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An Oration...
Providence, 1865.
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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1942

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ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL LIFE.

-A. N"

O E A T I O N

DEUVERED BEFOKE THE

CITY AUTHOEITIES AND CITIZENS OP PEOVIDENCE,

JULY 4, 1865,

By Eev. ANDKEW L. STONE, D. D.

PROVIDENCE:
H. H. THOMAS & CO., CITY PEINTEKS,
1865.

THE CITY OE PEOVIDENCE.

EESOLUTIONS OE THE CITY COUNCIL,
PASSED AUGUST 14, 1865.

Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be, and the same are,
hereby tendered to Kev. Andrew L. Stone, D. D., for the eloquent
and appropriate oration delivered by him before the municipal author
ities and citizens of Providence, on the fourth day of July last; and
that he be requested to furnish a copy of the same for publication.
Resolved, That the Committee of Arrangements be, and they are,
hereby directed to cause five hundred copies of said oration to be
printed In pamphlet form, for the use of the City Council.
A true copy. Witness ; SAMUEL W. BROWN, Gity Clerk.

ORATION.

ONE year ago to-day, we Were straitiing our eyes south
ward and westward, where the battle clouds lay
flaming and surging on half the horizon of our land.
At the centre in long and billowy lines, the armies of
Lee and Grant stood fronting one another — like two
red-edged tides of ocean, with incessant rush and roar
of angry waves. Sheridan and his bold riders were
raiding with wide sweeps of hard galloping, upon the
railway veins that still fed the rebel capital and the
rebel host. Up the valley of the Shenandoah, crowding
back the gallant but inadequate dommahd of Hunter,
moved rapidly the well appointed column of Early —
menacing once more the border lines of Maryland and
Pennsjdvania, and making some of us uneasy as to the
defences of the capital itself The grand army of Sher
man, emerging from the mountainous region of Georgia
by the AUatoona pass, partially shattering its columns
against the well defended rebel lines at the base of
Kenesaw mountains, but sternly closing them again for
one of its resistless flank movements, compelled the
evacuation of that stronghold on the third of July ; a

6 Oration.
good day for American arms, the anniversary of the
capture of Vicksburg. Farther westward, the rebels
Morgan and Forrest were riding and wasting in Ken
tucky and Mississippi, wherever they could evade the
Union forces sent to intercept their marches. The de
partment of the South was just recovering from the
disturbing influence of the Red River expedition, and
perfecting its interior political policy. Over the waters
came the welcome news of the sea-duel off" a port of
France, between the Kearsage and the Alabama, in
which that boastful pirate built by British gold, manned
by trained gunners of her Majesty's naval reserve, and
Avith choice of time and place, and heavier armament
courting the encounter — was sunk in one hour and
forty minutes, by cool Yankee gunnery that had hardly
got warmed to its work, while English neutrality with
its usual fairness sent out the steam yacht Deerhound
to act as the pirate's second and run away with our
prisoners, to fete them with English hospitalities and
refurnish them by English subscriptions.
The rebel power still defied our utmost strength.
The rebel flag flew unhumbled over great armies and
on proud fortresses. Rebel taunting was as insolent
and lying as evfer — it had bated no jot or tittle of its
aim and claim — rebel cruelt}; was as heartless and mur
derous as ever — the war taxes were mounting higher
and higher — gold ranging upward from 2.40 — the cost
of living gaining some advance every day among the
very necessaries of life — our hope and our courage
unabated indeed, and our purpose never once faltering,
but our work of conquering a peace, still before all
minds, a great and strenuous task, with many fluctua
tions of progress yet to intervene before the day of its

Oration. 7
consummation should dawn. The English press and
ministry were still talking of resolute intervention to
stop " the useless and disgraceful carnage," and a fort
night after the fourth, the President issued his call for
half a million of men to swell the depleted ranks of our
armies. We kept the day as of yore, v/ith ringing of
bells, with display of flags, with the measured tramp of
soldierly marches, with the firing of cannon and bands
of martial music, and evening skies aflame with flash
ing lights; but we hushed our breath in the pauses to
catch the more significant sounds from far away. Our
thoughts were ever galloping like swift couriers to
bring us tidings how it went "at the front." The festal
flags carried our dim sight to where the battle banners
flew, grimy and rent, amid the smoke of the fight; the
saluting cannon were but echoes of the thunders from
the distant cloud that blackened all the Southern
heavens ; the measured tread pulsed in our hearts as
the step of our own absent boys keeping time across
great fields to the music of the Union — the evening
lights were as signal flames of moving hosts, or the camp
fires, before which a wearied army lay sleeping to the
stormy lullaby of wakeful batteries.
So came and passed the last birth-anniversary of the
nation — the ship of state pitching and rolling still amid
the great waves of the tempest, and how near or how
far the breaking of the storm and the harbor entrance,
none of us could tell.
But now, thank God, all is changed. The North has
conquered. The cause of the Union has triumphed.
Armed treason has bitten the dust. That fatal grasp of
Grant on the neck of the rebellion tightened unto death.
The magnificent march of Sherman swept seaward and

