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The Banners of a Free People 
 Set up in the Name of their God. 
 
 THANKSGIVING SERMON 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE 
 
 IN TOE FIRST PRE3BYTEBIAN CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, 
 
 THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1864. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. HERraCK JOHNSON, 
 
 PASTOR OF THE THIRD PRESBYTERIAN CnURCII. 
 
 PITTSBURGH: 
 PEINTED EY AV. S. HAVEN, COKNER OE WOOD AND THIllD STS. 
 
 1 864. 
 
- ^^8 
 
 ^ 3 7 ^ ( 
 
■T- 
 
 r^ Pittsburgh, November 24, 1864. 
 
 Rev. Her rick Johnson, 
 
 Dear Sir : 
 
 The undersigned, regarding the Sermon which 
 you have this day delivered, as eminently worthy a place among the 
 records of our annual thank-offerings to the God of Nations, for his 
 munificent favors to us as a people, zvould most respectfully solicit a copy 
 for publication. 
 
 FRANCIS G. BAILEY, WM. A. PASSAVANT, 
 
 ROBERT BEER, I. C. PERSUING, 
 
 ALEX. LAUGIILIN, W. THAW, 
 
 JOHN D. yVCORD, JAMES LAUGIILIN, 
 
 SAMUEL REA, GEO. ALBREE, 
 
 ROBERT S. DAVIS, II. W. WILLIAMS, 
 
 JOSEPH M' KNIGHT, R. EDWARDS, 
 
 JOSEPH W. SPENCER, GEO. W. BLAIR, 
 
 DAVID ROBINSON, WM. A. HER RON, 
 
 JOHN A. R ENS HA W, J. K. MOORHEAD. 
 J. M. SMITH, 
 
 Pittsburgh, November 24, 1864. 
 
 Messrs. Francis G. Bailey, Rohert Beer, and others : 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 Grateful for the manner in which you have 
 been pleased to speak of the accompanying Discourse, I submit it to your 
 hrr.ds for the purpose indicated. 
 
 Very truly. Tours, 
 
 HERRI CK JOHNSON. 
 
A PROCLAMATION. 
 
 Tt has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life an- 
 other year, defending us with His guardian care against un- 
 friendly designs from abroad, and vouchsafing to us in His mercy 
 many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own 
 household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as 
 well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps, 
 and our sailors on the rivers and seas, with unusual health. He 
 has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and 
 by immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of 
 wealth, and has crowned the labor of our working men in every 
 department of industry with abundant reward. Moreover, He 
 has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts 
 with fortitude, courage and resolution sufficient for the great trial 
 of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence 
 as a nation to the cause of Freedom and Humanity, and to afford 
 to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from 
 all our dangers and afflictions. 
 
 Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United 
 States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in No- 
 vember next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my 
 fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiv- 
 ing and prayer to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler 
 of the universe; and I do further recommend to my fellow-citi- 
 zens aforesaid, that on that occasion they do reverently humble 
 themselves in the dust, and from thence offer up penitent and 
 fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of events 
 for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union and 
 harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign 
 as a dwelling-place for ourselves and our posterity throughout all 
 generations. 
 
 In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused 
 the seal o{ the United States to be affixed. Done in the City of 
 Washington, this 20th day of October, in the year of our Lord 
 1864, =ind of the Independence of the United States the eighty- 
 ninth. 
 
 By the President : ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Wm. H. Seward, Secretary of State. 
 
SERMON 
 
 " fVe will rejoice in ihij salvntioii , and in tlie name of our God toe t»ill 
 
 set up our banners,^' 
 
 Psalm 20 : 5. 
 
 LUTHER calls this psalm "a battle cry." Alexander 
 says it is "a prayer for the use of the Ancient Church 
 in time of war." The Psalm in our English version is head- 
 ed thus : " The Church blesseth the King in his exploits. 
 Her confidence in God's succor." It is both a prayer and a 
 psalm. It embraces petition and praise. It was evidently 
 written for troublous times, and is most fit embodiment of the 
 sentiment of a Christian nation, invoking aid of Jehovah for 
 the king going forth to battle, and pledging a jubilee in the 
 name of God for his successes. The whole Psalm breathes 
 the most devout recognition of the Nation's dependence 
 upon the God of Nations. "Some trust in chariots, and some 
 in horses ; but we will remember the name of the Lord our 
 God." 
 
 Israel had a king. And it was the salvation wrought or 
 experienced by him, in the overthrow of Israel's enemies, 
 that the people celebrated in their song. Yet in their rejoic- 
 
6 
 
 ing they looked higher than their king, and in the name of 
 their God they set up their hanners. 
 
 In America the people is king. The will of the Govern- 
 ment is the voice of the people. The rule is hy masses — by 
 majorities. This war of ours is the people's war. And here, 
 in the fourth year of it, after signal victories martial and 
 peaceful, by bullet and ballot, with the tokens and pledges of 
 a full and complete deliverance thickening about our path, 
 what could better express the feeling of every patriot heart 
 on this day of national thanksgiving than the triumph-song of 
 Israel : "We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of 
 our God we Avill set up our banners." 
 
 The salvation that we thank God for this day — what is it ? 
 Surely it is not the mere success of a party at the polls ; it is 
 not simply a political, partisan triumph ; nor yet the gain of 
 a battle. The Nation is now before God's altars with joyful 
 tribute of gratitude and praise, for other and better reasons 
 than these. In order to grasp the greatness of the deliver- 
 ance that has been wrought for us, and to realize its just sig- 
 nificance, our thought must go back beyond the year just 
 closed. 1 ask you, my fellow-citizens, to a brief review of so 
 mucli of the Past as shall place clearly before us the true 
 nature of our present conflict : the principles that underlie it 
 and that are involved and at stake in it. Events are im- 
 portant. But what they stand for, is the vital thing. If we 
 get at these and grasp them, we shall have truer appreciation 
 of the crisis and be helped to a heartier thanksgiving. 
 
 There is another reason why this should be a day of historic 
 reminiscence. Four years ago this Nation declared its will at 
 the ballot-box, and elected to the Chief Magistracy a man, 
 whose elevation to that office was made the occasion, though 
 
it was not the cause, of civil war. The war has raged cease- 
 lessly ever since, and yet the Nation has just reaffirmed and 
 emphasized its will, as constitutionally expressed four years 
 ago. Then, however, the hallots gave somewhat uncertain 
 sound. This year they thundered. The event marks a I're- 
 sidential term — a cycle of time in our history. It dates tlie 
 fourth year of a struggle that will make the cycle forever il- 
 lustrious. Hence the manifest propriety of extending our re- 
 trospect beyond the year, on this day of National Thanks- 
 giving. Hence the demanded fitness of putting on record 
 here to-day that wliich shall impress "s Avith the greatness of 
 the salvation for which we are assembled to praise God. 
 
