E 458 
 .3 
 
 .C56 
 Copy 1 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 THE ASPECTS OF THE WAE, 
 
 DELIVEKKD IN 
 
 Ei)c Kntrtana-piace Cfjatpel, Boston, 
 
 E'ast Day, Apbil 2, 1863. 
 
 BY JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 
 
 lublisfjjli t)g Request. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY.. 
 
 No. 245, Washington Street. 
 
 1863. 
 
DISCOURSE 
 
 THE ASPECTS OE THE WAE, 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 Efje Int(tana-piace Cfjapcl, Boston, 
 
 Fast Day, April 2, 1863. 
 
 BY JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 
 
 lubltsfjeli 6g l^equest. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 WALKEE, WISE, AND COMPANY, 
 
 No. 245, Washinoton Street. 
 
 1863. 
 

 BOSTON: 
 PRINTED BY PRENTISS AND DELAND, 
 
 40, Congress Street. 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 18, line 17, for "secure," read "remove." 
 Page 2G, line 8, dele the word " almost." 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 Jer. vi. 14 : " They have healed the hurt op the daughter of my people slightly, 
 SATING, Peace, peace, when there is no peace." 
 
 Ezek. xiii. 10-15: "They have seduced my people, saying. Peace, and there was no 
 peace; and one built up a wall, and — LO, others daubed it with untempered 
 MORTAR ! Therefore, thus saith the Lord : There shall be an overflowing shower 
 
 and great hailstones and a stormy wind ; so WILL I BREAK DOWN THE WALL, AND 
 BRING IT TO THE GROUND, THAT THE FOUNDATION MAY BE DISCOVERED. So WILL I 
 ACCOMPLISH MY WRATH UPON THE WALL, AND ON THOSE WHO HAVE DAUBED IT WITH 
 UNTEMPERED MORTAR ; THAT IS, THE PROPHETS WHO SEE VISIONS OF PEACE WHEN THERE 
 IS NO PEACE." 
 
 TT7E live in a great historic period. What we 
 call history occupies but a small part of the 
 centuries of time, or of the existence of the human 
 race. Nations, civilized and uncivilized, have ten 
 years or fifty years of annals to one year of history. 
 Lists of kings, wars of robbery, the records of 
 luxury, wealth, and outward well-being, do not make 
 history — they only make annals. It is with nations 
 as with plants, or with men — long periods of growth 
 alternate with short hours of blossom-bearing and 
 fruit-bearing — months of development with days of 
 crisis. 
 
 During the long months of spring, mid storms and 
 sunshine, the buds slowly swell on the trees ; gently 
 they unfold their little leaves, and shake them out 
 
timidly upon the harsh, inhospitable air; then as 
 the spring melts towards summer, the blossom-buds 
 expand, till one morning we rise, and lo ! summer 
 has come. The apple-trees are all white with their 
 snowy blossoms — the air is fragrant with theu' deli- 
 cate perfume. We have reached a crisis of concen- 
 trated life. Then, after a few days, the blossoms are 
 gone — the fruit begins to swell slowly through other 
 long months of silent growth — at last comes another 
 crisis, — yesterday we tasted the fruit and it was 
 sour — today the sun, before we were up, gave the 
 last mysterious touch with his magnetic rays, and the 
 juices are now sweet, — and the children this after- 
 noon may climb the trees to gather the apples, their 
 rosy cheeks shining by the side of the rosy fruit — a 
 picture for Teniers. Here is another crisis — the 
 days of blossom and of ripe fruit are the history of 
 the apple-tree, — > all the rest only its annals. 
 
 Or, look at your own life ! How small a part of 
 it is history — how large a part of it only story. 
 Outward events, with no informing idea, no corre- 
 sponding inward crisis. There was a day, — you 
 remember it well, — when you asked yourself the 
 question, — What am I ? What am I here for "? 
 Who sent me 1 What can I do with myself in the 
 world 1 On that day you came to self-consciousness. 
 It was a crisis in your life. Your history began on 
 that day. Before that day you existed ; after that 
 day you lived. You became a free being at that 
 
time, — assuming self-direction, self-restraint, self- 
 control. Before, you had floated on the current, or 
 drifted with the tide ; now you hoist the sail, take 
 the helm, look at the compass, and set sail beneath 
 the dewy stars and the recurring suniise, over the 
 violet ocean to some far-off island of the blest, some 
 divine distant home. 
 
 There was another day of crisis, when you knew 
 what it was to love. You found yourself caring 
 more for another than for yourself, — going out of 
 your own life into that of another, finding a divine joy 
 in adoring the beauty of another, following her with 
 your thought, and feeding your life daily out of hers. 
 This also was history. Those days may have long 
 passed by. Perhaps you are a gray-headed man, 
 known on change as a hard and keen man of 
 business ; no mortal suspects you of such a thing as 
 sentiment. And yet, I will venture to say, there is 
 somewhere among your papers, in some locked 
 drawer of your bureau, a little faded packet of notes 5 
 with a withered flower which you cannot bear to 
 throw away, — for it marks that critical jDeriod when 
 you were all alive with an idea — when you were rapt 
 away out of yourself into a seventh heaven. You 
 were foolish as you could be, no doubt, — but — well, 
 It was life; and you can never forget it. 
 
 So nations have long periods of annals, brief 
 periods of history. The history of a nation is the 
 time when it is filled with an idea, and when its life 
 
6 
 
 proceeds, self-directed, from that, and not from the 
 instmct which seeks mere material pleasiu'e, comfort, 
 luxury. When a nation is inspired by the idea of 
 patriotism, or of religion, or of freedom, it makes 
 history fast. When it subsides from these ideas into 
 a routine of mere growth, it only makes annals. 
 Wars, waged for an idea, even a false one, — like 
 those of Alexander to carry Hellenic civilization into 
 Asia ; or the Crusades to carry the cross back to 
 Palestine, and plant it above the crescent on the walls of 
 Jerusalem, and the tomb of Jesus ; or the Reformation 
 and its wars ; or the religious movements which have 
 stirred the life of a people — the Revival of Thought 
 in such ages as that of Elizabeth of England, Louis 
 XIV., or the constellation of genius surrounding the 
 Duke of Saxe Weimar in his little court ; or great 
 struggles for independence and freedom, as in the days 
 of the English Commonwealth, or the American 
 and French Revolutions ; these days, when a nation is 
 warmed through and through by the enthusiasm of 
 an idea, — these days make its history. 
 
