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SPEECHES AND ADDEESSES

OF THE LATE

HON. DAVID S. CODDINGTON,

WITH A

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
*

NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 443 & 445 Broadway,
1866.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
J. CODDINGTOIT,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York.

Cci-

John F. Trow & Co.,
PRINTERS, STEEEOTYPERB, AND ELECTEOTTPEES,
60 Greene Street, New York.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
Biographical Sketch  v.
1. The Burns Centennial Festival — Speech delivered at Mozart HaU,
New York, 1859  1
2. Fourth op Jult Oration, delivered at MonticeUo, Va., at the tomb
of Jefferson, in 1859  9
3. The Great Meeting in Union Square, N. Y. — Speech delivered April
20th, 1861  37
4. War Meeting in TJniou Square — Spaech delivered in July, 1862  45
5.' The Military and Financial Poliot of the National Government —
Speech in the Legislature at Albany, delivered Ja:n. 23d, 1862. ... 49
6. War Meeting in Madison Square — Speech delivered April 20th, 1863. 65
7. Meeting op the War Democracy — Speech delivered at Cooper Insti
tute on the Presidential Crisis, Nov. 1, 1864  73
8. Eulogy on Abraham Lincoln, delivered at Charleston, South Caro-
Hna, May 6th, 1865  •  93
9. Address on the death op Edward Everett, written for the Soldier's
Friend, a newspaper in New York  127
10. Letter to Abraham Lincoln, March 4th, 1865, written at request
of the workingmen of New York on his inauguration  133
11. The Presidential Campaign of 1848 — Speech delivered before the
Freesoil League in New York, Nov. 1848  141'
12. Fourth op July Oration, 184S, deUvered at Bergen Point, N. J., at
the Ladies' Fair  163

BIOGRAPHY OF DAYID S. CODDINGTON.

Da\td Smith Coddington, the author of the
speeches contained in this volume, was born in the
city of New York on September 23d, 1823, . He
was the third son of the late Jonathan L Codding-
ton, a prominent merchant of New York, and a
lineal descendant of one of the oldest families of the
country. The family traces its lineage clearly back to the
days of the American Colonies. William Codding-
toD, the founder of the family on this continent, came
to America in 1630, having been appointed by King
Charles I. of England a magistrate for the colony
of ]\Ia3sachusetts, a position which he filled for
several years. On the accession of Gov. Winthrop
to the Governorship of the colony, Mr. Coddington,
disagreeing with him in his policy, to avoid the
persecution with which Winthrop pursued his polit
ical enemies, emigrated with others to what was
then called the island of Aquetneck, but by Judge
Coddington named Khode Isknd. Here he founded

Vi BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.
a colony for which he framed a government and a
code of laws, and was elected Judge, but in 1640,
the form of government was changed, and the
founder and Judge of the colony was elected its first
Governor. He held the office for many years, — we
believe, until 1675. He has come down to us in
history as a prudent, active Quaker, zealous for his
principles and earnest in his advocacy of the liberty
of conscience. Jonathan I. Coddingtozst, the father of the sub
ject of this sketch, was also a leader among his
people ; and at one time held an influential position
in this city as a Democratic politican. His career
as such was at a time in the history of the Demo
cratic party of great interest,- and he may be said to
have been a representative man of the Jacksonian
Democracy of his day, as his son was of the war
Democracy as it now exists. Long before General
Jackson had begun his crusade against the United
States Bank, the Senior Coddington had given ex
pression to views upon the question of Paper-Cur
rency and its tendency to dangerous expansion
totally at variance with those of a great majority of
his fellow-merchants and politicians, and in conson
ance with those of the President ; so that when the

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. Vll

latter developed his " hard money theory " he looked
to Mr. Coddington as one of his most ardent and
active supporters, appointed him Postmaster of the
city of New York, and virtually placed the devel
opment of his policy here under Mr. Coddington's
direction. In support of Jackson's policy Mr. Cod-
dington became associated with Silas Wright, John
A. Dix, Wniiam L. Marcy and others, and was
equally energetic with them in defending that admini-
straition against the execrations of 'the sufferers
from paper money and in upholding the then much
ridiculed sub-treasury system. He was also very
active as a politician during the memorable era of
Van Buren's administration ; and a leading spirit
among the Democrats during that period of political
disaster. The political strife which ended in the
wonderful uprising of the people in the election of
General Harrison in 1840, began during the admini
stration of General Jackson, and was continued with
great bitterness through that of Mr. Van Buren. It
will be remembered as one of remarkable excitement.
The whole country was plunged into violent dis
cussion, and partisan feeling extended to all profes
sions and_trades and conditions of life, high and low.
The oldest and the youngest of the family, — men,

vni BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.

