^ 
 
LJ 75 
 
 P22 
 1862 
 Copy 1 
 
 ND THE FALSE, 
 
 OEATION, 
 
 u\ 
 
 CHARLES TRACY, Esq.; 
 
 ALSO 
 
 THE STARS AND STRIPES 
 
 A POEM, 
 
 Rev. CHARLES D. HELMER; 
 
 PKONOl. N*,Ki> IjlluKh liiK 
 
 PHT BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, 
 YALE COLLEGE, JULY 30, 1862. 
 
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 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE 
 AN ORATION, 
 
 7 
 
 CHAELES TRACY, Esq.; 
 
 ¥® 
 
 ALSO 
 
 THE STARS AND STRIPES, 
 A POEM, 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. CHARLES D. HELMER; 
 
 PKONOUKCED BEFORE TIJI 
 
 I 
 
 PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, 
 
 YALE COLLEGE, JULY 30, 1862. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY^:; ,, 
 NEW HAVEN. ^ 
 
 PRINTED BY E. HAYES, 426 CHAPEL ST. 
 1862. 
 
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ORATION. 
 
 The discovery and praise of truth, and the detection and 
 reprobation of falsehood, form no small part of the work of 
 men's minds in all stages of growth and all degrees of ac- 
 tion. To know the true and to avoid being ensnared by 
 the false is an instinctive impulse, which" nothing but a life 
 in reverse of all virtue can deaden. Valuing upon this 
 kindly tendency in the present hearers, let us attempt some 
 tracings of the true and the false among things which press 
 closely around us. 
 
 In the representation of material objects and the arts of 
 construction, truth is recognized as a main force, ruling the 
 taste despite habit and authority. Should we daily pass a 
 stately building, where the form, size and material challenge 
 admiration, and often follow up with the eye a marble tower 
 and steeple to the glittering top, never weary of the faultless 
 and suggestive proportions, 3^et if one day it comes to light 
 that somewhere up in the distance the marble ceases, and 
 all above is joist and lath and plaster, painted to counterfeit 
 the real, the charm of the pile has gone. It is in vain that 
 the plasterer and the painter have cheated the eye : it is be- 
 yond the power of fascination to make us satisfied with the 
 false, where we looked for and trusted that we had the true. 
 Nor will the notion of cost in labor or money, which some- 
 times gives dignity to an indifferent result, avail where a 
 deception is thus detected. If the plaster were made of 
 diamond dust and calcined pearls, and at great price, truth 
 
4 
 
 required that it should not pretend to be solid blocks from 
 the quarry. An equestrian statue balancing on a high pe- 
 destal does not offend the sense ; because it does not pretend 
 to be a man and a horse, but merely an imitation of their 
 form. If the bronze rider were habited in real cloth and 
 tinted to the life like a wax figure, and the horse were en- 
 cased in the skin and hair of the real beast, no one could 
 bear the sight of them on a pedestal. The incongruity of 
 a performance impossible in the hippodrome, would shock, 
 and the apparent and imminent risk of such aerial eques- 
 trianism would alarm. A picture in a frame, separated by it 
 from the real objects around, and plainly telling that it 
 represents, but is not, the landscape, the living group, the 
 tossing sea, the gorgeous sunset, is no fraud. It belongs to 
 the true. So a wooden building may be of a design grand 
 and pretentious, or highly ornamented, yet so long as it 
 gives no false token, but confesses the boards, it gains re- 
 spect and yields pleasure. 
 
 As the lack of the badges of the true cannot be supplied 
 by the signs of costliness, so the littleness or absence of ex- 
 pense does not impair the impression of the beautiful. An 
 India shawl, wrought by fingers toiling through years and 
 recording their owner's name in barbarian letters, may sell 
 for many times as much as another shawl of the same size, 
 material, pattern, color and quality, but manufactured swiftly 
 in a French or Scotch loom. Is the one more handsome 
 than the other ? -No. Will it wear or keep bright longer ? 
 No. Why then is it preferred ? To break the secret, the 
 fact that the one necessarily costs the most money and there- 
 fore is most seldom owned, is an abundant reason for the 
 decree of Fashion in its favor ; for the consideration of rela- 
 tive beauty never prevailed a moon's length in her fickle 
 court. Things which cost nothing at all are ever win- 
 ning with their beauty ; flowers, trees, curved shores net- 
 ted over with vines and resonant of bird music : where 
 nothing is sham but all is true : coming to rich and poor 
 
alike: never impairing the resources of fertile nature, nor 
 wearying the sense of her children. 
 
 The pursuits of physical science have a strong gravitation 
 towards truth. Beginning with numbers, and following the 
 laws of form and space by steps of infallible accuracy, 
 mathematics reveals to the student an invisible world where 
 all is harmony and no false thing can exist. This has been 
 likened to poetry ; but the mathematician's universe of form, 
 proportion, space and quantity, standing up in its purity 
 aloof from matter, and framed together into harmonious 
 perfections, has attributes which the poet's ideal must ever 
 lack. There is here no hazy outline between something 
 and nothing, no mystic transformations, no startling coin- 
 cidences, no doubt nor fear nor passion nor hazard; but 
 everywhere truth, defined, finished, regnant, supreme. Next 
 comes material philosophy, or physics, gathering facts 
 widely, collating them largely, and reaching by induction 
 to general principles or laws; — a process of patiently inquir- 
 ing of nature until her rules are learned : a long and diligent 
 watching for the grand truths which underlie phenomena 
 and bind matter into one great unity, No sudden conclu- 
 sions, no hasty generalizations from a scanty basis, no eager 
 grasping at conjectural conclusions, can be tolerated here. 
 The false in physics intrudes where brilliant haste takes 
 the short cut ; the true, toiling the long road about, with 
 many a careful step, finding not guessing its way, arrives, 
 sooner or later, but surely, at the right terminus. Physics 
 has her worst experience when she takes up hypothesis, and 
 leaps over the hard places of the road, often coming down 
 wide of the track and making for herself new labors. Crea- 
 tion is old and vast. It is not the work of a day, or a life, 
 or a generation, to master its constitution; and the wise 
 physicist rejoices on his way both in the discoveries which 
 open to his own sight and in the assurance that he is pre- 
 paring for men unborn the means of attaining further re- 
 sults of still higher interest. After science had revealed 
 
6 
 
 the distant Uranus, invisible to the natural eye, a generation 
 later found in that remote body some peculiarities of action 
 wbicb almost took it out of the rigor of the planetary system, 
 and led to a surmise that it might be the outer member of 
 the solar group. Another generation of astronomers kept up 
 their untiring work of observation, until it came to be seen 
 that there must be another planet, farther off in space, to 
 work those disturbances. The theoretical planet, as the sup- 
 posed body was called, became a theme of discussion. At 
 last a French mathematician, a solver of abstruse equations, 
 by a course of severe analytical computation, a toil of cal- 
 culation guided by genius, working upon the ascertained 
 elements of the disturbances, determined the direction of 
 that undiscovered body, gave to an observer the point to 
 which he should aim his tube ; and behold Neptune was 
 there. The observer with his telescope sounded the depths 
 of space but an hour before he reached the planet. Think 
 of the toil of many observers in the past gathering out of 
 the great ab3^ss the facts, and think of Le Verrier in years of 
 calculation, dealing with obstinate equations, and think of 
 the entire certainty of the result which crowned all. So 
 long, so slow, and yet so sure, is physical science when ad- 
 hering closely to the true. 
 
 Literature, as a pursuit, is more in peril of the false. It 
 deals more with the drapery and integuments of things, bal- 
 ances among words, wanders along the uncertain, the fanci- 
 ful, the romantic, the colored, rather than grasps, like science, 
 upon the very body of the real. History perhaps is the de- 
 partment of letters most near to inductive science; yet it 
 founds its conclusions on the testimony of witnesses who 
 are dead and cannot be scrutinized by cross-examination, 
 and who often speak with prejudice and argue rather than 
 state the case. It has befallen a part of the reading world, 
 after enjoying the history of Mexico and its first conquest, 
 newl}^ enriched by a gifted American author, to find grave 
 cause to doubt the general impression of the subject which 
 
has prevailed, and to suspect, at least, that contemporary 
 falsehood and suppression greatly magnified the cities, the 
 wealth, the people, and the events, and mingled the threads 
 of ballad and legend and fiction in the web of history. Chro- 
 nology itself, seemingly the most removed from such disad- 
 vantages, involves a world of care and of nice allowances. 
 The length of the human period, and the date of some 
 great events still belong to the class of hard problems, and 
 demand immense reading and thought. 
 