 And now we, in America, have suddenly come 
 upon such a period, and we all feel ourselves lifted 
 a little above ourselves, by its power. As, when the 
 tide rises in your harbor, it lifts, not only the great 
 man-of-war and the steamship, but also every little 
 skiff and the child's paper boat ; so, when an idea 
 sweeps through a nation, all people, good and bad, 
 wise and foohsh, old and young, great and narrow, 
 
for a time, at least, partake of it. All drink of the 
 same spirit. When the news came to us, flashed 
 along a hundred electric wires, of the attack on Fort 
 Sumter, every man, woman, and child in the country, 
 felt the thrill of patriotism. Many a man was 
 astonished at himself, and said, " I did not know I 
 had any patriotism. I did not know that I cared 
 anythmg for the old flag. I did not know I felt so 
 about the Union. Thank God, that I can care so 
 much for anythmg." 
 
 This is something to be thankful for, — that we 
 live in such a great historic time ; that we have seen 
 a phenomenon which occurs not more than once in 
 five hundred years, — the "uprising of a great people;" 
 and that we ourselves have partaken of this wonderful 
 impulse. This has been to the nation what the Day 
 of Pentecost was to the Christian Church, an out- 
 pouring of a spirit, which for the time dissolved all 
 parties, reconciled all antagonisms, and made all men 
 speak and hear the same language, — Parthians, 
 Modes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Republi- 
 cans, Democrats, old-fashioned Whigs, Pro-slavery 
 men and Anti-slavery, Tariff" and Free-trade, — all, 
 for a time, spoke one language, heard the same 
 words. That, also, is somethmg to have seen ! People 
 go from America to E-ome to see the ceremonies of 
 this week, m which the events of the Lord's Passion 
 are celebrated with all the pompous ritual of the 
 CathoHc Church. It is impressive to see the great 
 
floor of St. Peters covered with a standing congrega- 
 tion of fifty thousand persons witnessing the celebra- 
 tion of mass ; or to see twelve thousand soldiers in 
 the great square kneel at once on the pavement to 
 receive the papal blessing. But what is that to the 
 sight we have seen here, of a whole nation kneeling 
 and giving itself up, its wealth, its liberty, the lives 
 of its children, before the commanding presence of 
 an idea — the idea of "Oiu' Country." And as that 
 heavenly effusion of the spirit produced in the church 
 correspondmg fruits, so it has been with us. What 
 have we not lived to see of devoted action t 
 
 We have seen, first of all, young men, our sons, 
 the ripe fruit of the best culture of the best race of 
 mankind going cheerfully forth, animated by a sense 
 of duty, to live or to die in this cause. Not merely 
 those who went as officers, but the privates of our 
 army have shared fully this sphit. No doubt there 
 are exceptions, but the spirit of the nation has been 
 one of unexampled devotion. Europe never knew 
 anything like it, and refused to believe it. The South 
 could not believe it. It had looked on us as a race of 
 cowards ; and it had some reason to think so, since 
 we had, in past time, compromised and conceded, one 
 by one, nearly all the principles of manly indepen- 
 dence. If w^e had resisted the aggressions of the 
 South twenty years ago, we should not have been 
 obliged to resist now. But the South expected no 
 war, no resistance of any consequence, and bitter has 
 
9 
 
 been its disappointment. The old blood of the land 
 has shown itself as rich as ever in aU heroic effort 
 and sacrifice. No need, hereafter, for orators to go 
 to Greece or Rome, to Marathon or Platsea, to find 
 examples of grand heroism and martyrdom with which 
 to round their classic periods. Go to Baltimore, 
 and the passage of the Sixth Massachusetts through 
 that mob-accursed city. Go to Ball's Bluff, and the 
 Massachusetts Fifteenth and Twentieth standmg, hour 
 after hour, to be shot down because some one had 
 blundered. 
 
 "Theirs not to reason why, 
 Theirs not to make reply, 
 Theirs but to do and die." 
 
 Go to Hilton Head, and the magnificent exploit of 
 our fleet sailing steadily round and roimd its calm 
 curve of victory, till it had beaten to atoms the rebel 
 batteries. Go to the Mississippi, and the passing of 
 the forts and capture of New Orleans, and the 
 Varuna going down, fh'ing her deck guns, till they 
 touched the water, and sinking a hostile vessel while 
 she was sinking herself. Go to Hampton Roads, and 
 that memorable day which abolished in a moment the 
 wooden fleet of England and France, and see the 
 Cumberland going down with its flag flying, and firing 
 its batteries to the last. And what shall I say more, 
 for the time would fail me to tell of all the noble 
 deeds of our young heroes, down to this last splendid 
 cavalry charge at Kelley's Ford. 
 
10 
 
 Some twenty years ago, a physician who visited the 
 Massachusetts General Hospital, used to take with 
 him his little boy, three or four years old. A lady, 
 whose husband was at the head of the estabhshment, 
 endeavored to make the little fellow feel at home 
 by trying to amuse him. But he was very timid 
 and diffident; so much so, that when she brought 
 a rocking-horse for him, he was afraid to sit on it, and 
 would not ride on it unless held upon the horse by 
 the lady. That boy was one of the leaders in the 
 recent cavalry charge and combat — said to have been 
 the finest ever made on the continent. That boy, 
 twenty years ago, afraid to sit on a rocking-horse, 
 dashed at full speed into the hostile squadrons, and 
 when surrounded by superior numbers, defended 
 himself gallantly till his horse was shot, and then 
 refused to surrender. Our Boston boys have not lost 
 the spirit of theh* fathers. Wealth has not made 
 them effeminately self-indulgent, study and mental 
 cultiu-e has not made them incapable of energetic 
 action. 
 
