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MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 
 
 SERMON, 
 
 PEEACHED 
 
 IN WORCESTER, ON SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 1854. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, 
 
 Minister of the Worcester Free Church. 
 
 REPRINTED, BY REQUEST, FROM THE WORCESTER DAILY SPY. 
 
 / 
 BOSTON: 
 JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY. 
 1854. 
 

 boston: 
 
 pees8 op prentiss and sawteb, 
 
 No. 19 Water Street. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 Shall the iron break the Xorthern iron and the steel ? — Jeremiah xv. 12. 
 
 You have imagined my subject beforeliand, for there is but 
 one subject on which I could preach, or you could listen, to- 
 day. Yet, how hard it is to say one word of that. You do 
 not ask, at a funeral, that the bereaved mourners themselves 
 should speak, but you call in one a Kttle farther removed, to 
 utter words of comfort, if comfort there be. But to-day is, or 
 should be, to every congregation in Massachusetts, a day of 
 funeral service — we are all moui'ners — and what is there for 
 me to say ? 
 
 Yet, even in this gloom, the faculty of wonder is left ; as 
 at funerals, men ask in a low tone, around the coffin, what 
 was the disease that smote this fair form, and are we safe from 
 the infection ? So we now ask, what is lost, , and how have 
 we lost it, and what have we left ? Is it all gone, (men say,) 
 that old New England heroism and enthusiasm ? Is there 
 any disinterested love of Freedom left in Massachusetts ? 
 And then they think with joy, (as I do,) that, at least. Free- 
 dom did not die without a struggle, and that it took thousands 
 of armed men to lay he^ in the grave at last. 
 
4 MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 
 
 I am thankful for all tliis. Words are nothing — we have 
 been surfeited Avith words for twenty years. I am thankful 
 that this time there was action also ready for Freedom. God 
 gave men bodies, to live and work in ; the powers of those 
 bodies are the first things to be consecrated to the Right. He 
 gave us higher powers, also, for weapons, but, in using those, 
 we must not forget to hold the lower ones also ready ; else 
 we miss oiu" proper manly Kfe on earth, and lay down our 
 means of usefulness before we have outgrown them. " Ren- 
 der unto Csesar the things which are Csesar's and unto God 
 the things which are God's." Our souls and bodies are both 
 God's, and resistance to tyrants is obedience to Him. 
 
 If you meet men whose souls are contaminated, and have 
 time enough to work on them, jon can deal with them by the 
 weapons of the soul alone ; but if men array brute force 
 against Freedom — pistols, clubs, drilled soldiers, and stone 
 walls — then the body also has its part to do in resistance. 
 You must hold yourself above men, I own, yet not too far 
 above to reach them. 
 
 I do not like even to think of taking life, only of giving it ; 
 but physical force that is forcible enough, acts without blood- 
 shed. They say that with twenty more men at hand, that 
 Friday night, at the Boston Court House, the Slave might 
 have been rescued without even the death of that one man — 
 who was perhaps killed by his frightened companions, then 
 and there. So you see force may not mean bloodshed ; and 
 calm, irresistible force, in a good cause, becomes sublime. 
 The strokes on the door of that Coiu't House that night for 
 instance — they may perchance have disturbed some dreamy 
 saint from his meditations, (if dreamy saints abound in Court 
 Square,) — but I think they went echoing from town to town, 
 
MASSACHUSETTS IN MOTJENING, 
 
 from Boston to far New Orleans, like the first di-um beat of 
 the Revolution — and each reverberating throb was a blow 
 upon the door of every Slave-prison of this guilty Republic. 
 
 That first faint throb of Liberty was a proud thing for 
 Boston ; Boston which was a scene so funereal a week after. 
 Men say the act of one Friday helped prepare for the next ; 
 I am glad if it did. If the attack on the Court House had no 
 greater efiect than to send that Slave away under a guard of 
 two thousand men, instead of two hundred, it was worth a 
 dozen hves. If we are all Slaves indeed — if there is no law 
 in Massachusetts except the telegraphic orders from Wash- 
 ington — if our own military are to be made Slave-catchers — 
 if our Governor is a mere piece of State ceremony, permitted 
 only to rise at a military dinner and thank his own soldiers 
 for their readiness to shoot down his own constituents, without 
 even the delay of a riot act — if Massachusetts is merely a 
 conquered province and under martial law — then I wish to 
 Jcnow it, and I am grateful for every additional gun and sabre 
 that forces the truth deeper into our hearts. Lower, Massa- 
 chusetts, lower, Jcneel still lower ! Serve, Irish Marines ! the 
 kidnappers, your masters ; down in the dust, citizen soldiery ! 
 before the Irish Marines, and for you, O Governor, a lower 
 humility yet, and youi- homage must be paid, at second hand, 
 before the stained and soiled " citizen soldieiy." 
 