 I need not recount the steps that led to our nationality. 
 The immortal paper that told the world our purpose was a so- 
 lemn protest against oppression. However the exigencies of 
 political partisans may have led them to pervert that docu- 
 ment and torture it into a series of "glittering generalities,"" 
 the men who signed it and the men who sustained them in 
 signing it, heartily believed the principles it set forth, and 
 were willing to die for them. The partial inconsistency of 
 their practice Avitli this belief was owing to circumstances held 
 to be, in part at least, l)eyond their control. When the May- 
 flower buffeted the sea and bore to these shores the Pil"-rim 
 Fathers consecrated to human liberty, another ship came 
 freighted with a cargo dedicated to human bondage. It 
 landed nineteen slaves at Jamestown in Virginia. And when 
 we struck our sturdy blows for independence, the io-rioble 
 fruitage that sprung from the germ concealed in the hold of 
 that slave-ship had spread itself over the land. Slavery Avas 
 therefore interlaced Avitli our institutions, and rooted in our 
 soil, Avhen Ave became a nation. The posture of the Iea<liii(r 
 
men of that day, however, was hostile to this barbarism. 
 They were convinced of its wrongfulness, and expected and 
 desired its gradual and ultimate extinction. " The prcA'-ailing 
 ideas . . . were, that the enslavement of the African was in 
 violation of the laws of nature : that it was wrong in principle, 
 socially, morally and politically."* But with advancing years 
 and the development of mechanical appliance, the interests of 
 men changed, and whether as a coincidence or a consequence, 
 their convictions changed with them. Alas, that moral ideas 
 should be so often harnessed to the neck of material gain ! 
 
 Meanwhile we prospered beyond all historic parallel. Our 
 only national outfit "Avas the Avilderness and our head," but 
 these proved a richer dower than infant nation ever had before. 
 The wilderness we changed into fruitful fields. Our head we 
 put into schools and colleges and churches ; into inventions, 
 mechanics, the arts. We spanned the continent with our in- 
 dustry. Wc whitened the seas with the sails of our commerce. 
 
 But with riches and power came pride and corruption. We 
 took sacred Principle up with us into the mount of Material 
 Interests, and bound it upon our altars, and sacrificed it there 
 to Mammon, We nursed an insane passion for gain, until it 
 overrode all else. Trade, commerce, territorial acquisition — 
 these were the high-roads to individual and national ag- 
 grandizement, and nothing must bar them up. AYas any 
 measure of policy proposed ? It was canvassed in the inter- 
 ests of Cotton and of Commerce. If Commerce was at all 
 scrupulous, iind ventured with 'bated breath even the mildest 
 protest against a scheme manifestly in the interest of oppres- 
 sion and injustice, it needed only a muttered threat from Cot- 
 
 * A. II. Stephens' speech. jNIiirch 21st, 18G1, i^avannah, Ga., after the 
 State's secession. 
 
9 
 
 ton to make Commerce ashamed of itself and willing to strike 
 hands with the Southern King in the furtherance of almost 
 any pernicious and unjustifiable measure. And the spirit of 
 party — how that grew into a power and swept men from their 
 convictions, until majorities sanctioned at the ballot-box what 
 but a little while before the universal conscience of the nation 
 would have branded with the sternest condemnation, if not 
 with infamy. "Our party, right or wrong," was the bold 
 battle-cry. Under its leadership, men stained their hands 
 with corrupt legislation, and even perjured themselves before 
 God. 
 
 Losing sight, also, of the fact that governments are ordain- 
 ed of Heaven, we ignored our relations as a nationality to the 
 King of kings. In the clatter of our looms, in the ring of 
 our anvils, in the rattle of our machinery, in the chink of our 
 hard coin as it was dropped into our coffers, in the groans 
 of our slaves, we were deaf to the voice of our God ; or 
 hearing, did not heed it. God in history, God in provi- 
 dence, and God in his word, said unto us, ^"Seek judgme7it, 
 relieve the oppressed^ loose tlte bands of wiekedness, undo 
 the heavy burdens, and break every yoke. " This was our 
 safety, but we saw it not. We saw not the spirit that 
 was being nursed in the nation's bosom. We would not be- 
 lieve that the system of African slavery could give birth to 
 and feed and vitalize into alarming power, passions and 
 lusts and purposes and plans whose iniquitous and damning 
 nature stamps them as having their spring and motor in the 
 very heart of hell. , 
 
 At last the veil was uplifted. The ballots of a free people 
 struck a blow at the ambitious power that had dominated the 
 nation, and forth fi-om the brain of Slavery, as Minerva from 
 
10 
 
 the brain of Jove, sprang the child Treason, full armed and stal- 
 wart. The Government was summoned to decide for existence 
 by the dread arbitrament of the sword. I need not now recount 
 the events that preceded and culminated in this appeal to 
 arms. Whether the development of the plot was hastened by 
 the tokens of an aroused Northern conscience that threatened 
 to set a bound to the blight of human bondage, or whether the 
 plot was fully ripe for execution and the occasion for burst- 
 ing it upon tlie country purposely and deliberately made by 
 the disruption of the Democratic Convention at Charleston, 
 and the consequent election of our present Chief Magistrate, 
 is not material to my present purpose. The question to be 
 asked and answered is, what were the devices of these men's 
 hearts who sought to rend this Union, precious now with 
 countless memories of blessing already brought us, and rich 
 with larger prophecy of good to come ? If we can have be- 
 fore us just what these men designed to do and dared to at- 
 tempt — if we can read their deep, dark purposes, and get the 
 full proportions of their mad, unholy schemes — if we can 
 know just why they lifted tlie starred and barred standard of 
 revolt, we shall better realize the greatness of the deliver- 
 ance, and rejoice more heartily in the salvation for which we 
 thank God to-day. 
 