8 Oration.
then northward along the Atlantic shore — cities and
fortresses falling at only the shadow and the tread of
his passing legions. Old Sumter lifted his scarred and
battered forehead to salute again the sacred flag, rising
with prayer and psalm where first the mad hand of
treason struck it down. By one fell act, covering a long
series of dark atrocities, the savage malignity, the mur
derous barbarism of the rebellion took upon it the final
seal of its infamy, draping the nation and humanity in
mourning, and giving to our heart's reverent love, and
the immortal keeping of history, the name and memory
of a martyred President. With this lurid gleam the
baleful fires of the rebellion died out. Proud crests
went down to the earth. The peers of the new usurp
ing realm sat in sackcloth and ashes. Patrician families
came fawning for bread before the mudsills of society,
or the stern and martial faces of their own, sometime,
slaves. And the rebel chief, the builder of the new
power assuming to be a nation, the wielder of its thun
derbolts, the oracle of its wisdom, the dictator of its
policy, holding himself and his fellow conspirators as
solemnly devoted to death, in battle harness and the
hot, high blood of heroes, before the shame of yielding
the dishonor of flight, hides all his knighthood but its
boots and spurs beneath a woman's skirts, and in such
pusillanimous self betrayal meets, sharper than the head
man's axe, the derision of mankind.
We are to-day one nation again. The seat of govern
ment is the National capital, and not an arena for swag
gering southern bullies. The stars are dim, some of
them, on our field of blue, but they are all there. From
the St. Johns to the Rio Grande, from Atlantic to Pacific
coast, we have on land and river and encircling main,

Oration. 9
ONE FLAG. It la settled that, by wrong and violence, the
Union is indestructible. No sectional frenzy will ever
dash itself again against that castled life. We have all
of us consciously lost our sectional narrowness, and aim
to feel ourselves citizens of the Republic. The inter
ests of our own State are dear to us, but they are hence
forth as nothing in comparison with the interests of the
whole country. The circling States stand up together
now in pillared majesty and order, not for the sake of
their own strength and beauty, as pillars, but for the
sake of that which is built upon them and upheld by
them, the grand dome of Union and Nationality.
The crucial test is past. The American Republic
must be accepted as a fact and a power for the future
of history. The mighty strain has come and been en
dured. The shock was met and borne. The storm
smote the good ship, wrapt her in the black whirlwind,
dashed high over her steep deck and reeling spars the
fateful billows, till all that gazed frora afar and not a few
that were on board gave her up, a helpless wreck. But
she rides the waves to-day, with masts unbroken and
pennon flying, Avith a weatherly helm and a strong hand
at the wheel, the unshorn flag at the peak and all the
armament of her power ready to thunder forth gener
ous salutes to her friends — death and doom to her foes.
She must have her way over the high seas. The nations
know it and give her room. The Union Jack dips in
sign of a conciliating friendship. The tri-color exchanges
courtesies ; ahd forward on her voyage across the
parallels ofthe ages and the centuries, the stout vessel
keeps, and Avill keep, her course till the stars of time
shall set and there shall be no more sea.

10 Oration.
And the question upon which I wish to linger a few
moments — a question not of philosophic theorizing, but
pre-eminently practical, on the morning of this great
year of American Independence, is this — what is this
national Ufe of ours, that has proved itself so lusty and
enduring — ;wherein does it reside — what are its deep,
unfailing springs ? If we can find right answers to
these inquiries, we can then ask and answer more intel
ligently the questions that take hold of our present
personal duty as patriots inspired by the old immortal
spirit of " Seventy-six."
Throughout the ranges of nature life is given in vary
ing measure. There are annals among plants that
come forth in the spring time and die with the first
frost. There are oaks that are young after the nursing
of a hundred winters. With one kind of vegetable life
a single wound is fatal ; with another the hidden vital
ity eludes a thousand strokes and flourishes greenly on.
There is an animal life which one careless step crushes
out, one cold storm will chill; and there is animal life
that seeras to have a thousand springs, from each of
which, though all the rest should be cut off", it could
draw a copious supply. There are full and foaming
streams that seem brimmed as by all the rains of Heaven,
which a summer will turn to dusty channels. There
are other streams that run like the brook Cherith, on
whose bank the Prophet sat, through longest drought,
as though they drew their perennial supply from the
fountains in communion with the great deep.- And so
it is with the life of nations.
The past of human story is a melancholy vale strewn
with the wrecks of kingdoms and empires, amid which

Oration. II
the ghosts of Power wander miserable spectres reading
the epitaph of their own departed greatness.
Do we belong to the race of short-lived peoples?
What are the springs of our national vitality ? How
competent is it to cope with great crises, to sustain
wounds and injuries, to take bufFe tings and depictings,
and yet rise from all seeming overthrows fresher and
stronger than ever?
We have had from the beginning such struggles as
have thoroughly tested the strength and tenacity of that
life. Our fathers set foot on these shores, not as the
marches of the old "Tribes" came to their promised
Canaan, finding it a land flowing with milk and honey,
with mountains terraced to the top, vast emerald piles
of culture, and cities walled and strong, and homes
prepared as a bridegroom makes ready for his bride.
On the wintry shore the savage wild frowned with all
its terrors, and defiant nature had to be conquered and
conciliated before she would yield one nourishing tribute
to the strangers who had invaded her unplanted wilder
ness. In this early struggle we were often faint and
weary, and not a few lay down to rest; but we prevail
ed, and the broad waste continent begins already to
smile and bloom like a garden.
Then came the second struggle. The desert was
unplanted but not unpeopled. It was a Avilderness but
not a solitude. Jealous eyes watched out of the forest
glades the new invasion, and deathful snares caught the
invaders' feet. They who had conquered savage nature
found themselves next grappling for life with savage
men. The forest warrior was subtle and strong, and the
flames of many a settler's home lit the midnight skies —
the shrieks of murdered innocents pierced the midnight

