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 OUR COUNTRY : ITS PRIDE AND ITS PERIL ; 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 HARVARD STREET BAPTIST CHURCH, 
 
 Boston, Aug. 11, 18C1, 
 
 RETURN OF THE PASTOR FROM SYRIA. 
 
 DANIEL r. EDDY, D. D 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 JOHN M. HEWES, 81 CORN HILL 
 
 18G1. 
 

 
 ,»y 
 
 \i 
 
 61503 
 '05 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 Rnth 1 : 16, 17. 
 
 Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from follow- 
 ing AFTER THEE ; FOR WHITHER THOU GOEST, I WILL GO ; AND WHERE 
 THOU LODGEST, I WILL LODGE ; THY PEOPLE SHALL HE MY PEOPLE, 
 AND THY GOD MY GOD ; WHERE THOU DIEST, I WILL DIE, AND THERE 
 WILL I BE BURIED. 
 
 You will expect me, this morning, to depart some- 
 what from the usual routine of pulpit ministrations, to 
 leave the beaten path of theological discussion, and ad- 
 dress you a few words of Christian salutation. The sep- 
 aration of the past few months, renders this spot doubly 
 sacred, and makes every countenance here look sunny 
 and cheerful. I feel like one who has long been tempest- 
 tossed, who has been beaten about by storms, who has 
 watched for morning that he may see the beacon light at 
 the entrance of the harbor, and who at length has 
 reached the shore, and received the hand of welcome 
 and the embrace of love. 
 
 The language of the text is the language of my heart 
 to-day. " Thy people shall be my people, and thy God 
 my God." Suffer me to say that it is without affecta- 
 tion that I make this appropriation of scripture language ; 
 for, outside of the domestic circle, there is no relation- 
 ship so tender as that of a pastor towards a people, some 
 of whom, when burdened with sin, he has pointed to the 
 
cross of Christ ; whose bodies he has buried beneath the 
 sacred waters of baptism ; whom he has united in wed- 
 lock, uttering, amid the blessings of friends, the simple 
 formula which of twain maketh one flesh ; to whose 
 homes, in hours of sorrow, he has come with the consola- 
 tions of religion, identifying himself alike with the mar- 
 riage festival and the funereal woe ; and who in return 
 has received from them comfort in his own sad hours, 
 who has been borne up on their prayers, and who has 
 ever received a joyful welcome to their firesides and 
 homes. I think that the relationship between a faithful 
 pastor and his flock will survive long after many of the 
 ties of birth and blood are sundered and forgotten ; 
 it will never cease, but will grow deeper, stronger, 
 purer, holier, when with those who have been redeemed 
 through his instrumentality, he shall present himself be- 
 fore the Eternal throne, saying unto the Great Shepherd 
 and Bishop of all — "Here am I, and the children which 
 thou hast given me." 
 
 But it is not this local application that I propose to 
 give to the Scripture text announced. I think I have re- 
 peated this language a hundred times within the past few 
 months. It has again and again recurred to me, Avhile 
 traversing the streets, or roaming over the cultivated 
 hills of Protestant England ; while watching the fancy 
 pleasures of gay, voluptuous Paris ; while wandering 
 over the burning sands, or sitting beneath the beautiful 
 palm trees of Egypt, and while slaking my thirst at 
 Moses' wells in ancient Midian. It floated through my 
 mind like the music of home, as I stood years ago in 
 the deserted Forum of Imperial Kome, and as I trod 
 amid the ftiding glories of Papal power the marble pave- 
 ment of St. Peter's. It was the first passage I thought 
 
of as I rounded the Golden Horn, and looked up from the 
 sparkUng waters of the Bosphorus upon the crescents 
 and mmarets of Constantinople. It breathed uncon- 
 sciously from my lips as I stood upon the Mount of 
 Olives, and looked down across sad Grethsemane upon 
 Jerusalem, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole 
 earth ; and it came to me as the echo of an angel's lips, 
 as I sat down on Mount Zion, and saw the daughters of 
 Judah sweep by with tuneless harps. I heard it as a 
 melodious sigh, amid the broken pillars and trampled 
 pride of fallen Athens, and caught its echo from the 
 heights of the Acropolis. 
 
 But not to any of those climes did my heart go forth 
 in the expression of the text ; towards none of those 
 countries did I feel the tender sentiment of the Moabitess 
 woman. I could not say to the Frenchman, the Italian, 
 the Egyptian, the Turk or the Arab, " thy people shall 
 be my people." I could not say to the Papist, the Mos- 
 lem or the Jew, " thy God shall be my God." I could 
 not turn to the inhabitants of London, Paris, Rome, 
 Athens, or Jerusalem, and say to them, "where thou 
 diest, I will die, and there will I be buried." 
 
 My thoughts swept across the ocean, my arms stretched 
 out towards America, — tJiis country^ her soil stained with 
 blood shed in fratricidal war ; her banner torn and be- 
 reft of half its stars ; her Constitution trampled beneath 
 the feet of treacherous millions ; a plague spot, black as 
 midnight, resting on one half her fair domain, but with 
 all her faults and crimes, the noblest nation on the globe, 
 yet to be recognized by all men as the grandest experi- 
 ment of human history. 
 
 To know and appreciate his own country, the Ameri- 
 can must visit other lands, and mark the contrasts that 
 
every where appear. It is not enough that he reads 
 what travellers have written of the wants and woes, the 
 oppressions and tyrannies of other nations ; it is not 
 enough that he sees the trampled subjects of imperial 
 monarchs, the overtaxed, impoverished inhabitants of 
 royal realms flying to our shores as an asylum from des- 
 potisms that neither rest nor sleep ; it is not enough that 
 he catches fugitive glimpses of the moral and political 
 degradation of communities to whom God has given the 
 sunniest skies, the purest fountains, the most fertile soil, 
 and the most productive climate, but which are death- 
 ridden by priestcraft and kingcraft, imbruted by centu- 
 ries of indulgence, and dehumanized by a barbarism 
 which has neither suns nor stars. lie must see with his 
 eyes, hear with his ears, and feel with his heart. He 
 must go down from the high moral elevation on which 
 New England has been placed by Puritan faith and Pil- 
 grim creed, by free institutions and an open Bible, down 
 the successive steps of the pyramid of human society, 
 and see mingled at its black base, the dregs of human 
 nature, — men and women so little removed from brutes,, 
 that the difference can hardly be detected, the human form 
 alone distinguishing them from creatures as soulless as 
 the sod. 
 