women and children, had perforce to become eitiier
" Jacksonian " or " Federal "— " infernal whig " or
" rascally tory." The amenities of social intercourse
were often forgotten in the excitement of the
absorbing mania. Politics boldly intruded into the
church, and often a pastor's success depended more
c
upon his political opinions than his religious beliefs
or pastoral or oratorical ability. The financial
distress of 1837, which followed the inauguration
of President Jackson's policy, the unrelenting bear
ing of the administration towards its opponents, the
strictly partisan distribution of the public patron
ages, and other measures calculated to incite and
strengthen opposition, resulted in the great defeat of
the Democracy in 1840. It was in the midst of this
great political excitement and revolution that the
father, growing disgusted with national politics, re
tired to the quiet of private life, or indulged only in
local politics, and the son first displayed his taste
for political pursuits, though too young to begin the
life of a politician.
David* S. Coddington was then a boy of seven
teen, but particularly precocious, and he constantly
evinced an eager desire to attain a thorough knowl
edge of the principles of the party with which his

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. ix
father had so long acted. He was at this time just
from school, where he had won a brilliant reputation
as a quick scholar, though, while a student, he was
more famed for the readiness with which he acquired
knowledge and the recklessness with which he defied
school discipline than for serious application and dili
gent scholarship. He was possessed of a ready faculty
for acquiring information without severe study ; and
was indeed too delicate in frame for close applica
tion, though at the same time so full of a certain
vitality and energy that existed rather in his brain
than blood, that he could not bring himself to yield
readily to the rigid system of a school. He had
originally studied at New Utrecht and New Bruns
wick, but in 1837, when only fourteen years of age, he
had entered the Freshman class at Columbia College.
A year subsequently, he entered Union College as a
Sophomore, and remained there two years. He did
not carry off all the honors, but yielded the more
solid ones to more persevering, but less brilliant com
petitors, while he contented himself with the prize
for elocution, and with leaving behind him the remem
brance of many a witty saying and reckless deed of
daring as his legacy to the traditions of the Col
lege.

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.

Young Coddington evinced while at Union
doUege a remarkable talent for elocution and a
force and readiness in extemporaneous discussion
which indicated that in such occupation the energy
¦of his character found a congenial pursuit. Possess
ing this taste, the selection of the legal profession
was natural enough, and he entered with George
W. Strong, Esq., an eminent lawyer of the old
school, in whose office many prominent men now in
practice have been students. In this office, and
-afterwards in that of Slosscn and Schell, -likewise a
famed resort for aspirants to the bar, Mr. Codding
ton completed his legal education, varying the
monotony of professional study by an occasional
votive offering to the muses, or contributing an
article for the press, and at all times indulging in an
¦epigrammatic humor which caused him to take a
ludicrous view, not unmixed with satire, of life, its
surroundings, and pursuits, and sometimes of his
friends, but oftener of himself.
In the year 1845, and at the age of twenty-one,
Mr. Coddington was admitted to the bar. Having
but a feeble constitution, and without the incentive
of necessity, he never engaged earnestly in the
practice of his profession, but shrank from contact

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.' sl
with the rougher experience of a practising lawyer,
preferring to devote himself to the more congenial
pursuits of literature and politics, with a view to
giving his attention when occasion should offer to
public affaii's.
For some years no such opportunity as he desired
offered itself, and after the signal defeat of the
Democrats in 1840, until the convention of 1848,
Mr. Coddington remained quiet and secluded, pur
suing with great ardor his studies as a lawyer, and
fitting himself for public speaking. On two or
three occasions during these eight years, he delivered
public orations, but generally on subjects disconnect
ed with politics ; but in which he displayed the
same forcible epigrammatic style which subsequently
so distinguished him as an orator. On July 4th,
1845, he delivered a patriotic address at a Fair at
Bergen Point, New Jersey. This early effort was
characterized by great originality of thought, and
that fervent patriotism which in later years found
larger scope, and he is said to have held his hearers
fixed with a closer attention than is ordinary on such
occasions. The Presidential canvass of 1848 profoundly
attracted the attention of Mr. Coddington. The

SU BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.