12 Oration.
air, and ghastly reeking trophies were borne into the
depths of the wood to grace the hut of chiefs and braves.
But in this strife also our fathers won the day. The
germ of national life they had brought across the sea
could not thus be strangled.
The next succeeding struggle hastened on. Bow and
arrow, scalping knife and tomahawk receded toward the
setting sun, and from the East, in the track and from
the old homes of the forefathers' feet, with fleets and
armies and all the munitions of war, came avaricious
Power, to eat up our substance and impose its yoke upon
our neck — the mightiest nation of Christendom against
a youthful colony, struggling for daily bread. How
that conflict went this day keeps the story and tells it
well — and will tell it, with all its deep mouthed utter
ances, to generations yet to come.
Then carae the fierce conflict of opinion, the hot
debate, the sectional jealousies, the personal ambitions,
the internal dissensions, which might well have rent the
young Republic into a hundred warring fragments, that
should have worried and devoured one another, until
some foreign hand had grasped all in one and bound it
fast to his throne, dependent, tributary, sustained. But
out of this peril, too, we emer.ged triumphant. The life
would not thus be extinguished. The germ of nation
ality unfolded apace. It struck its roots deep. It lifted
a luxuriant stem. It became a great tree clasping below
the soil of a continent, and lifting goodly boughs with
in whose shade the weary of all lands might sit, and of
whose fruit all the hungry of earth might eat.
And then began another strife, more bitter, more
momentous, more tragic, that which sought on the one
side, to control and extirpate the malign leaven of

Oration. 13
oppression that had hidden itself within our new civili
zation, and on the other to preserve and extend that
leaven till it had leavened the whole lump. This, in its
final and deadliest grapple, that for which it has been
preparing and toward which it has been tending; for the
life of three generations, made inevitable, made what it
cost in treasure and suffering and life by the ruthless
purpose and mad method of wrong, culminated in that
fearful civil war out of which with garments stained,
and bleeding veins and weeds of mourning, the national
life, the genius of the Great Republic has come, sadden
ed, indeed, by the awful tragedy, but more vital than
ever before, and looking on with prophet eyes to a
future that shall be worth the great price of our redemp
tion. We repeat then our question, What is it that is so
vital in this transatlantic civilization, this American
nation, this popular life of ours ? The Spanish colonies
had it not on this continent. It was not planted with
the French settlements. It was not native to these
shores, veining the life of the aborigines. It seems
not to have had its home and incarnation in the sunny
south, for there death and desolation have wasted. We
must look for it mainly iij the hearts of our northern
homes, in the principles that have marshaled our north
ern armies, in the whole interior life, the spirit of that
cause that has reached through more than half a cen
tury of civil contention, through four years of bloody
warfare, a final ascendancy in this land.
The two vital facts in which the life of this nation
inheres, the twin columns on which the republic is built.
are Liberty and Law.

14 Oration.
No government that opposes the everlasting ordi
nances of Heaven can stand. Something the Divine
Providence may accomplish by such a kingdom, if only
to point a grand historic moral, may use it awhile to
serve nobler ends than its consciousness holds, but its
fate will sooner or later lift a monumental testimony of
God against it.
God made man not for prison gloom and dungeon
vaults, but to walk forth beneath the light of sunny day,
to breathe the free air of heaven, to drink the evening
dew, to gaze upon the solemn stars.
He gave him unfettered limbs — feet to bear him
whithersoever he would go — hands to do whatsoever
work. He did not plant him like a tree in the soil, there to
live and grow, there to decay and die. He left him to
choose where he would pitch his tent, on hill-top or
plain, or in the valley. He made his affections free, so
that none but himself could bestow them, and the home
of his domestic life might be the home of his heart.
He made him free of thought, so that his reason might
challenge all mysteries— his mind essay all knowledge —
select at pleasure what page to turn of all the volumes
revealing the great first cgiuse. He gave him a free
tongue guarded by his own lips, that he might speak
freely what he truly fell — what he clearly thought. He
gave him a conscience over which no creature could
exercise lordship, whose full freedom was essential to
the very idea of a moral being, and whose unconstrain
ed homage is the only offering the great Sovereign can
himself accept.
Secure this manifold freedom of the individual, and
government is as the will of God, and as the deathless

Oration. 15
instinct of man, and it takes on the unchangeahleness of
the divine purpose — the supremacy of the divine order.
But because of these rights, when men dwell together
in communities, there must be law. Freedom may take
wild license. Freedom may invade freedom. There
must be a rule by which freedom shall discern its proper
social limitations. Freedom in the noble sense is not
lawless selfishness. It is voluntary devotion to the high
est good. Law in its truest ideal defines this highest
good, and shows it to be the largest public welfare.
This great beneficence — the good of individual action —
the object of individual free choice. Law must set forth
in clear statement and with authoritative precept. For
this it must flood its domain with an atmosphere of light
— it must borrow its sanctions from the legislation of
Heaven. In its own most comprehensive identity there
fore it will include both the departments of education
and religion. Being a guide and controller of free
minds, it must needs deal with an instructed intellect
and an enlightened conscience. With any other constit
uency it is not law, it is force, it works not by the life of
the statute, but by the hand of power.
And because freedom may take the inspiration of
selfishness, law must be an asserter and protector of
right and an avenger of wrong — a guardian of exposed
liberties — a tribunal and arbiter of justice.
If it is to have any weight with its subjects but that
of a heavy heel and an iron sceptre, if it is to govern
them as free moral beings, it must have their moral
approval and their free con-sent. It must therefore be
in accordance with what they are able to see, of truth
and to feel, of duty. It must express and codify their
intellectual and moral judgments, or however influential

