What we have secured by the War, and what remains to be secured. 
 
 DISCOURSE, 
 
 Delivered on the 
 
 DAY OF NATIONAL THANKSGIYING, 
 
 DECEMBEK 7, 1865, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 SOUTH CHURCH, ANDOVER, 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. CHARLES SMITH, 
 
 ■H 
 PASTOR. 
 
 PRINTED BT REQUEST. 
 
 ANDOVER : 
 
 PRINTED BY WARREN F. DRAPER. 
 
 18 6 6. 
 
i 
 
 Cov 
 
 

 DISCOURSE. 
 
 O BLE83 OUE GOD, TE PEOPLE, AND MAKE THE VOICE OF HIi9 PRAISE TO BE HEARD; 
 WHICH HOLDETH OUR BOUL IN LIFE, AND BUFFERETH NOT OUR FEET TO BE MOVED. 
 FOR THOU, O GOD, HAST PROVED US: THOU HAST TRIED US AS SILVER IB TRIED. 
 THOU BROUGHTEST US INTO THE NET : THOU LAIDST AFFLICTION UPON OUR LOINS. 
 THOU HA8T CAUSED MEN TO RIDE OVER OUR HEADS; WE WENT THROUGH FIRE 
 AND THROUGH WATER; BUT THOU BROUGHTEST US OUT INTO A WEALTHY PLACE. 
 1 WILL GO INTO THY HOUSE WITH BURNT-OFFERINGS ; I WILL PAY THEE MY VOWS, 
 WHICH MY LIPS HAVE UTTERED, AND MY MOUTH HATH SPOKEN WHEN I WAS IN 
 
 TROUBLE.— Psalm Ixvi. 8-14. 
 
 rilHIS Psalm was written bj some unknown Hebrew poet, to 
 celebrate, probably, the return of the Israelites from exile 
 and captivity in Babylon. The portion of it selected as the text 
 of discourse, though written many hundred years ago, and re- 
 ferring to the condition and trials of people long ago at rest, 
 not inaptly describes the circumstances in which, as a people, 
 we have been placed. God has " proved us," and " tried us 
 as silver is tried," in the heated furnace of civil war. He 
 " brought us into the net," when, under the lead of men who 
 had held prominent places in the Government, rebellion was in- 
 augurated with fearful celerity in eleven States of the Union, 
 while prominent cabinet and military officers treacherously be- 
 trayed their trust, and the Chief Magistrate pleaded a want of 
 constitutional power to preserve the nation from dismemberment. 
 He " caused men to ride over our heads," when our soldiers 
 were defeated at Manassas, Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, on the 
 Peninsula, and at Chancellorsville ; causing our enemies to talk 
 
 ^.r» V 
 
 ?,3l 
 
4 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 
 
 contemptuously of our valor, and foreign nations to treat us witli 
 gross indignity. He "laid afflictions upon our loins" — most 
 grievous and severe afflictions — when our young men fell by 
 the thousand, on the battle-field, by sickness in the camp, and 
 starvation in rebel prisons ; when conspiracies were formed in 
 the loyal States, and the fear of national destruction took hold 
 of the most hopeful. "We went through fire and through 
 water," — through terrible and diverse trials, from foes without 
 and foes within. But now we can say to God, with the Hebrew 
 psalmist, " Thou hast brought us out into a wealthy place." 
 These heavy trials of the past four years are over. We are at 
 peace ; the integrity of our nation has been preserved ; and 
 more, even, than this, we come out of our terrible ordeal a 
 stronger nation, more compact, more homogeneous, vastly more 
 respected and feared by foreign nations than ever before ; de- 
 livered, also, of the body of death by which we had been heavily 
 weighted from the beginning of our national existence. Our 
 national energy has been stimidated, our material resources aug- 
 mented. Though with a heavy debt upon us, the income of our 
 treasury is more than equal to its wants. Our credit abroad is 
 unimpaired, and never before had we, as a nation, such a fair 
 prospect of national wealth and greatness. 
 
 " Thou hast brought us out into a wealthy place." The 
 President of the nation has not been unmindful of Him by whose 
 resistless purpose and power we have received deliverance. 
 Through his proclamation for a day of national thanksgiving and 
 praise we have said : " We will go into thy house with thank- 
 offerings ; we will pay thee the vows which our lips uttered and 
 our mouth hath spoken when we were in trouble." Yes, in the 
 ten thousand temples of worship throughout the land, we say to 
 all the people of the land to-day : "Oh bless our God, ye peo- 
 ple, and make the voice of his praise to be heard : which holdeth 
 our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be moved," — which 
 
AND WHAT KEMAINS TO BE SECURED. 5 
 
 preserve th our national life among the nations of the earth, and 
 suflFereth not our national standing to be disturbed. 
 