 Let me point you to a few of these contrasts. Passing 
 England, whose blood is our blood, whose history, whose 
 literature, Avhose religion are all ours, our fatherland, 
 into a war with which, the satanic press of this country, 
 the mischief-breeding perverters of public sentiment, here, 
 and the selfish, mercenary dependents on cotton crops, 
 there, are endeavoring to plunge us, we come to France. 
 The ocean separates us from that gay, vivacious country, 
 where fountains sparkle in the sun and music vibrates 
 
on the air, and odors are wafted to the senses, and the 
 people live in Elysian fields. But there is not more 
 difference in the languages spoken, than in the institu- 
 tions of the two countries. The faith and hope of the 
 Frenchman are as unlike the foith and hope of the 
 American, as light and darkness. That gay land is the 
 theatre of constant revolutions ; the people overturn the 
 Government, and assassinate the rulers for public amuse- 
 ment. Within a dozen years that beautiful land has 
 been ruled by a King, a President, a Mob and an Em- 
 peror. The most fragrant flowers that grow in Paris are 
 fattened by the gore of monarchs. Fountains gush out 
 and sparkle where royal blood flowed in torrents ; mon- 
 uments stand where the guillotine worked day and night, 
 and a thoughtless crowd fill the streets along which the 
 death cart rolled from the revolutionary tribunal to the 
 sanguinary execution. A few years ago, I saw the best 
 king France ever had, flying a mournful exile from the 
 capital, on the embellishment of which he had lavished 
 his fortune, amid hoarse cries of, Vive la BepubUque ! 
 Vive la Gouvernement provisoire V^ while Republican 
 hands wrote on the doors of the Tuileries and the 
 Louvre, the significant words, — " Liberie^ Equalite, Fra- 
 ternite. Since then those words have been obliterated, 
 their sacred meaning is a myth in France, and that land 
 rests under a despotism as severe, if not as odious, as 
 relentless, if not as cruel, as any on earth. 
 
 Sail down the blue Mediterranean and land in Italy. 
 Follow the track of Francis II., the most despicable of 
 the Bourbons, to Rome, or take the path of Garibaldi to 
 Turin, and how little there is comparable with what we 
 enjoy in New England. There are halls with miles of 
 pictures in them ; galleries piled full of sculpture, but 
 
Qio real liheriy ijet. Eome, where great Crosar reigned, 
 where Paul preached salvation, where Constantine flour- 
 ished — Rome, whose citizenship was a royal honor, whose 
 name was a terror to the world, whose flag waved in 
 imperial supremacy over all lands — Rome, the birth- 
 place of martyrs, the sepulchre of apostles, is but the 
 filthy centre of a religion which has blazoned on its 
 front, " Ignorance is the mother of devotion^ Her narrow 
 streets are thronged by a Avorthless priesthood and a 
 filthy lazzaroni ; in her dim, faded palaces sit conclaves 
 of tyrants debating how best to stifle the freedom of the 
 globe ; blasphemy is enthroned in her churches ; anti- 
 christ presides at her altars which glisten with precious 
 stones, while an oppressed and down-trodden people im- 
 plore the aid of the civilized world to break the chains 
 which have been on them for centuries. Italy presents 
 to the world the singular spectacle of twenty-five mil- 
 lions of people struggling to be free, yet with neither the 
 virtue nor the intelligence essential to freedom. 
 
 Embark again and sail to Egypt — land of mythology, 
 cradle of learning and science. Tread where the Pha- 
 raohs used to tread ; sit down among the antiquities of 
 Memphis and Thebes ; ramble by daylight or moonlight 
 amid the melancholy pomp of Karnac ; step softly on 
 the dust of the ancient city of the Sun, and every where 
 you behold evidences of degradation which you never 
 imagined. Man is an ignorant, besotted creature, living 
 in the most sensual abandonment, practising the grossest 
 vices, and satisfied with the lowest forms of humanity. 
 Woman, in turn, becomes the slave of her husband's indo- 
 lence and the victim of his passions, condemned to 
 drudgery and toil, her immortality denied, her com- 
 plaints unheeded, and her happiness disregarded. Child- 
 
9 
 
 hood is allowed to grow up without instruction, in beast- 
 liness that leaves its marks on the physical constitution, 
 in blindness, idiocy and stupef^iction, and on the moral 
 nature in a conscience utterly diseased, and a heart ut- 
 terly depraved. Moses and Pharaoh are dead ; the Is- 
 raelites have gone out of the land, but the plagues are 
 there yet, reigning from the banks of the beautiful Nile 
 to the outward boundaries of the sun-scorched desert. 
 
 Visit Greece^ the land of art, which every ambitious 
 sophomore has invested with eternal charms, which has 
 been eulogized in every gifted oration, from the days of 
 Demosthenes until now, which has been woven into 
 poetry and song — Greece^ the land of Lycurgus and 
 Aristides, which stands forth to the scholar, what Pales- 
 tine is to the Christian, and how little is there worthy 
 of its past renown. The Acropolis full of broken 
 images ; the Parthenon in ruins ; Mars' Hill without an 
 apostle ; the Court of Areopagus broken up, the judges 
 dead ; the pillars of Olympus falling down ; the The- 
 seum battered by Turkish cannon balls — while within 
 sight of these, toils an over-taxed, illiterate peasantry, 
 and close by them rises the tasteless palace of the vile, 
 unscrupulous despot, King Otho. 
 
 Why, this modern Athens in which we live is a nobler 
 spectacle than ancient Athens ; one humble temple, 
 where Christ is preached and the cross is held up, is 
 worth more to humanity than the thousand-godded Par- 
 thenon ; Bunker Hill and Lexington are grander in their 
 moral significance than Marathon and Thermopylre ; Fan- 
 euil Hall is more eloquent in its historic meaning than 
 the Acropolis was in the days of Demosthenes. While 
 the children of the ancient Greeks are a poor, pitiable 
 race, rich only in an ancestry which they dishonor, a lit- 
 
10 
 
 erature, the beauties of which they are ignorant, and a 
 historic prestige to which they are indifferent, the chil- 
 dren of the Pilgrims are loyal to their principles, and on 
 their graves, to-day, are contending for the precious 
 legacy they bequeathed to us. 
 