16 Oration.
through a d'espotic administration, its moral authority is
wanting. Their moral Ufe must be in it, their moral
sense must enact it and enthrone it, their freedom must
choose to be bound by it, or their allegiance can never
be real or hearty, its supremacy never either authorita
tive or secure.
And because this whole constitution of roan and socie
ty is of God, the law that is at once its outgrowth and
its aegis, gathering the suffrage of an enlightened intel
lect and an enlightened conscience, both taught of the
divine mind, carries in its bosom the life and the sancti
ty of Him to whom all loyalty is due.
But we are in danger of running into abstractions.
Give us a national life, in which this liberty of the indi
vidual has breadth and room — all needed breadth, all
just room — and in which it is both guided and guarded
in all its developments by sovereign and authoritative
law, and we have a life that will pulse on so long as man's
being remains what it is and God himself is immutable.
That which looks toward the realization of the divine
ideal in human society must enlist the great Monarch
in its defence, and take hold of the better ages coming.
The individual life expanding freely, and yet so as to
adjust itself by the highest rules of benevolence to all
other life in organized communities, this supplies the
condition of a national existence whose vitality cannot
be exhausted.
In these controlling principles of our history, in this
bridal of Liberty and Law, this sacred freedom of the
individual conformed to the sacred statutes of house
hold fellowship and the good Father's will, loving all his
children impartially, we have had our imperishable life
as a nation. Men will suffer for such a nationality ; they

Oration. 17
will sacrifice for it, they will fight for it, "they will die
for it. In maintaining it they maintain their own most
inviolable rights ; they defend the sacredness of their
own being, the honor of their own souls and all that is
included in "the pursuit of happiness;" they do homage
to their deepest moral convictions; they work out the
will of the Highest.
Devotion to these principles has been deep in the
Americcan heart from the beginning, such a love of coun
try as "many wat«^rs could not quench, nor floods drown."
While the State that should embody these principles
was only ideal, it drew after it our fathers across the
wintry sea. They saw it on the ice-bound coast and
leaped ashore. They saw it through the thick stemmed
wilderness and plunged in. They saw it beyond the
leaguer of pale famine, grim pestilence, and hideous
savages, and fought their way onward. God built the
frame of Adam out of the dust and breathed into him
the breath of life. We had the soul of our State begun
before the body was framed. That soul had flitted a
restless ghost frora refuge to refuge in the mother coun
try. Itsought a shrine, " a local habitation and a name,"
in the "Low Countries," it sat on the prow ofthe May
flower, it touched with foot unseen and unheard the
sacred rock, and as the walls of our new empire rose, it
made them its fane and hallowed all within with its
presence. This is the vital spirit of our national life. It is a
soul with a body now. The body had its own majestic
and irapressive proportions. None of us are indifferent
to the continental breadth and vastness that make here
the visible state. We know and feel that it is a goodly
heritage. We thank God for keeping it for us and

18 Oration.
bringing us to it, and defending us in it. We begin to
call these lakes and rivers, these sweeps of woodland
and prairie, these swells of mountain and embasined
valleys ours, with appropriating affection. "Fit body
for fit soul." Harmonious incarnation ! And God help
ing us we will keep the body for the life of the soul.
A free man, a free nation, is worth more with such grand
possibilities of development. That continental magni
ficence is Avorth more because it enshrines such a spirit
and afford such a theatre for the sublime drama of Lib
erty and LaAV elevating and perfecting humanity.
In this view of what our national life is, the nature
of the peril into which Ave suffered it to drift is more
apparent, and the questions of present practical duty
gather light and certainty.
Within this grand fane, sacred to Liberty and Law,
we permitted a deadly antagonism to both to take root
and grow and become strong and dominant. We denied
the doctrine of liberty by enslaving and holding in
bondage, without crime, four millions of our fellow-
countrymen and kindred. We delivered thus a national
testimony right in the teeth of our highest and holiest
national claim, and the truest glory and loftiest heroisms
of our history. This cause in turn denied to twelve
millions of us free speech, free thought, free conscience
and free political and moral action. It degraded man
and so disallowed and humbled the nobility of our com
mon nature. The rights of man, the charter of his
manifold freedom, became under such a degradation, an
empty sound, an idle claim. It denied the common
fatherhood of God, and so destroyed the basis for just
and equal law. It made law not a parental guardian
of rights, but a tyranny in the interest of wrong.