 And the mothers of these young men, — I go 
 to the house of one whose noble child has been 
 struck down in battle. I go m fear, expecting to 
 meet too much anguish, and almost too great a call 
 on my sympathy. I find her hapjDy, calm, thankful 
 to God that he has given her such an opportunity of 
 sacrifice for the land. This is the usual state of 
 mind of the mothers of our young soldiers. There 
 
11 
 
 is nothing of false excitement about it; it is the 
 natural state of mind of those who have conscien- 
 tiously and devotedly offered to God, to Truth, to 
 Humanity, their best beloved child. They gave and 
 it is given to them again, full measure, pressed down 
 and running over. They gave a son; they receive 
 back from God a saint and a hero. 
 
 Then look at the spirit of generosity and devotion 
 which this war has called out at home. Look at the 
 voluntary contributions, which seem to be more free 
 and generous the longer the war goes on. I have 
 had occasion, in my time, to collect money for various 
 purposes ; and I never saw anything so easy as to 
 obtain money now. When I went to beg, formerly, 
 I generally prepared myself beforehand to hear no 
 three times to every yes, and to have people look at 
 me, as though I were begging for myself. Now, on 
 the other hand, I have yes said to me three times 
 for one no. And, indeed, they sometimes beg of 
 me to come. Only last week I was getting some con- 
 tributions for the freed negroes in the South-west, 
 who are in great want, and suffering for clothes and 
 provisions now ; and I was asked to come to one 
 business place, and each of the partners handed me, 
 without a word, fifty dollars, so that I went away 
 with a generous contribution to the fund given at that 
 one place without my asking for it. People get into 
 a habit of giving, and it becomes easy. 
 
12 
 
 One of the most striking aspects of the war is, 
 that it comes as a Judgment, and is full of God's 
 judgments. It is not well, I know, to interpret the 
 ways of God very freely, or rashly to call siiifermg 
 judgment. The whole book of Job is a warnmg 
 against that. Job's friends came to him in his woe, 
 and said to him that his sufferings were judgments on 
 him for his sins, and that he ought accordingly to 
 repent of his sins. He replied that he did not see 
 how he had sinned, so as to deserve these judgments 
 more than other people. They said " He must have 
 sinned in some terrible way, because he suffered so 
 terribly." But they were told in the end that they 
 were wi'ong and that Job was right. His sufferings 
 were not judgments, but trial and discipline. So, 
 too, Jesus rebukes the tendency to call suffering judg- 
 ment, when his disciples wished to know about the 
 man born blind : " Did this man sin, or his parents % " 
 "NMien, then, may we say that God has sent judgments \ 
 I think we may do so when we see that there is 
 a law of God at work, by which a man has sowed sin 
 and reaped pimishment ; that a nation has sowed the 
 ^vind and reaped the whirlwind. Judgments make 
 the necessary connection between sin and its conse- 
 quences ; long deferred, perhaps, but sui'e to come at 
 last, and when thev come, invohins: often the inno- 
 cent with the guilty, visiting the sins of the parents 
 upon the children, to the third and fourth generation. 
 
 In the Bible we see a great many judgments on the 
 
13 
 
 Israelites and on the Egyptians, on David and on 
 Pharaoh. But though these are represented as direct 
 and immediate acts of God, it does not follow that 
 they did not come also by divine laws. God's acts 
 are never arbitrary. In the Bible we see the law on 
 its supernatural side, in its sense, and in its meaning. 
 The Bible merely shows the inner side and spiritual 
 side of natural laws. The Bible, therefore, is like a 
 watch with a transparent face, in which we can see 
 the inner movements, and main-spring which tui'ns 
 the hands. 
 
 Now m this war we may see a divine judgment, 
 because it is evil working out its natural results. We, 
 as a nation, established ourselves on the principles of 
 the Declaration of Independence, and declared that 
 " aU men were born equal, and endowed with an 
 inalienable right to life and liberty." Meantime we 
 held slaves, and took no measures, as a nation, to 
 abolish slavery. Here was war abeady ; a latent war, 
 indeed, but none the less real ; war between the 
 national idea and the national conduct ; between the 
 national institution, on the one side, and the national 
 convictions on the other. Now, in such a war, one of 
 two thmgs must come, — the institution must give way 
 to the convictions, or the convictions to the institution. 
 Failing this, the inner war must at last terminate in an 
 outward struggle, in outward war. God's judgments 
 are in bringmg to light the things of darkness, and 
 
14 
 
 making manifest the man of sin hidden away in the 
 secret consciousness. 
 
 Judgment brings evil to light, and, by bringing 
 it to light, prepares the way for repentance and 
 reformation. When the consequences of an evil 
 principle appear, men are ready to see the wrong of 
 it, and repent of it. And to repent is the fii'st step 
 in any effectual progress. The Apostle Paul, you 
 will remember, says in one of his Epistles, that his 
 readers must not suppose, even from his former letter, 
 that the coming of Christ and his day of triumph 
 was near. It cannot come, he adds, till the " Man of 
 Sm " is revealed. This " Man of Sin " he describes 
 as an evil principle of spiritual and ecclesiastical 
 ambition, at that time latent in the church, — a secret 
 poison. It must come out, he says, and be seen and 
 understood and judged by the truth, and condemned 
 and repented of before the day of Christ can come. 
 Just so we needed this judgment to bring out and 
 expose the inner conflict m this nation, between its 
 principles and its institutions. 
 