name of Martin Van Buren, the friend of his father,
was again brought forward as a candidate for the
Presidency. Defeated in 1840, by the Hardcider
and Tippecanoe enthusiasts at the ballot-boxes, and
in 1844 in the convention by the machinations of
Calhoun, Van Buren's friends hoped that at least in
1848 the people would have an opportunity to pass
upon the merits of his previous administration, and
if they approved of it, to reelect him to the Presi
dency. Though every consideration of justice
seemed to entitle him to this recompense for what
he had suffered for the party, Mr. Van Buren was
again deprived of the nomination. When the free
soil nomination at Utica, on June 22d, was made,
and which was reluctantly accepted by Martin Van
Buren, Mr. Coddington threw his whole soul into
the movement, and did all that was in his power to
render it effective. He fully approved the senti
ments of the platform of the Free Soil Democracy
in opposition to Slavery. His maiden political
speech in that campaign was considered an evidence
of his superior qualifications as a public speaker, and
of great promise as a politician. Foreseeing the
determination of the leaders to make the slavery
question the test, and to proscribe henceforth every

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. XUl
man who was 'not wholly committed to the false
policy of its extension, he took a firm position in
opposition to that pliant faction of the Democracy
at the North which yielded everything to the South.
He was anxious to have the rights of the South
protected by every suitable guarantee, and as long
as the Missouri Compromise was in force to strictly
observe the conditions of that ancient compact. No
admirer of slavery, yet never a political abolitionist,
it was only when he became satisfied that without
freedom to all, the Union could not exist, was he in
favor of the destruction of slavery. He made no
claim to being actuated by philanthropic impulses
in favor of those already slaves, but acted from
convictions of his duty to the fre'emen of the North.
He charged that abolitionism was not the cause of
the late rebellion, but that in the history of the
platforms, and of the men placed in power by the
Democratic party from 1844 to 1860, could be
found material enough to indicate how the flames
of discontent were fanned into the fire of rebellion
which precipitated the great crisis of 1861 upon the
country. He dated the commencement of the civil
war not to the firing on Fort Sumter, but to the
manipulations of the Kansas Question by Mr. Pierce

siv BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.
and Mr. Buchanan and their advisers, and believed
that the blood spilled in that territory was the
opening sacrifice in the great struggle. A Demo
crat by birth and by conviction, with nothing in
common with abolitionism until the existence of the
government was assailed, and then still a Democrat,
but subordinating party obligation to his duty to
the country, choosing rather to support an admini
stration he had no hand in placing in power to the
greater evils of anarchy and disunion, he was willing
to act with any party which was earnest in restor
ing the integrity of the Union, obedience to its laws
and respect for its flag.
The campaign of 1848 resulted in the defeat of
the Democrats. The vote of that party in the State
of New York was divided between Van Buren and
Cass, and hence the Whigs carried the State for
General Taylor. The Free Soil Democrats were
henceforth out of the pale of the party, and might
never more hope to be taken back again. After
this campaign, Mr. Coddington as a Freesoiler could
not expect to be considered as any longer available
as a politician in the ranks of the Democratic party,
the majority of which had followed the beck of
Calhoun, and the leadership of Cass, leaving the

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. XV
Freesoilers in a hopeless minority. Mr. Coddington
was temporarily proscribed in common with all the
principal Freesoilers, and with them was left by the
Democratic leaders to enjoy several years of retire
ment ; much of which he devoted to reading and to
study. This course of study only served to
strengthen the political convictions which he had
inherited from his father, and the correctness of
which his own experience had confirmed. Mean
time, he satisfied himself with proclaiming in 1859
his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution and
scheme ; and interested himself by frequent addresses
to the people in patriotic orations, but he seldom
touched upon partisan subjects. Among the most
interesting of these efforts was his address, published
elsewhere, at the Burns Centennial Festival of 1859,
in New York. This address was said by prominent
Journals at the time to have been most powerful
and beautiful, and is described by them as the
" feature of the day." It was a brilliant and
scholarly effort, showing a most intimate knowledge
of the writings of the Poet, abounding in incident,
anecdote and metaphor, and so excited the enthu
siasm of his Celtic auditors that they greeted him
with rounds of applause more enthusiastic than those