 This is a day of national thanksgiving and praise, — a day in 
 which, pubUcly and in concert, our people shall heartily and 
 gratefully acknowledge their indebtedness to Almighty God. 
 Let us, by way of incitement to grateful praise, recall some of 
 the benefits which, through the kindness of God, we have secured 
 as a nation. 
 
 First. We have secured an honorable peace. One year ago 
 the Lieutenant-General of our mihtary forces, with his large army, 
 was encamped before the fortifications of Richmond and Peters- 
 burg, with the disheartening prospect of a dreary and profitless 
 winter campaign. The rebels were as defiant as ever, and 
 maintained their ground in their intrenched position around their 
 capital with unflinching obstinacy. At home and abroad they 
 proclaimed their determination to fight till their independence 
 was conceded. Our army was melting away by disease con- 
 tracted in the intrenchments, and by exhausting assaults upon 
 almost impregnable fortifications. There was an earnest call for 
 men to fill up the decimated ranks. We had already given many 
 of our best young men to the terrible work and sacrifice. Some 
 of these had fallen, some were languishing in rebel prisons. 
 Recruiting was difficult. The first enthusiasm had spent itself. 
 Grim war, ceasing to be a froHc, had become a dread reahty. 
 We said men must be had : we must fight it through ; but our 
 hearts were sad while our resolution was finn. We bade our 
 yoimg men go forth to the contest, while in whispers we asked, 
 " When shall the end be ? " We should not then have ventured 
 to think that, in a little more than four months, Savannah, 
 Charleston, and Richmond would be occupied by our troops ; 
 that the two greatest generals of the Confederacy, with the two 
 4argest armies, with all their ofiicers, would be prisoners of war 
 on parole ; that, in less than eight mouths, not a Confederate 
 
6 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 
 
 soldier in arms would be found from the Potomac to the Rio 
 Grande, from Carolina to Arkansas. Never was there before 
 such a sudden and complete overthrow of a great and well-or- 
 ganized military power, extending over such a vast territory. 
 This almost instantaneous collapse of the great Slaveholders' 
 Rebellion will always be a surprise in history. 
 
 The war has been fought through. The rebels have been 
 completely conquered. There is no question among them as to 
 the thoroughness of their defeat. They have been placed en- 
 tirely at the mercy of the Government against which four years 
 ago they hurled defiance, anathemas, taunts, and ridicule. 
 There has been no compromise with treason — no bridging the 
 way back to allegiance by concession or promises of favor. The 
 rebels have been beaten by hard blows, — fairly and terribly 
 beaten, — thrust down to the earth, held down, till they cried for 
 mercy, and were glad to receive their forfeited lives from the 
 clemency of those they sought to destroy. The peace thus 
 gained is likely to be a long one. No second rebelhon will the 
 children or grandchildren of any person now living witness 
 against the Government of these United States. Years before 
 that fatal shot was fired on Sumter, we were in a state of war, 
 — South against North, North against South. There was an 
 " irrepressible conflict " between the two sections. This conflict 
 has come to an end. We shall have more or less bluster and 
 bravado at Washington ; but the haughty, self-asserting, brow- 
 beating spirit of the olden time has been laid to rest forever. A 
 Massachusetts senator will hereafter be at liberty to speak his 
 mind on any subject in the senate-chamber at Washington, with 
 no fear of a South Carolina bludgeon before his eyes. We have 
 conquered an honorable peace, and a lasting peace. 
 
 Again : We have secured the destruction of slavery in our 
 country, and the consequent destruction of the institution in all • 
 civilized countries at no distant day. By a most infelicitous, but 
 
AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 7 
 
 perhaps necessary concession, the right to hold negroes and the 
 descendants of negroes' in slavery was recognized in the Consti- 
 tution of the United States. The framers of this instrument, 
 who saw the inconsistency and incongruity of engrafting a system 
 of slavery upon democratic mstitutions, hoped that through state 
 legislation slavery would be gradually and within a Umited period 
 abolished throughout the land. Their hopes were not realized. 
 With the increased demand for cotton, and the invention of the 
 cotton-gin, slave labor at the South became exceedingly profitable. 
 The slaves increased in number. Planters, with the stimulus of 
 large profits, pushed out into new territory. Slave States mul- 
 tiphed. The South grew rich and proud through the labor of its 
 bondmen and bondwomen. A haughty aristocracy grew up, 
 which claimed to possess the courtesies and elegances of social 
 hfe, and the arts of statesmanship and arms, to an eminent degree. 
 Talent and religion became subservient to this aristocracy. The 
 Bible was ransacked to find plausible reasons for the existence 
 and continuance of slavery. The institution was pronounced by 
 learned men to be " a divine institution," established from the 
 days of Canaan. No thought was now entertained of its ultimate 
 extinguishment. The rather it was to be fortified by new con- 
 stitutional guaranties ; it was to be extended over territory al- 
 ready sacredly dedicated to free labor; and, not content with 
 this, the slave aristocracy unblushingly and offensively assumed 
 an air of superiority on account of slave-holding over their non- 
 slave-holding equals in ofiicial position. They claimed the right 
 to dictate the policy of the National Government, and to desig- 
 nate those who should be our presidents, ministers of state, and 
 ambassadors ; and when seemingly about to lose this assumed 
 right, they rebelled. Being blindly devoted to slavery, they 
 determined to make it the comer-stone of a new nation, which 
 they fancied they might easily establish, with only mercenary 
 and cowardly Yankees to oppose them ; and that this new na- 
 