 Did the South strike for rights tiicy had been robbed of? 
 Was their resort to violence a justifiable protest against op- 
 pression and misrule ? Let the answer be given by Alex. IT. 
 Stephens, a prominent Southern statesman, a slaveholder, and 
 now the dishonored Vice President of the treasonable Con- 
 federacy. I trace the placing of this unimpeachable testimo- 
 ny before the world, to the direct providence of God. Though 
 familiar to you all, I would here put it on record, as an es- 
 
11 
 
 sential link in the chain of evidence illustrating the character 
 and animating spirit of the rebellion. Stephens, at Milledge- 
 ville, in January, 1861, stood up in the Georgia Convention, 
 about to vote on an act of secession, and spoke these mem- 
 orable words : " Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a mo- 
 ment ■what reasons you can give that will satisfy yourselves in 
 calmer moments ; what reasons you can give to your fellow 
 sufferers in the calamity that it will bring upon us ; what rea- 
 sons you can give to the great nations of the earth to justify 
 it What right has the North assailed V What inter- 
 est of the South has been invaded ? What justice has been 
 denied ? Can either of you to-day name one governmental 
 act of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the Gov- 
 ernment of Washington, of which the South has a right to 
 complain ? I challenge the answer." 0, it does seem as if 
 the God whose favoring providences have marked all the 
 war's progress, was there working by unseen and subtle forces 
 to lead such a man in such a place, just before he with pros- 
 tituted patriotism became the bribed and forced acquiescent 
 and participant in the plot of treason, to hurl a challenge in 
 the teeth of traitors that they could not and dared not answer ! 
 That calm voice of reason failed to quell the troubled South- 
 ern sea, but the words shall stand for all lime, as the triumph- 
 ant vindication of " the best and freest government," as he 
 himself in that same hour pronounced it, " the most equal in 
 its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in 
 its measures, that the sun ever shone upon." 
 
 If then the leaders of this rebellion could point to no proofs 
 whatever of the perversion of national authority, why did 
 they so recklessly cast off their sworn allegiance, and inaugu- 
 rate the horrors wc now see '( What urged them on in their 
 
12 
 
 work of ruin, with such dire and dreadful purpose ? What 
 was the cause :? We are not left to inference or conjecture, 
 for answer. Nor yet to the biased judgment and, it may- 
 be, unwarranted prejudice of the North. Out of their own 
 mouths shall they be condemned. 
 
 I call Stephens to the witness-stand again. In his celebra- 
 ted " corner-stone" speech, delivered in Savannah, March 21, 
 1861, just prior to tliat dark day when our flag was shot through 
 and shot down at Sumter, he said, " African slavery as it ex- 
 ists among us — the proper status of the negro in our form of 
 civilization — this loas the immediate cause of the late rupture 
 and present revolution ;" and Savannah's Athenaeum never 
 before shook with such thunders of applause as greeted that 
 sentiment. Thus the Forum. 
 
 Now hear the testimony of the Pulpit. Dr. B. M. Palmer, 
 of New Orleans, a representative man, and one of the ablest 
 in the ministry, in a sermon preached November 29, 1860, 
 after the Presidential contest was decided just four years ago, 
 declared it to be the present solemn trust of the South, " to 
 'preserve and transmit our existing system of domestic servi- 
 tude, ivith the right unchanged hy man to go and root itself 
 wherever Providence and nature may carry it. This trust we 
 will discharge in the face of the ivorst possible peril. . . . It 
 is this that makes the c7-isis. Whether we ivill or not, this is 
 the historic moment when the fate of this institution hangs sus- 
 pended in the halanceJ" 
 
 One more Avitncss as to the cause and purpose and inspira- 
 tion of this dark conspiracy, and I have done. The Rich- 
 mond Examiner of June, 1863, a representative press, con- 
 ducted with marked ability, put out before the world the prin- 
 ciples and designs of the rebellion thus: "TAe establishment 
 
13 
 
 of the Confederacy is a distinct reaction against the tvhole 
 course of the mistaken civilization of the age. . . . For '"Lib- 
 erty, Equality, Jfratcrnity ,' we have deliberately substituted 
 Slavery, Subordination, Crovernmetit By these jyr ind- 
 oles ive live, and in their defense we have shotvn ourselves ready 
 to die. Reverently ive feel that out Confederacy is a Grod-sent 
 missionary to the nations, with great truths to preach." 
 
 Here, then, is the evidence. The Forum, the Pulpit, the 
 Press, leading exponents of the political, religious and social 
 convictions of the South, unite in the distinct and unequivocal 
 avowal that slavery was the cause. This is no charge of North- 
 ern fanatics. It is the bold and boastful affirmation of our ene- 
 mies. Not to be rid of oppression, not to escape unconstitu- 
 tional enactments, did these men plot their treasonable schemes 
 and attempt their bloody execution ; but, as they themselves 
 authoritatively declare, to reverse the tide of mistaken civili- 
 zation, to protest against every idea which the world accepts 
 of justice and liberty, to perpetuate and extend a monstrous 
 outrage upon the manhood of a fellow man by making this 
 stone, African slavery, which was rejected by the first build- 
 ers, " the chief stone of the corner" of a new governmental 
 edifice. They could not do this in the Union. " Perish the 
 Union, then," they said; " this is our God-given trust, and 
 we will be true to it." 
 
 Nor was independence their only object. It was not enough 
 to curse their own soil with the blight and mildew of unre- 
 quited toil. It was not enough to rend Freedom's only gov- 
 ernmental fabric, that they might stand untrammeled before 
 the world and impiously claim their Confederacy as a God- 
 sent missionary to the nations. It was not enovigh to hold up 
 to the scorn of despotism and the scoffs of aristocracy, the 
 
14 
 
 failure of free institutions, a broken and shattered Republic. 
 It was not enough to make the sweet name Liberty, a hissing 
 and a by-word. But they schemed and plotted for the right 
 of slavery " to go and root itself wherever Providence and 
 nature might carry it." They meant, with their Northern 
 allies, to wheel the loyal States by force and fraud into the 
 line of treason, and to fling to the breeze the banner of a new 
 government reared on the ruins of the old, inscribing upon 
 its folds not that immortal declaration : "All men are crea- 
 ted equal," but the motto: "There are slave races born to 
 serve ; master races born to govern." The very day that 
 the booming cannon opened the carnival of treason in Charles- 
 ton harbor, the Confederate Secretary of War, Mr. Walker, 
 threatened at Montgomery, Ala., tliat before the first of May 
 the Confederate flag should be Avaving over the Capitol at 
 Washington, and Faneuil Hall, Boston. 
 
 Such were the dark designs of these men. Such their 
 monstrous subversion of natural rights. Such their hostility 
 to Him who said He came to this world "to preach deliverance 
 to the captive and to break every yoke." How near they 
 came to success we may never fully know. They laid their 
 plans with the craft and subtlety of the first arch rebel. They 
 plotted to win. The military force of the country was small 
 and purposely scattered. The navy was small and also scat- 
 tered. Treason was in them both. Treason was in Congress. 
 Treason was in the Cabinet. Imbecility, if not treason, sat 
 in the Chair of State. The time was well chosen. And no 
 schemers ever went to their work with deeper cunning. No 
 poisonous reptile ever coiled itself more secretly for the fatal 
 spring. No murderer ever crept with stcalthier tread to his 
 place of concealment to strike the death-blow. The treacher- 
 
15 
 
 ous devices of their hearts were framed with protracted and 
 covert preparation. But they have failed. They were athwart 
 the will of God ! 
 