XVI BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.
by which orators are generally rewarded even at a
festive gathering. Another of Mr. Coddington's
most interesting efforts was delivered on the fourth
of July, 1859, being an oration at the grave of
Thomas Jefferson at MonticeUo, Virginia. This
oration," which is also published in full in this
volume, was delivered when the excitement which
preceded the Presidential elections of 1860 had
already begun to be felt in Virginia ; and the speaker
took care to express how foreign and repulsive to
him was the idea of national estrangement, and how
kindly were the sentiments then as now entertained
by the people of the Empire State, and the North
generally, for those of the old Dominion. These
efforts did not serve, however, to bring him prom
inently forward in public life, did not particularly
endear him to the public heart, as he was destined
to become. It was not until his party, amidst the
excitement of April, 1861, became the great War
Democracy that he again appeared in politics.
Then Mr. Coddington, born a Jackson Democrat,
reared in the faith of Van Buren, successively a
Freesoil Democrat in 1848, and an anti-Lecompton
Democrat in 1859, adhering to his life-long princi
ples and his party, proclaimed himself, before the

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. XVU
echoes of the guns of Sumter had died away, as an
out and out war Democrat.
When the Southern States were precipitated into
armed resistance to the Government by designing
politicians, and the thunder of cannon against
Fort Sumter woke the slumbering North to the
reality of long-threatened disunion, the people found
themselves unarmed and unprepared for the mighty
struggle for national existence which was upon
them. Their leaders had slumbered or betrayed
their trust — no man seemed equal to acting in this
great emergency, and the capitol was cut off from
communications with the greater portion of the
country. Early in April, 1861, the people assembled
in overwhelming masses in Union Square to take
counsel together, and discuss this terrible calamity,
and to endeavor to disentangle themselves from the
meshes of the network of conspiracy in which they
had become involved. This was the moment in the
life of David S. Coddington in which his prompt
action in the limited field which was open to him,
will tend most to make his memory dear to those
who knew him. An old-school Democrat, for years
in opposition to the party which had just obtained
the power, and which had within a few days past

xviii BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.
become responsible for the administration -of the
government, there was no reason why as a politician
he should become a leader in their councils. Policy
would have dictated to a less patriotic opponent, as
it did indeed to many of his party, to leave the
Republicans to act for themselves, and await the
opportunities to take advantage of their errors.
But Mr. Coddington did not hesitate a moment in.
throwing himself heartily and zealously in support
of an administration which at the ballot-box he had
opposed, but which now identified itself with the
life of the nation, and boldly and openly joined
hands with it as a northern war democrat in opposi
tion to the democracy of the South who had taken
up arms for the nation's overthrow. On the 19th
of April, in a masterly appeal to the people to rouse
up and exert themselves for the preservation of the
Union, he astonished even those who knew him best
by his singularly classic and eloquent remarks,
abounding in condensed sarcasm and in originality
and terseness of thought. He had plead at the tomb
of Jefferson for the perpetuation by arts of peace of
a Union which its inmate had done so much to
create ; now he argued for the preservation by force
of arms of that Union assailed by the countrymen

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. XIX
of Jefferson, and threatened to be rent asunder by
the appliances of war.
The course of Mr. Coddington as a war democrat
was consistent and active to the last. He aided in
every way to bring the struggle to a successful con
clusion, and though mindful of the frequent mistakes
of the party in power, regarded them as secondary
to the great object of preserving the integrity of
the nation. Had his physical organization equalled
his moral courage and patriotism, he would have
been among the first to take the field in a cause in
whose success his whole soul was enlisted.
In the fall of 1861, Mr. Coddington was elected
on the Democratic ticket a member of the State
Assembly from the city of New York. Although
nominated as a partisan, he was largely supported
by good men of all parties. He devoted himself
with untiring industry to the interest of the city,
and worked with a zeal and energy little in accord
ance with his former inactive life as a student, faith
fully discharging his duties both as a member in the
House, and of important committees. He at once
took position as a skilful and able debater, and
when he spoke, he commanded that attention which
in large deliberative bodies is the highest evidence

XX BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.
of the appreciation of the speaker by his col
leagues. As a representative in the State Legislature his
most effective speech was delivered on a resolution
introduced for the purpose of requesting the Gen
eral Government to accelerate the movements of the
army. While sketching the progress of events, and
holding up to ridicule the cry of impatiient home-
guards men and tacticians of the " on to Richmond "
school, he displayed his sympathies for the cause of
the country, and his confidence in its triumph, by re
marks which called forth the highest commendations
of the Press, the vigorous applause of the galleries,
and the congratulations of the members. The New
York Times said of this speech :
" Its aim was to discourage public impatience and inspire
confidence in the national authorities wlio have the matter in
charge. It was eminently the production of a scholar, clear
forcible and compact in style, and marked with great justness
of thought and vigor of expression."
An Albany paper said :
'' Everybody expected a brilliant display, and nobody was
disappointed ; Mr. Coddington made a splendid speech ap
proving the course of the government, and in favor of stand
ing by the Union. There was an intensity about his manner
that fastened the attention of the house."
The career of Mr. Coddington as a member of