8 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 
 
 tion, with slavery for its chief corner-stone, would arise in majesty 
 and splendor till its court should eclipse that of St. Peters- 
 burg, of St. James, and even that of St. Cloud. 
 
 " In dreams, through camp and court they bore 
 iThe trophies of a conqueror." 
 
 Four years of terrible war, in which the manly strength, pride, 
 and beauty of the South have been laid in the grave, — four years 
 of fastmg and nakedness, of devastation and havoc, — four years 
 of struggle ending with defeat, humihation, poverty, and shame, 
 
 — have destroyed this beautiful fabric of a dream. That comer- 
 stone of the grandest empire of the future has been lifted from 
 its place and broken into ten thousand fragments by plebeian 
 hands. Abraham Lincoln, the Illinois lawyer, deridingly called 
 the "rail-splitter," — ungainly in person, uncourtly in speech, 
 
 — with the aid of Grant, Sherman, and their fellow-soldiers, 
 took up this corner-stone of the imperial Southern Confederacy, 
 which was destined to overshadow the earth, and ground it to 
 powder. Slavery can never again exist in any form whatsoever 
 on this North American Continent. True, it has at present 
 some semblance of hfe in Kentucky ; but its life here is but the 
 spasm of its death-struggle. Now, with the destruction of slavery 
 in the United States, its doom in Cuba and Brazil cannot long be 
 delayed. The moral influence of emancipation here will be felt 
 in that Garden of the Ocean, on the banks of the Amazon, herald- 
 ing the day of freedom to the poor bondmen toiling beneath a 
 tropical sun. 
 
 Again : We have secured the future indisputable supremacy 
 of the National Government, and the consequent right to call 
 ourselves an integral nation, rather than an assemblage of mde- 
 pendent States. For years Southern statesmen have uniformly 
 maintained the right of a State to secede from the Union ; though 
 some of them may not have deemed the exercise of this right 
 expedient. Some Northern statesmen and some Northern orators, 
 
AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 9 
 
 as ]Mr. Phillips and his associates, have also loudly claimed the 
 right of a State to secede. Hence, at the time of the secession 
 of the Southern States, men at the South -who opj.osed secession 
 with all their ability, when their State seceded, believing in the 
 paramount authority of a State, renounced their allegiance to the 
 United States, and Avent into rebellion with clear consciences. 
 Hence Mr. Buchanan, timid and wavering, could find no author- 
 ity in the Constitution to coerce a State. It seemed for a time 
 as if we were about to tumble to pieces — roll apart, as wculd a 
 pyramid of cannon balls were one from the lower strata knocked 
 from its place. The anxious inquiries passed from lip to lip, 
 " Have we a Government ? " " Have we been living in a delu- 
 sion ? " " Are we really a nation, or only the shadow of a na- 
 tion ? " The decision of these vital questions was taken from 
 the senate chamber and the supreme court room, and given to 
 the battle-field. Bomb-shells, cannon balls, and mini^ balls were 
 the arguments used. The conclusion arrived at under this 
 severely practical style of reasoning is, that we are a nation, one 
 and inseparable ; that we have a Government that can and will 
 defend its own existence to the last extremity, — that can and will 
 crush rebellious States, however united they may be in their 
 rebelUon, — that can and will punish treason with fire and sword, 
 however sincere and honest the traitors may be. We take our 
 place among the nations of the earth, having proved our right to 
 be, and our ability to be. The doctrine of State Rights as 
 opposed to the central Government has gone to oblivion Avith the 
 rebellion. Henceforth we are to be known as the United People, 
 as well as the United States, of America. Gov. Orr, of South 
 Carohna, in his recent inaugural address to the legislature of 
 that intensely secession State, says: "The war has decided, 
 first. That one or more of the States" of the Federal Union 
 have not the right, at will, to secede therefrom. The doctrine 
 of Secession, which was held to be orthodox in the State Rights 
 
10 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 
 
 school of politics, is now exploded, for any practical purpose, 
 ^ihe theory of absolute sovereignty of a State of the Federal 
 Union (from -whence was derived the right to secede), which 
 was believed almost universally to be a sound constitutional 
 construction, must also be materially modified to conform to 
 this unposing decision. In all the powers granted in the Con- 
 stitution to the Federal Government, it is supreme and sover- 
 eign, and must be obeyed and respected accordingly. Where 
 the rights of a State are disregarded, or unconstitutional acts 
 done by any department of the Federal Government, redress can 
 no bnger be sought by interposing the sovereignty of the State, 
 either for nullification or secession ; but the remedy is by petition 
 or remonstrance ; by reason, which sooner or later will overtake 
 justice ; by an appeal to the supreme judicial power of the Union ; 
 or by a revolution, which, if unsuccessful, is treason." 
 