 Go then to the other extreme of literature, and behold in 
 romance and poetry how the true and the false rush in to- 
 gether, and how the grandest, most stirring, most ennobling 
 sentiments struggle ever against the tides of error and wrong. 
 A poetic soul, with the glorious power of ideal fascination, 
 should be always pure, wise, just, and devout, or the world 
 bewildered will go astray. Happy for our day it is that so 
 much of this sort of inspiration has fallen upon minds 
 deeply imbued with virtue, humanity and faith, thus ren- 
 dering the divine gift doubly a blessing to man. 
 
 No species of composition is more common than what is 
 called biography. From the brief line upon a tomb stone, 
 the newspaper obituary notice, and the funeral sermon, 
 through the series to the volumes of the complete life of the 
 departed, it has its authors everywhere ; and they all have 
 their temptations. De mortuis nil nisi honum, is their practi- 
 cal maxim : a good and worthy rule within its right limits. 
 Alas, there is not so great a mass of biased and unfair testi- 
 mony in the rolls of the criminal courts as in the growing 
 library of biography. The biographer of George Fourth 
 hides his odious faults, exaggerates his meagre mind, and 
 by a graceful pen bewilders the reader into reverence for a 
 shallow, faithless creature, with no merit except superficial 
 accomplishments and an inherited crown. In humbler names 
 there are lives of men, not a few, who thus appear, printed 
 and bound for perpetuity, in the glorious forms of virtue, 
 culture and loveliness, without a shade of the qualities which 
 
8 
 
 contemporaries saw and grieved over. How many a model 
 of the books was sordid, grasping, sharp, trickish, self-seek- 
 ing, or irritable, improvident and self-indulgent. On the 
 canonization of a modern saint, it was remembered that one 
 of his associates who knew him well had left his testimony, 
 that " Vincent was a pleasant fellow, but had a bad habit 
 of cheating at cards." Eead the record of one whose life is 
 declared so perfect that he left not a blank to fill nor a blot 
 to erase, and then, if you would know, go el?ewhere to ask 
 of the practical men who had to meet him, and tried to 
 manage his failings or avoid their encounter, whether they 
 could not have suggested some improvements in his charac- 
 ter. Was he not peevish, denunciatory, prejudiced, intoler- 
 ant : could people love him strongly : did their esteem for 
 his good qualities live by liberal allowances for his faults : 
 was his heart cold : was his learning small and his diligence 
 little : did he have a large field for usefulnes, and neglect 
 its due cultivation? It is in vain to trust an average 
 biographer for any such actual truth. Among the men 
 of genius, whom we all recognize as the great, some had 
 abominable habits, and did vast mischief by bad personal 
 example. Will you find this in their printed lives ? 
 Such a book should not be called a biography but a 
 eulogy. The art of this species of authorship consists in 
 ingenious selection, which goes through a man's life, choos- 
 ing out the worthy acts, the good designs, the wise say- 
 ings, and arranging them with skill, but studiously sup- 
 pressing every defect or turning it into an excellence by 
 friendly interpretation. It is an art which can pass to 
 the annals of the age every party politician as a pure pat- 
 riot who never plotted or intrigued, never took care of his 
 own promotion ; every merchant as one who bought and 
 sold almost without the thought of gain ; every manufac- 
 turer as a great humanitarian, driven by unmingled benevo- 
 lence to supply the needs and increase the comforts of his 
 fellow men ; every scholar or professional, as an embodi- 
 
9 
 
 ment of the thinking, the studious, the genial, the modest, 
 the great. Why is this? The age has passed when au- 
 thors feared the attack of ghosts and therefore flattered 
 tliem. But there remains an influence of the living, the 
 friends of the subject of eulogy. The biographer is not al- 
 ways an indifferent stranger. He often looks on the sub- 
 ject with a lover's eye, which smooths wrinkles and rounds 
 angles. A generous impulse in a stranger leads him to men- 
 tion the virtues rather than the errors of the dead. Con- 
 science itself, sometimes reproving a child for past undu- 
 tifalness, prompts to an easy atonement by exaggerated 
 praise of a departed parent: — a thing not without loveli- 
 ness in its interior spirit, but noxious in its influence work- 
 ing externally. The discriminations among the living 
 which justice draws, belong both to the proper rewards of 
 goodness, and to the wholesome corrective forces of society ; 
 and the embalming of good and bad alike, in the same fra- 
 grance of biography, cheapens virtue and emboldens wrong. 
 Sneering wit has coined the phrase "to lie like a tomb- 
 stone:" a more humane but just vindication of the true 
 demands that biographic art be held amenable, somewhere, 
 to courageous criticism. Doubtless it is useful, indeed ne- 
 cessary, that people should read of good examples, of wor- 
 thy actions, of the heart's struggles, of the patient endu- 
 rance of adversity ; and the effect is heightened by the em- 
 bodiment of those noble things in a real life and name; 
 but let not history turn into fiction. 
 
 There is a species of writing where the good and bad, the 
 grand and the little, of character, may be shown without 
 restraint. The novelist, speaking at a distance of time or 
 disguising by names and surroundings, can portray an actual 
 character with entire fidelity. Strange, that to find a delin- 
 eation of the man as he really was, one should turn away 
 from the entitled registers of truth to labelled romances. 
 Compare what comes in proper biography, concerning cer- 
 tain personages, with what you see of them in such a book 
 2 
 
10 
 
 as ' The Minister's Wooing.' For a true and full notion of 
 tlie character of the minister or the soldier, no one would 
 send an inquirer to biographies rather than to that novel. 
 Other examples could be given where a whole character 
 goes forth a true lesson to the world, while quite recent, the 
 disguises of a judicious pen preventing the personal appli- 
 cation which might offend surviving friends. 
 
 The great delusions of our age, mormonism and spirit- 
 ualism, both indigenous in the United States, so familar as 
 to be dropped from the list of current topics, cannot be 
 passed, in the tracings of the true and the false, without 
 some attention. As a general rule there is no controlling 
 and abiding error which does not arise from a damaged 
 truth. The power of the erroneous idea actually springs 
 from the elements and fragments of truth which it has 
 appropriated and retaind. The energy of Mohamedan- 
 ism, and its power to continue for centuries, came from 
 certain grand ideas which it stole from the true faith and 
 wickedly devoted to its false devices. The superstitions of 
 the East which hold out longest, have recognized and used 
 certain sublime truths. Mere falsehood, without aid from 
 weighty truth, is a light force and soon fails. It is remark- 
 able that the two delusions specified have followed one an- 
 other at so short an interval, and have existed contempora- 
 neously so long, and yet both have gathered converts so 
 widely. The two never interfered with each other ; mor- 
 monism losing nothing from its existing hordes or its steady 
 accessions by the rise of spiritualism, and the latter never 
 being diminished by desertions to the dominion of Deseret. 
 The class which Smith and Young have drawn together 
 and thus far ruled firmly, will bear a general description. 
 They are coarse, low-minded, impressible, and with reli- 
 gious capacity enough to feed fanaticism but rarely warming 
 into any .ecstacy of devotion. From whatever tribe or clime 
 they come, this is their style. A scholar, a poet, a physicist, 
 an artist, a gentleman, can never spring from such a level. 
 
11 
 
 Persuasive talkers, artful intriguers, shrewd traffickers, and 
 perhaps sullen and unflincliing soldiers, may not be want- 
 ing: — the latter a chance which our nation should think of, 
 as this strange mass rolls on and grows. The true of mor- 
 monism is its acceptance of some doctrines of the holy scrip- 
 tures, enough to give the stock of mormon lies quite too 
 many probabilities of lasting. The false of this system is 
 most gross, and transparently absurd : — a story of supernat- 
 ural revelations proved by affidavits taken before a justice 
 of the peace, beginning "Wayne County, to wit;" and new 
 chapters of the same sort furnished by the prophet as the 
 crisis demands, attested by nothing but the word of the 
 chief and the quick amens of his obedient followers. 
 