 Last of all, go to 'Palestine — the Ilohj Land I Journey 
 on to Jerusalem, where Christ lived and died, where 
 apostles preached and labored ; travel through all the 
 country once covered with wonderful fertility, blest by 
 industry, sanctified by religion, now the abode of a mis- 
 erable, indolent, thieving, cowardly race, the hill-sides 
 run out by neglect, the vallies fruitless by inattention, 
 not a decent road from the hot, arid deserts of Philistia 
 to Damascus, not a single newspaper, nor rail-car, nor 
 telegraph in the land, whole towns, containing hundreds 
 of inhabitants, where not a chair, nor a table, nor a 
 comfortable bed, nor any evidence of civilization can be 
 found, and you have reached, there in tiiat IM>i Land., 
 every hill-top and valley of which has been consecrated 
 and hallowed by the footsteps of the immaculate Son of 
 God, the outward boundaries of civilization. The Hot- 
 tentot and the Caffre can scarcely be more sunken and 
 degraded than the Ishmaelitish inhabitants of Central 
 Syria. 
 
 The New Englander finds no place where he would 
 like to live, no country for which he would exchange his 
 own. There are royal burial places and pyramidal 
 tombs, but in none of them would he wish to sleep the 
 lasting sleep. As the Jew wishes to die within sight of 
 Jerusalem, and the Moslem lies down within the .shadow 
 of Mecca, so the American, turning from the veneral)le 
 Abbey of Westminster, from the ambitious dome of the 
 luvalideSj and from the rural glories of fair Pere-la- 
 
11 
 
 Chaise, re:iches his anus to his loved ones here, ex- 
 claiming, " Where thou cliest let me die, and there let 
 me be buried." 
 
 And why is it, that the American can find no clime 
 comparable with his own ? What is there that so en- 
 dears it to us all ? 
 
 Certainly, it is not the fertility of its soil. That is 
 coarse, rough, often barren and unfruitful. No man 
 would ever settle in New England for its fertility. 
 England is a garden of flowers ; France a vineyard of 
 grapes ; Italy a paradise of beauty, compared w^ith this 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 It is not for the salubrity of its climate. Our Atlantic 
 coast is dotted with consumptives' graves ; our Western 
 prairies waft the burning fever and the shivering ague 
 on every breeze ; our inland lakes produce a miasma 
 almost as fatal as the Roman Campagna ; while the 
 South, with every returning season, invites the soft, yel- 
 low footsteps of the plague. 
 
 It cannot be on account of its works of art, its antique 
 remains, or its lengthened history. Florence and Dres- 
 den have galleries of paintings and sculpture ; Rome 
 has its Coliseum and Athens its Parthenon ; Egypt has 
 its ancient history, its mythological record, and Pales- 
 tine its pilgrim shrines. Our country has none of these. 
 Our history dates with the Mayflower, and is but a little 
 more than two hundred years old ; our flag has not seen 
 a century since its stars were set, and the only pilgrim 
 shrine we have — Mount Vernon ^ we were told in Syria, 
 but I find falsely, had lately been rifled by robbers of its 
 sacred bones. 
 
 We love our native land for something better than a 
 lengthened history, or the crumbling ruins of antiquity. 
 
12 
 
 We can boast of something better than battle fields and 
 castles. We present to tlie world tlie only illustration 
 of constitntional government, unencumbered by tradition- 
 ary rights, privileged classes and hereditary claims, 
 that it has ever seen ; the only specimen of a genuine 
 republic ever known. The ancient republics were such 
 only in name. The grand idea of constitutional liberty, 
 wide apart from license on the one hand, and despotism 
 on the other, tliey did not reach. That idea is ours — 
 embodied in our government, illustrated in our history, 
 exemplified in our experience, enunciated in our Consti- 
 tion and laws. That idea we have had the greatness to 
 attain unto ; the events of the next few months are to 
 show whether we have the integrity to preserve it. 
 
 This constitutional government of ours insures to us 
 freedom of conscience beyond the power of any church 
 or inquisitor ; freedom of speech beyond the interfer- 
 ence of any mob censorship ; freedom of the press be- 
 yond any ecclesiastical or political despotisms. It makes 
 all our citizens politically equal, and furnishes liberty, 
 enlarged and salutary, to all who come within its influ- 
 ence. However much we sometimes fall below this, 
 these blessings are the legitimate results of the working 
 of our institutions. However barbarisms that have been 
 entailed upon us by dead or decaying monarchies, or 
 barbarisms that are the fruits of human wickedness may 
 for a time defeat the operation of the best of laws or 
 the purest of principles, the form of government be- 
 queathed to us by our Withers cannot fail to work out 
 for us a noble independence and a sure prosperity. 
 
 Beneath such a government our population has in- 
 creased to thirty millions of souls ; sovereign States, — 
 some of them too sovereign to be loyal to the mother 
 
13 
 
 th;it reared them, stretch from the surf-beaten rocks of 
 the Athuitic to the gold besprinkled sand of the Pacific ; 
 our canvas whitens every sea, and our flag waves in 
 every port ; our manufactories have arisen like magic 
 on the banks of our rivers, and populous cities thrive on 
 the shores of our mighty inland seas. Our national 
 wealth is as enormous as our pride, and our ambition is 
 bounded only by shoreless deeps. 
 
 Keeping pace with free institutions, our Protestant 
 religion has pushed its conquests in all directions. The 
 Bible has been made the foundation of our laws, the 
 code of our morals, and the ethics of our lives. In every 
 village and hamlet Christ has been held up as an aton- 
 ing Saviour ; the plan of salvation has been unfolded in 
 its vastness and glory, and we stand out before the world 
 as the Christian nation that best illustrates soul liberty, 
 as well as political freedom, unencumbered by any state 
 church, or any government recognized creed. 
 
 Hence it is that the American, wherever he goes, 
 turns back to his own country with feelings of patriotic 
 love and pride. Whatever he may see to admire else- 
 where, this is his home. The land of Washington is 
 dearer than the Via Sacra of the Cresars, and the Consti- 
 tution of Washington is an instrument more sublime than 
 the code of Lycurgus. With patriotism burning in his 
 bosom, he cannot look upon the flag waving among the 
 masts in any harbor, or floating in the sunlight over any 
 consulate, without a thrill of pleasure. It is the ensign 
 of his country ; that country is America ; and America, at 
 least in organic structure, is morally and religiously free. 
 