 Therefore, for seventy years has been this inward 
 war, this hidden conflict in the heart of the nation, 
 between the idea of Liberty and Equality which 
 make the nation's soul, and this outward institution 
 from which the North and South got their gain, by 
 which they were growing rich and richer day by day. 
 We had seventy years given us by God, in any part 
 of which we might have prevented this war by 
 
15 
 
 removing its cause. But three generations have 
 refused to do it. The Revohitionary fathers said, 
 " We have done enough in gaining independence for 
 the nation. Let our children put away slavery when 
 they choose ! " Their children of the next generation 
 said, " Time enough by and by. Slavery is a very 
 wrong and bad thing, we know, but by and by it will 
 be easier to abolish it. By and by it can be done, or 
 will come to an end of itself." The thhd generation 
 arrived, and found slavery the source of great and 
 growing wealth and power to the nation, and said, 
 " No ! we will not touch it." The South said, " Our 
 fathers were mistaken when they said slavery was 
 wrong. Slavery is not wrong ; it is right. Call all 
 oiu' doctors of divinity, and let them prove it to be so 
 out of the Bible. Call our ethnologists and anatomists, 
 and let them prove it right from the negro's skull 
 and shin-bone. Call our moralists and let them 
 show that it is right, because it makes the slave 
 happy." So at the call of the cotton lords, they came 
 and did their work. And so the whole South was 
 united and agreed not to abolish, but to maintain 
 and extend slavery ; and to secede from the Union, 
 or at least threaten to secede, if they were not 
 allowed to do it. 
 
 On the other hand, at the North the people also 
 finding themselves growing prosperous and powerful 
 by means of this institution, said, " Let it alone. It 
 is nothing to us. Am I my brother's keeper? Why 
 
16 
 
 exclude slavery from the territories? It cannot go 
 there. They are too wet, or too dry, or too moun- 
 tainous, or too much of a prairie. The laws of God 
 exclude it. Why re-enact them? We are not 
 responsible. We have nothing to do with it. Put 
 down the abolitionists and freesoilers, and let us have 
 peace." 
 
 Peace, — peace, — which was no peace. "Daub 
 the wall "svith untempered mortar, and make it look 
 like a good wall. The frost below is sapping it, the 
 stream beneath steadily undermining it ; but when 
 the cracks begin to appear, put on a little mortar, 
 and make it look like a good wall. It will last our 
 day — after us the deluge." Such has been northern 
 statesmanship for the last thirty years. 
 
 They tell this story of William Lloyd Garrison. 
 He was riding, one day, several years ago, in the cars ; 
 somewhere in Western New York. A Southerner in 
 the car was told that Garrison was present, and said, 
 " I should like to talk with him." So he said, " Mr. 
 Garrison, I wonder how you can expect to succeed. 
 Look at the facts. The more you preach abolition, 
 the more it does not come. The slave power is much 
 stronger now than it was when you began. You 
 cannot unite the North against slavery, and you have 
 united the South in its defence. See the facts. We 
 have done every thing we wished to do. We have 
 annexed Texas, bought up the democratic party at 
 the North, silenced and defeated the whigs, got a pro- 
 
IT 
 
 slavery congress, a pro-slavery executive, a pro- 
 slavery judiciary. These are the facts," Mr. Garri- 
 son. " Yes ! but one fact you have omitted in your 
 estimate." "What is that?" said the other. Garri- 
 son replied, ^^ The fact of the existence of God" The 
 Southerner, with the frankness which often belongs 
 to him, threw up his hands, and said, " Well, by 
 heaven, we do sometimes forget that, I think." 
 
 Meantime the idea, the conviction on which the 
 nation was founded, did not die. It was awake and 
 at work. It could not be put down by mobs. It 
 could not be argued down by doctors of divinity 
 referring to the curse of Noah, and Paul's Epistle to 
 Philemon. 
 
 It could not be destroyed by the compromises of 
 false-hearted poHticians, only eager for power, — who 
 were ready to sell out their anti-slavery convictions 
 to the highest bidder. The anti-slavery conviction of 
 the country was deserted by its leaders, — it lost its 
 great men ; but it went on and on and on. This was 
 " the irrepressible conflict." 
 
 People say that the anti-slavery men were the cause 
 of this war. That is perfectly true, in a certain 
 sense. If there had been no anti-slavery, there would 
 have been no war. The war could have been pre- 
 vented in two ways : One way might have been by 
 resisting the increase of slavery, — shutting it out 
 of new States ; throwing the whole influence of the 
 Federal Government against it ; and so, by degrees. 
 
18 
 
 killing it out. If that had been done, there would 
 have been no war. 
 
 Or, on the other hand, if the northern people, 
 listening to the temptations of wealth, and the in- 
 structions of pro-slavery ministers, had given up all 
 belief in human freedom, had expunged the pream- 
 ble of the Declaration of Independence, and allowed 
 slavery to extend itself where it would, — into Mas- 
 sachusetts, or anywhere else ; there would have 
 been no war. In this sense, therefore, anti-slavery 
 was the cause of the war. 
 
 But here was the question you will observe. Here 
 were two hostile and irreconcilable elements in the 
 life of the nation, — an institution and a conviction, — 
 the institution of slavery, and the conviction of free- 
 dom. One or the other must be put down, or war 
 would come. Now which was the easiest to Siecure ? ^ 
 The mistake our great men made was to think that 
 it would be easier to crush a conviction than abol- 
 ish an institution. That was a mistake ; and I 
 attribute the present war to the men who made that 
 mistake, who thought that they could more easily 
 destroy an idea in the soul of man, than abolish 
 the institution of slavery. In 1850, under the lead 
 of Daniel Webster, the great men of the land, after 
 much hesitation, and after trying to be on both sides, 
 finally saw that they must choose. They saw the 
 approaching danger of war. They saw dissolution 
 of the Union approaching. So they finally decided, 
 
 4, 'HAAA.^f^^ 
 
19 
 
 though reluctantly, that it would be more easy to 
 uproot the conviction of liberty than the institution of 
 slavery ; and they set themselves deliberately to work, 
 to induce the North to " conquer its prejudices." 
 