 I remember the great trades-procession in Boston, a few 
 years since, in honor of the visitors from the North, from the 
 free soil of Canada. Then all choice implements, which 
 Massachusetts had invented to supply the industry of the 
 world, were brought forth for exhibition, and superb was the 
 show. This time we had visitors fr'om the South — the South 
 which uses tools also — and imports them all, "hoes, spades. 
 
6 MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 
 
 axes, politicians, and ministers." So the last new implements^ 
 for her use, vrere to be exhibited now. There were twenty^ 
 one specimens of Boston mihtaiy comjDanies. There "vvere the 
 two hundred more confidential buUies, for whom the city was 
 ransacked, men so vile, that it was said the pohce had no 
 duties left, for all the dangerous 2)ersons were emj^loyed as 
 policemen themselves, — men whom a Pohce Judge having 
 inspected, recognized criminal after cruninal, who had been 
 sentenced by himself to the House of Correction ; these came 
 next. Truly as there is joy in heaven over one sinner who 
 repenteth, so there was joy in Boston that day, over one 
 sinner who had not repented, — - over every man in AAhoni the 
 powers of hell were strong enough, aided by public brandy, 
 to fit him for that terrible service. Those were the tools 
 marshalled forth for exhibition. But why were these only 
 shown ? Why were the finer, the more precious implements 
 kept invisible that day, the real engines of that Slaveholder's 
 triimiph ? Why not make the picture perfect ? Place, O 
 Chief ^larshal, between the Slave and the guardian cannon, 
 the crowning gloiy of that sad procession, the Slaveholder in 
 his carriage, and cham, on the one side, the Mayor of Boston, 
 and, on the other side, the Governor of the Commonwealth) 
 with the motto, " The Representative Men of ^Massachusetts, 
 — These tools she gives, Virginia, to thee ! " 
 
 I mean no personality. The men who occupy these offices, 
 are men who (I have always thought) did them honor. I sup- 
 pose that neither would own a Slave, nor (personally) catch one. 
 Xo doubt they favorably represent the average of Massachu' 
 setts men. But I introduce them for precisely this reason, to 
 show the tragedy of oru* American institutions, that they take 
 average Massachusetts men, put them into pubhc office, and 
 
MASSACHUSETTS IX MOUKJTIXG. 7 
 
 then, demanding more of them than their education gives 
 them manliness to meet, ^^- use them, crush them, and drop 
 them, into the dishonor -with which these hitherto honored 
 men aie suddenly overwhelmed to-day. 
 
 If such be the influence of our national organization, what 
 good do our efibrts do ? Our labor to reform the North, with 
 the whole force of nationalized Slavery to resist, is like the 
 efibrt of Sir John Franklin, on his fii'st voyage, to get north' 
 ward by travelling on the ice. He travelled towai-d the pole 
 for six weeks, no doubt of that ; but at the end of the time 
 he was two hundi-ed miles farther from it than when he 
 started. The ice had floated southward — and our ice floats 
 southward also. And so it will be, while this Union concen* 
 trates power in the hands of Slaveholders, and gives the 
 North only commercial prosperity, the more thoroughly to 
 enervate and destroy it, 
 
 - Here, for instance, is the Nebraska Emigration Society ; it 
 is indeed, a noble enterprise, and I am proud that it owes its 
 origin to a Worcester man— ^ but where is the good of emi-^ 
 grating to Nebraska, if Nebraska is to be only a transplanted 
 Massachusetts, and the original Massachusetts has been tried 
 and found wanting ? Will the stream rise higher than its 
 source ? Settle yoiu* Nebraska ten years, and you will have 
 your New England harvest of corn and grain, more luxuriant 
 in that virgin soil ; - — ah, but will not the other Massachu^ 
 setts crop come also, of political demagogues and wii'e-pidlers, 
 and a sectarian religion, which will insure the passage of the 
 greatest hypocrite to heaven, if he will join the right church 
 before he goes ? And give the emigrants twenty years more 
 of prosperity, and then ask them, if you dare, to break law 
 
8 MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 
 
 and disturb order, and risk life, merely to save their State 
 from the shame that has just blighted Massachusetts ? 
 