 Spiritualism, allowing the name it has wrongfully as- 
 sumed, has its proper class of subjects. These are persons 
 of distorted mind. Some smitten with natural obliquity, 
 intellectual or moral, which often carries them off to the 
 left when grappling with a matter requiring close thought ; 
 — a defect belonging more or less to an unsound nervous 
 system : — others who have experienced a secondary distor- 
 tion, by false and partial education. Smatterers in particu- 
 lar departments of learning with no foundation in its ele- 
 ments, ever seeking the new, strange, or extreme in scien- 
 tific hypotheses, (a cloudy region which the well-balanced, 
 safely educated, sober mind avoids), the quacks in medicine, 
 the charlatans in philosophy, the progressive skeptics who 
 never land in the dogmatic region of settled unbelief, nor 
 turn back to the right way, but doubt on, excited, fluttering 
 and timid : through all their lesser varieties they conform 
 to the one general class of distorted and abnormal minds. 
 The true of spiritualism, where is it? Happily for the 
 future, this thing rests wholly on the false. It stands for no 
 truth at all ; except it admits a life after death, which no 
 human tribe has forgotten, and which truth it degrades, belit- 
 tles, and ruins. The whole catalogue of its pretended phe- 
 nomena is a series of juggleries. The legion of the golden 
 
12 
 
 book of mormon is not a barer lie than the whole stock of 
 authorities — the rappings, writings, visions, voices and pos- 
 sessions — of spiritualism. Totally without any essential 
 alliance with the true, it cannot maintain a long existence; 
 and already, in its first decade, it is vanishing away. Great 
 have been its mischiefs, but chiefly in its influence on char- 
 acter. A reliable witness, who has encountered most of the 
 chiefs of this movement, makes a sad report of their gener- 
 ally impaired veracity. While mormonism further imbrutes 
 a sluggish soul, spiritualism seizes upon a distorted mind 
 and works fell mischief in both intellectual and moral char- 
 acter. The one clinging to some fragments of truth's 
 wreck, floats on and may have a future : the other without a 
 plank of the good old ship to sustain it, must sink speedily 
 and forever. 
 
 Grovernment, the familiar theme, open in every way to 
 discussion, and universally treated by hands of every degree 
 of skill, has come now to be subjected, among us, to fresh 
 scrutiny. Our system, apparently complete in its general 
 principles, has advanced, like every living thing, through a 
 progress of growth, developing its greater and lesser limbs, 
 and sometimes putting forth branches which the good of the 
 tree makes it needful to prune away, if the shadows of rank 
 vegetation do not first make them wither and disappear. 
 The prevailing tendency has been towards greater popular- 
 ization of authority. Starting from the maxim tlaat all gov- 
 erning power resides in the mass of the people, some have 
 come to the conclusion that the briefer the term of office, 
 and the more direct the action of the mass in naming its 
 agents, the more true and safe the administration. Numbers 
 being king, the seekers of the royal favor have yielded to 
 this drifting of the public sense, not venturing to question 
 the popular infallibility. A statesman once tried to put off 
 compliance with the royal behest of the majority, gracefully 
 intimating that the decree was hasty, and asking for " the 
 sober second thought of the people;" and although, like a 
 
13 
 
 court flatterer, lie declared that such sober second thought of 
 the people was " never wrong and always efficient," he lost 
 favor forever. The prevalent assent to this debateable view 
 of government, has been owing not only to the personal 
 desire of ambitious men to keep right with the current, 
 but also to an accepted exaggeration of the revolutionary 
 principle, that governments derive their just power from the 
 consent of the governed. The declaration of independence 
 was the act of a nation, the people of a continent, setting 
 up a government of their own ; and the passage referred to 
 w^as meant to utter forth that people's right of erecting their 
 own polity, and to proclaim the reasons why thej'' dissolved 
 the bands which had held them to another state ; and not to 
 vent the doctrine of an arbitrary democracy, which might 
 change its will with the wind, and yet that will be supreme 
 and dominant. In times of quiet, in the oratory of Congress 
 where there was no grave trial of statesmanship, amid de- 
 bates of niere abstractions, doubtless some to whom we all 
 now confide the greatest interests, have said what the an- 
 archists of to-day may quote as sanctioning the principles of 
 secession ; but practical necessities of state, — the real and 
 earnest life of a nation with its terrible trials, — lead to a 
 sounder notion. Tiiere is a divine right in government. 
 Tlie chances of birth, or the chances of elections, may give 
 the ruler his place ; but when seated there, his exercise of 
 authority, his doing right to his friends and enemies, within 
 the nation and abroad, his legislation, his administering of 
 law, his rendering of justice, his regulation of the things 
 that pertain to industry, trade, property, and order, belong 
 to a higher title than a descent from king or noble, or a cer- 
 tified plurality of ballots. With us, he comes in by prefer- 
 ences of the people ; but he rules jure divino. Hence a 
 government once established cannot be assailed for small 
 cause. It cannot be disrupted by malcontents, as mere mat- 
 ter of will, but only for causes grave and just, heavy griev- 
 ances long borne and become unendurable, so that a solemn 
 
14 
 
 duty "denounces a separation." It would be a low and 
 unworthy view of our resistance of secession, should we try 
 to stand on the ground of holding the states to their bar- 
 gain, and exacting the performance of the bond, or on the 
 ground of our own will to retain them and our ample power 
 to enforce that will. This goverument is not a mere com- 
 mercial partnership, nor a social club, nor a mutual benefit 
 lodge. It is the established ministry of our nationality ; a 
 nationality founded by a supreme hand, shaped by the long 
 process of preparation, matured by chosen trials, cherished 
 by the profusion of prosperity ; throughout the period from 
 the first occupation of these coasts by settlers down to the 
 day we take our present lessons, the touch of that mighty 
 hand being always manifest. From copartnerships, clubs or 
 lodges, individual members may withdraw, and the joint 
 concern thus maybe dissolved; but what God has joined 
 together let not man put asunder. 
 
 This solid doctrine of the divine right of government has 
 suffered temporary obscuration from an unlimited devotion 
 to paper constitutions. The British constitution, as it is 
 called, consists of a series of restrictions on the power of the 
 crown. Magna charta, the Bill of Eights, and the like, were 
 encroachments upon the powers of an existing absolute gov- 
 ernment : they never were the foundation or affirmative 
 basis of that government's right or power. But an Ameri- 
 can constitution founds a government and professes to give 
 it specified powers. It is the difference between negative 
 and positive treatment. The English charters took away 
 from absolutism ; the American charters bestow powers 
 upon government. Such is the theory. Hence our internal 
 debates have turned so much on the interpretation of our 
 charters ; and constitutional law has grown into a depart- 
 ment of learning, throughout which the notion has been 
 generally current, that government has no power but such 
 as it can make out by a paper title. The piping times of 
 peace have favored this narrow view of the subject. But 
 
15 
 
 national peril and pressing exigency, in the face of armed 
 rebellion, taught the country, that there were powers of 
 government not written on parchment, but belongiDg to 
 it essentially and of divine right. Arming, borrowing, 
 arresting, imprisoning, became necessary to be done, and 
 done promptly; and in many cases without the least warrant 
 of written law or constitution, and in breach of solemn 
 judicial precedent those very things were bravely done. 
 Some show of argument was put forth, at times, to make 
 these acts square with the paper-vouched rights of govern- 
 ment ; but the verity of the matter is that the conduct of 
 public affairs, necessary in the crisis, was sometimes without 
 the sanction, and sometimes in contravention of the written 
 constitution. The vindication of what was done should 
 never be put on any narrow ground. The nation had, and 
 must have, a natural right to exist, to maintain itself, to de- 
 feat its enemies, to suppress treason. It had a necessary 
 right to judge of the best means for its self-preservation, 
 including, if need be, the establishment of its Bastile. In 
 all our reverence for the eminent wisdom of the men who 
 framed our paper constitution, we need not impute to them 
 an infinite foresight of every possible conjuncture of affairs, 
 nor deny that they left out some things in grants of power, 
 or inserted some things in the restrictions and limitations, 
 with imperfect ideas of possible contingencies ; but the gov- 
 ernment when in being, installed as the ruler and protector 
 of a great people, by its very nature holds every authority 
 and power which it needs for maintaining its existence, and 
 conserving the nationality of which it has charge. The 
 controversy between strict construction and loose construc- 
 tion, does not reach this point. The nation's power of self- 
 preservation comes not of conventions, or delegations, or 
 resolutions, or ratifications, but of divine right. Some may 
 shrink from this position ; and accustomed to extol the ad- 
 vantages of having a written constitution, and of adhering 
 to it alwaj^s, may fail to see how state department warrants, 
 
16 
 
 unexplained arrests, and detentions in Fort Lafayette and 
 Fort Warren, can be other than nsurpations, tending to fatal 
 mischief. Conservatism, of one sort, consists merely in saving 
 the written constitution from infraction. A true conservatism 
 is that which saves the state from destruction. When the 
 brave and worthy acts of our government, in its direct pro- 
 ceedings to conserve the nation, shall come to be canvassed 
 in legal tribunals, and those who have taken part in the vig- 
 orous measures which written charters did not sanction, 
 shall be arraigned as culprits, then shall we see whether 
 Courts can rise to the perception of the divine right of gov- 
 ernment, or must ever feel for a sinuous and scant}'' footpath 
 along the margins of grammatical authority. That will be 
 the test whether the true or the false shall prevail. 
 