 The question comes up, and a very significant ques- 
 tion it is, in these times, — Is this country worth preserv- 
 ing ? Is this Union, in which are bound up the hopes 
 
14 
 
 of millions of human beings now on earth and millions 
 yet unborn, which is so intimately connected with the 
 welfare of the whole race, the spread of the gospel over 
 the globe, and the liberty of mankind, worth contend- 
 ing for ? 
 
 I return to you in the midst of civil war. I find hos- 
 tile armies traversing our country. I find a man's foes 
 to be they of his own household, and my soul shudders 
 at the prospect yet before us. I venture to say that 
 such an unreasonable, unnatural, merciless war was never 
 before entered upon. The rebellion of Absalom against 
 David, his royal sire, his mad endeavor to overturn the 
 Hebrew throne, does not approach the enormity of this 
 sanguinary conflict. The Sepoy rebellion, in India, was 
 not as inexcusable as this w^ar waged against the Fed- 
 eral Government by States whose soil we have purchased, 
 whose firesides we have defended, whose debts we have 
 paid, whose insults we have forgiven, whose injuries we 
 have borne, and, alas ! — God forgive us, — whose slaves 
 we have caught and returned. Never since God made 
 the world, has a brighter and more beautiful flag been 
 drabbled in a dirtier soil than that which fell pierced 
 with swords in the streets of Richmond ; never has trea- 
 son worked to a meaner purpose, and with more vil- 
 lainous instruments, than that which had South CaroUna 
 nullification for its hydra head, and the Montgomery abor- 
 tion for its cloven foot and forked tail. The name of Ar- 
 nold, which has been hung with a sable cloud, now 
 begins to glow with lurid light, in comparison with those 
 that in inky black, are inscribed beside it ; and the Ro- 
 man Catiline looks saintlike, compared with some of the 
 men who have plotted the niin of this great nation, and 
 
15 
 
 who, to consummate the purpose, have been willing to 
 drench the land in innocent blood. 
 
 The first intelligence we received of the commence- 
 ment of hostilities, was in Syria. We were told that eight 
 thousand chivalrous men had overcome a half-starved 
 garrison of seventy soldiers, and divided the immortal 
 honor of the exploit between them ; that Massachusetts 
 blood was soaking into the pavements of Baltimore ; 
 that the American flag, which no sovereign in Europe 
 would dare insult, had been hooted by a mob, pierced 
 with swords, trampled under foot, and rent to pieces ; 
 that an army of rebels was marching on Washington, to 
 haul down the banner, every star, and stripe, and thread, 
 and dot of which is redolent with freedom, and put up a 
 bastard ensign, a piratical insignia, in every flap of 
 which the world should hear the crack of the whip, the 
 clank of chains and the groans of the negro. 
 
 And that was all we heard ! The account was meagre 
 and did not tell us how such treason was to be met ; 
 how such rebellion was to be quelled, and how such a 
 government was to be preserved. A week, — a long and 
 painful week must elapse ere we could hear again. It 
 was a week of harrowing suspense, and I assure you that 
 as excited as you were here, your suspense could not 
 have been as dreadful as ours. The very silence of the 
 Syrian desert was eloquent with forebodings and fears. 
 We questioned ! Have the fires of patriotism all gone out ? 
 Has the love of liberty fled from Plymouth Rock to And 
 a home in Italy, Hungary and Poland. Are the de- 
 scendants of the men of Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and 
 Valley Forge all dead ? Will the people rise in their 
 majesty and defend the Constitution and vindicate the 
 flag, or will the freemen of the North yield once more, — 
 
16 
 
 yield forever ? and let that base Palmetto rag float over 
 the capitol, that counterfeit Montgomery constitution ex- 
 tend to the St. Lawrence, and that arrogant Georgian 
 fulfil the boast he made that he would call the roll of 
 his slaves on Bunker Hill ? 
 
 I must tell you that I was afraid of the North, of New 
 England, and especially of Boston. I knew that the 
 North had a conscience, but I also knew that warehouses 
 and manufactories had been built upon it ten stories 
 high. I knew that New England had a heart, but I 
 was well aware that it was all covered up with bales of 
 cotton, boxes of shoes and cargoes of tea, and was afraid 
 that its life-throes could not cast off the mighty incubus. 
 
 The week rolled away, — a week of suspense, and we 
 held our breath with pain. We had reason to suspect 
 this now vindicated metropolis. The scene that was 
 shimmering before my eyes, when I sailed, was that dis- 
 graceful mob in Tremont Temple, where, in obedience to 
 the behest of South Carolina, free speech was trampled 
 down and lay bleeding in the dust. The last sounds that 
 floated on the air were the echoes of those compromise 
 speeches made in Faneuil Hall, tempered and toned to 
 be read in old Virginia. 
 
 The week expired, and behind the bar of the Ottoman 
 Bank in Beyroot, ten of us gathered over a pile of Eng- 
 lish and American newspapers ; our letters lay unopened 
 before us. Wives and children were forgotten ; our 
 bleeding country was alone remembered. The intelli- 
 gence was all we could desire. It told us that the Pil- 
 grim spirit was yet alive ; that everywhere at home an 
 intense enthusiasm was enkindled ; that party ties were 
 all sundered, and party interests all forgotten ; that 
 our young men had risen to arms, and our old men 
 
17 
 
 had blessed them as they went forth ; that women and 
 chiUU'en were making garments, banners and tents for 
 the sokliers ; that the churches were hung with the okl 
 flag — the Stripes and Stars — God bless it ! that from the 
 farthest river in Maine to the prairies of the West, the 
 people were rising to trample the traitors down ; that 
 Sunday, God's day, had been taken to do God's work ; 
 that timid, conservative preachers, who had been deaf 
 and dumb while all this mischief was brewing, had come 
 to the front of the altar, shouting, " The sword of the 
 Lord and of Washington ;" that a long vascillating 
 Cabinet had been raised, and cast on the great waves of 
 popular might against the brazen gates of treason ; that 
 the old flag, borne by ten thousand hands, was to go 
 straight through Baltimore, and be lifted up upon the 
 Federal capitol, and wave there in the sight of all na- 
 tions, the symbol of Constitutional Government and 
 human freedom, until treason was overturned and sla- 
 very was extinct. 
 