Oration. 19
dishonored labor, making it a badge of servitude, and
wronging and restricting thus the free choice and just
reward of every diligent hand. It Avas thus in its own
nature anarchic, tending to social disintegration, and
making the special ideal of our Puritan State, the organ
izing and working of our American principles, impossi
ble. The farther on we advanced the more self-contra
dictory Ave grew. Our A'oice became every day louder
aud clearer in the assertion of the governing ideas of
our national calling and polity; our practice, visibly to
all the world, every day more grossly inconsistent with
tho.se ideas, more fatally opposed to their supremacy.
Not too soon did the final collision and the decisive
conflict come. It had become evident that the moral
debate could not settle the question at issue. The trucu
lent spirit of slavery itself was responsible for this. And
an appeal to force being thus inevitable, it Avas well
that it made haste. The shock parted the bond by
which that body of death was bound to our better and
freer life. It shook off that loathsome corpse into the
grave of all putrefactions. It left us for the first time
in all our story — a story sufficiently eventful and drama
tic, — with a free and open stage upon which to work
out for ourselves and to display to the world the triumphs
of Liberty and LaAV — those tAvin beneficences whose
reign in this land has been let hitherto.
Oh welcome morning of a ncAv day, rising indeed
through blood-red clouds and dripping with crimson
dews, but shining from shore to shore, from the east
even unto the west, upon a free land ! The terrible
irony of our flag — coupling the stars and the stripes,
the stars emblems of privilege and power for the white
master, the stripes, the hire paid to slaves, reproaches

20 Oration.
us no more. Glad outlook over a happier future, bright
prophecy of a long reign of righteousness and peace!
We begin again under fairer auspices — that corrupting
leaven — that old malign barbaric element extirpated, —
the experiment of a free and self-governed nation.
But it is precisely at this point that Ave must make
assurance sure. The most intense vigilance and care
fulness are needed now. Out of the Aveakness of our
"magnanimous concessions" of long ago came that great
tragedy that has just baptised the nation in tears and
blood. Let there be no more such Aveakness now. One
false step at this new outset, and we entail upon the
years to come a legacy of discord, vexation and strife.
We must take now amplest pledges for the security of
the future. If we are not left to a most fatuitous blind
ness, we shall see to it that what this costly revolution
has wrought for us of deliverance and progress, shall
not be imperilled again. A little heedlessness at this
point, a little false generosity — a little suffering of
things to take their course — a little disinclination to
press our {;dvantage, and we shall rue it through years
of bitter repentance.
It isn't a question of magnanimity and- generosity.
It isn't a question of forgiving erring brothers, or show
ing kindness to repentant rebels. It is a question of
right and justice. It is a question of keeping faith
where God and man have written our covenant down.
It is a question of holding or losing the whole grand
gain Avhich unprovoked and successful war has put into
our hands. It is a question of the associate dynasty of
Liberty and LaAV in this American Republic and on this
continent. It is a question of our national life trader
conditions of stability and permanency and the favor of
a just God.

Oration. 21
There is a peril that all that was cast by rebel hands
upou the issue of battle and that fell to us as the fruits
of our victory, the inestimable price God in his Provi
dence laid at pur feet that had trodden forward to raeet
it over fields wet from the veins of our sons and broth
ers, should be supinely surrendered, negligently suffer
ed to be stolen away. Only let us sit still and do nOth-
jjiff for a few critical days — fan ouiselves after our fever
of fighting — complacently regard the rebellion and the
rebels as subdued and the war ended and the mischief
is done. And when done it will be long irremediable.
We can't take backward steps to find a new path. We
comrait ourselves to the future now with every passing
moment. " In vain is the net spread in the sight of any
bird." That is true of birds ; but instinct is often sharper
than reason, and we are running with our eyes open
into fatal snares.
We have conquered the rebels in the field and with
weapons of war. That is all. They have laid down
those weapons ; but Avith tlje same spirit, with essential
ly the same purposes, they have taken up other arms
— the weapons of intrigue, cunning, deceit and treach
ery — weapons in the use of which they are unmatched
and unmatchable.
Are Ave going to give them quarter on the battle-field,
and suffer them to go home, and with blood stained
fingers and their uniforra. on, vote theraselves the very
victory Avhich they lost ? That victory cost us dear —
are Ave going to fling it back, after such purchase, to be
scrambled for again amid their shifting and subtle politi
cal devices ? Two issues indeed seem to us clear, and
must we confidently say abide. There will he no inde
pendent southern nation; and slavery is dead. Very well

22 Oration.
as far as words ago — and with a great and blessed truth
in the words — but a truth half of whose significance
and worth may be filched away from us before we sus
pect that we have suffered any loss.
Let those rebels do the work of reconstructing the
State governments and the social institutions of the
south ; let them say what laws shall be expunged from
their statute books, what shall reraain and what shall be
added ; let them norainate and elect candidates for muni
cipal and State ofl&cers, and set at work at their own
pleasure all the civil and social machinery of life ; let
them send up presently their choice spirits as Senators
and Representatives to the national Congress, and renew
on that floor with their old insolence and effrontery the
struggle for their political ascendency, with northern
allies helping their success, and how real Avill our national
unity be ? Of what worth for a general and healthful
progress? The old dead-lock Avould have us in its
clutches again in a single political campaign. The broad,
bright current of our histoj-y, now gathering forceful
way, would pause and stagnate. A more determined
conflict would be resumed between those antagonistic
elements, rending and riving the popular heart and
the national life, and we should add another illustration
to the truth which need not have been written in scrip
ture to have made it credible, that " a house divided
against itself cannot stand."
Is this what we have taxed ourselves for, suffered for,
fought for, bled for and triumphed for, through these
four memorable years ?
Do we mean that there shall be no probation for peni
tence and loyalty before those blood-stained hands settle
by their votes all the new issues pending over their poli-