 It is well, it is best, it is needful, to have a written con- 
 stitution, and to describe and fix, as far as possible, in that 
 written symbol of power, the prerogatives of a supreme 
 government ; and the constitution of the United States is 
 the most eminent example of such an instrument. Yet that 
 charter was a human production, and not exempt from the 
 liability to error which belongs to every aggregate work of 
 man ; and wdien that paper document fails to give, or speaks 
 to deny, an attribute of government which must exist; 
 which is indispensable, inevitable, inalienable ; the govern- 
 ment takes such attribute of divine right and holds it firmly. 
 Therefore let no one be troubled by demonstrations that the 
 government has no warrant by paper constitution to coerce a 
 state into submission to federal authority, or to acquire new 
 territory, or to take a neighboring republic into the Union, 
 or to exercise supreme power over the people within the ter- 
 ritories. These are necessary attributions of our national life, 
 and must exist whether granted or denied by the words of 
 the charter. With such a view of the perfection of our nation 
 the duty of loyalty to its government, fidelity to its unity, 
 and subserviency of individual opinion and will to its high 
 claims, takes the rank of a religious obligation binding the 
 conscience to the ordinances of heaven. 
 
17 
 
 From the consideration of government t"he transition is 
 short to party politics. Here we reach a field where the 
 true is hard to find, and the false flourishes like the bay. 
 Whatever may be said in favor of parties abroad, where 
 they represent controversies about the policy of administra- 
 tion, or parties in past periods of our country, when gov- 
 ernmental policy was the real and the sole ground of divi- 
 sion, we now are where party means a selfish league to get 
 offices and emoluments, and politics, as a term in present 
 use, refers less to the art of statesmanship than to the sys- 
 tem of management of crafty aspirants. Those stupendous 
 frauds, the platforms of parties, still appear at intervals ; but 
 nothing could be more erroneous than to suppose the man- 
 agers of the party to be acting upon the principles of the 
 published scheme. The leaders in such affairs, with unim- 
 portant exceptions, seize upon state questions as matter of 
 capital to use in the business of attracting together a majority 
 in support of their candidates. The immediate object of a 
 party, in their view, is not to establish a doctrine or defeat 
 a measure, but to elect a ticket; and the permanent object 
 is to hold the power of nomination and election for the 
 future. Multitudes, not of the managing class, sustain a 
 party as the exponent of some state doctrine, such as free 
 trade, or protection, or any of the theories concerning 
 slavery ; but these are not the politicians. They are the 
 innocent victims of managers, who cunningly put into party 
 symbols such doctrines, from time to time, as seem likely 
 to catch votes. It would not be agreeable, nor admissible 
 now, to name party men nor point out examples of party 
 contrivance ; but those who carefully look within the ma- 
 chinery and watch the workings of these combinations, 
 without participating in any of the designs, behold an ex- 
 hibition of depravity, falsehood and hypocrisy, which not 
 only stirs indignation, but causes an anxious forecasting of 
 our country's future. It is undeniable that every party which 
 has appeared in these later years, whether boasting of its 
 3 
 
18 
 
 antiquity or of its fresh newness, whether claiming favor as 
 a champion of good old ways or as a reformer of ancient 
 abuses, has presented some fair show of principles ; but the 
 selection, arrangement and embodying of the particular prin- 
 ciples for the time held forth, has been, in the main, the cool 
 study of mere gamesters, choosing one side or the other of 
 the question as they thought it would win voters ; and the 
 ardor, the ring of a conscientious spirit, which always marks 
 the proclamation, is totally hollow. Principles touching 
 closely upon humanity itself, have been slipped in and slip- 
 ped out of a party creed at short intervals, while the organ- 
 ization itself kept right on with the same boast of exclusive 
 public virtue ; and the land is sprinkled over with politicians 
 who have transmigrated from party to party, impelled by no 
 change of opinion, but following merely the prospect of 
 personal advancement. To those who abide outside of these 
 combinations, and disown all party allegiance, it is wonder- 
 ful to see the multitudes of sincere and earnest men, in pri- 
 vate life, themselves free from personal ambition, ensnared, 
 caught, and led by one party or another, and unconsciously 
 becoming active supporters of the insincere, self-seeking, 
 and crafty. When a party chief, as his friends were about 
 entering into power, privately cautioned them that no party 
 upon attaining a victory could afford to redeem the pledges 
 it made before the election, and they might find excuses 
 for not fulfilling their public promises, but be sure not to 
 think of actually performing them, it was only a frank 
 utterance of one of the Machiavelian secrets of his order. 
 A thing so wrong cannot fail to bear evil fruits. Look 
 at the style in which every party berates every other. 
 Eidicule, sneer, charges of fraud, imputation of disloyalty, 
 intimations of the grossest corruption, mark the outpourings 
 in party addresses and convention resolutions. Malice, 
 sarcasm, and scandal grow imder such influences. A spirit 
 bordering on fanaticism springs up, which it requires the 
 humanizing course of business, the quiet teachings of social 
 
19 
 
 contact, the bonds of common sorrows, and the hopes of a 
 common faith, to restrain and allay. 
 
 But it is gravely said that parties are necessary. Some 
 daily and weekly oracles have so pronounced: — quite in 
 their sphere as devoted and rewarded agents of party. I 
 deny the whole proposition. Parties, as they are made and 
 used, if rightly appreciated, are neither necessary nor useful 
 nor worthy of favor. If, in an election, you have a prefer- 
 ence for a candidate, in view of his personal character or 
 his opinions on state questions, what help of party do you 
 want to enable you to -cast your ballot accordingly ? Take 
 the greatest national movement of this generation, the pres- 
 ent struggle to preserve our nationality and overthrow 
 anarchy and rebellion : have we wanted any party organiza- 
 tion to help the work ? Have the boasted virtues of party 
 given any aid? On the contrary, the spirit of the nation 
 has risen sublime and thrust aside these distrusted organiza- 
 tions ; and the period of noblest popular action, our very 
 highest public development, has been marked by a suppres- ^ 
 sion of party almost complete. The incorrigible gaming 
 men of every clique, from time to time, cautiously, lift a 
 faint voice ; but their words look only to a future when the 
 war being over their time for spoliation may return, and 
 their present total lack of following warns them back into 
 their conclaves. Yet in the midst of war, with all its de- 
 mands, and all its sacrifices, and all its endurances, men 
 affecting patriotism have been found who could cheat the 
 government of its money; and it is remarkable that these 
 plunderers have come mainly from the class of managing 
 politicians of the several parties. 
 
 Doubtless the mechanism of party politics does sometimes 
 put the right man in the right place ; but then it gives him 
 no freedom to do the right thing. The officer is made to feel 
 that he is in for the benefit of the party, that he owes his 
 elevation to the managers, that he must help them or nobody 
 will help him, that his reelection is in their hands ; in short, 
 
20 
 
 the power that gave him place, tempts to use it contrary to 
 the broad views which a right minded man should carry 
 into office. Thus the growing tendency of parties, in their 
 workings for a period of some years prior to the present 
 war, was to give power to intriguers, to divide the people 
 into hostile bands, and to deprave the common conscience 
 of the country. 
 
 The attempts of reformers to make party less a tyranny 
 and fraud, by various appliances, always fail. A general 
 attendance on primary meetings was one of the proposed 
 remedies ; but these assemblages proved to have been pre- 
 ceded by smaller ante-primary caucuses of the managers ; 
 and the worthy citizen found himself at a primary meeting 
 performing the secondary part of consenting to the arrange- 
 ment, which was prepared, beyond his power of amendment, 
 by the previous decree of a cabal. In the testing of this 
 hour, party politics must be cast out as false. 
 
