the sun as it shines and the rain as it falls 6 indue season, aiiil in right proportion upon the dull insen- sate earth, set all this system of transit and of traffic in motion. Nor is this all. Those fertile fields of the West have been largely iustruraeiital in constructing the chief rail-way of our own State. The growing wheat and corn of that great agricultural region, have called for this high-way over which to convey the surplus stores which may supply the wants of our densely populated manufacturing districts, and even those across the ocean. How true, therefore, that the profit of the earth is for all. These lines of rail-way, more than a thousand miles in length, and a multitude of ships plowing the ocean, have all been built because man is dependent, first of all, upon the Earth. They all teach us the importance of the primal ' /interest and employment of mamand all this busy hum and / whirl of transit and of trade, these transactions of commerce and the exchange, are, in one view, the exhibition of the value and dignity of the Husbandman's calling. Let that fail to be prosperous, and the wheels of trafSc move more slowly or are made to stand still; the fleet ships of com- merce fold their white wings ; the hardy sailors are dis- charged ; a thousand iorms of productive industry are checked ; and wide-spread suffering ensues. We have special reason for thankfulness to-day, that du- ring the past year, the seasons have been propitious to the husbandman. We were just recovering from a state of financial embar- rassment, occasioned in part by mismanagement and in part by a deficient productiveness of our great western grain- fields during two successive years, when the rebellion, which dates nearly from the beginning of the present year, swept away from the hands of those loyal to the govern- ment hundreds of millions of wealth in the form of debts due froin those in revolt, created a panic almost throughout the country, paralyzed trade and manufactures, depreciated the value of property of every kind, and at the same time occasioned the necessity of a greatly increased expenditure on tlu! part of the government. It w:is a fearful complica- tion of evils- Cotton had been proclaimed King, and in the interest of Slaver?/ seemed about to rule with tyrannous and ruinous severity. But God had provided better things for us, and in the midst of his justly-deserved rebukes for our sins, remembered mercy, and would not allow us to be without the tokens of his goodness which might lead our hearts to him in penitence and gratitude. Sitting high in his supremacy alike over nations and all material forces and agencies, he had so disposed the powers of nature, so gov- erned the winds, the frosts, the rains and the sun-shine, that while in other lands, — and especially in those whose gov- ernments would be likely to take advantage of the trouble occasioned to us by the unnatural and wicked revolt, — there should be a more than usual necessity of seeking food from abroad, our own barns and warehouses should be full. The workmen in the factories of England and France can live without cotton, but they cannot without food. And now, as we look where we feared to see a ruthless despot- ism lording it over us, or breaking us asunder as a nation, and treading the rights and the hopes of humanity in the dust, behold Corn quietly mounts the throne, and pushing away the black usurper, stretches out his golden scepter, fringed with the tassels which the summer suns and the sprites of the air and of the soil have embroidered upon it, and commands peace between us and other lands. What no president or board of financiers could do, this vicegerent of God bids the nations over the water come and pour their hoarded gold into our hands that we m;iy have it to equip our army and use it to crush the rebellion which they would bo but too glad to see pi-osper, that they might use it for their own selfish aggrandizement, and against the God-given rights of man. The money needed by the gov- ernment in its exigency is abundantly supplied. The wheels of traffic can not roll fast enough to biing the surplus of our grain-fields to market. Roads and canals are choked with the burden which the soil has poured out upon them. The machineries of ten thousand factories upon our streams are making the hills echo again with their welcome sound. Industry springs to life once more. The currents of trade feel the beneficent impulse. All arts, all occupations, are revived and quickened. And as though this were not enough, God has sealed up for us the eaves of the polar cold and drawn out the autumnal warmth to its utmost length. More than realizing the fabled descent of Jove to Danlfe in a golden shower, He has coined the very sunbeams into gold for us, making each added day of autumn a contribution of millions to the wealth of the husbandman and so to the wealth and com- fort of all. Blind are our eyes and hard are our hearts if we do not see and feel the special goodness of God to us now in the Seasons, and if we are not moved with humble, tearful grat- itude to render thanks to him on this account. 