 Send up your thanksgivings for this, nation of freemen. 
 Let the peal ring through the air. This is the great salvation 
 in which we rejoice to-day : not only that the Government of 
 these United States is saved from hopeless disintegration and 
 ruin, but that it is also saved from the vitiating, degrading, 
 deforming, poisoning presence and power of the infernal spirit 
 of slavery. The spirit that has ever been the nurser of un- 
 holy ambitions, and the feeder of unhallowed lusts. The spirit 
 that prompts such utterance as this, which I quote from the 
 Richmond Examiner, one of the ablest of the Southern press : 
 "We have got to hating everything with the prefix 'free.' Free 
 farms, free labor, free society, free will, free thinking, free 
 children, and free schools, all belong to the same brood of 
 damnable isms. But the worst of all these abominations is 
 the modern 'system of free schools.' " 
 
 The spirit of slavery, I say, that nursed pride and passion 
 and lust of power in the hearts of men until they were urged 
 to the inauguration of civil war, with the hope and purpose 
 of nailing their black-bannered motto to the nation's flag-staff 
 of freedom. The spirit, that has added to the horrors of Avar 
 the hideous barbarisms of men who have grown up under its 
 fell and foul dominion. The spirit, that has led to the raising 
 of the black flag, "not courageously on the battle field, but 
 over prisons and hospitals in the South, full of surrendered 
 and helpless men." The spirit, whose odious features are re- 
 vealed by the sworn testimony of scores on scores of escaped 
 and exchanged prisoners taken by a Commission of Inquiry 
 appointed by the U. S. Sanitary Commission, and whose testi- 
 
16 
 
 mony compels these men conctituting the Commission to say, 
 "It is the same story everywhere: — prisoners of war treated 
 worse than convicts, shut up either in suffocating buildings or 
 in out-door enclosures, without even the shelter that is pro- 
 vided for the beasts of the field ; unsupplied with sufiicient 
 food ; supplied with food and water injurious and even poison- 
 ous ; compelled to live in such personal uncleanliness as to 
 generate vermin ; compelled to breathe an air oppressed with 
 an intolerable stench ; hemmed in by a fatal dead-line, and in 
 hourly danger of being shot by unrestrained and brutal guards ; 
 despondent even to madness, idiocy and suicide ; sick of dis- 
 eases, appearing and spreading like the plague, caused by the 
 torrid sun, by decaying food, by filth, by vermin, by malaria 
 and by cold; removed at the last moment and by hundreds 
 at a time, to hospitals corrupt as a sepulchre, there, with few 
 remedies, little care and no sympathy, to die in wretchedness 
 and despair, not only among strangers, but among enemies 
 too resentful to have pity or to show mercy." 
 
 "These are positive facts," say this Commission in their of- 
 ficial report now published to the Avorld. "Tens of thousands 
 of helpless men have been and are now being disabled and 
 destroyed by a process as certain as poison, and as cruel as 
 the torture or burning at tlie stake. . . . No supposition of 
 negligence, or thoughtlessness, or indifference, or accident, or 
 inefficiency, or destitution, or necessity, can account for all 
 this. So many and such positive forms of abuse and wrong 
 cannot come from negative causes. The conclusion is unavoid- 
 able, therefore, that these privations and sufferings have been 
 designedly inflicted by the military and other authority of the 
 rebel government, and cannot have been due to causes which 
 such authorities could not control." 
 
17 
 
 And here I turn from this historic record, some of it 
 the very language of our enemies, some of it the state- 
 ment of scores of credible witnesses under the solemnity 
 of an oath, and all of it supported by an overwhelming mass 
 of collateral evidence — I turn from this historic record and 
 boldly brand Slavery as the cause of all this crime and woe. 
 In the name of Christianity, I impale it here before high 
 Heaven. The ambitious souls that would rule or ruin, were 
 bred in thy bosom, black barbarism of perdition ! The 
 thousands of braves who have made their last charge and 
 fought their last battle, and whose rough mounds tell where 
 they were buried, — the blood of our precious slain that crieth 
 unto God, — the shrouded homes and desolate firesides, — the 
 orphaned and widowed and sonless hearts all over this fair 
 land, — the marred forms and mangled limbs of the heroes, 
 battle-scarred in the holy cause of Freedom, — the poor vic- 
 tims of heartless tyranny who perished in numbers every day 
 last winter on Belle Island under the very walls of Richmond, 
 whom the cold froze because they were hungry and Avhom the 
 hunger consumed because they were cold, — the new comers 
 who entered the "horrible rottenness" of the prison pen at 
 Andersonville, exclaiming "Is this hell ?" — the human skele- 
 tons with their pinched and pallid features and looks of phy- 
 sical and mental agony, and the driveling idiots and mental 
 imbeciles that have come forth from rebel prisons and worse 
 than rebel cattle-pens, all make their dreadful arraignment, 
 and say : '•'■It was tJiou, Slavery, pestilent, iniquitous and 
 damning ; mother of Treason and child of Hell .'" And a jury 
 of millions of loyal freemen have heard the indictment, have * 
 weighed the evidence, and by their millions of voiceless bal- 
 lots, on the eighth day of November, 18G4, thundered the 
 2 
 
18 
 
 verdict : " Die I Slavery, pestilent, iniquitous and 
 
 DAMNING ; MOTHER OF TREASON AND CHILD OF HeLL ;" 
 
 This, my hearers, is the scope and grandeur and high signifi- 
 cance of the salvation we celebrate in our song to-day. The 
 Nation is not only saved, but it is saved to freedom and the 
 rights of man. The evil possession has been exorcised by agen- 
 cies of Avhich we little dreamed, but all of them under the order- 
 ing fiat of Almighty God. We here grasp the greatness of the 
 deliverance, -vve get some adequate conception of the spirit 
 and aim and inspiration of this mad attempt against beneficent 
 rule ; and here, in the midst of the sounding praises, in the 
 name of our God, like Israel of old, we will set up our 
 banners. 
 
 And upon the folds of the first banner that we lift aloft in 
 joyful token of gratitude and victory, let the inscription be, 
 
 I have taken occasion once before to refer to this written in- 
 strument, as a cause of thanksgiving. But to-day, when we 
 have just given to the sight of the world the sublime and un- 
 paralleled spectacle of a great people, after four years of civil 
 war and while still in the midst of it, electing their rulers 
 under the prescribed constitutional forms, and casting their 
 millions of ballots without riot or bloodshed and without armed 
 intervention, at perfectly free polls, there is fitness in giving 
 special emphasis to our recognition of the legacy our fathers 
 left us in the Great Charier. For its breadth and compre- 
 hensiveness, for the guards it sets about our liberty, for its 
 equitable distribution of power, for its manifest leaning to 
 freedom, for its general consonance with eternal principle. 
 