 Our country for one year and more has borne the burden 
 -of t1ie world. The only spot of the earth's surface, where 
 popular government has its free abode and maintains a great 
 power, the land of hope to the oppressed of distant nations, 
 has been visited by an attempt at anarchy. This gigantic 
 wrong against the nation and against mankind, calling to 
 its aid false philosophy, false doctrines of society, and brutal 
 capacity of hate, has shown a front of horrible determina- 
 tion. It is the great type of the false. But the true has 
 risen majestically for its overthrow. A land of peaceful 
 arts has armed a million of men and taught them the 
 trade of war. The wealth of a prosperous people has been 
 advanced promptly when wanted. The endless resources of 
 mechanic art have been turned to the common cause. The 
 sacred ministry has blest the devoted bands. Women wor- 
 thy of eternal memory, have given their sons to the perils of 
 war, and have wrought at home with tireless fingers to pro- 
 vide for the wounded and the sick, bearing saint-like the 
 bereavements of many deaths. At last we are one people, 
 
21 
 
 a nation doubly consolidated, having a common and sure 
 hope of a glorious result. These times not only have de- 
 veloped unknown virtues in those whose record was good 
 before, but have awakened patriotic feeling and inspired 
 noble zeal for the country in not a few whose past career 
 had given little promise of such things. 
 
 Beyond our boundaries we had enjoyed an apparent 
 friendship, and had generously reciprocated what seemed to 
 be a sincere kindness of other powers ; but the deep seated 
 aversion to our government of the people, and the jealousy 
 of such a power rising rapidly into the circle of the masters 
 of the world, long lurking among the ruling classes of mon- 
 archical and aristocratic states, only wanted an occasion for 
 unfriendly manifestation. To break this country into frag- 
 ments, two or more, was the mission of the rebellion ; and 
 those false friends took joy at the prospect. The rebellion 
 also courted and won their sympathy, by proposing to fix 
 upon its confederation a permanent law of caste, dep:rading 
 labor and exalting patrician power. Soon came the grand 
 effort of humanity, the strife to maintain the dignity of in- 
 dustry ; and all that was peculiar to America, as the vindi- 
 cator of human equality, the protector of the humble indi- 
 vidual, the asserter of freedom, stirred the great heart of 
 our people to an arousing without a parallel. The capacity 
 of the loyal states to send forth armed hosts by land and 
 sea, and to raise at home immense subsidies, has amazed the 
 world. The end is not doubtful. When every acre of our 
 dominion is reclaimed, and order is restored in all the 
 bounds of the union, with no impairment of our popular 
 form of government and no check on the refuge open for all 
 seeking the land of the free, our country will stand abso- 
 lutely at the head of nations, as the first military power of 
 the earth. The true and the false come in contact at every 
 stage of this contest; but truth is mighty and must prevail. 
 
 The pure love of the true, — the deep personal adhesion 
 to truth itself, — has had its examples^ its suffering witnesses, 
 
22 
 
 in many departmeTits of man's pursuits. Let one instance 
 be mentioned, so humble that an apology perhaps might be 
 required for its introduction. A pauper child, an emigrant 
 from a foreign land, an orphan boy taken from an alms- 
 house to live in the family of a small farmer in the west, 
 was required by his foster parents to deny the truth of a 
 thing he had told to another : — a true statement of a fact. 
 The child refusing to admit the thing to be false which he 
 had spoken truly, was beaten by this man. The little .vic- 
 tim, tied in a loft, was whipped by the cruel husband, under 
 the influence of the wife who exhorted to the severity, mean- 
 while being assured, at intervals, that on making the false 
 denial he would be instantly relieved. The pure soul of 
 the boy clung to the truth; and he suffered on, while the 
 blood trickled down his limbs and dropped through the 
 loose floor. Pauses there were in this punishment, but the 
 rod came again. At last, when a cold chill seized his naked 
 body, and death, the deliverer, approached, the poor child, 
 unbound, sank upon his tormentor's neck, and articulated 
 with his last breath — "I could not tell a lie." Oh what a 
 soul rose then to its welcome in the skies ! Let grown men 
 debate the question whether falsehood may not be justified 
 in extremities. Let casuistry show how that child might 
 have found justification, in the love of an innocent life just 
 begun, or in the horror of occasioning a murder b}^ his per- 
 sistency, for some equivocation or mere false confession. 
 Happily he had not learned such ethics. His lot, as a waif 
 of the race, cast about the world, and ending his brief pil- 
 grimage in the place where he suffered all, had opened to 
 him none of those metaphysical ways of vindicating the 
 false. His mission was to die a martyr to the true. 
 
 The yearly gatherings at this venerated seat of learning 
 befit our theme. Early associations and unfading impres- 
 sions of the past, cheer while they sober the spirit. If there 
 is any place preeminently fit for the bold tracing of the true 
 and the false, it is here, amid these groves of faithful teach- 
 ing, and around these fountains of knowledge. 
 
POEM. 
 
 By Rbv. CHARLES D. HELMER, 
 
THE STARS AND STRIPES. 
 
 1. The Flag of the New World. 
 
 2. The Flag of Independence. 
 
 3. The Flag of the Republic. 
 
 4. The Flag of the Union and Constitution, 
 
 5. The Flag of Battle. 
 
 6. The Flag of Peace. 
 
 7. The Flag of Freedom. 
 
 8. The Flag of our Country. 
 
 Forsake to-daj the soft and tender reeds 
 Of peace : the thunder-peals of mighty deeds 
 In battle drown the silver lute : 
 We will not hear the velvet flute 
 And silken strings : let them be mute. 
 
 ^iD'- 
 
 No time is this for moonlight seranades 
 Or songs of nightingales in evening shades : 
 The war-steeds neigh, 
 The trumpets bray, 
 Our Dahlgreens, Parrotts and Columbiads pour 
 Their echoing thunders forth from shore to shore. 
 On every hill, by every stream. 
 Our banners wave, our bayonets gleam : 
 4 
 
26 
 
 And far tlarougli odorous groves, in marshy damps, 
 Behold the fluttering canvass of our camps ; 
 Where vahant regiments and brave brigades 
 
 Their solid columns wheel, 
 
 Full-armed with loyal steel, 
 
 While ever and anon, 
 
 As press our armies on, 
 The furious hoof of battle stamps 
 In streams of blood, on heaps of broken blades. 
 
 We had a Banner once — we have it yet ; 
 
 A flag, our children never can forget ; 
 
 A flag, whose stars ascend — but do not set. 
 
 We hold it for a sacred truth, 
 
 That Grod this banner gave us ; 
 When in our country's tender youth 
 
 He raised up men to save us, 
 Who, striking down a tyrant's hand, 
 Outflung this ensign o'er our land. 
 
 Above us still it waves ; 
 
 And shall above our graves, 
 K we are faithful to our Grod and those 
 Who flung it earliest in the face of foes, 
 When rose, in blood, our nation's morning sun, 
 And threw a halo round our Washington. 
 
 It is not old — and yet men call it so 
 
 To-day— the dear Old Flag ! 
 
 Because a mutinous rag, 
 
 That drips the filth of Treason, 
 
 Disgusts the air a season : 
 A loyal curse upon it ! time will show 
 The Devil's handiwork that all may know. 
 
27 
 
 All hail, tlie glorious clustering Stars ! 
 All hail, the Stripes ! those glowing bars 
 That stream resplendent on the air ; 
 Our Country's Banner — honored everywhere. 
 
 No Crown upon its radiant folds ; 
 No throne of King your eye beholds ; 
 No hungry bird of prey 
 To snatch your rights away ; 
 No lion, raging to devour ; 
 No slimy serpent, coiled in power : 
 But only Freedom's Constellation bright, 
 Outstreaming in exhaustless beams of light. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE FLAG OF THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 Behold this Starry Banner thus unfurled, 
 And floating proudly o'er this Western world : 
 It streams nndimmed amid Atlantic spray. 
 And glows where evening shuts the gates of day 
 Upon the far Pacific coast ; and wide 
 Its realm from Northern Lakes to Mexic tide. 
 No conquering nation brought it o'er the sea, 
 Borne westward in the hands of Tyranny ; 
 Devised and wrought, with sentiment sublime, 
 In Europe, Afric, or some Asian clime : 
 But here, upon this Continent unstained 
 By footprints of the Despot unrestrained. 
 This Banner's course of glory was begun. 
 Blending the Evening Star and morning sun 
 In beams harmonious and in orbit one. 
 