3. I name, as another occasion of thanksgiving to-day, our Aneestrt/. By a happy thoughtfulness, our excellent Governor, who has proved himself a man for the times and for the place which he occupies, has designated as the time for our public thanksgiving the day on which the first settlers of Massa- chusetts and of New England, not j^et landed from their frail and tempest-tossed vessel, entered into a compact of civil government, the first compact of government known in the world's history. It would be well if this appointment should be taken as a precedent, and the anniversary of that signing of the compact in the cabin of the Alayflower J^ be henceforth enshrined in memory by a fortunate con- nection with our sacred annual New England festival. 9 The character of a State or Nation depends much upon the character of those who lay its foundations; more bj^far, usually, than upon those who are active and influential in it at any subsequent period. The features impressed up- on a people when in the plastic, formative state, harden into abiding permanency as the body politic becomes consoli- dated with age. And so Lord Bacon rightly classes among the most eminent and noble of men, the "Founders of States." If ours had been a different ancestry, how different would have been our history and how different our character and condition to-day. It is not going beyond the warrant of truth to say that not only does Massachusetts, but the whole country, owe its civil and religious liberty to the character of the founders of New England, and these w^ere largely the founders first of Massachusetts. It is freely admitted now that it was the religious and moral element of the New England colonies which carried us triumphant- ly through the struggle for independence. Not only did these colonies furnish the needful amount of men and mon- ey,* far more than was furnished by all the other colo- nies, but they furnished the sturdy moral principle and ar- dent love of liberty which made each musket think as well as speak, and gave to every dollar contributed to the pub- lic funds the weight of a talent. If, for example, our ancestors had been of the stamp of the first settlers of Virginia and the Carolinas, or New Eng- land had been settled in the same spirit and upon the same principles as those colonies, the whole country would, very likely, have been a dependency of the British Crown to this day. We should have had our orders of nobility, our * The force brought into the field during the Revolutionary War, was, in round numbers. 289,500 men, ot which Massachusetts furnished 83,000, whUe all the Southern States together supplied only 67,000. Massachusetts furnish- ed one soldier to every 5.7 of her inhabitants, the Southern States one to every 26.8 of theirs. ' 10 established religion regulated by state law, the many taxed and oppressed for the benefit of the few, and no such in- telligence, culture and freedom as are now our distinction.^ Massachusetts was founded by a company persecuted and exiled for their love of liberty and their religious opinions. The Carolinas, and the same is true largely of Virginia, were founded by companies of the rapacious Courtiers of the profligate Stuarts. The motive which sent the New England pilgrims to these shores was religious. Gov. Bradford, in his histor}^ of Ply- mouth Colony, names as one, ''-but not the least" of the rea- sons which led our forefathers to this country, "A great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagat- ing and advancing the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of the world." And Davenport, the master-spirit of the New Haven Colony, has left behind him a treatise, which bears evidence of having been written at the beginning of the settlement at Quinnipiac, entitled "A discourse about civil government in a New Plantation whose design is Religion." Nothing could be more unequivocal than this. The object of the settlement of the Southern Colonies, on the contrary, was gain. Those who originated and for- warded the settlement of the Carolinas were animated by the same spirit which had animated the Spaniards under Pizarro and Cortez in their raid upon Mexico. North Carolina has, indeed, always had a better character * It is well known that South Carolina hesitated to join in the declaration of Independence, once voting against it, and finally giving her vote for it formal- ly and for the sake of a seeming unaniiuitj'. During the Revolution her Commis- sioners made a proposition to the British Commander which an eminent histo- rian has pronounced " equivalent to an offer to return to the British Crown." John Adams wrote, in 1776, " All our misfortunes arise from a single source, the resistance of the Southern Colonies to Republican Government. — Sumner. Baron de Kalb is reported as saying to General Marion, "I thought that British tj-ranny would have sent great numbers of the South Carolinians to join our arms ; but so far from it, they are all, we are told, running to take British protections." — Weems' Life of Marion. 