Oration. 23
tical domain ? Have we emptied those hands of bullets
only to fill them with ballots that may more silently and
more effectually do Avhat the bullets failed of? Are we
going to fling the reins of public affairs at the south
into these rebel hands, upon these rebel necks, and let
them drive as they please over mercy and justice and
our necks also ? Can it not be seen, is it not palpable
to the dullest eyed observer, that in the reorganizing
process begun in more than one of the rebellious States,
the political control is passing already into the hands
of men Avho have been voluntarily and actively engaged
in attempting by force of arms to overthrow the general
gOA'ernment and break up the Union ? Is it not equally
evident that the men Avho thus assume political manage
ment are anchored back in the old prejudices, the old
principles, the old policies of the south, go for the old
issues, seem utterly ignorant of the new ideas that by
virtue of the revolution are -to mould the new future of
the country, and raean to rule through an arrogant aris
tocracy, still ignoring all the grand fundamental changes
which the war by its proclamations and victories has
inaugurated ? Are Ave going to employ these conquer
ed rebels, bitter, insolent and untaught by defeat, as our
agents to construct the fair order of society and govern
ment at the south?
Not so. Let those blood-stained hands bleach awhile
before they touch such sacred work. Let us know the
spirit and meaning of these so recent traitors in arms
before we suffer them to join in nursing the life at which
they struck. I am afraid of such nurses for that life.
Failing in the use of the dagger, I fear poison. "Oaths
of allegiance !" Oh ! yes. They Avill swear you till they
are black in the face, but fresh swearing don't make

24 Oration.
covenant-keepers of covenant-breakers. If and when
after probation, they take up political action again, there
raust be some absolute prescriptive limiting edict of the
government-: — the government as it now is — of loyal
minds and hearts, which shall mould that action safely,
raake it republican, oblige 'it to accord Avith the new
facts and the new spirit of our history, see that it be
true to the proclamations and decrees that have marked
the great stages of our progress and chirae with the
solemn pledges of the public faith.
How coolly the same parricidal hands are manipulat
ing the Avhole status of the freedmen. Obliged to accept
in form the death of the legal system of slavery, they
are doing all that the most savage and heartless inhu
manity can compass to make that grand beneficence
null and void. At heart they are slaveholders, despots,
woman whippers, robbers -of human sweat and labor
still. They must fix the terms and wages of the new hire !
They must be allowed under the forms of contracts to
grind and oppress those Avhom they once claimed the
right to treat as their property ! Their sense of justice
is quickened by no pleading of self-interest. If the
families of the stinted laborers starve and die, it is not
iheir loss now, for it is no longer their " money" that is
thus sunk. In addition to the old feeling of lordly
superiority, the right to own and control, there is now
a feeling of keen and cruel malice toward the blacks.
It partakes of the meanness of envy, the greed of covet-
ousness, the bitterness of revenge. The slaves have
been the cause of their troubles, the material of their
losses, the means of their defeat, and now stand over
against them, not only beyond their legal control, but

Oration. 25
wearing an air of personal equality and military supe
riority. They cannot bear it. They are determined
to bring down that superiority, they will not admit that
equality. They Avill make those negroes know and
keep their place. So they persecute them and abuse
them, and outrage them, driving thera frora their homes,
withholding their little properties from them, beating
them, cheating thera and doing their malicious utmost
to make them feel that the blessings of freedom are
rather equivocal, that self-ownership has lost thera the
selfish protection, the interested friendship of their
former owners. This persecution is going on now all
through the south with scenes that raake our blood boil
to read, and in not a few instances under the very eyes,
if not with the silent connivance of our military ofiBcers
set to administer justice and enforce right.
Is this a people to be left just noAV to theraselves; to
come to order on their own account and in their own
way, to settle their own principles and methods of re
organization, to carry out the grand social and political
reforms which the mailed hand of war led in and against
which they fought, so many of them, unto the death,
and to claim full partnership with us in determining the
policy and administration of a government they sought
so lately to destroy ?
Well, what can Ave do about it, some ask, without
going against our fundamental theories of popular
government and giving up all the formal boundaries and
normal life of these rebel States, still integral parts as
we hold of the Union and needing no reconstruction ?
I answer — We can maintain our war power a little
longer. We can hold fast to our war rights still. We

26 Oration.
can count a man a rebel, Avhether with or without arms
in his hand, till we see and know him to be a good and
loyal citizen. There are no laws of war, there are no
rights of the conquered party, there are no principles
of philanthropy or Christianity which oblige us to hazard
by a full and immediate resto;:'ation of political privi
leges all that Ave fought to maintain, all that victory
seemed to secure.
If the spirit and temper of these conquered rebels
were unexceptionable, if they did not come swaggering
back as though we ought to be very grateful to them
for not fighting us any more, and ought to have some
special reward for them for such gracious waiving of
their belligerent rights, they are so madly and intellect
ually blind as to their real position before the nation
and the world — so unable to apprehend the altered
complexion of all things in this land — so stupidly confi
dent that "old things have not passed away"— so com
pletely ignorant of the new volume opening itsgloAving
pages in the history of our country and of humanity,
that if no probation were required of them for loyalty's
sake, it were yet indispensable for education's sake.
They want a world of teaching before they are moral
ly or intellectually fit to assume political power and be
clothed with political supremacy. They want a school
master with authority to keep school, and to keep them
in school, and to make them learn their lessons and
recite them with many a patient review and many an
annual examination, before they shall graduate into the
majority of citizen life. They have learned sorae things,
pricked into them at the point of the bayonet. They
have learned that one southern man is not quite a