 In view of these facts, what stands between us and a mili- 
 tary despotism ? " Sure guarantees," you say. So has every 
 nation thought until its fall came. " The outward form of 
 Roman institutions stood uninjured till long after Caligula 
 had made his horse consul." What is yoiu- safeguard? No- 
 thing but a parchment Constitution, which has been riddled 
 thi'ough and through whenever it pleased the Slave Power ; 
 which has not been able to preserve to you the oldest privi- 
 leges of Freedom — Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury ! 
 Stranger still, that men should think to find a security in our 
 material prosperity, and our career of foreign conquest, and 
 our acquisition of gold mines, and forget that these have been 
 precisely the symptoms which have prophesied the decline of 
 every powerful commercial state — Rome, Carthage, Tyre, 
 Venice, Spain, Holland, and all the rest. 
 
 In the third century after the birth of Jesus, TeruUian 
 painted that brilliant picture of the Roman power, which 
 describes us, as if it were WTitten for us : 
 
 " Certainly," says he, " the world becomes more and more 
 our tributary ; none of its secret recesses have remained 
 inaccessible, all are known, frequented, and all have become 
 the scene or the object of traffic. Who now di-eads an un- 
 known island ? who trembles at a reef ? our ships are sure to 
 be met with everywhere — everywhere is a people, a state ; 
 everywhere is life. We crush the world beneath oiu* weight 
 — onerosi sumus mundo.'" 
 
 And Rome perished, almost when the words were uttered ! 
 
 How simple the acts of our tragedy may be ! Let another 
 Fugitive Slave case occur, and more blood be spilt (as might 
 
MASSACHUSETTS IN MOTJRNING. 9 
 
 happen another time ;) — let Massachusetts be declared insnr- 
 rectionary, and placed under martial la-nr, (as it might ;) — let 
 the President be made Dictator, Trith absolute power; let 
 him send liis willing Attorney General to buv np officers of 
 militia, (which woidd be easy,) and frighten Officers of State, 
 (which would be easier ;) — let him get half the press, and a 
 quarter of the pulpits, to sustain his usm-pation, under the 
 name of " law and order " ; — let the flame spread from New 
 England to Xew York, from Xew York to Ohio, from Ohio 
 to Wisconsin ; — and how long would it take for some fritiu-e 
 Franklin Pierce to stand where Louis Napoleon stands now ? 
 How much would the commercial leaders of the East resist, 
 if an appeal were skilfrilly made to their pockets ? — or the 
 poHtical demagogues of the West, if an appeal were made to 
 their ambition ? It seems inconceiyable ! Certainly — so 
 did the cou_p d'etat of Louis Napoleon, the day before it 
 happened ! 
 
 " Do not despair of the Republic," says some one, remem- 
 bering the hopeful old Roman motto. But they had to de- 
 spair of that one in the end, — and why not of this one also ? 
 Why, when we were going on, step by step, as older Repub- 
 lics have done, should we expect to stop just as we reach the 
 brink of Niagara ? The love of Liberty grows stronger every 
 year, some think, in some places. Thirty years ago, it cost 
 only $25 to restore a Fugitive Slave from Boston, and now it 
 costs ^100,000; — but still the Slave i$ restored. I know 
 there are thousands of hearts which stand pledged to Liberty 
 now, and these may save the State, in spite of her officials 
 and her mihtaiy ; but can they save the Nation ? They may 
 give us disunion instead of despotism, but can they give us 
 anything better i Can they even give us anything so good? 
 
10 MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 
 
 We talk of the Anti-Slavery sentiment as being stronger ; but 
 in spite of your Free Soil votes, your Uncle Tom's Cabin, and 
 your New York Tribunes, here is the sim^ile fact : the South 
 beats us more and more easily every time. So chess-players, 
 when they have once or twice overcome a weak antagonist, 
 think it safe, next time, to give up to him a half dozen pieces 
 by way of odds ; — and after all gain the victory. Compare 
 this Nebraska game with the previous ones. The Slave 
 Power could aflford to give us the Whig party on our side, 
 this time — could give up to us the commercial influence of 
 Boston and New York, so strong an ally before — it has not 
 had the name and presence of Daniel Webster to help it now, 
 nor the voices of clergymen, nor the terror of chsunion, nor 
 the weariness after a long Anti-Slavery excitement : it has 
 dispensed with all these ; — nay, the whole contest was on 
 our own soil, to defend the poor little landmark we had re- 
 treated to long before ; — and for all this, the Slave Power 
 has conquered us, just as easily as it conquered us on Texas, 
 Mexico, and the compromises of 1850. 
 