 Thanks be to God that, through the opening made by Sher- 
 man and his brave soldiers, the true light on this subject shines 
 even upon the capitol of South Carohna, the cradle of secession 
 and treason. 
 
 Again : We have secured, abroad and at home, confidence in 
 the stability of our democratic institutions. Monarchists in 
 Europe have been from the beginning of our national existence 
 aflfirming the inherent weakness of democratic institutions, and 
 predicting their overthrow in this country at the first serious trial 
 of their strength. The wisest men in the convention that framed 
 the Constitution — among them Hamilton and Adams, with 
 Washington — feared there would not be strength enough in 
 our institutions to stand the shock of sectional and partisan strife. 
 Up to the year 1861 it was an open question whether our form 
 of Government could be maintained — whether it had vitality 
 enough to live — amidst internal upheaving and commotion. It 
 was looked upon by thoughtful men as an experiment ; hopeful, 
 indeed, still not beyond question as to its failure. But now, 
 
AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 11 
 
 after four yaars of unparalleled trial, we present ourselves before 
 the world with our institutions intact, unharmed. We have nei- 
 ther fallen into anarchy, nor succumbed to a military despotism. 
 We have neither come under the tyranny of the street mob, nor 
 that of the " solitary man on horseback." The strength of our 
 institutions has been tested by a rebellion of greater magnitude 
 and fierceness, with greater intellectual and military resources, 
 than any to which the governments of modern Europe have been 
 subjected. Our young men have been taken from their homes 
 and secular pursuits by the million to fill the ranks of our armies. 
 We have submitted to the relentless conscription. We have 
 been heavily taxed. We have practically said to the Govern- 
 ment : " Do what you will with us and ours, only secure to us, 
 and transmit unharmed to our children, the republican institu- 
 tions we have inherited from our fathers, and this noble country 
 in its integrity, from the Lakes to the Gulf, from the Atlantic to 
 the Pacific." 
 
 In the hour of our victory the hand of the assassin took the 
 life of our beloved Chief Magistrate, and laid low his Secretary 
 of State. But, though every heart in the land trembled at the 
 terrible news, as the soli 1 ground does under the shock of an 
 earthquake, there was no trembling or quivering in the demo- 
 cratic institutions of the state. The trusted head of the Gov- 
 ernment through violence lay a corpse in the presidential man- 
 sion ; but the Government itself continued " vital in every part." 
 It moved on undisturbed in its functions, and its funds were 
 depressed but the fraction of a cent on the dollar, and but for a 
 day. 
 
 Our democratic institutions have, then, been tried by fire, and 
 have stood unharmed the test. We believe in them now as we 
 never did before ; and the nations of the world, from Great 
 Britain to Tunis, with surprise not unmingled with regret, con- 
 template their stability, and are forced to the unpalatable conclu- 
 
12 AVHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 
 
 sion that they are as vigorous as thej are flexible, as permanent 
 as they are popular, as firm as they are free. 
 
 Again : We have secured the profound respect of foreign 
 nations. There is nothing in this Avorld "which nations so much 
 respect as power, wisely and successfully used. We have put 
 down a rebellion such as Lord Palmerston, late Prime Minister 
 of Great Britain, declared Great Britain would be unable to put 
 down. We have done in four years what nearly every statesman 
 in Europe said never could be done. In the face of prediction 
 and pity we have shown our ability to manage our own affairs, 
 and bring our troubles to a happy issue. The vastness of our 
 military operations seems to have fairly confounded the wise men 
 of the Old World. Sir Morton Peto, on his return from his visit 
 of inspection to this country, tells his friends of Bristol that " he 
 went to America at a most interesting epoch of its history — at 
 the close of the most tremendous struggle known in modern times. 
 He did expect to find exhaustion, and society somewhat disar- 
 ranged ; but he saw nothing of the kind. (Cheers.) There was 
 nothing throughout the whole of the great country that would 
 have led him to suppose such a struggle had existed. To 
 understand America," he said, " they should go there ; and no 
 man of business, entering life, should consider his education 
 complete until he had paid that country a visit. The war was 
 from the very first a war of principle. The United States army 
 was 1,200,000 strong; and General Grant had told him at St. 
 Louis he had mustered out 875,000 men up to that day. He 
 stated that he did not mean to have more than 50,000 men ; and 
 if their friends of the South were sincere, they would bring the 
 army down to 30,000. (Cheers.) If these men could go and 
 be absorbed in civil hfe, it must show that the country possessed 
 resources such as were never seen before, and which nations in 
 Europe would do well to imitate. (Loud cheers.)" These men 
 have gone and have been absorbed in civil life. Sir Morton 
 