 This was enough ! Never since the day when God 
 forgave my sins, and made me a new creature, have I 
 felt so willing to die, as then, — so able, to say sincerely, 
 " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for 
 mine eyes have seen thy salvation." We read those 
 columns down with choked utterance and sobbins: voices. 
 
 o 
 
 The tears streamed down our cheeks, while clerks and 
 bankers looked on amazed ; we grasped the hands of 
 each other ; we laughed and wept by turns, and rushed 
 out to make the French camp, close by, and through 
 which we rode on our way to Damascus, ring with our 
 national anthem : — 
 
 " IMy country, 'tis of thee, 
 Sweet land of liberty. 
 Of thee I sine; 
 
18 
 
 Land where my fathers died, 
 Land of the rilgriiu's pride, 
 From every mountain side. 
 Let freedom ring." 
 
 Yon know what has transpired since. You haA^e lived 
 an age within these hist four months ; events have burnt 
 themselves into the staple of time ; have been written 
 in letters of blood on the pages of history. AVhen pos- 
 terity reads, what a chapter it will be ! Treason for 
 thirty years working in the Cabinet, in the Army and in 
 Congress ; fraud plundering the national treasury and 
 the public arsenals ; coivardice assailing with eight thou- 
 sand men, and eighty thousand still behind, a half- 
 starved garrison of seventy men ; a ferocious mob mur- 
 dering unoffending Massachusetts soldiers, while on their 
 way to defend the Federal capital ; a letter of marque 
 issued by an ambitious pretender, for the encouragement 
 of piracy ; tlie sacred tomb of the Father of his country 
 threatened with robbery, and, as if it were not enough to 
 tear Washington's constitution to pieces, destroy his 
 country and trail his banner in the dust, his ashes must 
 be cast upon the altars of the oppression which he hated, 
 to satisfy the Moloch of slavery. And then scene fol- 
 lowed scene, 
 
 " Blood trod upon the heels of blood ; 
 Revenge in desperate mood at midnight met 
 Eevenge. War brayed to war," 
 
 until now, in the harvest moon. Death centres as if it 
 were a pivot upon the ridge of the AUeghanies, and 
 flaps his raven wings over all the land. The nation 
 seems to have been passing over a gulf of horrors, upon 
 a bridge of sighs, all the way from John Brown's gibbet 
 to Manassas Gap. Who can count the widows' tears as 
 
19 
 
 tlicy fall ? Who can describe the desolated homes ? 
 Who can number the silent graves ? Who can tell the 
 ruin of character, the blasting of hope, and the fearful 
 crimes that will follow, like a retinue of devils, in the 
 track of this fratricidal war ? And what name will his- 
 tory give to him who stands forth as the acknowledged 
 leader of this rebellion, on whose hands the blood is clot- 
 ting now, as she enrolls him on her catalogue with Nina 
 Sahib and the murderers of the Maronites ? 
 
 And now what of the future ? Watchman, what of the 
 night ? Can any one of you see any stars amid the por- 
 tentous blackness of this hour ? You, who stand in the 
 midst of prostrate business prospects, who walk in the 
 gloom which hangs over the exchange and the market- 
 place, who are menaced by failure and bankruptcy ; you, 
 whose honest dues have been repudiated by your South- 
 ern creditors ; you, who clung to guilty South Carolina, 
 praying her to be reasonable, shielding her from reproach, 
 until she turned and stabbed you, and sent you home 
 bleeding and wounded ; you, who apologized for the 
 South until she had well nigh brought down the temple 
 of our liberties, a heap of ruins ; tell me, do you see 
 any rays of light ? 
 
 It seems to me that a division of our country is an 
 impossibility. We cannot have two or more republics on 
 this soil. God and nature have forbidden it. Neither 
 of them, could they be established, would attain to any 
 considerable respectability in the great family of nations, 
 and between them would be perpetual war. A peaceful 
 separation seems to be rendered impossible by all the 
 exigencies of the case, and hence there can be but two 
 ways of settling this question, — it is a dreadful alternative. 
 
 The Jird way, is to compromise, yields surrender. A 
 
20 
 
 government extending over a wide range of country, 
 must, to some extent, be one vast system of compromises. 
 When the interests of one part conflict with the inter- 
 rests of another part ; when opinions differ, and men 
 cannot see alike, compromise and concession are the le- 
 gitimate modes of adjustment. But no government can 
 with any safety compromise the principles on which it is 
 founded ; to do that is self-destruction ; and there are 
 some questions which can never be made matters of com- 
 promise. The troubles in which we now are, are the 
 results of concessions in matters of principle, which 
 should have been settled by the infinite standard of 
 right, and by the great law of God. We had a monster 
 in our midst, and we thought the best way to manage 
 him was to feed him, pat him, and let him have his own 
 way. So every time he roared we threw him a bone to 
 still him, and all the time he was grovving strong. 
 When we saw his glaring eyes we threw him the Mis- 
 souri Compromise, and still he grew. When he growled 
 we threw down before him the Fugitive Slave Law, 
 and yet he grew. When he became more terrible we 
 fixed the Kansas-Nebraska bill to please him, and when 
 we had nothing more to cast to him, this monster, whom 
 we fondled and fed, came upon us and tore our flag to 
 pieces, trampled our Constitution in the dust, repudiated 
 honest contracts, and seizing with his infernal claws the 
 pillars of the fabric of our freedom, endeavored to pull 
 the whole structure down into one common ruin. That 
 monster is Slavcri/ — a system which has been the cause 
 of our alienations, the source of our misunderstandings, 
 and the plague of our nation from the time its corner 
 stone was laid. Some men seem to have an evil 
 genius — a bad angel, that moves them to evil, that 
 
21 
 
 sweeps away their good intentions, that spoils every 
 honest endeavor, and destroys them in spite of themselves. 
 Slavery has been the evil genius of our nation ; the blot 
 on our liberty ; the stain on our banner ; the millstone 
 in our ascent to a glorious destiny. And yet the legis- 
 lation of our country, for a half century, has been little 
 more than a series of compromises with this evil spirit, 
 and the result we have in the ruin and disgrace Avhicli 
 stare us in the face to-day. 
 
 And yet we shall hear of compromise again ere long ; 
 the old cheat is not yet dead, and the moment the en- 
 thusiasm of victory is over, men will begin to yield. 
 " Feed the monster," they will say. " Throw him a 
 few more bones ; let him grow a little ; give him more 
 life." Politicians, who want something upon which to 
 climb into office ; business men, who feel the pressure of 
 these evil times ; quiet citizens, who are tired of war, 
 and mistaken theorizers, who really think slavery a 
 source of national strength, will begin to cry — " Feed 
 the monster ; let him live, though he has taught our 
 senators treason, and shed the blood of our soldiers — let 
 him live." 
 