 At first it seemed almost as if they were right. 
 There was an alliance between the two great parties 
 to put down all anti-slavery discussion in church and 
 state. A minister who spoke against slavery was 
 to be turned out of his pulpit ; no rising, ambitious 
 politician was to be encouraged, who was not willing 
 to be quiet. For a time the compromises seemed all 
 well. The wall, daubed with untempered mortar, 
 seemed a very good, solid wall. They merely forgot 
 one thing, — '■'- the fact of the existence of God."" 
 
 God is more on the side of his ideas than of our 
 institutions. When he sends an idea into the world 
 he stands by it. It would have been a hard piece 
 of work, no doubt, to have uprooted slavery, however 
 gradually. But if our great men had decided to do 
 so, in a wise but thoroughly earnest way, it could 
 have been done. But what they tried to do, — to 
 put down the conviction of freedom hi the human 
 soul, could not he done ; and hence this war is a 
 judgment of God, — first, on slavery, which it smites 
 with the thunderbolt of battle ; second, on slavehold- 
 ers, whose pernicious sophisms and refuges of lies it 
 will destroy forever ; and thu'dly, on all northern 
 time-servers, self-seekers, and false teachers of mo- 
 rality, who smote Christ in the house of his friends. 
 
20 
 
 and tried to persuade the nation that gain -^as godli- 
 ness. 
 
 T think that God, in his providence, is now teach- 
 ing us a great many things ; but among the rest, es- 
 pecially this, — to repent of our treatment of the Afri- 
 can. We have hated him because we have injured 
 him. He belongs to an affectionate and moffensive 
 race ; and I know of no other way to account for the 
 hatred borne to him by so many, except that reason 
 which the sagacious Roman historian assigned as a 
 trait of human nature. 
 
 And this hatred of the negro leads me to say 
 something of another aspect of the war ; namely, the 
 development of evil. It has brought out latent good, 
 but latent evil also. Now I will say something of the 
 last. 
 
 Great historic hom's, like the present, are also, in 
 this wa)', a day of judgment to communities and na- 
 tions. As the poet truly says : — 
 
 '• Soiuo grout OiUiso. God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, 
 I'iirts tho i^Oiits uiHMA the left hand, parts the sheep upon the right, 
 And tho ohoioo jjoos by t'orerer, 'twixt that darkness and the light." 
 
 This war, which has developed the noblest quaH- 
 ties ill some, has also developed the basest in others. 
 I do nor know anything more mean and diaboHcal 
 than this — when there is a prejudice against any 
 poor and weak cla&s, to make it ones business to 
 oxnsperato and increase it — when a race is trampled 
 
21 
 
 upon, to set one's heel upon it more heavily — when 
 a people are poor and weak, and find it hard to get 
 a lining by honest industry, in the face of a bitter 
 prejudice, to make it harder, by circulating, greedily, 
 all rumors against them, true or false. Now this 
 unmitigated meanness, this consummate baseness is 
 the systematic and persistent course of some of our 
 newspapers. They think thus to please the poor 
 Irish, I suppose, but I think that the Irish have a 
 vein of generosity in them which will, sooner or later, 
 make them despise such baseness. I do not know 
 anything but a bad Yankee that is at once mean 
 enough and cunning enough to do such things. The 
 best thing, when corrupt, becomes the worst. " The 
 sweetest wine," says the Italian proverb, " makes the 
 sourest 'vinegar." * So the Yankee, also, when good 
 and true, is the noblest of characters ; when he is 
 bad, the meanest. And among mean Yankees the 
 meanest of all is a pro-slavery Yankee, whether he 
 be editor of a newspaper, a south-side doctor of 
 divinity, an episcopal bishop, or a president of a 
 New-Hampshire college. 
 
 There always will be croakers, and they are very 
 useful people. God not only has made the birds 
 who welcome the comins: dav. in the soft auroral 
 twihght, with a multitudmous chant of joy, — but he 
 has also made the frogs who croak their sad com- 
 
 * " n piu dolce vino fa il piu forte aceto." 
 
22 
 
 plaints over the damp, departing night. It always 
 has been so. People have croaked over every great 
 advance of the human race. They croaked at the 
 invention of printing — it took the bread out of the 
 mouths of the copyists ; at the Reformation of 
 Luther — it opened the way to a deluge of changes ; 
 at the downfall of Paganismj* so many respectable 
 augurs and haruspices were relieved of duty ; at 
 the progress of Christianity — so few respectable 
 people approved of it, — " not many wise or noble " 
 being called. There are croakers now, also, who 
 lament over the downfall of slavery, as though it 
 were the very keystone of the State. One of these 
 croaking gentlemen made a speech, the other day, in 
 the Massachusetts Senate, in which, searching for the 
 cause of the war, he found that in 1831, John Quincy 
 Adams introduced several petitions for the abohtion of 
 slavery in the District of Columbia, and our Massa- 
 chusetts wise man says, " this act exasperated the 
 South." Also he finds that in 1851, a coalition of 
 democrats and freesoilers chose Charles Sumner to 
 the Senate, and George S. Boutwell as governor; 
 " and to this act, directly and indirectly," he adds, 
 " and to these two gentlemen, more than to any other 
 northern men is to be traced the present awful and 
 deplorable condition of the country. It was they," he 
 adds, " who succeeded in goading the South to open 
 rebellion." The South was exasperated, and it seems 
 justly, because we ci\illy asked that human slavery 
 
23 
 
 might not exist in oiir own National Capitol. We 
 ought not to have made them an^n". It was \erv 
 wicked of the lamb to make the wolf ansiry. by 
 drinking in the stream so near to him. It was ven- 
 wicked in Elijah the prophet to trouble Israel, and 
 exasperate King .Ihab by rebuking his sin. It was 
 very wrong in Jeremiah to exasperate Kins: Zedekiah 
 and the princes by not prophesying smooth things, and 
 to make them wroth with him, so that they smote 
 him and put him in prison. It was wrong in Xaboth 
 to exasperate Jezebel by refusing to give up his vine- 
 yard, and he was responsible for Jezebel's conduct in 
 killing him. So. in the same way, it was wrong for 
 Massachusetts to exasperate South Carolina by send- 
 ing ]Mr. Hoar to give legal protection to Massachu- 
 setts citizens, and to exasperate the chivalric sons of 
 ^lississippi by not asking then* leave before we 
 elected Charles Sumner and Governor Boutwell. 
 Thus croak a few frogs still in the damp places of 
 the land. But that sort of croaking is a safety-valve 
 to let out the pressm-e of their dissatisfaction. I look 
 upon the Boston Courier as a kind of marsh which 
 has been providentially provided for these people. 
 where they can sit and croak to each other in a sort 
 of frog concert of mutual condolence — and if it 
 makes them happy, why not ? 
 