28 
 II. 
 
 THE FLAG OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 Away with that standard with fire for its light ! 
 St. George and St. Andrew their Crosses unite, 
 To follow the old British Lion in fight ; 
 But the stars of the sky descend from their courses, 
 And, bright on our ensign, lead onward our forces. 
 Shall millions of men, whom the Highest made free, 
 Submit to a monster of cruelty, groan 
 Overburdened and crushed by a merciless throne. 
 That flings its dread shadow far over the sea ? 
 ISTever 1 our lives and our fortunes cry, never ! 
 The bands that have bound us we dare to dissever. 
 Let nations be judges and God be our shield, 
 No tyrant can conquer, no freeman can yield — 
 We swear Independence, for ever and ever. 
 Then up with our Banner, bespangled with Stars ! 
 Unfurl it defiant to Tyranny's crew ; 
 Jehovah of Battles descends as our Mars, 
 And makes his pavilion of Eed, White and Blue. 
 Athwart the Atlantic no Monarch shall dare 
 His sceptre extend, here to multiply slaves ; 
 The ocean is freedom, and never will bear 
 The transports of tyranny o'er its free waves. 
 Behold, how the billows are ceaselessly broken 
 In impotent foam on our bulwark of rocks ; 
 And take this, ye Despots, a free people's token 
 Of power, to resist your proud armament's shocks. 
 Athwart the Atlantic no Standard shall come, 
 To wave o'er our armies, to float o'er our domes; 
 Our arms thus to palsy, our hearts to benumb, 
 And shielding the insolence dared in our homes : 
 But down from the sun we will pluck threads of fire, 
 To weave one broad Stripe ; and another, as white 
 
29 
 
 As the snow that falls on the North's icy spire, 
 Shall blend with the sky on our Banner of Light. 
 Let this be the Flag of the uprising nation, 
 The flag of a people rejecting their King : 
 Fling out to the world the sublime Declaration, 
 And o'er it the Flag of the Kingless outfling. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE FLAG OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 Across the sea of nations the gales 
 Of Empire blow, and westward waft 
 The fleets of Power with swelling sails — 
 A navy of commingled craft. 
 
 The keels are built of Monarchs' thrones : 
 A sceptre for the bow, a crown 
 The stern ; and launched amid the groans 
 Of millions, free, to sail — or drown. 
 
 Their masts are one, or two, or three. 
 That grew through centuries of time ; 
 They are Might and Gold and Tyranny, 
 With shrouds of cruelty and crime. 
 
 The decks are trod by Noblemen; 
 
 The holds are full of gasping slaves: 
 
 There's glory for the Upper-men, 
 
 But shame grows darker toward the waves. 
 
 Aloft the hateful pennons shake. 
 The flags that Despots long have borne ; 
 Beneath, the hearts of bondmen break — ■ 
 Their hopes of freedom quenched with scorn. 
 
30 
 
 But lo ! a ship, new-launched, appears ; 
 Of model beautiful, unique : 
 JSTot drawn from Time's remembered years, 
 Not seen by Eoman eye or Grreek. 
 
 Its keel is Liberty ; its masts 
 Are Justice, Truth, Humanity ; 
 Its banner in the varying blasts 
 The Starry Ensign of the free. 
 
 Amid the floating Thrones it sails — 
 The New Eepublic's Ship of State ; 
 The heavens vouchsafe their fairest gales, ' 
 While fatal storms their rage abate. 
 
 To mast-head Grod himself has nailed 
 The Stars and Stripes, aloft to gleam 
 The Cynosure of nations, hailed 
 With rapture — Man's prophetic dream. 
 
 Not all the tyrants of the world 
 That stellar Banner down can tear ; 
 Jehovah hath its Stripes unfurled, 
 And set His Stars in glory there. 
 
 Advanced, the New Eepublic's mast 
 Shall bear this standard of the free : 
 The foremost empires shall be last ; 
 The flag of Freedom rule the sea. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE FLAG OF THE UNION AND CONSTITUTION. 
 
 O Hand divine ! that made the worlds on high, 
 That grouped the Constellations of the sky 
 
 In union permanent: 
 With self-same power thou didst the stars create, 
 That form the Constellation of the State, 
 
 Upon the Nation's firmament. 
 
31 
 
 There were but thirteen then, when first they shone 
 In dawning glory over Freedom's throne — 
 
 A civic Constellation ; 
 But star by star they came, from far and near, 
 Together drawn, from brighter year to year, 
 
 By Freedom's gravitation. 
 
 And ever, as they rise amid the years, 
 Eesounds the music of these civic spheres 
 
 Along the wilderness : 
 Now blended into one, shine Thirty-Four, 
 While Freedom's melody attracts still more — 
 
 There never shall be less. 
 
 Though waves on waves rebellious rage and rise, 
 Dashing their quenching fury on the skies 
 
 In mad Secession, 
 In God we trust ! no star shall fall from heaven ; 
 The dome of Union never shall be riven 
 
 By the Treason of Oppression. 
 
 Eebellion lifts from Hell its snaky head, 
 And shakes its horrid locks, with ruin red, 
 
 Behind the Traitor's rag : 
 It flouts the Constitution, dares the might 
 Of loyal millions, arming for the fight 
 
 Beneath the Union's flag. 
 
 The storm is wild ; the tempests sweep and roar ; 
 The darkening billows rush on every shore 
 
 In fury and affright : 
 But through the gloom the Flag of Union gleams ; 
 No clouds of battle quench its starry beams, 
 
 That wide illume the night. 
 
 Now banners wave as thick on all the air 
 As forest leaves, while armies everywhere 
 Eespond to war's alarms ; 
 
 X 
 
32 
 
 And loud as thunders bursting from the cloud, 
 Than whirlwinds or tempestuous seas more loud, 
 The rush of men to arms ! 
 
 The guns that poured on Sumpter's sacred walls 
 A storm of traitorous fire, with shells and balls, 
 
 Against a faithful band, 
 Were like Archangels' trumpets, to awake 
 The slumbering nation and with fury break 
 
 The silence of the land. 
 
 The Union and the Constitution call 
 
 For vengeance and defense ; their banner's fall 
 
 Is crying from the dust : 
 Let traitors tremble ere they stamp again 
 In hate upon our flag ; for loyal men 
 
 Uplift it will and must. 
 
 By all the suffering of ancestral times ; 
 By all the glory of these blended climes ; 
 
 The Union sworn to cherish ! 
 Wave, Loyal men, your-starlit banner wave, 
 And sweep the hordes of Treason to their grave — 
 
 Let every Traitor perish ! 
 
 V. 
 
 THE FLAG OF BATTLE. 
 
 Where rolls in clouds the battle-smoke ; 
 Where sabres flash with lightning-stroke ; 
 Where bursting shell and shrieking ball 
 On reeling columns mangling fall ; 
 Where horse and rider, overthrown, 
 In dying pangs together groan ; 
 Where gush the streams of patriot gore ; 
 And clouds repeat the cannon's roar ; 
 The Stars and Stripes, uplifted there, 
 Unroll their glory on the air. 
 
33 
 
 The Flag of Battle— let it float I 
 The eye in death shall on it gloat, 
 When, on some memorable day, 
 The soldier's life slow ebbs away 
 At sacred wounds upon his breast — 
 The gates of his eternal rest. 
 Beneath its folds he left his home ; 
 Beneath it glory 's mountain clomb ; 
 And now within this winding sheet 
 He sleeps in peace at Grod's own feet. 
 
 There's wailing in the cottage door I 
 
 The widow's son returns no more ; 
 
 For Country — honored mother dear ! 
 
 Has called the patriot volunteer. 
 
 He marched to victor}?- or death ; 
 
 He hails his flag with dying breath ; 
 
 And while his comrades onward press, 
 
 In battle's fierce and mighty stress, 
 
 He gazes, with dim eye, afar. 
 
 And counts once more each sacred Star, 
 
 That glimmers through the darkening fight ; 
 
 And watches still the Eed and White, 
 
 Till death with darkness veils his sight. 
 
 Oh, banner of the fallen brave, 
 
 Forever in thy splendor wave ! 
 
 Oh, banner of the patriots dead, 
 
 Thy glory on their memory shed ! 
 
 Oh, banner of the Martyrs slain, 
 
 Eain honor, with a golden rain ! 
 
 There's many a grave on earth's round breast ; 
 
 There's many a place where heroes rest, 
 
 By hostile hands in battle slain ; 
 
 There's many a glory -gilded plain ; 
 
 5 
 
84 
 
 There's many a flag by men admired, 
 And death. Ambition has desired : 
 But no such spot as that where sleeps 
 Our patriotic dead, where keeps 
 Eternal watch a nation's eye, 
 And ne'er permits their fame to die. 
 
 There's no such plain as that, whose flowers 
 
 Have drunk the blood that poured in showers 
 
 From patriotic veins, that gave 
 
 Their lives, their country's life to save. 
 