Oration. 27
match for five northerners, that one northern man
though he may even have been a laborer in some useful
and gainful industry, is in blood and valor, and all good
manhood, at least the equal of one southern man,
though he may have lived in lordly and idle beggary
all his days. They have learned that the world can go
on, and win its daily bread and keep the breath of life
in itself without the help of the south. They have
learned that the right of individual and State secession
cannot be maintained in this confederation of ours either
by arguraent or arms. They have glimmerings of the
idea that the world's progress in light and murals has
passed ahead of their infernal institution of the dark
'ages, and cannot be made to go back and take it up and
carry it on into the brightening future. But they do
not yet know, they have not the least conviction of the
guilt and crime of treason ; they can't comprehend the
spirit or the requisitions of loyalty; they don't under
stand the relations of a system of free labor to all their
industrial interests. They do not know Avhat is needed
to make men of theinselves and to secure their personal
and political salvation. They do not see that "for a'
that and a' that," a man is a man no matter what his
color. They do not see that a hearty and honest co-op
eration with all Union loving and labor-loving raen, of
whatever skin, in developing the resources ofthe south
and building up its new system of order and thrift is
indispensable for a prosperous future. They do not
know the new foundations upon which it is settled that
the greatness of the American States shall rest and
lise. That demonstration which has come to all other
minds, — "the logic of events" — has not yet risen upon
theirs.

28 Oration.
Schoolmasters and schooling of a stern and peremp
tory sort are what they need. We must supply this
corapetent tuition. We raust hold these States by
military tenure till these great lessons can be taught.
We must appoint provi.«ional governors — good men and
true, with military authority to see that the spirit of
lo^'alty, instead of suffering martyrdom and being crush
ed out, controls the new political movements Avhere the
national authority has been disallowed and has reassura-
ed by force its supremacy. I have the profoundest
conviction that the Avelcoming ot the disbanded rebel
arraies, and of all the old conservatives and aristocrats
of the South, now creeping back out of their holes and
hiding places, their veins full of the virus of secession
and disloyalty, to the re-enacting of State laAvs,the re-ap-
pointnient of State magistracies, the re-ad raini.xtration of
State governraent, and the re-assertion of Southern ideas
on the floor ot the National Congress, is not only to
peril all that Ave have gained through these four great
years for Justice, Liberty and Humanity, but to put in
jeopardy also again the very peace and integrity ofthe
nation. Wc shall never by such a process settle down
into order and concord on the ncAV basis of national
righteousness and the equal rights of man. It is siraply
suicidal in the government to entrust the rebuilding of
civil and social order in the rebel States on the new
principles and in the ncAv spirit that are to control our
future, to the hands that have been strenuously and
violently tearing doAvn that order, for the sake of rear
ing another on a basi.s just as opposite as darkness to
light, slavery to freedom, the devil and all evil to God
aud ull good.

Oration. 29
Let these aspirants for political power and privilege
AV.ait till they are better taught, and till Ave know that
it will be safe to restore them their forfeited sovereign
ities. Let thera see that some things have been settled
that are not to be questioned again. Let thera get
an estimate of the guilt of treason as they look north
ward, by seeing convicted traitors hung as high as
Haman. Meanwhile we need not in these very States give up
the doctrine of popular government. There is there a
mass of loyal population to whora we may commit the
exercise of political rights. They are men who have
been true to the cause of the Union through the whole
war. They do not come forward now with feigned and
perjured loyalty. They have served that cause in e\'ery
possibly way through these four bloody years. They
have been guides to Union commanders, they have
been spies lor us in the enemy's land, they have housed
and protected Union refugees, they have piloted escaped
Union soldiers through outlying rebel guards to the
Union lines, they have fed our starving soldiers in the
terrible slaughter pens, always at risk often at cost of
their own lives, and when permission was given they
leaped to arras and put on the uniform of the Union
soldier. Their step was lively to the battle bugles as
that of our own brave boys. Their blood mingled with
that of our sons on many a field, and none could tell
which was reddest. The sands of Morris Island, the
parapet of Fort Wagner, the chasraed mines of Peters
burg, give crimson Avitness to their valor and patriotism.
And the first measured tramp that came up the streets
of Richmond on that third of April morning was from

30 Oration.
the feet of Weitzel's colored brigade, and the first Union
music that echoed through the rebel capital was the
favorite colored refrain, " His soul Is marching on."
commemorative of one John Brown whose .soul has
marched a good way since his body went to the dust.
These men are felloAV-raen, fellow-countryraen, fellow-
patriots and felloAV-soldiers. The sarae grave holds their
dust and that of our most laurelled heroes, and not
even the angel of the resurrection will be able to
discriminate as to heroic quality between the one and
the other.
Are these the raen whora Ave are going to leave to
the conteraptuous insolence and grinding oppression of
their old rebel raasters, socially to disown, personally to
abuse, and politically to trample on ?
If that were right — if it were not the forfeiture of our
pledge to them — the repudiation of our great debt, the
ending of the recent beginnings of justice and right
eousness — in itself incredibly mean and base, — do you
think it Avere safe ? These men have tasted the sweets
of full liberty — have breathed in the inspiration of equal
felloAvship Avith soldiers and patriots — have learned the
secret of their own strength and prowess — know the
use of rifle and bayonet, the solid compactness of disci
pline and order, — and do you suppose they are going
to submit tamely to see their liberties infringed, their
families outraged, theraselves elbowed and jostled, and
the heels of their old raasters on their necks? Any
such policy as this Avill be responsible for bloodiest insur
rections and universal anarchy at the South.