AND WHAT REMAINS TO V,E SECURED. 13 
 
 went on to say that " he had had the pleasure of meeting General 
 M'CulIum, whoj had conducted the whole of the Commissariat 
 Department, and who would be his guest next year, and he hoped 
 to bring him to see the Bristol people. (Cheers.) He learned 
 from the General, after going into the whole (juestion on the 
 termination of that gi-eat struggle, that the North were working 
 on their own account 2500 miles of railway, 887 engines, GOOO 
 cars, 7000 employes in connection with these. (Loud applause.) 
 Such a course of action had been instituted, that Avhen General 
 Sherman made his march on Atlanta, the enemy had burned 
 every bridge on the railway for a distance of 150 miles ; and 
 Sherman gave General M'CulIum eight days in which to recon- 
 struct these bridges. One bridge was 1200 feet long and 97 feet 
 high, and it was constructed in three days and a half (loud 
 cheers) ; and every bridge in the course of that 1 50 miles was 
 constructed in six days, and the whole supplies of Sherman's 
 army were carried over that line." 
 
 These remarks were received with cheers, loud cheers, show- 
 ing that the good people of Bristol Avere not a little amazed at 
 the statistics. 
 
 Yes, our military operations have been the astonishment of 
 European people and governments. We raised and kept in the 
 field an army of more than a million of men, mostly by volunteer- 
 ing, Avhile our agricultural, manufacturing, and all other indus- 
 trial interests Avere prosecuted with unexampled activity and 
 success. "We created from almost nothing, in less than four 
 years, a navy that Great Britain, who calls herself the Mistress 
 of the Seas, would hesitate to encounter. We brought forth, 
 after repeated trials, commanders on the sea and on the land, — 
 Farragut, Porter, Foote, Winslow, Grant, Sherman, Thomas, 
 Meade, Howard, Sheridan, M'Pherson, and others scarcely their 
 inferiors, — whose reputation for naval and miUtary ability and 
 prowess will bear favorable comparison with that of Nelson, 
 
14 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAK, 
 
 Marlborough, Napoleon, Wellington, Ney, and other eminent 
 commanders of the Old World. And, what is more to our credit, 
 we held on to our purpose to put down the rebellion and destroy 
 its cause, amidst disasters and trials, while every leading nation 
 in Europe — Russia excepted — tried in all possible ways to 
 hinder and discourage us, while they openly sympathized with 
 and aided our enemies. A recent writer in Blackwood says : 
 " It is no secret now that Lord Palmerston was ready to fight us 
 on the Trent affair, with the French Emperor to back him up, 
 and was prevented from so doing, not from any consideration 
 of right or friendship to us, but by the pacific disposition of 
 some of his leading associates in office." We have fought this 
 rebellion down single-handed, against the sympathies, the one- 
 sided neutrality, and the secret cooperation with rebels,, of Great 
 Britain and France. We thus compel these nations, which 
 respect nothing but power, to respect us. When, on the morn- 
 ing of the 19th of June, 1864, the Kearsarge, under command of 
 Capt. Winslow, sent the Alabama — a British-built, British- 
 armed, and British-manned war-steamer, under the Confederate 
 flag — to the bottom of the ocean, in sight of France watching 
 from the fortifications of her great naval port to shout over a 
 victory, these rival nations raised their military caps a little in 
 token of respect ; and when Lee surrendered to Grant, and 
 Johnston to Sherman, these nations completely uncovered their 
 heads, and made profound obeisance. 
 
 The manner in which our Government has borne itself since 
 the suppression of the rebellion has tended greatly to secure for 
 us the respect of mankind. There have been no mihtary execu- 
 tions, but few imprisonments, and not the least vindictive feeling 
 manifested towards those in the power of the Government who 
 for four years exerted themselves to the utmost to insult our 
 people and destroy the nation. There has been no sweeping 
 confiscation of property, no revenge, no spirit of retaliation shown. 
 
AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 16 
 
 Rebels are pardoned, and invited to reconstruct their States 
 upon the new principles established by the result of the war. 
 They have been treated with the greatest leniency and forbear- 
 ance. Such an other example of self-restraint and magnanimity 
 in the hour of victory is not to be foimd in the history of nations. 
 Contrast it with the conduct of the British Government at Ja- 
 maica, parallel in time. A shght emeute of a few thousand poor 
 negi'oes, easily put down within a day or two, is followed by the 
 military execution in cold blood of the leaders and two thousand 
 of their miserable associates. What right have a people with 
 such a record fresh in the minds of all men to whimper over the 
 confinement in Fortress JNIouroe of Jefferson Davis, the head of 
 the great Slaveholders' Rebellion, the cold-blooded murderer, by 
 starvation, of helpless prisoners of war ? This dark background of 
 English cruelty will serve to set off to greater advantage before the 
 eyes of mankind, living and to live, the godlike clemency of our 
 Government. The nations of the earth cannot fail to respect to 
 the borders of reverence a people who have self-control and mag- 
 nanimity enough to make a merciful use of victory, and such a 
 consciousness of right and power as to extend the hand of broth- 
 erly love to a prostrate foe. 
 
 Again : We have secured such a position that we can afford 
 to be just to all classes of citizens, and humane towards our i\;imer 
 enemies. A weak government, tottering on its base, will, almost 
 of necessity, be unfair, partial, unjust, and cruel. The Missouri 
 Compromise grew out of the feehng among Northern statesmen 
 that our Government was too feeble to bear the wrenching of a 
 fierce struggle for the right. Up to the breaking out of the 
 war we lived in the constant dread lest some disaster should over- 
 take the ark of our strength. We have kept silence lest the 
 breath of too loud talk about right should topple over the fair 
 fabric reared by the trembling hands of our fathers. We have 
 been like all other nations in this subserviency to conscious weak- 
 
16 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAK, 
 
 ness — no worse, certainly ; not much better, I fear. But this day 
 of weakness has passed. We can do justly to all classes, black 
 and white, with no dread of mysterious disaster. We can aflford 
 to be humane also. The rebels of the South have done their 
 utmost to destroy the Government : they have only made it ten 
 times stronger than before. They have lost everything for which 
 they fought and gave their sons to the bloody sacrifice ; separa- 
 tion, independence, slavery, the supremacy of cotton, free trade, 
 the pride of superiority in arms and statesmanship, property, — 
 all gone. Think you there will ever be another Secession Con- 
 vention ? I tell you nay ! Such a lesson is not forgotten in 
 one generation. These rebels will be glad enough to remain, 
 hereafter, peaceable citizens. The Government is strong enough 
 to treat them humanely ; strong enough to give them pardon and 
 citizenship on easy terms. It seems to me that the great mass 
 should be pardoned, a few expatriated, and that but one — the 
 head and representative of treason, Jefferson Davis — should be 
 hung ; — not as Jefferson Davis, a rebel citizen cf Mississippi, but 
 as the representative, the voluntary representative, the embodiment 
 of treason against the United States Government ; not out of 
 vengeance, but to show that treason is an atrocious crime, and to 
 make treason i)dious, revolting, and infamous. Let us be merci- 
 ful, pxuiishing only as God punishes, — to make sin appear " ex- 
 ceeding sinful." 
 
 Now, here are reasons enough, sufficiently momentous and 
 grave, to call forth towards God the profoimdest gratitude of our 
 hearts. For let us reverently remember, as we recount them, that 
 we have secured these benefits, not by our wisdom or might, but 
 by the good-will and providence of God, overruhng our affairs, 
 guiding and aiding us in our terrible struggle. 
 
 A few important things remain to be secured or settled, that we 
 may, as a nation, gird ourselves up as a strong man to run a race. 
 
AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 17 
 
 First. We must secure the constitutional abolition and pro- 
 hibition of slavery forever in all the States and Territories of the 
 United States of America. 
 
 Secondly. It remains for us to secure to the freedmen their just 
 rights as citizens. What these rights are, is a proper question for 
 calm, thoughtful, and thorough discussion in the halls of Congress, 
 in the newspaper press, in State legislatures, pulpits, town-meet- 
 ings, and in private conversation. The attempt to force public 
 opinion one way or the other by heated declamation, by factious 
 action, or by an exaggerated representation of existing or appre- 
 hended evils, is untimely, unseemly, and injurious to the truth 
 and to sound judgment. There are, confessedly, difficulties con- 
 nected with this question, which may lead wise and patriotic men 
 to differ in opinion ; but an exhaustive discussion, temperately 
 conducted, will bring us eventually to the right conclusion. I 
 fear nothing but heat and haste. Might I venture an expression 
 of opinion on this matter, I should say that, in the reconstruction 
 of the rebelUous Slave States, the Government of the United 
 States is bound to see to it that freedmen, or colored citizens, 
 have secured to them^ by constitutional provision or legislative 
 enactment, the same protection as to person and property that is 
 accorded to white citizens. They should have the same hberty 
 of movement — to buy and sell and make contracts, to engage in 
 any pursuit or profession they may choose, to sue at law and be 
 sued, to work or play — that the white man enjoys. There should 
 be no code of laws for the black man exclusively. That would 
 be making too much of the negro. That thing belongs to the 
 days of slavery. Vagrant laws will doubtless be necessary at 
 the South, as they are in Massachusetts ; but they should pay 
 no respect to color. A white and black vagabond, thief, or 
 drunkard should be amenable to the same statute. The colored 
 man should be admitted to the witness-stand, and his testimony, 
 as that of a white man, taken for what it is worth. His children 
 