 No wonder that this excitement is turning Wliigs and 
 Democrats into Free Sellers, and Free Soilers into disunion- 
 ists. But this is only the eddy, after all ; the main current 
 sets the wrong way. The nation is intoxicated and depraved. 
 It takes all the things you count as influential, — all the 
 " spuit of the age," and the " moral sentiment of Christen- 
 dom," and the best eloquence and literatui-e of the time, — to 
 balance the demoraHzation of a single term of Presidential 
 patronage. Give the oflSces of the nation to be controlled by 
 the Slave Power, and I tell you that there is not one in ten, 
 even of professed Anti-Slavery men, who can stand the fire 
 in that furnace of sin ; and there is not a plot so wicked 
 
MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 11 
 
 but it will have, like all its predecessors, a sufficient majority 
 when the time comes. 
 
 Do you doubt this ? Name, if you can, a victory of Free- 
 dom, or a defeat of the Slave PoA^^er, within twenty years, 
 except on the right of petition, and even that was only a 
 recovery of lost ground. Do you say, the politicians are 
 false, but the people mark the men who betray them ! True, 
 they mark them, but as merchants mai-k goods, with the cost 
 price, that they may raise the price a little, when they want 
 to sell the same article again. You must go back to the 
 original Missouri Compromise, if you wish to prove that even 
 Massachusetts punishes traitors to Freedom, by any severer 
 penalty than a seat on her Supreme Bench. For myself, I 
 do not beheve in these Anti-Slavery spasms of our people, for 
 the same reason that Coleridge did not believe in ghosts, 
 because I have seen too many of them myself. I remember 
 when oui- Massachusetts delegation in Congress, signed a sort 
 of tlii'eat that the State Avould withcb-aw fi-om the Union if 
 Texas came in, but it never happened. I remember the 
 State Convention at Faneuil Hall in 1845, where the lion 
 and the lamb lay down together, and George T. Curtis and 
 John G. Whittier were Secretaries ; and the Convention sol- 
 emnly pronounced the annexation of Texas to be " the over- 
 tlii-ow of the Constitution, the bond of the existing Union." 
 I remember how one speaker boasted that if Texas was voted 
 in by joint resolution, it might be voted out by the same. 
 But somehow, we have never mustered that amount of resolu- 
 tion ; and when I hear of State Street petitioning for the 
 repeal of its own Fugitive Slave Law, I remember the lesson. 
 
 For myself, I do not expect to live to see that law repealed 
 by the votes of politicians at Wasliington. It can only be 
 
12 MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 
 
 repealed by ourselves, upon the soil of Massachusetts. For 
 one, I am glad to be deceived no longer. I am glad of the 
 discovery — (no hasty thing, but gradually dawning upon me 
 for ten years) — that I live under a desj)otism. I have lost 
 the dream that ours is a land of peace and order. I have 
 looked thoroughly through our " Fourth of July," and seen 
 its hollowness ; and I advise you to petition your City Gov- 
 ernment to revoke their appropriation for its celebration, (or 
 give the same to the Nebraska Emigration Society,) and only 
 toll the bells in all the churches, and hang the streets in 
 black from end to end. O shall we hold such ceremonies 
 when only some statesman is gone, and omit them over dead 
 Freedom, whom all true statesmen only live to serve ! 
 
 At any rate my word of counsel to you is to learn this 
 lesson thorouglily — a revolution is begun ! not a Reform, but 
 a Revolution. If you take part in politics henceforward, let 
 it be only to bring nearer the crisis wloich will either save or 
 sunder this nation — or perhaps save in sundering. I am not 
 very hopeful, even as regards you ; I know the mass of men 
 will not make great sacrifices for Freedom, but there is more 
 need of those who will. I have lost faith forever in num- 
 bers ; I have faith only in the constancy and courage of a 
 " forlorn hope." And for aught we know, a case may arise, 
 this week, in Massachusetts, which may not end like the 
 last one. 
 
 Let us speak the truth. Under the influence of Slavery, 
 we are rapidly relapsing into that state of barbarism in which 
 every man must rely on his own right hand for his protection. 
 Let any man yield to his instinct of Freed6m, and resist oppres- 
 sion, and his life is at the mercy of the first di'unken officer 
 who orders his troops to fiire. For myself, existence looks 
 
MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 13 
 
 ■worthless under such circumstances ; and I can only make 
 life worth living for, by becoming a revolutionist. The say- 
 ing seems dangerous ; but why not say it if one means it, as 
 I certainly do. I respect law and order, but as the ancient 
 Persian sage said, " always to obey the laws, virtue must 
 relax much of her vigor." I see, now, that while Slavery is 
 national, law and order must constantly be on the wrong side. 
 I see that the case stands for me precisely as it stands for 
 Kossuth and Mazzini, and I must take the consequences. 
 