Oration. 31
Give this citizen soldiery, this loyal population Avhich
has so much at stake, Avhich has earned so noble and
generous a gratitude of the whole land — permission to
protect themselves, promote the loyal cause and save
the South, by the exercise ofthe right of suffrage, and
the problera of re-organization is solved; and it will
never be rightly and safely solved in any other way.
Are those candidates for the honors of citizenship
intelligent raen, or are they so hopelessly imbruted in
mind as to be unfit for so great a trust ? Why the negro
is incomparably the brightest, quickest intellect in the
whole south. All art, all ingenuity, all mechanical
contrivances and iraproveraents, and all constructive
talent there for three generations have been contribut
ed by this servile race. Their eagerness for learning
and the facility Avith which they acquire are perfectly
marvellous. I had, myself, a little school of some six
hundred pupils in Newbern, N. C, and there was not
one dull pupil in the whole six hundred, and old woraen
of eighty learned in three weeks, from absolute igno
rance to read and Avrite.
Certainly none of their white neighbors can boast of
an intelligence like that.
But are they true and honest men? Are they not a
deceitful and thieving race? It is strange that they
have not learned from the dominant race to be thieves
and robbers. It is strange that under the pressure of
a whole atmosphere of dishonesty they recognize any
such thing as property rights. But it is not more
strange than true. And through these years just past
theirs are the only lips that have kept truth and honor
through all the lying and perjured south.

32 Oration.
They are as competent to construct and manage asso
ciations and to organize popular moveraents as any
population on that soil. The only celebration of this
day at the capital of South Carolina is by the colored
people of that vicinity who have thrift, intelligence and
wealth enough to come together in large numbers,
appoint committees of management and of finance,
raise four hundred dollars in raoney at a single call,
adopt patriotic resolutions, and offer a public dinner to
the Union officers and soldiers doing garrison duty in
the city, and friendly to their interests.
What question of local or general political moraent
is there that could not be as safely entrusted to the
suffrages of such raen as to those sneaking white rebels
in the city and in so raany captured cities, eating bread
at the Union crib and spitting out their defiling venom
against the Union flag? Who would not welcome on
any issue a ballot from a colored loyalist sooner than
from a white secessionist?
I do not urge the indiscriminate right — the universal
extension of it — but I do urge the right and the exten
sion of it to this colored people as a race. Let not
color disfranchise these true men — these good citizens
— these noble patriots.
It must come — this heritage of their full citizenship.
All other improvements without this wiU keep them
hopelessly down, and brand thera still as an inferior
race. This one badge and privilege will lift them up
to the height of their old tyrants and upset and reor
ganize the whole social system of the south. Nothing
else Avill effectually protect the colored man from a
social despotism that will be as cruel and galling as the

Oration. 33
slavery that is dead and gone. Nothing else will over
balance and outweigh the intriguing disloyalty all
through the south, that falling of winning its ends by
weapons of Avar is intent now to compass them by poli
tical monopolies and frauds.
And above all the persuasions of honor and grati
tude, of pledges given, proclamations issued and urgent
political expediency, this claim for the colored race is
one of high and solemn justice.
We owe them a grand reparation for ages of wrong.
We must not make their heritage of civil and social
privilege partial and narrow. God is on the side of this
long oppressed people. He will require and requite.
If we have not yet learned the lesson of full justice
and unprejudiced fairness, toward those to whom our
debt is so deep and sacred, he will take us in hand and
give us another term at school.
Herein, then and not otherwise in our day, can we
secure the full development and the fresh invigoration
ofthe national life; for herein alone do we establish in
our land universal Freedom, and build fair and strong
the fabric of Popular Government.
Come, then, my fellow patriots, lovers of civil liberty,
and, by a glorious State ancestry, hereditary champions
of religious liberty, let us make this birth anniversary
of the nation a sacramental day, and gathering around
our country's altar, grateful to God for leading us safely
through the Red Sea of war by his pillar of cloud and
of fire, jubilant over the victories grander than all
martial triumphs, which have given us to-day for the
first time in our story our annual festival with not one
clank of chains, not one groan of a slave making discord

34 Oration.
with its choral music, and remembering with tearful
sympathy the cost of this national redemption as it is
reckoned in more than a hundred thousand homes
keeping the memory of joimg heroes whose feet shall
never, in all this coming and going world, cross those
thresholds again, let us devoutly consecrate to the
defence of this shrine of Liberty and Law against
rebels at home and foes abroad, in the spirit and the
words of our dead forefathers, '• our lives, our fortunes
and our sacred honor."
"By our altars pure and free.
By our laws' deep-rooted tree,
By the past's dread memory,
By our Washington,
By our common kindred tongue.
By our liopcs, bright, buoyant, young,
We -will still be one."
' ' Fathers, have ye bled In vain ?
Ages, must ye droop again ?
Maker, shall we rashly stain
Blessmgs sent by Thee ?
No ! receive our solemn vow
While before Thy throne we bow,
Ever to maintain as now,
Union — Liberty. ' '

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