 3 
 
18 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 
 
 should have equal privileges in all public schools. As to the 
 ballot, about which the contest will be warmest, it seems to me 
 that certain resolutions introduced into the senate of Tennessee 
 bj one of its members are not far out of the way. They pro- 
 vide, first, that all colored men over twenty-one years of age, 
 free before the war, who can read and write, shall, from their 
 passage, possess the right of voting. Second, that all colored 
 men over twenty-one years of age, slaves before the war, who 
 have borne arms in the Union service, and can read and write, 
 shall also, from their passage, possess the right of voting. And 
 finally, all other colored men over twenty-one years of age, who 
 can read and write, shall, after the year 1875 (I thuak) , possess 
 the right of voting. Now, these resolutions offered in the senate 
 of Tennessee are discriminating and just in the main. In Mas- 
 sachusetts we prescribe, as conditions to exercising the elective 
 franchise, that a man shall be twenty-one years of age, a resident 
 for one year in the State, shall have paid a tax in the State, and 
 shall be able to read intelligibly the Constitution, and write legi- 
 bly his own name. These conditions we have found to be neces- 
 sary safeguards to the ballot-box. I think they will be found 
 equally necessary at the South. Perhaps it is too much to 
 expect of the South to adopt the resolutions referred to. But, 
 let the discussion go on in a spirit of charity, without taunt or 
 reproach, and I have no fear but that, first or last, the intelhgent 
 negroes will secure the ballot with the consent of their former 
 masters. The Southern people are proud and prejudiced ; but 
 they have no such instinctive dishke of the negro as Northern 
 people very generally have. They are not fools, and they wiU 
 learn in time that an intelligent man — one who feels his man- 
 hood, one who feels that he has rights that a white man is bound 
 to respect — is a better laborer, a better servant, adds more to 
 the wealth of the State than an imbruted chattel who comes at 
 the call of a master, whose liighest ambition is to do as little as 
 
AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 19 
 
 possible and consume as much as possible while avoiding the 
 lash of tlie overseer. For their own material and pohtical inter- 
 ests they will, inthin less than twenty years, be desirous of rais- 
 ing the negro to the highest condition of life of which he proves 
 himself capable. 
 
 Since writing the above, I have met with this from the mes- 
 sage of Gov. Orr to the legislature of South Carolina: " Interest 
 and humanity require us to treat him kindly, and to elevate him 
 morally and intellectually. It will make him a better laborer, 
 neighbor, and man. Suddenly relieved from the restraints of 
 the servile condition in which he was bom and reared, his igno- 
 rance can excite no surprise ; nor can we hope that he Avill 
 eschew vice and crime. If he is to live in our midst, none are 
 so deeply interested in enlightening and elevating him as our- 
 selves." 
 
 But there is a matter, affecting the future condition and wel- 
 fare of the negro, of far more consequence to him and the nation 
 than this of the ballot. He must be educated, intellectually, 
 morally, and rehgiously, or he will become a greater curse to us, 
 and more wretched, as a freeman, than he has ever been as a 
 slave. If slavery is the terrible thing we believe it to be, then 
 the people who have for generations been subject to its demoral- 
 izing, degrading, unhumanizing influences, must be far down in 
 the scale of intellectual and moral character. In the oppressed 
 race there will doubtless be found not a few able and excellent 
 men and women, — men and women in whose veins flows'some of 
 the best blood of the South ; but it must be far otherwise with 
 the mass of this four milUons of emancipated slaves. We must 
 not delude ourselves with the notion that deliverance from slavery 
 alone will essentially change their character. If we are inclined 
 to this notion, let us study the effect of simple emancipation in 
 Jamaica, where the negro freeman is far less of a man to-day 
 than was the South Carolina slave at the beginning of the war. 
 
20 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 
 
 The simple truth is, that great, persistent, and self-sacrificing 
 efforts must be put forth to bring this poor abused people up to 
 the condition of average manhood in this country. Legislation 
 cannot make men of them. The spelling-book and the Bible, 
 the teacher and the preacher, must do this work ; and the North 
 must furnish mainly the men and the means. 
 