 There is. however, a different class of men. and a 
 much more dangerous class, who mean to carry 
 practical opposition to the Government as far as they 
 
24 
 
 dare. They mean to give aid and comfort to the 
 rebels, so far as they can do it, salvd cervice, without 
 too great elongation of their own necks. To this 
 class belongs Mr. Salisbury, in the Senate of the 
 United States, who calls Lincoln an imbecile, and 
 draws a pistol on the sergeant-at-arms. To this class 
 belong Seymour and Fernando Wood and James 
 Brooks, in New York, and Vallandigham and others 
 in other States. But all history shows that when, in 
 time of war, men attack the Government in this way, 
 they will lose their mfluence. The best men of their 
 own party will refuse to follow them. Those men in 
 England who opposed the war against Napoleon, 
 though they were patriots, yet because they opposed 
 the Government in time of war, fell into hopeless 
 minority. Those men in Massachusetts, who op- 
 posed the war of 1812, were politically killed from 
 that hour. The instincts of the two nations said, 
 "Whether the Government be right or wrong, it 
 is at war, and we must support it. Else anarchy — 
 else national ruin." It will always be so. All 
 factious opposition to our Government in time of war 
 will destroy itself. No harm vrill come to the nation 
 from the efforts of unprincipled editors and politicians. 
 I am glad they come out as they do. All loyal, 
 honest democrats will spurn them with contempt — 
 as Dickinson spui-ns them, as Wright spurns them, 
 as Henderson and Noel of Missouri spurn them, as 
 
25 
 
 Robert Dale Owen and Orestes Brownson spurn 
 them, and as Benjamin F. Butler spurns them. 
 
 But what is the prospect of success in this war ? 
 Read Stille's pamphlet, and see. Stille, in his pam- 
 phlet, called " How a Free People conduct a long 
 War," has shown us, by the light of history, how we 
 are to succeed. England, in the Peninsula war, began 
 with a universal enthusiasm like ours in April, 1861. 
 All parties united in voting large supplies, all parties 
 expected overwhelming victories. But when Sir 
 John Moore retreated to Corunna, and the French 
 overran the Peninsula, the English gave up hope, 
 and fell into an extreme of despondency. Still they 
 persevered. When Wellington failed to take the 
 French armies, they desponded again. But they 
 persevered. And so at last, the French were driven 
 from Spain, and defeated everywhere, not by great 
 victories, but by the force of perseverance, which 
 inspires a free people. 
 
 How much we have done ! It is true that we 
 have not found a Napoleon yet for a general ; 
 nor a General Jackson, to put an iron will into 
 the Executive Department. But a Napoleon is, 
 fortunately, as rare as a Shakspeare. A great cap- 
 tain, like Hannibal or Csesar or Frederick or Na- 
 poleon, comes only once in five hundred or a 
 thousand years. We had no right to expect any 
 such. Well for us that none such has come. We 
 have had able and loyal captains, but no great 
 
26 
 
 military genius, who could, in all likelihood, have 
 destroyed our republic and made himself its despot. 
 Nations may well say of such : — 
 
 " Curse on his genius — it 's undone his country." 
 
 But meantime, without any splendid victories, we 
 have been steadily advancing. We have done what 
 no other nation on earth could have done. We have 
 girdled the rebellion with an almost effective block- 
 ade of three thousand miles extent. We have held 
 every loyal State exempt from being the seat of war. 
 We have taken, with an iron grasp, four slave States, 
 Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky. We 
 have taken half of Virginia and made a free State of 
 it. We have emancipated the District of Columbia, 
 and so killed disloyalty therein. We have occupied 
 a large part of Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, 
 Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, with our 
 troops. We have nearly opened the Mississippi 
 river. Finally, we have struck the rebellion the 
 most damaging blow of all, and shaken the ground 
 under its feet, by freeing so many of the slaves, and 
 by threatening the whole slave system. Soon we 
 shall have large bodies of negro troops organized on 
 the lower Mississippi, to keep that which our armies 
 and gunboats conquer. Soon we shall be holding 
 Texas as a State to be colonized with free labor, and 
 restored to the Union a free State, capable of raising 
 
27 
 
 cotton enough for the whole world. Soon we shall 
 have Missoim as a free State, slavery not being cut 
 down by the sword of war, but taken up by the roots, 
 by the free act of its own citizens. I am radical 
 enough to prefer to see it thus taken up by the roots. 
 When this is done, Maryland must follow, and Ken- 
 tucky must follow Maryland, and we shall hope to see 
 a great central tier of free States, voted free by the 
 people themselves. In all these States the negroes 
 will be hired by their old masters, and occupy their 
 old homes, and demonstrate, after a little time, the 
 inherent superiority of freedom over slavery. In 
 twenty years after slavery is gone, Kentucky, Ten- 
 nessee, North Carolina, and Virginia will blossom 
 like the rose, and be the garden of the American 
 continent, as well as the keystone of the American 
 Union. 
 