 . But unless we find some means to ensure the peaceful, 
 constitutional, honest extinction of slavery, we keep the 
 cause of all our woes. Settle this civil war by compro- 
 mise, and it will not be ten years before this scene will be 
 repeated, even if the breach be now healed. It will not 
 be ten years before slavery will let loose upon us u new 
 tide of blood. 
 
 The victory we need to gain, is not simply to crush 
 out the spirit of rebellion, to set up the flag over the 
 bastions of dismantled Sumter, and drive traitors out of 
 Kichmond and Charleston ! Do all that, mend the 
 
22 
 
 breach, heal the divisions, bind up the wounds, present 
 to the worUl an unstained flag and an undivided nation- 
 ality, and if slavery has not received its death-blow, you 
 are a vanquished people ; the precious blood you have 
 shed has been spilt in vain ; the brave men, who have 
 lost their lives, have been thrown away ; the millions of 
 money you have expended will be worse than squan- 
 dered, and you will come out of the battle with the heel 
 of the monster on your neck. 
 
 And what is there about slavery that any man in the 
 North should want to keep it ? lias it not corrupted 
 your public men, perjured your judges and senators, plun- 
 dered your treasury, murdered your citizens, soiled your 
 flag, trampled on your Constitution, perverted your his- 
 tory, and sown your fields with blood ? Has it not done 
 all this, and more than this ? And can you afford to 
 give it new lease of life, even though you pacify it now ? 
 Do you dare to lengthen its cords, and allow it to gather 
 strength, that it may rise again in four, eight, or twelve 
 years, anew to plunder your national treasury, destroy 
 your national honor and credit, blast your business and 
 prosperity, butcher your wives and children, and again 
 overflow the land with blood ? Why, how many civil 
 wars can America stand ? How often can it go through 
 periods like this, without having its light quenched in 
 blackness and blood ? Let your government enter into 
 any compromise that will strengthen the hands of sla- 
 very, and you rush upon your doom. You take up a 
 controversy with the religion of the Bible, and the con- 
 science of the whole civilized world. You go, with your 
 eyes open, into a hopeless war with omnipotent God. 
 
 Why, what is God teaching us now ? Don't you hear 
 his voice ? From Sumter's dismantled bastions don't 
 
23 
 
 you hear it ?— " Let the oppressed go free." From the 
 blood-wet pavements of Baltimore don't you hear it 1— 
 " Let the oppressed go free." From the fearful slaugh- 
 ter of Bull Run, from that brave day that mysteriously 
 lapsed into panic and flight, don't you hear it ?— " Let 
 the oppressed go free." From victory and defeat, from 
 the beleagured camp and the murderous charge, don't 
 you hear it ?— " Let the oppressed go free." Every 
 slave that comes to us, saying, " knock off these chains," 
 is a plea from God. Every drop of blood shed, and every 
 unburied body left on Southern fields, is a heaven high 
 demand for the extinction of slavery. 
 
 I say, then, that compromise with slavery is a mad, 
 ruinous, hopeless method of settlement. You who urge 
 it, are the scribes who would write in gore the doom of 
 American liberty, and quench every star that now shines 
 in the horizon of our country's future. 
 
 The second method of settlement, is to conquer a 
 peace. This is the dreadful alternative— »/f^ it out. 
 This can be done. With twenty millions of Northern 
 freemen against eight millions of Southrons, embarrassed 
 by four millions of slaves, eftectually blockaded, desti- 
 tute of credit, and opposed to God, the ultimate result, 
 notwithstanding the late defeat, cannot be doubtful. 
 God may punish us awhile for our comphcity with sla- 
 very, for that great sin has been defended by the press 
 and the pulpit, and strengthened by political and com- 
 mercial alliances. He may allow us to suffer until 
 our national pride is humbled and our national vanity is 
 mortified, and we recognize his hand in our history. 
 But when a united North goes marching down from the 
 graves of the Pilgrims, with libert// written on the 
 banners, to contend for loyalty against treason ; law 
 
24 
 
 against anarchy ; government against barbarism ; free- 
 dom against slavery, the result is sure. And such 
 a war, not for ambition and lust, is a holy war — a 
 grand necessity forced on us by Providence. God has 
 driven us from paper compromises to the tented field. 
 Words and pens are powerless to settle the contest now. 
 The unsheathed sword and the soldier's charge are the 
 only compromises. 
 
 " If infamy were but a word, not thing, 
 
 With words we'd meet it and with bandied blame 
 
 Advance great Freedom's language, 'till the shame 
 
 Cowered before Persuasion's iron ring. 
 
 For eloquence can only strike and sting 
 
 Where mind is baffled, and like hunted game 
 
 Tired by pursuit and growing weakly tame, 
 
 Yields to the fatal shot its wearied wing. 
 
 But with Rebellion, reeling to and fro, 
 
 Drunk with a mad despair, it is not so. 
 
 And words would vitalize as quick the dead 
 
 As compromise a peace Avith such a foe. 
 
 Then is a nation's duty plainly read — 
 
 Then is a nation's eloquence — a blow !" 
 
 But from such an alternative, I know there is a shrink- 
 ing in every soul. I am not a man of blood, and I shud- 
 der as I contemplate the cost of the struggle now in 
 progress — the cost, not in gold and silver, but in human 
 lives, in widows' tears, in wrecked characters, in all that 
 darkens the pages of history, and sickens the soul as it 
 reads the record. 
 
 There can be no glory in this war, however it may re- 
 sult, and whatever brilliant deeds may be done. There 
 was glory at Thermopylie and Marathon ; there was glory 
 at Austerlitz and Lodi ; there was glory at Lexington 
 and Bunker Hill ; there was glory at Montebello and 
 Solferino, but there can be none in this cruel, civil war. 
 
25 
 
 Our great nation at its close will weep as David did over 
 Absalom. There will be no monuments erected to its 
 heroes ; there will be no preans sung to its conquerors. 
 No American will ever wish to read its record, and we 
 shall pray to have it forgotten. It is a fratricidal war ; 
 brother is butchering brother ; it is our own blood that 
 is flowing. 
 