19 
 
 and above all for its wonderful adaptation to the perilous exi- 
 gencies of the hour, framed as it was with no reference to such 
 a crisis, is it not meet that we accept it as one of God's best 
 gifts to the nation, and to-day thank him for it with all our 
 hearts ? 
 
 Perfection is not claimed for it. God's law only can be 
 that. It needs amendment, and is about to receive it, I trust 
 and pray. Yet not by force. Never, while there is any man- 
 hood left to the nation. But the Constitution, as it is, has so 
 wonderfully allowed the adjustment of the nation to its present 
 anomalous circumstances, it has so met and proved equal to 
 the emergency, enabling the Executive without abuse or usurp- 
 ation of power, without blotting out a line of the Great 
 Charter, to provide all needful means for thwarting and crush- 
 ing this wide-spread treason, that it seems to me the favoring 
 providence of God could alone have secured to us its wise 
 provisions, directing the minds of the men who framed and 
 fashioned it. If, up to this hour, order has been maintained 
 and the laws respected and obeyed except within the theatre 
 of military conflicts ; if twenty millions of people have given 
 the grandest possible demonstration of the practicability of 
 government by universal suffrage and of rule by majorities ; if 
 republican institutions have been shown to be better based 
 than the sternest despotism, in the very circumstances where 
 they were thought to be weakest — in the midst of civil war 
 I believe it attributable in large part to the people's faith in 
 the beneficence of the supreme law. If treason has always 
 unsuccessfully schemed and plotted here at the North, thouo-h 
 with an ingenuity of appliance and a fertility of resource 
 worthy of a better cause, it has been because the Constitution 
 fully met the crisis, and placed ample power in the hands of 
 the Government to throttle the hydra. 
 
20 
 
 This is neither the time nor the place for a constitutional ar- 
 gument upon the war powers of the President. But I believe 
 he has never exceeded them. I believe he has been literally 
 true to his oath of office. Never so much as an instant has 
 he departed from the spirit of the written instrument. And if 
 the question might justly be raised, which I very much doubt, 
 whether the exact letter of the law has been rigidly complied 
 with, what of it? Is not the first law of a nation, self- 
 preservation? An old Roman maxim declares that "the 
 safety of the Republic is the supreme law." There may 
 come a crisis in the national as in the individual life, when 
 conviction of right shall override the form, and act in what 
 the universal conscience would concede to be the spirit, of 
 legal enactment; trusting to God and that conscience for 
 vindication. Such crises are possible, because man is hu- 
 man, and his statutes are only a proximate, never a perfect, 
 expression of the highest intelligence and will. 
 
 It is said of Switzerland's hero, the immortal Tell, that 
 when he was about crossing a lake on a dark and stormy night, 
 he was told by his companion, "Sir, it is impossible to cross 
 the lake in such a storm as this !" Turning to the speaker, he 
 sternly and resolutely answered, " I know not whether it is 
 impossible, I know it must be attempted." The attempt was 
 made ; the lake safely crossed ; and Switzerland Avas free. 
 
 Our Ship of State, riding upon a quiet, peaceful sea, was 
 confronted with a sudden peril. Murky, threatening clouds 
 appeared above the distant horizon. They rose higher and 
 higher, blackening as they came up. From out their bosoms 
 shot red-hot thunderbolts. Their artillery volleyed and thun- 
 dered through the upper air. The storm burst, and the gal- 
 lant ship was unprepared. The very suddenness and magni- 
 
21 
 
 tude of the peril seemed to have struck officers and crew 
 with a dull, strange, death-like apathy. Strand after strand 
 snapped asunder like die brittlest thread. The sea surged 
 and swelled with wilder and wilder fury. The grand old hull 
 creaked and groaned with the terrible strain upon it ; it swept 
 toward hidden reefs ; in the distance were descried the break- 
 ers; all the precious hopes with which the vessel was freighted 
 seemed about to be engulfed in the tumultuous waters ; and an 
 imbecile word-sticJder was in command, who saw and ad- 
 mitted the overwhelming danger, yet denied the power under 
 the rules of navigation by which the ship was sailed, to es- 
 cape it. Who shall say that law was violated, and liberty 
 endangered, and rights imperiled, and the Constitution trod- 
 den under foot, when another took his place at the call of the 
 people crowding the deck, and amidst the wild war of the 
 elements, whilst the forked lightnings played about the mast- 
 head, and the blinding spray shot high in air, and the turbid 
 sea grew madder with the lash of the howling storm, seized 
 the helm, and planting his foot firmly on the deck, silenced 
 the impotents who shouted it was imposible to save the ship, 
 and whose wish was father to the thought, by saying ; " i 
 know not whether it is impossible. IJcnoiv it must be attemjyted." 
 He did attempt it ; and after four years of storm, the ship 
 rides still. Who is any the less a freeman for it, save the 
 mutineers ? Yet for this, Abraham Lincoln is called a tyrant. 
 He is charged with usurping despotic powers and reviving the 
 Bastile. He is branded as a guilty and lawless oppressor. 
 He — whose every step has been with his face resolutely set 
 toward freedom ! He — who immediately after being reborne 
 to office on the proudest wave of popular triumph the world 
 ever saw, and having been the target of most vile and venom- 
 ous detraction, could stand up before the Nation and say : "I 
 
22 
 
 am thankful to God for this approval of the people. But, if 
 I know my own heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of 
 personal triumph. I have never willingly planted a thorn in 
 any man's bosom !" He, a tram pier on the Constitution and 
 the people's rights ! No, said the people to this man of the 
 people. All through the years of trial they had felt the throb- 
 bings of his great heart, in profoundest sympathy with them, 
 and at the ballot-box, where freemen pronounce judgment, their 
 verdict was : Well done, thou good and faithful servant. 
 
 And the Constitution remains to ,us. Notwithstanding all 
 the clamor of demagogues, it is to-day throughout the loyal 
 States, in its essential spirit, sacredly inviolate, the supreme 
 law of the land ; reverenced, I verily believe, more than ever. 
 So high homage was never given it, so eloquent eulogy was 
 never paid it, so grand a vindication of its scope and aim 
 and grants and reservations was never made, as at this 
 very hour, when the minority, after a heated canvas, peace, 
 fully yield to the decision at the ballot-box, and the De- 
 mocracy say as one man. We bow to the verdict. To-day, 
 therefore, as in the name of our God we set up our banners, 
 we inscribe upon the folds of one of them, Our Constitution, 
 thanking God that our fathers were given wisdom to write 
 out the Great Charter. 
 
 The second banner that we lift aloft, this national day of 
 thanksgiving, let it couple the nation's heroes, bearing that 
 proud inscription, 
 
 ^\\t inncnau ^o\Am and the giweriatt ^«il0t;. 
 
 If these should be forgotten, as the nation brings its tribute 
 to the altar, the very earth would cry "Shame." All honor, 
 therefore, this day, to the rank and file, and thanks be to God 
 
 ^ofC. 
 