 Meantime, while we have been thus crushing the 
 rebellion with our right hand, we have been holding 
 England and France still with our left hand. The 
 difficulties of our position were very great, and it re- 
 quired consummate prudence, joined to a great dis- 
 play of force, to prevent interference. We need not 
 be surprised at the hostility of England toward us 
 which culminated in the Trent affair, but which has 
 since been growing less and less, till now England 
 may be said to be really on our side. Three great in- 
 fluences impelled England to desire the dissolution of 
 the Union. First was the influence of the aristocracy, 
 
28 
 
 including not only the nobility, but the army, navy, 
 church, gentry, the educated, the rich, and the literary 
 classes. The success of the American republic has 
 been, for thirty years, the great argument used by 
 English reformers against the English aristocracy. 
 The dissolution of the American republic would 
 destroy that argument, and give the aristocracy a lease 
 of a hundred more years of life. " See," they could 
 say, " a republic has no stability, because wanting in 
 this aristocratic element. Keep us, and England is 
 safe, not otherwise." Then came the manufacturers, 
 who had committed England to the prmciple of free 
 trade, and who needed markets for her goods. The 
 dissolution of the Union would secure an open market 
 at the South, and compel the North to reduce its 
 tariff to the lowest terms. This motive was of im- 
 mense weight. Finally, there was added the feeling 
 in the heart of nearly every Englishman, that the 
 Union Avas becoming a great and dangerous neighbor. 
 They had been obliged to bear from us what they 
 would not have borne from any other people, to 
 concede to us what they would not have conceded to 
 any other. This concession and endurance rankled in 
 the English bosom. They felt as you would feel if 
 you had a family for neighbors who were noisy, who 
 came through your yard, overlooked your windows, 
 and threatened the peace of your melon-patch. If 
 you should hear, some day, that this family had quar- 
 relled among themselves, and would probably be 
 
29 
 
 divided and scattered, you woidd be glad of it. You 
 would say, " Now, I shall have peace, and it will be 
 better for them to be broken up ; they will cease to 
 be a nuisance, and will become more respectable." 
 These three influences ruled the action of England. 
 But the other nation (as Count Gasparin calls it), in 
 England, which is not an aristocracy, which is sin- 
 cerely anti-slavery, which is humble, and voiceless, — 
 the plebeian multitude, honest, strong, determined, — 
 has always been on our side. Starving, withoul bread, 
 in deepest want, it has clung to the northern cause, 
 as the cause of justice and true democracy ; and now 
 it begins, more and more to be felt in all the counsels 
 of England, and I think England will not act against 
 us in this war. 
 
 But the principal thought which forces itself 
 upon the mmd, is, that God is in this war. We 
 cannot keep out of sight the Divine Providence, 
 which is sure to punish evil — sure to put down 
 the proud and raise the lowly — which judges 
 nations, as men, by fixed and inevitable laws. For 
 the sake of our prosperity, our union, and our 
 peace, we consented, during long years, to what we 
 ourselves knew perfectly was unjust and wrong. 
 What was the natural consequence? The South 
 came to believe that we cared for nothing but 
 money. As long as we were willing to concede, 
 again and again, principle, honor, conviction, for 
 the sake of union, peace, and prosperity, they 
 
30 
 
 believed, and with good reason, that for the sake 
 of peace, prosperity, and union, we would concede 
 every thing. If we had resisted at the first, we 
 should never have come to this. 
 
 But the great Power which presides over the 
 world meant that we should do justice. He cares 
 for all His children. There is with Him neither 
 Jew nor Gentile, neither bond nor free, neither black 
 nor white. So, refusing to do anything for the slave ; 
 refusing to let the people go out of bondage ; plague 
 upon plague has come upon us, until, at last, we 
 have reached the darkness of Egypt and the death 
 of the fii'st-born. And now, finally, we are driven 
 to the point of emancipation, not because we wish 
 to emancipate, but because we must. What we 
 would not do for the sake of justice and humanity, 
 we are compelled to do to save ourselves. We 
 call on the negro, in oiu' extremity, to save us. 
 It will be a very strange illustration of the ways 
 of God if the poor ignorant negro, trampled under 
 foot of all, rises to the work of saving the Ameri- 
 can Union. " As a military necessity," says the 
 president ; "As a military necessity," says General 
 Butler. " Don't think we do it, because it is right," 
 we say to mankind — " do not so misunderstand us ; 
 we do it because we cannot help it." - But it must 
 be done. All men of any sagacity, no matter what 
 were their previous opinions, are fast coming to 
 agree on this point. It must be done. The re- 
 
31 
 
 bellion is slavery — and if we fight the rebellion 
 we must fight slavery. General Butler says the 
 slaves are sure to be free. Wendell Phillips, as 
 an abolitionist, says his work is done. When the 
 children of this world and the children of light are 
 so emphatically agreed, I thmk that all between the 
 two extremes, will come to a like conclusion. Gen- 
 eral Butler took seven pro-slavery democratic col- 
 onels with him to New Orleans, and they are all in 
 favor of emancipation. Such is the logic of facts. 
 The objections to negro soldiers are coming to an 
 end very rapidly. The low motive of selfishness must 
 help soon to accomplish this result. When it comes 
 to drafting, and the question is whether we refuse to 
 let negroes be soldiers, and so increase the chance of 
 being drafted ourselves and having our sons drafted, 
 I do not think there are many who will refuse to let 
 them go. Col. Higginson, and Col. Montgomery, in 
 South Carolina and Florida, have demonstrated that 
 they make good soldiers. They take discipline well, 
 are obedient, are imitative, have a great deal of the 
 love of approbation, which is an important motive in 
 war ; and as to courage, courage in a soldier after he 
 has been disciplined, is a matter of course. Then 
 they know the South ; are acquainted with the coun 
 try; are used to labor and hardship; do not need 
 half the equipage that white soldiers need, in march- 
 ing ; and are not exposed so much to the diseases of 
 southern climates. If the war goes on I expect to 
 
32 
 
 see armies of negroes, all of whom will acquire self- 
 respect as United-States soldiers, and inspire respect 
 in others. The wives and children will stay at their 
 homes ; the men will come and enlist ; and this will 
 be the best education for liberty — the best kind of 
 transition from slavery to freedom. 
 