11 than either South Carolina or Virginia, which may be at- tributed in part to the fact that a leaven of liberty and equality was hidden, though in more than three measures of meal, almost from the beginning, by a company of colon- ists from Massachusetts who, as early as 1G60 or 1661, established themselves upon the Cape Fear River, and to the further fact that North Carolina became a place of ref- uge for a portion of the inhabitants of Virginia, who fled from the enforcement of conformity to the Episcopal ritual, which was already the established religion of that colony. The o-overnment founded bv our ancestors was free and popular from the beginning. Accordingly before they landed from the Mayflower, and on the day of which this is the anniversary, recognizing the equal rights of all and abjuring all claims of privilege or rank, they entered into a solemn compact of civil government for the purpose of securing those rights. The document is so remarkable in its histor- ical connections, and withal so brief, that I will quote it entire. "In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are un- derwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, defender of the faith, &c., having under- taken, for the glory of God and advancement of the Chridian faith, and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves togetl;ier into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and the furtherance of the ends aforesaid ; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offi- ces, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general goi)d of the colony ; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness 12 whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names, at Cape Cod, the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord. King James, of England, France and Ire- land, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the 54;th — anno dom- ini 1620." Here it will be observed that the avowed objects of their migration are the '"glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith" and subordinately to that, the honor of their King and country, and that they propose by virtue of this compact to enact and frame "just and equal laws" for the "general good." And, in passing, I will say, that while here for the first time we have realized the fiction of the social compact, of which so much has been made by some writers upon gov- ernment, the framers of this compact did not by their act lend the least countenance to the notion that government depends for its authority upon the consent or agreement of the governed, or that men in forming government give up certain of their original rights, which now become the ground and measure of power and authority in the govern- ment. They only held it to be their province and privilege to designate who should exercise among them and over them the divine power and authority of government. So Robin- son, in his letter of advice to the company, when about to embark for the New World, says, "whereas you are to be- come a body politic, using amongst yourselves civil gov- ernment, and are not furnished with any persons of special eminency above the rest, to be chosen by you into office of government, let your wisdom and godliness appear not on- ly in choosing such persons as do entirely love and will diligently promote the common good, but also in yielding unto them all due honor and obedience in their lawful ad- ministrations, not beholding in them the ordinariness of their persons, but God's ordinance for your good ; nor being like the foolish multitude, who more honor the gay coat 13 than either the virtuous mind of the man, or the glorious ordinance of the Lord. But you know better things, and that the image of the Lord's power and authorif/j, which the magistrate beareth, is honorable, in liow mean persons so- ever. And this duty you both may the more willingly and ought the more conscionably to perform, because you are, at least for the present, to have only them for your ordina- ry governors which yourselves shall make choice of for that work."* So far from there having been any religious purpose in founding the colonies of the Carolinas, there was no settled minister of religion in North Carolina, nor a house of wor- ship, until more than forty years after its settlement be- gan. It will show the character of that colony in other re- spects also, when I say that it had no court house until twenty years later, while for the blessing of a printing press it waited nearly a century.f The Preamble to the famous Charters for the Caroli- nas, drawn up for the Proprietaries by one no less famous than John Locke, the philosopher, or at least with his aid, sets forth the motives for forming the fundamental consti- tution of Carolina as being "the interests of the proprie- tors," the desire of "a government most agreeable to mon- archy," and '"'the dread of a numerous democracy T Nothing is said of religious and moral aims, or of the ecjual and gen- eral rights of the people. Accordingly Locke's charter, drawn by him in concert with Lord Shaftesbury, establish- ed three orders of Nobility for the young Kingdom of Car- olina, where there were as yet but a handful of people. These were styled Barons, Cassiques and Landgraves.^ The land was divided so that two-fifths went to the proprie- tors and the nobility. Property was made the basis of po- * Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims 95. t Bancroft, Vol. 2. p. 153, 164. X Ramsay's History of South Carolina. 