 With regard to this whole matter of reconstruction, we must 
 exercise patience with the people of the South, black and white, 
 and be content to lead them on gradually to adopt the wiser 
 policy and truer principles of the North with regard to labor. 
 If, for the coming twelve months, they shall make as rapid prog- 
 ress toAvards what we think theoretically to be right, as they 
 have made ostensibly for the past three months. New England — 
 Connecticut at least — will have to take a step forward to keep 
 rank with some of them. 
 
 Our President, in the opening paragraph of his message, in 
 speaking of the unprecedented weight of care throwTi upon him, 
 says : " To fulfil ray trust I need the support and confidence of 
 all who are associated with me in the various departments of 
 government, and the support and confidence of the people." 
 Shall he not have our support and confidence — the sympathy 
 and confidence of all loyal people ? There can be no reasonable 
 doubt in the mind of any candid man as to his patriotism, integ- 
 rity, and honesty of purpose. His ability is unquestioned. His 
 firmness has been thoroughly tested. He may not think or act 
 as Mr. Sumner or Mr. Phillips or Mr. Douglass, or as you or I 
 would have him, in every one of the many matters upon which 
 he must act. What then ? Is he for this to be accounted as 
 unworthy of trust ? Is he for this to be denounced, held up as 
 a prospective traitor, threatened with infamy, have his speeches 
 ridiculed and travestied, and his good name smeared with sus- 
 picion ? Oh, shame on such despicable meanness ! Shame on 
 such cowardly baseness ! Shall the man who stood up alone 
 
AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 21 
 
 among Southern men in the senate-chamber at Washington, in 
 the early days of secession, and denounced treason with fiery 
 tongue ; who suffered confiscation of property and the loss of 
 home ; who braved the bitter hatred of old friends and political 
 associates ; who anathematized rebelhon in the very place where 
 its altar-fires burned ; who exposed his Ufe hourly for months to 
 the knife and bullet of the assassin ; who declared on the steps 
 of the State-house of Tennessee, while the rebellion was still boast- 
 ful, that every black man of the State should be free and equal 
 under the law with the white man ; who solemnly pledged himself 
 to the colored men at Nashville to be their " Moses, and lead them 
 from the house of bondage ; " who, as President, demands of all 
 inchoate Southern States the passage of the Constitutional 
 Amendment, repudiation of the rebel war-debt, and legal pro- 
 tection for the free Imen before they can present themselves at 
 Washington, — shall this man, shall Andrew Johnson — when 
 all is gained, when traitors are daily at his gate suing for pardon 
 — turn traitor himself to his country, to his former princi- 
 ples and life ? The question itself is almost impious. As well 
 ask if God's sun will not to-morrow, instead of genial light and 
 heat, emit miasma and pestilence. This practice of some, of 
 showering anathemas and suspicion upon our public men the mo- 
 ment they fail to come up to their ideas of the right, is exceed- 
 ingly mischievous and excessively mean. Its effect is to create 
 distrust in the minds of the people, and coldness between them 
 and their rulers, when there should be mutual confidence and 
 the freest interchange of feeling and sentiment. Let the people 
 trust Andrew Johnson, — reason with him if need be, and pray 
 for him, — and there is not the remotest danger of his proving 
 recreant to any vital interest intrusted to his hands. . 
 
 Another thing there is in this connection, not national, but 
 local, which I cannot omit mentioning. It remains for us of 
 
22 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAK. 
 
 Andover to erect some suitable memorial which shall perpetuate 
 to future generations the remembrance of those from our town 
 who sacrificed their lives to secure for us the benefits we now 
 possess. This seems to me to be a duty we owe the noble dead, 
 — a duty we owe those who shall come after us, — a duty we 
 owe the. sacred sentiment of patriotism. 
 
 Having had such recent rich experience of God's marked 
 kindness towards us as a people, shall we not, with our grateful 
 praises to-day, gather fresh confidence in his watchful care over 
 our destiny for the future ? He has brought us safely through 
 perils whose magnitude defied the skill of the Avisest statesmen to 
 shun or surmount : shall we not have impUcit faith in his con- 
 tinued wise management of our national afiairs, till, upon the 
 broad basis of " equal rights and exact justice to all men," we 
 shall, as a nation, become as harmonious as it is possible for a 
 people to be occupying such a broad space on the map of the 
 world ? Shall we not to-day comply with the request of our 
 Chief Magistrate in the closing paragraph of his recent most ad- 
 mirable and statesmanHke message to our National Congress, 
 and join with him in the prayer that " the invisible Hand which 
 has led us through the clouds that gloomed around our path, will 
 so guide us onward to a perfect restoration of fraternal afiection, 
 that we of this day may be able to transmit our great inheritance 
 of State Governments in all their rights, of the General Govern- 
 ment in its whole constitutional vigor, to our posterity, and they 
 to theirs, through countless generations " ?