23 
 
 for what they have suffered and achieved in behalf of the 
 country and freedom. Weave amaranths for them, people. 
 They have breasted the tide of treason with a wall of living 
 hearts. Their eyes and their muskets have flashed fire all 
 along the lines. And their eyes have quailed not as their bul- 
 lets have failed not, in the deadly strife. There they are and 
 there they have been, one, two, three years, hundreds of thou- 
 sands of them. They have marched, they have camped, they 
 have picketed, they have slept on their arms, they have gone 
 without sleep, they have dug and fortified and skirmished and 
 charged and fought and fallen, by night and by day, in cold 
 and heat, in dust and mud, amidst the pelting rain-drops and 
 the pelting sleet and the pelting bullets, with a perseverance 
 and prowess and patriotism, a vigor and valor and victory, 
 that have convinced amazed Europe the American soldier is 
 no mere slave or hireling, nor yet the lawless member of a 
 mob ; but that beneath his bronzed temple is a thinking brain, 
 and back of his bra\>ny arm, a principled heart, locking his 
 jaw with the clench of duty and keeping him true to an idea, 
 though he die for it. 
 
 All that these soldiers in the ranks and these sailors on the 
 ships have borne and braved and suffered for lil>erty, we shall 
 never know. Never war yet gave so many and so sublime il- 
 lustrations of almost more than mortal heroism by the man 
 and by the mass. I cannot here enumerate them. They Avill 
 be told by and by in the homes and at the firesides of our 
 children's children, as the deeds of the Revolution have been 
 told, by the veterans themselves, with their hearts aglow with 
 the old-time ardor and their eyes flashing the fire of their 
 martial manhood, shouldering their crutches and showing how 
 fields were won. 
 
24 
 
 We know how the heroes have fought through wildernesses, 
 and crossed wide rivers amidst a storm of bullets, and scaled 
 mountains, charging up their jagged sides, and hurling them- 
 selves against the serried ranks of the foe, until the flash of 
 their rifles has been seen above the clouds. We know the 
 charge of the Light Brigade "into the jaws of death, into the 
 mouth of hell," has had its peer and superior on this side the 
 sea, as the earth has shook Avith the tread of our armed hosts, 
 their faces set toward the volleying thunder of the enemy as 
 if "cut out of determined bronze." We know how with their 
 iron hearts in wooden ships they have run the gauntlet of 
 death, their gallant leader the Avhile lashed high up toward the 
 mast-head. We know how as if by magic they have wrung 
 victory from defeat, and sent the exultant foe whirling up the 
 valley under the inspiration of a loved leader, whose black 
 steed flecked with foam had borne him to the field to the music 
 of the red artillery. But we do not know the countless in- 
 stances of personal daring — the sublime heroism of individ- 
 uals in the field, and, if possible, the sublimer fortitude of 
 individuals in the hospitals. We hardly realize that the farmer 
 boys who mowed the grass one year, have sprung to the skill 
 and bravery of veterans the next. It is not heralded to us, 
 it cannot be, all the silent, patient endurance, the waiting and 
 suffering, the victories over pain, the cold in the rifle-pits and 
 in the trenches and in the shelter tents, the hours spent on 
 bloody fields as life has ebbed away, without a human hand 
 hold out in sympathy, and with no watchers save the still 
 stars. Ah, this is the unwritten history. Yet all this neither 
 abates the port nor bends the spirit of the hardy braves- 
 Nestling in their bosoms, are thoughts of home and wife and 
 mother and children ; but they have counted the cost, they 
 
25 
 
 know the issue ; and the muscles knit, and the teeth set firmlj 
 together, and the heart ghnvs with the divine impulse which 
 devotes man to dutj, as they choose death before the country's 
 dishonor. Such is the stuff a Republic makes its soldiers of. 
 And, thank God, they vote as they fight. While they make 
 war, they make government. They shoot their bullets into the 
 enemy, and turning on their heels, they shoot their votes into 
 the ballot-box. These men, standing in the mud of the trenches, 
 shivering in the chill winds of autumn, breasting the storm of 
 shot and shell, looking back upon their bloody trail from the 
 Rapidan to Richmond and from Chattanooga to Atlanta, look- 
 ing around upon the thick mounds of their dead comrades and 
 not knowing who may be the next to lie beside them, — these 
 men vote for a continuance of the war ! And shall the nation 
 they fight and die for, do no more than extend to them its 
 '•'■ sympathy?'' God forbid. Let every lip repeat its " God bless 
 them." Let every hand be quick to do offices of loving 
 and holy ministry in their behalf. Let every heart invoke 
 benisons on the heroes. 
 
 'God bless our soldiers true 
 In all they dare and do 
 
 For thee and right; 
 In battle shield the brave, 
 And from the threatening grave 
 Our loved defenders save, 
 
 By thy great might. 
 
 "Lord, help them from on high, 
 And keep them with thine eye ; 
 
 Hear when we call. 
 Father, their prayers attend ; 
 Be Christ their chosen friend ; 
 Thy Spirit on them send : 
 
 God bless them all !" 
 
26 
 
 But amidst our sounding praises and songs of thanksgiv- 
 ing, let us this day set up another banner in the name of our 
 God, inscribing upon its broad and beautiful folds, 
 
 I choose this inscription, because it represents the two or- 
 ganizations whose nationality and catholicity best reveal the 
 great heart of the people flowing out in channels of sustained 
 and marvelous benevolence — tlie U. S. Sanitary and the U. 
 S. Christian Commission. Other agencies have been put in 
 operation. Soldiers' Aid Societies and Relief Associations, 
 the Freedmen's Relief Association, and organizations like our 
 own nobled and honored Pittsburgh Subsistence Committee ; 
 and these have been able to prosecute a Avork through the free- 
 will offerings of the people that shall be to the nation an ev- 
 erlasting monument of praise. But the two great Commis- 
 sions have confined their operations to no local arena. Wher- 
 ever the flag has gone, from the National Capitol, around the 
 whole war-circle, over the mountain ranges, down and up the 
 great rivers, along the gulf and by the coast of the sea, they 
 have been on errands of mercy, performing helpful and be- 
 neficent ministry, caring for the mortal and immortal interests 
 of the army and navy of a nation at war. 
 
 They represent no State. They answer to no sect. They 
 are the agents of no party. From all over the land and from 
 all classes and conditions of men, contributions amounting to 
 millions have poured into their respective treasuries. No such 
 national achievement, through voluntary and often unpaid ef- 
 fort, honors the historic page. It was left for a Christian 
 people, instinct with the heaven-born spirit of liberty, and all 
 aglow with patriotic fire, actuated by love for God and their 
 
2T 
 
 country, to set siicli example to the nations. It relieves war's 
 sombre picture. It lights up the dark back-ground of this 
 awful strife. It seems like a ray from Heaven, shot down into 
 the blackness of this shadow of death. To-day we set up a 
 banner in joyful remembrance of it, thanking God. 
 