 And yet, dreadful as war is, it is better than dishonor ; 
 better than disunion ; better than the lot to which the 
 mad South was determined to push us. The existence 
 of this Union to mankind, is worth all the blood we have 
 to shed, all the treasures we have to spend. The main- 
 tenance of the Constitution is worthy of any sacrifice, 
 except the sacrifice of honor. Not half a decade of 
 years has passed away since Gov. Wise, now a trai- 
 tor, pronounced that document " A work of glory, 
 and a work of inspiration," and added, what we are 
 willing to endorse, that " no man from Hamilton, and 
 Jay, and Madison — from Edmund Randolph, who had 
 the chief hand in making it — and he was a Virginian — 
 the writers of it, the authors of it, and you who have 
 lived under it from 1789 to this year of our Lord 1858, 
 none of your fathers' sons has ever measured the height, 
 or the depth, or the length, or the breadth of the wisdom 
 of that Constitution." That Constitution which the ex- 
 ecutioner of John Brown declared *' a glory and an in- 
 spiration," " an unmeasured height, depth, length, 
 breadth of wisdom," we are endeavoring to preserve for 
 our children and a coming age. And preserve it we 
 will. In the name of God, and in behalf of liberty, we 
 will preserve it. To quote the enthusiastic declaration of 
 an ecclesiastic of the Methodist church, — " We will take 
 our glorious flag — the flag of our country — and nail it 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 just beloiv the cross ! That is high enough ! There let it 
 wave as it waved of old. Around it we will gather : 
 ' First Christ's, then our country's.' " 
 
 If the present generation is beggared, posterity will 
 rise up and bless us as the benefactors of mankind. Why, 
 destroy this government, and you destroy the grandest 
 hope of liberty ; you extinguish the light which is beck- 
 oning on the enslaved millions of Italy, Hungary, Turkey 
 and Poland to constitutional freedom. If there is no 
 other way to save this government than fighting, dread- 
 ful as that is, then love of country and patriotism, aye, 
 and religion too, would bid us fight. And to just this 
 issue have we come — to compromise with the monster 
 which has so long ruled us, and thus insure the destruc- 
 tion of this Union in less than a quarter of a century, or 
 to settle now and forever that not another inch of ground 
 can be given to slavery, that the North is no longer to 
 be made a negro hunting ground, that this nation, in its 
 broad extent and its grand proportions, is the heritage of 
 freedom, and not the Bastile of oppression. 
 
 And now let me indicate three things which should be 
 accomplished by the dreadful discipline through which 
 we are passing. 
 
 Fo'st. As I have just said, we should become, in 
 fact, as we are in name, a free people. Some plan should 
 be devised for the peaceful, honorable emancipation of 
 the slaves. For the good of the laboring people of the 
 North ; for the good of the masters, and the welfare of 
 their families in the South ; for the good of the op- 
 pressed ; for the good of mankind, chattel bondage should 
 be extinguished. I say this without any reference to 
 the negroes themselves. They in the South enslaved 
 are a national crime and curse ; free in the North, they 
 
27 
 
 are at present a public misfortune. In consequence of 
 the wrongs done them, they are, to a great extent, an 
 indolent, dependent race, and were they all in Africa, 
 from whence they have been stolen, and for leaving 
 which they are not responsible, it would be better for 
 them and for us. I argue this now, not as a moral 
 question, but in the lower light of political economy. 
 We must get rid of slavery to save the Union, the Con- 
 stitution and the flag. 
 
 When the Bourbon throne was overturned in France, 
 the people saw the black, frowning walls of the Bastile 
 looking down upon them. They said, " The Republic 
 is not safe w^hile that stands." With the gathered might 
 of a tempest, they poured themselves upon it and demol- 
 ished it, and sent a fragment to every town in France. 
 The Bastile of human bondage, in which treason has 
 been hatched, rebellion suckled, honor sacrificed, and 
 from the battlements of which have burst upon you the 
 terrors of this unreasonable war, yet stands. And while 
 it stands the Republic will not be safe. It is a Bastile 
 menacing the liberties of the nation, and the choice 
 offered this great people is the destruction of the one or 
 the other. 
 
 Second. We should emerge from this discipline with 
 higher ideas of national honor and integrity. It should 
 be established once and forever, that the government is 
 not to be tampered with, nor the Constitution violated 
 with impunity. Our own people and all our adopted 
 citizens should learn, in lessons of fire and blood, if need 
 be, that he who lifts his hand against the government is 
 a traitor, and meets a traitor's doom. The ship of state 
 should be committed to the best hands we have. We 
 have given her up to pirates, and they have tried to 
 
28 
 
 scuttle her in mid ocean ; we have called on board in- 
 competent pilots, and they have stranded her on the 
 rocks of anarchy and ruin. Our rulers, for years past, 
 have been selected too much from a class of paltry poli- 
 ticians. HoAV mean some of them look beside the great 
 statesmen of Europe. How few Russells, Peels, Pal- 
 merstons. Broughams, Disraelis and Gladstones we 
 have ! How few Lamartines, Cavours and Ricasolis ap- 
 pear in our troubles. I do not say we have no great 
 statesmen. That would not be true. We have as noble 
 a line of public men as ever appeared in any land. But 
 we have too far overlooked the merits of our great men, 
 left them in political obscurity, while we have elevated 
 men to place and power, who have great capacity only 
 to dishonor the trust reposed in them, who are gifted 
 only in the lowest arts of party huckstering, and who 
 never arrived to the higher plane of the patriot and 
 the statesman. This has been our ruin and our shame. 
 
 If we are capable of learning any thing from bitter ex- 
 perience, this knowledge should bring us out of the fire 
 with loftier integrity, and sublimer ideas of government, 
 law, and national honor. We should feel that the pub- 
 lic weal is a thing too sacred to be intrusted to charla- 
 tans and demagogues, who have ascended, through im- 
 pudence, from the mud, where they were born, to sta- 
 tions of trust which they dishonor. 
 