 There's no such banner as that one. 
 
 Which from the fountains of the sun 
 
 Its folds with glory fills, and, bright 
 
 With Liberty's celestial light, 
 
 Streams through the darkness of the strife, 
 
 Where a nation struggles for its life. 
 
 ' Tis long since first the sword was drawn : 
 What man remembers War's red dawn ? 
 The years have many been and dire. 
 Through which has flashed the sabre's fire ; 
 And under many a banner's shade 
 Has reddened deep the warrior's blade : 
 But never was the sword more keen 
 And bright than with the starry sheen, 
 That from our flag of Stripes and Stars 
 Illumes the sacred steel of Mars. 
 
 The cloud of war is dark with wrath ; 
 A rain of blood shall mark its path ; 
 Its awful gloom no sunbeams break ; 
 Beneath its shadow nations quake : 
 But where this Flag in splendor flies 
 A rain-bow spans the battle's skies ; 
 
35 
 
 It rides sublime the clouds of war, 
 Like Victory's triumphal car. 
 
 Already thrice since first it rose — 
 
 A splendid menace to our foes, 
 
 Its Stars have lit the battle plain, 
 
 And led triumphant each campaign. 
 
 Unfurled in virgin beauty fair 
 
 On Saratoga's lurid air, 
 
 From field to field its glory flew, 
 
 And in its train fresh conquests drew ; 
 
 Till down on Yorktown's conquered height 
 
 It flung the trophies of its might. 
 
 And then above the conflict's roar 
 Its star-lit wings were spread once more, 
 Shaking its pinions of blue and gold, 
 Till splendor streamed from every fold. 
 It gave New Orleans the victor's hand, 
 And drove the Briton from the land. 
 
 Thence onward through the years it goes — 
 
 The flag of conquest o'er its foes ; 
 
 O'er Buena Yista, Monterey, 
 
 And Cerro Gordo, on its way 
 
 To Montezuma's ancient halls, 
 
 To float in triumph o'er their walls, 
 
 And write, in lines of fadeless gold. 
 
 The name of Scott on every fold. 
 
 So streams through battle-storm and smoke, 
 So gleams above the sabre-stroke, 
 This star-lit flag of victory. 
 Upon the land and on the sea. 
 Where'er our army's hosts have passed ; 
 On every war-ship's towering mast ; 
 
86 
 
 On field and mountain, lake and sea, 
 It waves the flag of victory. 
 Its brave defenders ne'er liave quailed, 
 Nor have its Stars in dust been trailed, 
 Before its foes ; but proud and fair 
 Its stainless folds adorn the air, 
 Eespect compelling everywhere. 
 
 Alas ! alas ! the Muse is wrong : 
 Rebellion's curse disturbs her song. 
 For, now, it must with shame be told 
 How Treason has defiled the gold 
 And glorj^, that our flag illume : 
 It has become our latest doom 
 To see this banner stained and spurned 
 By sons, to fiendish traitors turned ; 
 To see the proudest flag on earth 
 Begrimed by men of kindred birth 
 With us, whose noble sires were one. 
 Who love a common Washington. 
 
 '&' 
 
 Behold it, loyal countrymen ! 
 A sight we would not see again ! 
 And by the sword of Freedom, now 
 In vengeance drawn, record the vow ; 
 That such dishonor shall not go 
 Unpunished, if a nation's woe 
 Hath vials filled with ruin red. 
 To pour on Treason's guilty head. 
 
 The storm of war has burst once more 
 The world repeats the deafening roar ; 
 A nation lifts its mighty hand, 
 To sweep Rebellion from the land. 
 This last campaign shall yet outweigh 
 The rest in glory, and display 
 
87 
 
 Its crowns of victories sublime — 
 Proud trophies for all corning time : 
 Our Flag of Battle yet shall wave 
 O'er every Traitor's loathsome grave. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE FLAG OF PEACE. 
 
 But not amid the gloom of war alone 
 
 Our banner-spangling Stars have brighly shone — 
 
 The Flag of Peace as well ; 
 
 Whose light, enkindling, fell 
 On Art, Invention, Learning, up the way 
 Of human progress toward the world's millennial day. 
 
 Its beams have guided Labor to its toil, 
 Have cheered the genial culture of the soil ; 
 
 The Sailor's starless chart, 
 
 The studios of Art, 
 The halls of science, and commercial spheres. 
 This banner has illumed and guarded through its years. 
 
 Upon our mountains, fluttering in the breeze — 
 A light-house, flashing beams athwart the seas, 
 
 To guide the nations o'er 
 
 The deep to Freedom's shore — 
 The Stars and Stripes, the heralds of success, 
 Have beckoned millions westward to the wilderness. 
 
 And while the hosts of Europe's fleeing poor 
 
 Came crowding through the New World's golden door, 
 
 The wilderness began 
 
 To blossom wide for Man, 
 And cities, like the work of magic, sprang 
 Along its wastes, where Labor's noisy echoes rang. 
 
88 
 
 The Peasant, gazing with enchanted eyes 
 Upon this Banner in the Western skies, 
 
 Sees hope in every fold, 
 
 Wealth in each star of gold, 
 And feels a manh blood flowing in each vein. 
 And grasps, with joy, his speeding fortune's golden rein. 
 
 The Grod of Eaces has uplifted thus 
 This standard for the nations — as for us — 
 
 Upon this hemisphere, 
 
 To gather peoples here ; 
 And give the poor, oppressed and spurned, a place 
 Beneath the sun, with hope to run life's weary race. 
 
 The sea, that with incessant billows beats 
 Its shores, forever floats the busy fleets 
 
 Of Commerce round the globe ; 
 
 While Peace, with shining robe, 
 Walks every deck and waves her starry sign, 
 And bids the nations prosper in her sway benign. 
 
 Behold ! amid the pinnacles of ice 
 
 In Arctic realms our banner's bright device. 
 
 Borne farther toward the Pole, 
 
 Where waves forget to roll 
 In icy sleep, than any flag unfurled 
 By Christian hands through all the regions of the world. 
 
 From North to South, from East to West, 
 On every land the foot of man has pressed, 
 
 In heat extreme or cold, 
 
 This flag has been unrolled, 
 Displaying Peace, with all her bounteous stores. 
 And pouring light and life upon war-wasted shores. 
 
89 
 
 Upon this far, sequestered, Continent 
 Did Peace her open Temple build, intent 
 
 To hold a glorious reign — 
 
 Beneficent to men, 
 Upon a bloodless, olive-shaded throne, 
 Beneath her star-lit Banner to the winds outthrown. 
 
 Then on her throne and on her Banner smiled 
 The God of Peace benignant, pleased and mild ; 
 
 And from His open hand 
 
 Poured treasures on her land 
 Munificent, in ceaseless golden showers, 
 As sunbeams pour their floods upon meridian hours. 
 
 Oh ! Flag of harvests, vineyards, streams and mines, 
 Floating o'er valleys, prairies, hills of pines. 
 
 Thou star -crowned Flag of Peace ! 
 
 Let War's fierce tumults cease, 
 And, wave thou, radiant down succeeding time, 
 Till flames the Banner of the Cross in every clime. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE FLAG OF FREEDOM. 
 
 Lift again the Starry Banner, 
 
 Let the nation feast its eyes ; 
 Lift aloft the Flag of Freedom, 
 
 Glowing on its native skies. 
 
 Wave it gladly, wave it proudly ! 
 
 No such standard gilds the air : 
 Look, ye nations tyrant- ridden. 
 
 Let the sight dissolve despair. 
 
 Ye who dread despotic sceptres, 
 Ye who crouch before the thrones, 
 
 Pause and gaze upon this vision ! 
 Pause and hush your patriot groans. 
 
40 
 
 Sweetest of all earthly music 
 Is the song that Freedom sings ; 
 
 Sounding on its way of battles, 
 O'er the sea of Time it rings. 
 
 Through the dark and dreary dungeons 
 "Where Oppression smites its chains, 
 
 Like the hymns of coming angels, 
 Eoll the echoes of its strains. 
 
 Lo! a bright and long procession. 
 Marching down the track of days, 
 
 Singing as they come still nearer, 
 "Waving banners all ablaze. 
 
 It is Freedom's army, marching 
 To the music of their souls ; 
 
 And the Standard they are bearing 
 Shows the Stars upon its folds. 
 
 Like the Brazen Serpent, lifted 
 
 In the wilderness, of old, 
 Nations, by Oppression bitten. 
 
 Freedom in this flag behold. 
 