 Do you say that ours is a Democratic Government, and 
 there is a more peaceable remedy ? I deny that we live under 
 a Democracy. It is an oligarchy of Slaveholders, and I point 
 to the history of a half century to prove it. Do you say, 
 that oligarchy will be propitiated by submission ? I deny it. 
 It is the plea of the timid in all ages. Look at the expe- 
 rience of our own country. Which is most influential in 
 Congress — South Carolina, which never submitted to any- 
 thing, or Massachusetts, with thi-ice the white population, but 
 which always submits to everything ? I tell you, there is not 
 a free State in the Union which would dare treat a South 
 Carolinian as that State treated Mr. Hoar ; or, if it had been 
 done, the Union would have been divided years ago. The 
 way to make principles felt is to assert them — peaceably, if 
 you can ; forcibly, if you must. The way to promote Free 
 Soil is to have your own soil free ; to leave courts to settle 
 constitutions, and to fall back (for your own part,) on first 
 principles : then it will be seen that you mean something. 
 How much free territory is there beneath the Stars and 
 Stripes? I know of four places — Syracuse, Wilkesbarre, 
 Milwaukie, and Chicago : I remember no others. " Worces- 
 ter," you say. Worcester has not yet been tried. If you 
 
14 MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 
 
 think Worcester County is free, say so and act accordingly. 
 Call a County Convention, and declare that you leave legal 
 quibbles to lawyers, and paities to politicians, and plant 
 yourselves on the simple truth that God never made a Slave, 
 and that man shall neither make nor take one here ! Over 
 your own city, at least, you have power ; but will you stand 
 the test when it comes ? Then do not try to avoid it. For 
 one thing only I blush — that a Fugitive has ever fled from 
 here to Canada. Let it not happen again, I charge you, if 
 you are what you tliink you are. Xo longer conceal Fugitives 
 and help them on, but show them and defend them. Let 
 the Underground Railroad stop here ! Say to the South that 
 Worcester, though a part of a Republic, shall be as free as if 
 ruled by a Queen ! Hear, O Richmond ! and give ear, O 
 Carolina ! henceforth Worcester is Canada to the Slave ! 
 And what will Worcester be to the kidnapper ? I dare not 
 tell ; and I fear that the poor sinner himself, if once recog- 
 nized in our streets, would scarcely get back to tell the tale. 
 
 I do not discoiu-age more peaceable instrumentalities ; 
 would to God that no other were ever needful. Make laws, 
 if you can, though you have State processes abeady, if you 
 had officers to enforce them ; and, indeed, what can any State 
 process do, except to legalize nullification ? Use politics, if 
 you can make them worth using, though a coalition adminis- 
 tration proved as powerless, in the Sims case, as a Whig 
 administration has proved now. But the disease lies deeper 
 than these remedies can reach. It is all idle to try to save 
 men by law and order, merely, while the men themselves 
 grow selfish and timid, and are only ready to talk of Liberty, 
 and risk nothing for it. Our people have no active physical 
 habits ; their intellects ai'e sharpened, but their bodies, and 
 
MASSACHUSETTS IN MOURNING. 15 
 
 even their hearts, are left imtramed ; they learn only (a^ a 
 French satirist once said,) the fear of God and the love of 
 money; they are taught that they owe the world nothing, 
 but that the world owes them a Kving, and so they make a 
 living ; but the fi-esh, strong spirit of Liberty droops and 
 decays, and only makes a dying. I charge you, parents, do 
 not be so easily satisfied ; encoiu'age nobler instincts in your 
 children, and appeal to nobler principles ; teach your daugh- 
 ter that hfe is something more than dress and show, and your 
 son that there is some nobler aim in existence than a good 
 bargain, and a fast horse, and an oyster supper. Let us have 
 the brave, simple instincts of Circassian mountaineers, with- 
 out their ignorance ; and the unfaltering moral covu-age of 
 the Puritans, without their superstition ; so that we may 
 show the world that a community may be educated in brain 
 without becoming cowardly in body; and that a people 
 without a standing army may yet rise as one man, when 
 Freedom needs defenders. 
 
 May God help us so to redeem this oppressed and bleeding 
 State, and to bring this people back to that simple love of 
 Liberty, without which it must die amidst its luxuries, like 
 the sad nations of the elder world. May we gain more iron 
 in our souls, and have it in the right place ; — have soft 
 hearts and hard wills, not as now, soft wills and hard hearts. 
 Then will the iron break the Northern iron and the steel no 
 longer ; and " God save the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
 setts ! " will be at last a hope fulfilled. 
 
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