 In attempting to conceive the vast benefits that have flowed 
 from the varied and multiplied agencies, that have been the 
 spontaneous outgrowth and organized expression of the na- 
 tion's benevolence, and of which the two Commissions are fit 
 exponents, our minds are lost in bewildering wonder. Work- 
 ing in harmony with the Government, o.nd supplementing as 
 auxiliary help its vast official work, they have saved thousands 
 of lives to the army and the nation. " Wounded heroes on the 
 battle-field have been rescued from death and given back to 
 their families. Those wearied, worn and exhausted on long 
 marches and from hard fighting, have been refreshed and saved 
 from perishing. Bread has been dealt to the hungry, cloth- 
 ing to the needy, medicine to the sick, delicacies to the conva- 
 lescing, and cheer to all." Over and above this, and higher 
 and better than this, the Gospel in its power of salvation 
 has been furnished the bronzed veterans. Messages of truth 
 and love have been wafted to them on the winors of the wind 
 in every form in which thought takes shape and expression, 
 publishing glad tidings like the beautiful feet of morning upon 
 the mountains. Men of God have borne living testimony to 
 the truth of Christ's evangel, and found and followed the 
 Master's foot-prints, as they have gone to preach the Gospel 
 and to pray by the side of the bayonet and the cannon, break- 
 ing the bread of life to men running the extra hazards of war, 
 and walking daily on the brink of death. For these and kin- 
 dred objects, aiding the families of soldiers, relieving the 
 
28 
 
 frecdmen, giving bounties, caring for the sick and wounded, 
 the loyal States have made a free-will offering, in addition to 
 the vast outlay of the Government, of more than one hundred 
 and fifty millions of dollars. And this is a people who Avere 
 charged with worshiping the almighty dollar. It is true, as 
 we grew rich we were increasingly disposed to make an idol of 
 it. But God has broken the idol to our faces ; and the mag- 
 nificent charities evoked by the war, prove that the lesson was 
 not in vain. It is not the least among the compensations of 
 this dreadful strife, that we have been taught the blessedness of 
 giving. 
 
 There is still another banner that we should lift high in air 
 to-day. We should set it up anew in the name of our God, 
 its staff planted more firmly than ever on the solid rock of 
 freedom — that standard sheet, symbol of Union, token of lib- 
 erty, hope of the oppressed, joy of every patriot, 
 
 ©hu ^tiUiS and ^ttijrciS. 
 
 It is our country's banner. All around the world bondaged 
 hearts have beat toward it with high hope. When it was en- 
 veloped in this cloud of treason, strong men wept lest they 
 should sec it no more. Wronged men looked with dimmed 
 eyes from across the sea, wondering if our starry ensign were 
 no longer to make proclamation of an asylum for the oppress- 
 ed. Base men, who had been nursed under its protecting 
 folds, threatened that it should be lowered forever. But the 
 sons of the sires who raised it, sprang to their arms, and said. 
 It shall float still. And they have kept their word. How well 
 they have kept it, let the undying record of their deeds and 
 words bear witness. 
 
29 
 
 It makes the blood tingle and the cheeks glow to read how 
 they have gone into battle under the inspiration of the red, 
 white and blue. It is enough to make the nation weep for 
 joy — their devotion to the dear old flag. "Old Glory," they 
 call it. Yonder is a begrimed color-bearer, just after the 
 battle. He was in the thickest of the fight, mangled with 
 shell and pierced with bullet, and scarcely able to crawl from 
 the field. And the old hero, pointing to the revered banner, 
 says to his comrades : '•''Boys, she never touched the ground.'' 
 There is the dying son of one of our American missionaries, 
 who fell in a brave assault upon the enemy's works. "Chap- 
 lain," says he, as life is fast ebbing away, "Chaplain, tell my 
 comrades, if the war should seem to drag, that I said to you 
 and I say to them : Stand by the dear old flag.'' 
 
 I saw a young sergeant in a hospital at Fredericksburg. 
 He was dying there with the stars and stripes about him ; arms, 
 haversack, canteen, blanket, all were lost, but he had clung to 
 Old Glory. His lips moved. We stooped to listen. He was mak- 
 ing his last charge: "Come on, boys, — our country and our 
 flag forever." When asked, Is the Saviour with you? he whis- 
 pered : "Do you think he would pass by and not take me ? I 
 go." And wrapped in stars, he went up among the stars. 
 
 So it has been, everywhere ; even amidst the suft'erings of 
 Libby prison, where one might think hunger and cold and 
 filth would quench somewhat the patriotic fire in our brave 
 soldiers' hearts. There, the imprisoned officers last year de- 
 termined to celebrate the Fourth of July. They tore up a' 
 portion of their scanty apparel to make the red, white and 
 blue. They draped those dingy prison walls with tlie signif- 
 icant symbol of freedom. But just as they were ready for 
 the celebration, a rebel officer entered, and casting his eye on 
 
30 
 
 the hated banner, he insolently ordered it to be taken down. 
 To their lasting honor be it said, not a man of tliem obeyed. 
 Not a foot stirred. They would sooner die. 
 
 Up then, loyal, thankful hearts, with the starry flag of 
 Freedom. It is to-day, a truer emblem than ever, of liberty. 
 It is now the symbol of a nation committed Avholly to justice 
 and the rights of man. This is the voice of the people, with 
 the issue fairly before them, at the recent election. Their bal- 
 lots did not applaud the sentiment: "If any man hauls down 
 the flag, exhaust all the resources of statesmanship to get him 
 to raise it up again, but don't shoot ;" but that other and ring- 
 ing order : "If any man hauls down the flag, shoot him on the 
 spot." They voted for a continuance of the war and the ex- 
 tirpation of its cause ; and I verily believe in this instance, 
 "the voice of the people is the voice of God." For I believe, 
 with another, that "God has made this whole land a 'cradle 
 of liberty,' and is rocking it, rocking it to and fro, to and fro, 
 Avith omnipotent arms. And as the nations hear the thunder 
 of that rocking, we pray God that it may never cease, until 
 Liberty shall need rocking no more in her cradle, but shall 
 stand up fair and young and strong ; true liberty — liberty for 
 the body and liberty for the soul : and shall walk as a queen 
 through the land, — the daughter of our Christianity, nursling 
 of God and America." Lift aloft, then, the star-spangled ban- 
 ner. Forever float that standard sheet. Unfurl it to the breeze, 
 that every zephyr may kiss the sacred folds, red with the blood 
 of God's heroes, white with God's justice, and blue with 
 Heaven's own pure azure. Bear it onward and onward, 
 braves of a free people, until over the whole vast extent of Lib- 
 erty's soil shall again be "seen the gorgeous ensign of the Re- 
 public, once more full high advanced, its arms and trophies 
 
31 
 
 streaming in [even more than] their original luster, not a stripe 
 erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured — bearing for its 
 motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this 
 worth ? but everywhere, spread all over, in characters of living 
 light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea 
 and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, 
 that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, lAh- 
 erty and Uwmi, now and forever, one and inseparable l'' 
 
 It would ill befit us to close this enumeration, without rear- 
 ing one more banner in joyful token of gratitude and victory. 
 We set it up in the name of our God, THE Banner of the 
 Cross ; and upon its pure white folds we place in letters of 
 golden light the sacred inscription. 
 