 As tbe cloud and fire-like pillar 
 Went before the chosen ones. 
 
 So this Striped and Starry Banner 
 Leads the hosts of Freedom's sons. 
 
 Hence the hate of angry despots. 
 Like the flames of hell's own fire, 
 
 Leaps aloft in conflagrations, 
 With a fierce infernal ire. 
 
41 
 
 But, though earth itself were blazing, 
 Not a flame could strike the stars ; 
 
 So the hottest rage of tyrants 
 Ne'er can reach these sacred Bars. 
 
 High above their fiercest fury, 
 On the sky of Freedom spread, 
 
 Shall this flag of living glory 
 Wave above earth's tyrants dead. 
 
 Bearing high this star-lit standard 
 
 Eolls the car of liberty ; 
 Wide athwart these Western regions 
 
 Flash its wheels in victory. 
 
 Only ensign of man's freedom 
 Under all the shining sun ; 
 
 Who shall shame us, if we love it 
 For the deeds already done ? 
 
 Dare we here our conscience utter ? 
 
 Are our voices in our laws ? 
 Do our rulers crush or serve us ? 
 
 Ask this Banner for the cause. 
 
 Other flags interpret empire ; 
 
 Some the pride of rank enshrine : 
 This alone is Freedom's emblem — 
 
 Charter of man's rights divine. 
 
 Wave it, then, before the nations ; 
 
 Let the light that from it falls 
 Scatter all the gloom of Bondage, 
 
 Flashing day-spring o'er its walls. 
 6 
 
42 
 
 As the icy bands of winter, 
 
 That the singing streams restrain, 
 
 Melt beneath the sun of summer, 
 Let this Flag dissolve each chain. 
 
 Let the hard and galling fetters, 
 That have blood upon their links, 
 
 By its magic break asunder, 
 
 While the sun of Slavery sinks. 
 
 Oh ! the guilt too long already 
 
 Has been lying on our souls, 
 That a Eace, by millions numbered. 
 
 Has no name on Freedom's scrolls. 
 
 Shall the eyes of White men only. 
 Looking on our Stripes and Stars, 
 
 In them see a free-man's glory, 
 While the Black see prison bars ? 
 
 Or has God his freedom given 
 
 Only to the strong and great? 
 If not, let these bonds be riven : 
 
 Speak the word — Emancipate ! 
 
 For no human eye should ever 
 
 Look upon our Banner's face, 
 Without seeing in each color 
 
 Liberty for all the race. 
 
 Flag with justice, flag with freedom. 
 
 Blazing on each splendid fold, 
 Speak them from each White and Ked stripe, 
 
 Flash them from each Star of gold. 
 
43 
 
 And while Traitors boldly venture 
 On our freedom's grave to frame 
 
 Slavery's empire, wide extending, 
 Bury them in death and shame. 
 
 Strike ! ye soldiers of the Union ; 
 
 Let your war be freedom's cause ; 
 Let the sword grow red and redder — 
 
 Never, till triumphant, pause. 
 
 Oh ! remember all the Martyrs 
 Sleeping in their bloody shrouds ; 
 
 Think of all the noble spirits 
 Gazing on you from the clouds. 
 
 See the hands of mighty heroes, 
 That have borne this standard high, 
 
 Borne it through the storm of battle — 
 Stretching toward you from the sky. 
 
 Hear, from out the Past and Future, 
 Voices full of hope and cheer; 
 
 " Bear it ! bear it ! bear it ! upward, 
 Into freedom's loftiest sphere." 
 
 Flag of Freedom ! flag of glory I 
 
 Flag of all Humanity ! 
 Lead the van of marching nations; 
 
 Wave ! the ensign of the free. 
 
44 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE FLAG OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 Mj country ! country still, tliough deeply gashed 
 With bleeding wounds — by traitors made ; 
 
 Yes country still, thou art, though, rudely dashed, 
 
 Thy cup of peace, upon whose brim once flashed 
 The gems of glory, now is laid 
 
 All empty in the dusty battle's shade. 
 
 My bleeding country ! once so free and proud ; 
 
 So beautiful among the nations then, 
 
 Eesplendent in the light of liberty ; 
 
 Now darkened by the fearful cloud 
 
 Of war and shaken by the tread of men 
 
 To battle rushing vengefully ; 
 Oh ! country, God to Baptism calleth thee. 
 
 Thou art the country of the free ; 
 
 Thy God is consecrating thee. 
 And now, once more, the Font of blood is brought ; 
 Behold the crimson emblem. Oh, how red ! 
 Jehovah pours it on thy sacred head. 
 This holy service is not done for nought ; 
 Prepare thee for the labor to be wrought. 
 
 And, now, the sacred Flag He dips ; 
 The Stars and Stripes He plunges deep 
 Beneath the surface, thence to lift 
 The consecrated banner up the steep 
 Of War's wild heights : and lo ! it drips 
 The blood of heroes, while pale lips 
 Still whisper to it through the swift 
 And angry clouds of battle, as they sweep 
 Athwart the fields, with here and there a bloody rift. 
 
45 
 
 Oh ! consecrated country, rise I 
 Uplift thy sacred banner to the skies : 
 
 Go forth to fight ; 
 
 Defend the right ; 
 For twice ten millions of the bravest brave 
 Will gladly fill for thee a bloody grave. 
 
 Oh! consecrated banner, wave ! 
 Above this land without a slave ; 
 
 When freedom's risen sun 
 
 Beholds her mission done. 
 And bright athwart America her light 
 Pursues the shadows of Oppression's night. 
 
 We have a country still ; 
 
 That country has a right to live : 
 
 Let those forsake its cause who will, 
 There are the chosen ones, whom God will give 
 
 The glory of defending it ; 
 Whose names shall cover pillars bright and high, 
 Whose fame shall be as lasting as the sky, 
 
 While years are wide extending it. 
 
 Our country has a Banner too. 
 Of heaven's own stars and heaven's own blue. 
 
 And streams of light combined: — 
 
 That flag is in our hearts enshrined. 
 
 Our country's banner, God defend its stars 
 
 In sacred Union blent ! 
 Our country's hopes, our nation's life, 
 Are one with it ; through all the whirls and jars 
 Of civil discord and rebellious strife. 
 
 Let not one shining fold be rent — 
 Preserve the Union from dismemberment ! 
 
 Oh ! sun, refuse to shine 
 Upon the nation wrecked, upon the heap 
 
46 
 
 Of ruins from the Union strewn. 
 
 Oh ! stars, withhold your beams benign, 
 
 And in eternal darkness weep 
 
 About the sun's forsaken throne, 
 If ever falls our country from its bright 
 And high career to anarchy and night. 
 
 Nor let the glory from our banner fade, 
 Till dies in heaven the sun's last beam ; 
 
 Nor let a single star expire 
 
 Upon its folds, on high displayed, 
 Till those in heaven forget to gleam ; 
 But coexistent burn their kindred fire. 
 And through the dawn of coming years shall rise 
 New stars to shine upon our Banner's crown, 
 As states, begotten from our empire vast, 
 Ascend to places on the Union's skies ; 
 Till flings our larger constellation down 
 Its beams, more splendid than illumed the past. 
 Upon America and o'er the world ; 
 And millions, yet unborn, shall see 
 Our Banner, more resplendent still, unfurled 
 Above a wider realm of liberty. 
 
 This banner was the standard of the brave. 
 When first it rose amid the battle's gloom : 
 
 It shaded Washington in death : 
 Its folds have drooped o'er many a patriot's grave : 
 It floats above the cradle and the tomb 
 Of every citizen ; while Freedom's breath 
 Still tosses it on many an airy wave. 
 
 Then take this banner ! bear it forth 
 
 Through East and West, through South and North ; 
 
 Let every star be bright. 
 
 And pure the Red and White — 
 
47 
 
 Through battle storms, on bloody fields ; 
 With G-od and Freedom for your shields. 
 
 What though the wild and dismal night 
 Of war enshrouds ? behold the light 
 
 That through the darkness streams, 
 
 With unextinguished beams, 
 From out the Stars and Stripes : no gloom 
 Like this can be the country's tomb. 
 
 These clouds shall pass ; this storm shall cease, 
 And leave the shining sun of Peace 
 To light our Banner still — • 
 If such be Grod's dear will : 
 And high our Starry Flag be borne, 
 Though in the storm of battle torn : 
 No star erased, 
 No stripe effaced. 
 Its folds in glory ^to be furled 
 Above a free and happy world, 
 Amid the splendors of the earth's millennial morn. 
 
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