 People say, " what will you do with the negroes 
 if you free them ? " Providence answers the ques- 
 tion — make soldiers of them. Give the negro the 
 opportunity he needs. This is a part of the solu- 
 tion of the problem, and so we had better accept it. 
 Another part of it is, to make Florida and Texas 
 free States, and let the negro go there and work for 
 wages ; or work on land of his own, raising cotton 
 by free labor. Free labor will supersede slave labor 
 in a few years, if you give it this trial. 
 
 Another aspect of the war is its tendency to pro- 
 duce a deeper and truer union between the States 
 and people. It is often the tendency of prosperity 
 to divide, and of adversity to unite. Those who 
 have gone together through great trials are likely to 
 be thoroughly united ; more so than those who have 
 only enjoyed life in company. " Two young lovers 
 lately wed," think that they love each other as 
 much as is possible. They know nothing about 
 it. They do not know how much deeper and richer 
 the love will be which will come one day, when 
 they shall have borne together common sorrows, 
 gone through labors together, endured hardships 
 
33 
 
 and made sacrifices for each other, watched by each 
 other through long hours of sickness and pain, and 
 dropped tears into the same grave on the little casket 
 which holds the darling of their hearts. So is it 
 also with nations. When prosperity has divided a 
 nation by developing different interests and antago- 
 nist activities, adversity unites it by common sacri- 
 fices and common struggles. Superficial thinkers 
 imagine that our Union was made by the Constitu- 
 tion, and that those who made the Constitution made 
 the Union. Superficial thinkers, — for what is a 
 constitution but a piece of parchment, unless it 
 expresses the wishes and intentions of the people ] 
 Nothing is easier than to make a good constitution, — 
 nothing harder than to have it accepted and set in 
 motion, unless the people are ready for it. The 
 South- American States have had as good or better 
 constitutions than ours ; but their constitutions have 
 not saved them from anarchy and civil war. The 
 Revolutionary War made the people ready for the 
 Federal Constitution, by making them really desu'e " a 
 more perfect union." Their common struggles and 
 sufferings, side by side, through eight years of war ; 
 their common efforts to raise men and money ; " the 
 bones of New-England's sons, fallen in the great 
 struggle for independence, and mingled with the soil 
 of every State, from Maine to Georgia," — this was the 
 real basis of the Federal Union. And now the same 
 causes will produce the same results. Massachusetts 
 
34 
 
 men, fighting side by side with the men of Pennsyl- 
 vania, for the defence of Kentucky ; men of Iowa and 
 Wisconsin and Maine and Maryland, struggling for 
 the possession of Richmond, or the opening of the 
 Mississippi ; New York and New England, rescuing 
 the loyal men of Texas and Western Virgmia with 
 their own blood ; comforts sent from Boston to the 
 bedside of the sick soldier of Missouri, in the hos- 
 pitals of Tennessee. These are the things to unite a 
 nation. The Union between the loyal States is 
 today stronger than it has ever been. Never was 
 there less danger than there is today, of the West 
 separating from the East, or of New England's being 
 left out in the cold. The war, like a burning fire, 
 has fused the convictions and sentiments of the 
 nation together; it has made abolitionists by the 
 logic of facts, of men, who, two years ago, were 
 bitterly pro-slavery ; it has made the semi-loyal 
 loyal, or has driven them into open treason or rebel- 
 lion. We may therefore say that the Union was 
 never so strong as it is today. 
 
 And even as regards the rebel States, perhaps 
 it will be found that this war will have a tendency to 
 prepare them for union with us on a firmer founda- 
 tion than in the years that are past. If it destroys 
 slavery, it will destroy the only cause of disunion. 
 Slavery abolished and the slaveholders converted 
 to emancipation, they will become one with the 
 North in feeling and conviction. The fact that 
 
35 
 
 we have fought together will not necessarily divide 
 us. The people of England were as much united 
 after their civil war as before. Two boys at 
 school, long jealous of each other, often like each 
 other better after they have had a trial of strength. 
 The North and South have learned to respect 
 each other's coiu'age and determination. We 
 thought them braggarts — they thought us cowards. 
 We have both found out that we were mistaken. 
 There is, then, no reason for discouragement. 
 We can always fall back on first principles, and 
 say, "The Lord reigns." It never was more 
 evident than now that the Lord reigns. He 
 had waited long enough for us to do justly, — he 
 could wait no longer. 
 
 We have shown in this war the immense power 
 of free institutions. We have improvised armies and 
 extemporized navies. We have shown that a free 
 and educated people need never have standing armies 
 or great navies or forts ; that when she needs them 
 she can make them all at once. America sprang 
 from the ground, at the sound of the cannon fired at 
 Fort Sumter, an armed man. Her common schools, 
 which send armies of industry into the field in time 
 of peace, sent armies of soldiers when necessary to 
 the war. We supplied all deficiencies of organiza- 
 tion by the power of voluntary action. 
 
 Best of all, whatever else comes, emancipation has 
 come. Whether the slaves are free or not, we our- 
 
36 
 
 selves are free. Xo longer is slavery legal ; no 
 longer are we bound to maintain it. That disgrace 
 has passed away forever. Those who have fallen 
 in this struggle have not fallen in vain. Blessed 
 be God for their heroic lives and noble deaths. 
 
 " Let it go or stay, so I wake to the liigher aims 
 Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold, 
 And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames 
 Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told; 
 And hail once more the banner of battle unrolled. 
 Though many an eye shall darken, and many weep, 
 Yet God's first claims shall be wreaked on a giant liar. 
 And many a darkness into light shall leap, 
 And the hearts of tlie people beat with one desire; 
 And noble thought be freer under the sun ; 
 For the peace I deemed tio peace, is over and done 
 In the blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire,'" 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 012 028 984 6 
 
 I