 Third. Another result of our discipline should be to 
 make our whole people more thoughtful, sober, and de- 
 pendent on God. We are a jaunty, showy race. Our men 
 are more impulsive and fickle than the English ; our wo- 
 men more thoughtless and extravagant than the French. 
 From this struggle every man, woman and child should 
 come out more thoughtful, serious, economical and trust- 
 
29 
 
 worthy, with more rational ideas of the majesty and im- 
 portance of our being. When we have been reproved 
 for our fast habits, we have said, " 0, we are a young 
 nation ; we have the vivacity of youth ; we shall settle 
 down and be steady by and by." I have seen a young 
 mother, with her babe in her arms, all life, animation 
 and happiness, gay as a lark, and thoughtless as the but- 
 terfly. But death came and took the child, led that 
 young mother through life's most bitter experience ; 
 took off her flowers and clothed her in sable. From that 
 hour that mother was an altered being. She matured 
 while passing through the flood ; she emerged from that 
 sorrow a woman I — she was a c/iiM before. Her disci- 
 pline had lifted her up to a great world of reality, and 
 henceforth she was more fit to perform life's solemn 
 duties here, or walk with the angels above. 
 
 So our nation, the young bride of Liberty, the gay, 
 dancing creature, brilliant as the stars of her own flag, 
 has received a bloody baptism. Years of experience have 
 passed over her in one long, dreadful night, and she 
 should come out of it matured, chastened and sanctified. 
 Every man should be more a man, and every woman 
 should be more a woman from this hour. It is a disci- 
 pline that should elevate, ennoble and dignify our people, 
 and make the nation greater than it ever was before. 
 
 Of course, in a Christian assembly like this, I need 
 not argue that this discipline should lead us to more de- 
 pendence on God, to a clearer recognition of his hand in 
 this bitter contest. In all the movements of the past he 
 appears, and in the carnage and strife by which we are 
 surrounded, he is forcing us to acknowledge him, as, the 
 God of nations and of armies. We must be right with 
 him, and he must be on our side, or we cannot succeed. 
 
30 
 
 The trust reposed in some of our Generals is sublime ; 
 but our trust must be higher than men — in Gocl. 
 
 And, now, one word more, for I shall not often trouble 
 you with war sermons. The time for pulpit preaching 
 on this subject has gone by. If the American pulpit 
 had been true to itself, for the last twenty-five years, 
 this thing would not have happened. The preachers now 
 are at Manassas Gap and Harper's Ferry. 
 
 The impression exists Avidely in Europe that this na- 
 tion is stranded ; that the Republic has gone to ruin ; 
 that the bubble of democracy has burst. This opinion 
 has been expressed in Parliament, echoed by the press, 
 bandied in the streets. Doubtless, some in England 
 would like to have it so. To the titled aristocracy of 
 Great Britain, our government is a standing reproach ; 
 to the army and navy it is a constant remembrancer of the 
 most severe defeat those proud powers have ever ex- 
 perienced ; to the people, it is, to some extent, an object 
 of popular dislike and spleen. But, while this is so, 
 there are millions in England who wish us well, and who 
 pray for our prosperity. But they can see no principle in 
 this conflict. We have studiously concealed the fact, that 
 liberty is the end at which we aim. We stand in a false 
 position before the philanthropists of Europe. We have 
 told them that it Avas not to enlarge the area of freedom 
 that we are contending, but for nationality, to subju- 
 gate rebels, to quell mutinies. Can we then be surprised 
 that the manufacturing and commercial classes of Eng- 
 land, who have so much at stake, should desire peace, 
 even, at the cost to us, of a division of this country ? 
 They think the experiment of self-government a failure. 
 But it remains to be seen whether we have virtue, intel- 
 ligence and piety enough to save the country from ruin. 
 
31 
 
 Nothing could be more disastrous to the world than the 
 permanent dismemberment of this confederacy. It is a 
 picture too awful to contemplate. We feel as Daniel Web- 
 ster felt as he exclaimed : — "When my eyes shall be turn- 
 ed to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not 
 see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments 
 of a once glorious Union ; on States dissevered, discordant, 
 belligerent ; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, 
 it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their last feeble and 
 lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous Ensign of 
 the Republic, now known and honored throughout the 
 earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies 
 streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or 
 polluted, nor a single star obscured." 
 
 This Union is worth too much to be destroyed without 
 a struggle. It cost too much to be surrendered without 
 an effort. True, the America of the future cannot be like 
 the America of the past. We are to face realities that 
 we have dreamed of, but never feared. We must have 
 a stronger government, a standing army, and a national 
 debt. But these, with freedom, can be endured. Pre- 
 pared for all these things, we should do our work now. 
 If we have national crimes, remove them ; if we have 
 rebels, subdue them ; if we have traitors, hang them. 
 The government must be supported ; treason must be 
 rooted out and extinguished ; secession presses and 
 pulpits closed up — not by mob violence, indeed, that is 
 always cowardly and dangerous, but by the strong arm 
 of civil or martial law. The length and breadth of this 
 contest must be measured, and we must be prepared 
 for the sacrifice of our commerce and our manufactures, 
 and for the contribution of all we have. If our land be- 
 comes a desert, only that the flag be left flying over it, 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 g2 012 026 254 6' 
 
 we must be prepared for that ; we must adopt the motto, 
 " The union must and shall be preserved." Richard 
 Fuller said in a speech made a few months ago, " If 
 this Union is broken to pieces, I will put up the stars 
 and stripes over my house and say, ' I am an American 
 still.' " So should we feel ; so should we act. 
 
 This country belongs not to us alone ; it belongs to 
 the Past ; it belongs to the Future ; it belongs to Hu- 
 manity, to Liberty, to God. Look at that flag — those 
 stars and stripes ! it is not yours nor mine ! That flag 
 belongs to the world ; it is the ensign of the oppressed 
 of all lands. This soil we tread ! it is not yours nor 
 mine. It does not belong to the cotton lords of the 
 South, nor to the merchant princes of the North. It be- 
 longs to constitutional government and human happiness. 
 And it should be settled now and forever, that this gov- 
 ernment cannot be broken up ; it should be understood 
 by every man in Virginia and South Carolina, and in 
 Massachusetts, too, that the Constitution is too sacred a 
 contract to be trampled under foot. It is too late now 
 for the boys' play with which our politicians have amused 
 us. From this time, whether it shall be peace or war, 
 there will be work for the sturdiest, truest manhood. 
 The hopes of constitutional liberty are suspended on this 
 Union, and as we look at her in her perilled greatness, 
 we can but catch the prophetic words of one of our poets : 
 
 " Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! 
 
 Humanity, with all its fears, 
 
 With all the hopes of future years, 
 Is hanging breathless on thy fate !" 
 
Abrary of congress 
 
 012 026 264 6 .^