14 iitical power and privilege, no man being eligible to the provincial parliament who was not possessed of a free- hold estate of five hundred acres. Each Baron was to have twelve thousand, and every Landgrave forty-eight thousand acres. The bulk of the people were to be serfs of the great hereditary proprietors or the wealthy nobles, and it was decreed that, like slaves of a later day, the chil- dren should remain in the same condition as their parents. There was to be no possibility to the mass of the people of rising above the condition of serfs. African slavery was also distinctly anticipated and provided for, as we might suppose it would be in a State begun and founded upon such principles, and the master's authority was declared absolute. The spirit of this feudal and aristocratic system was so far carried out, that they were to have in addition to courts for the ordinary purposes of justice, a court for the cogni- zance of "ceremonies and pedigrees"of "fashions and sports.* Happily this feudal charter was never fully established. Other influences besides gain and profligacy early gained such a foothold that the selfish policy of the Carolina pro- prietors was resisted more or less strenuously, and after a contest of forty or fifty years the attempt to bring the peo- ple under their arbitrary power was abandoned. But the character of those foremost in settling the Carolinas, though it could not control, did make its impress upon those colo- nies, an impress visible even now.f Such were the men by whom and the spirit in which the Carolinas were settled. The proprietors were not, like our Carver and Bradford and Winslow and Winthrop and Hop- kins, men who were of and with the people, ready to brave all the hardships of the wilderness and of the beginning of a new social and political state, bringing the ministers of religion with them, men who, like Cotton and Davenport, * Bancroft, 2, p. 149. t See Olmstead, Seaboard Slave States, 493-8 605. 15 had o-raccd the pulpits of London and the Universities; but profligate courtiers, living in luxury three thousand miles away, aiding the debaucheries of a dissolute king and in- tent only upon pleasure and gain, regardless of the inter- ests of their colonists. What would New England have been, nay, what would the whole Country have been, had such been its founders and such the principles upon which they acted ? Have we not reason to think that the record of our history would have been very different from Avhat it is ; and have we not reason to lift up the heart with thanksgiving to-day, from the midst of these churches and school-houses, our equal privileges and laws, our free and enlightened press, our gen- eral intelligence and thrift, and bless God that our founders were the signers of the compact in the cabin of the xMay- flower and not the greedy courtier's or decayed and prof- ligiite cavaliers of King James or King Charles ? 4. I name as another occasion for thanksgiving to-day, the War in which we are now engaged. Your attention has been occupied to such an extent al- ready that I must be brief upon this point, though one up- on which it was my design to dwell at some length. It may possibly surprise some that T should name Civil War as a cause of thanksgiving. But I religiously believe it, in the present instance, to be such. Not of itself and taken simply as War. No one can be thankful to God for that. Bloodshed is not a thing to rejoice in. But tak- en as a cause, an agency, and not as an effect, not as a re- sult, I do think this war a matter of rejoicing, and that it is to be one of the things to be remembered in our history with joy. The time has come to revise our notions of war and to change our view of it somewhat- The time has come for us to infuse into our religion even a more sturdy spirit. We have misinterpreted the gospel of peace and have gone 16 faster than God in bringing on the millcnial day when war shall cease. We have expunged a large portion of the Old Testament, and have forgotten that Christ himself declared that he came not to send peace but a sword. The ulti- mate result of the gospel will be, undoubtedly, to estab- lish peace among men. But until we come nearer to the grand consummation than we are yet, there will be wars and strifes. The very opposition of Christ's peaceful spir- it and reign to the wrathful, vengeful spirit of unsanctified men, will cause them to array themselves in battle against the right and the good. And they that take the sword must perish by the sword. When brutal men will not lis- ten to the argument of reason, and when they assault rea- son with violence, there is often nothing left but to use the argument of force, or let truth and goodness be overthrown. Isaiah says, "The Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle," and God does not hesitate to tell us that He goes with some armies ; that they are his chosen instruments of good. So I believe that the present war has come in the way of divine providence and appointment, not only to punish us for our sins, but also to be the instrument of preserving the liberty and the life of our nation, and of making our liberty and om life purer and nobler and more precious than before. The very advantages accruing to us of the North and largely to the whole Nation from our puritan ancestry, had given us an unparalleled prosperity, in which at length, by a perversion of good, we had so far departed from the char- acter of the fathers as to put gain for godliness. We had become so eager in the pursuit of wealth, that we were be- come very indifferent to principle and careless of the claims of morality. Our character as a people was rotting down. Only let our gains increase and we cared little by what meauF. The great struggle of life was to outstrip each 17 other ill the chase of the golden prize. An