 Inscription as true, with reverence be it spoken, as prophet or 
 apostle ever wrote. 
 
 0, has not God been with us ! None but the atheist and 
 the fool, saying in their hearts, "There is no God," can doubt 
 it. In the midst of His judgments, all through these dread- 
 ful years of war. He has not forgotten to be gracious. 
 
 Ample returns have crowned the labors of the husbandman, 
 and our barns have been plethoric with golden grain. We 
 have had bread enough and to spare, so that we could even 
 reach out our helpful hands to hungered Europe. Famine, 
 therefore, skeleton-fingered, grim, gaunt, ghastly, has knocked 
 at no doors. God has wonderfully preserved us also from the 
 ravages of the enemy "that walketh in darkness." We have 
 breathed no noxious vapors, no pestilential airs, deadlier than 
 the shot and shell of martial foe, and that might have made 
 
32 
 
 mounds about our homes more thickly than they are made in 
 the track of -war. Nay, our population has been augmented 
 during this destructive, decimating strife. The earth too, 
 Nature's great work-shop, has been alive with the hidden and 
 subtle forces of God, manufacturing wealth for us. And now 
 in the time of our need, that wealth is being poured into our 
 bosoms. 
 
 And in the war itself, what signal proofs we have had that 
 God is with us. You remember, when that seemingly al- 
 most omnipotent, soulless, iron-mailed, murdering monster 
 came into Hampton Roads, belching forth fire and shot and 
 shell and smoke, dealing destruction and death one day, to be 
 met and driven back to its haunt by a foeman worthy of its 
 steel the next. Was it all chance that built the Monitor and 
 launched it and completed it, and sent it on its way just in 
 time to reach that perilous point on that perilous night of 
 March, 1862 ? Who is it that holds the winds in his fists ! 
 
 You have not forgotten how Lee with his army, as if in ut- 
 ter contempt and scorn of his foe, uncovered his capital, left 
 the Rapidan far behind him, crossed the Rappahannock, crossed 
 the Potomac, entered Maryland, entered Pennsylvania, and 
 here upon the soil of this free commonwealth, wily, bold, confi- 
 dent, gathered his forces and took them well in hand to hurl one 
 last destructive blow at the Government, and from its ruins to 
 dictate terms of peace ! It was one of the pivotal battles of the 
 war. Rebel joui'nals shouted their huzzas over the audacious 
 movement, and were wild with anticipation of triumph. The 
 English TImndcrer caught up the shout and repeated it to the 
 echo, predicting that the next arrival would announce Presi- 
 dent Davis at AVashington. Was it all chance that led that rebel 
 invader back by the way by which he came, with a hook in his 
 
33 
 
 nose and a bridle in his lips ? Let the remembrance of Sen- 
 nacherib banish the atheistic thought. Who is it that rules in 
 the armies of heaven and amongst the inhabitants of the 
 earth ! 
 
 Once more. You all remember the depression that grew 
 and gre^y upon loyal hearts last summer, when loyal arms were 
 held at bay before Atlanta and Richmond. "With high hopes 
 the two great armies under their two great leaders had set out 
 in the spring, and by matchless generalship, heroic fighting, 
 fearful sacrifices and hard blows, had forced their way south, 
 until at last they seemed bafiied ands uccessfuUy defied before 
 frowning fortifications. Gloom settled down upon the nation. 
 Just Avhen it was thickest and blackest, August 29th, a Con- 
 vention met at Chicago, and did what it would not have dared 
 to do sixty days before, what it Avould not have dreamed of 
 doing thirty days after — declared the experiment of war a 
 failure and demanded peace. Then straightway, as if rebuked 
 of God, peal after peal of victory shook the heavens. Mobile, 
 Atlanta, the Weldon road, the Shenandoah ; Farragut, Sher- 
 man, Grant, and Sheridan thrice, gave the nation hope and 
 heart ; and overwhelming majorities at the ballot-box said the 
 declaration at Chicago was a lie. Was it all chance that ar- 
 ranged that grand mosaic ? Ah, the arrow, sped from a bow 
 drawn at a venture, which smote the King of Israel between 
 the joints of the harness, was winged of the invisible God. 
 May He not wing ballots as Avell ? 
 
 Above the banner of the Constitution, then ; above the 
 banners to the American Soldier and Sailor, and the Great 
 Commissions; above the Stars and Stripes — high over all, 
 let us raise the Banner of the Cross, that we and the world 
 may read its sacred motto, Immanuel, God with us. This Chris- 
 3 
 
34 
 
 tian nation cannot and will not longer withhold its public and 
 official recognition of dependence on the God of Nations. The 
 elective head of the people has conspicuously placed it in his 
 state papers and official proclamations. The people have em- 
 phasized it in their public acts all through the war. The 
 Government has sealed it, too, upon our coin ; and no gold 
 piece ever stamped in United States mint, no weighty ingot 
 ever cast, was half so valuable to the nation, as that little 
 nickel coin bearing the inscription, "In God we trust." Let 
 us place such recognition in our Constitution. Aye, if God 
 saves us our country, let us do with it as the mother did with 
 her babe, placed by an intrepid sailor safe in her arms again 
 after having been borne by an eagle to his eyrie home. Before 
 she allowed the first kiss of maternal love to press her dar- 
 ling's brow, she carried the babe to the altar, and dedicated 
 it there to God. So may we take our saved Country, if God 
 shall give it wholly back to us redeemed indeed, and first of 
 all, make holy consecration of it to its Almighty Saviour. 
 
 And then, from rejoicing in this salvation thus accepted, 
 "the mystic cords of memory stretching from every battle- 
 field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone 
 all over this broad land," swelling again the chorus of the 
 Union, we shall go on, giving light to the nations, and liberty 
 to man, and honor to God, passing from brighter to brighter 
 . apocalypse of the New Jerusalem descending out of Heaven, 
 until every kindred and people and tribe and tongue on the 
 whole earth shall rejoice in the salvation of the King of 
 kings, and everything that hath breath shall praise the 
 
 Lord. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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