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. xxi
the Legislature, although so highly creditable to
himself and beneficial to the city and State, ended
with one term ; he did not seek a re-nomination.
As a citizen, he continued active in his exertions
for the support of the Government, frequently ad
dressing assemblages of his fellow-citizens, and rarely
omitting an opportunity to aid in the work of
restoring the Union. When the Presidential nomina
tions were made in 1864, Mr. Coddington could not
find it consistent with his views of Democracy to
accept the Chicago Platform as the political text
for one who loved his country. He tersely express
ed his opinion of that programme in a letter to the
committee of the great Union Mass Meeting to be
held in New York, on the 27th of September, and
which remarkable document is as follows':
New Yoek, Tuesday, Sept. 2Vth, 1864.
Gextlemen : Your invitation to speak to-night is received.
A severe cold will prevent me.
But neither cold nor heat ceRi freeze or melt out of this
country the belief that the Chicago Convention has left a
Democrat no choice between Jefferson Davis, with all his
crimes, and Abraham Lincoln, with all his faults.
The Vallandigham platform is merely an attempt of the
Richmond authorities to run the blockade of Northern ballot-
boxes, Montgomery Constitution in hand. True, the Union
flag floats from the first section ; so it does from the Florida
and Tallahassee, until you get near enough for them to hoist

XXU BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
the Confederate rag and scuttle the Union ship, while we,
robbed of our compasses and stripped of our national consist
ency, are to be landed upon some bleak dogma of egotistical
States' Rights and universal anarchy!
Call Abraham Lincoln a joker ! Why, the Chicago party
are trying to make this war the ghastliest joke of the continent
or the century. Have we gone to school to a million of bay
onets and learned nothing ? Have we marched a million of
men a thousand miles to stand still ? Are we spending four
millions a day merely to buy back the old wrangle about
Slavery? — to buy back another Brooks's murderous cane;
another Buchanan's Lecompton crime, greater than all the
Lincoln lapsus- eonstitutionis ? The Crittenden Amendment
was very well to prevent war ; but are we to be fought four
years, despoiled of our means, called foreigners, hunted on
every sea and shore, and bury five hundred thousand brothers,
to give them all they asked in the past, and no security for all
they will demand, on that very account, in the future ? They
will say : " We plunged you vital deep in debt, we helped you
to innumerable funerals ; but we never buried a single demand.
While your armies have advanced, your principles have re
treated ; and, so long as your victories only mean concessions
to us, war has no terrors and peace no shame in Dixie." Will
the red crisis stand this — will greenbacks support it ? Every
five-twenty bond is a stump speech for Lincoln ; every dollar
greenback a campaign tract distributed among a warned and
consuming community, cautioning them how they trifle with
the dead and the debt of this war.
Hoping that the ballot-box will prove the sentry-box of
the national honor, I am, very respectfully, yours,
DAVID S. CODDINGTON. •
General McClellan did not receive the full vote
of the Democracy, for many democrats had the same

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. XXUl
convictions as those expressed by Mr. Codding
ton. For the support of a large majority of those
who did vote for him, McClellan was indebted to
his own letter, and not to, but really in despite of,
the platform on which he was nominated. During
this campaign in November, 1864, Mr. Coddington
addressed a great gathering of the war Democracy
at the Cooper's Institute strongly supporting Mr.
Lincoln and the- prosecution of the war. This
memorable effort of the orator was pronounced at
the time to be one of the sharpest, clearest and most
powerful indictments ever framed against a party
whose leaders had proven false to its principles
as well as to the honor and welfare of the country.
As a vivid, spirited picture of the Democratic party
of that time, and its attitude this speech is unequalled.
On the second inauguration of President Lincoln,
Mr. Coddington prepared a letter to him at the
request of the working men of the city of New York
replete with patriotic sentiments. His next effort
was destined to be the oration in memory of the
martyred president.
Soon after the occupation of Charleston by the
Government, Mr. Coddington visited that city for
the benefit of his health. While there the news of

Xxiv ElOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.
the assassination of the President was received, and
at the request of the military authorities and soldiers
of that Department, he delivered a Eulogy in the
citadel square church. This oration delivered in
the cradle of the Rebellion amidst the ruins it had
caused, in memory of its most illustrious victim was
the last and greatest of Mr. Coddington's addresses.
Always of a feeble constitution, with failing health,
and days already numbered, it will be seen in the
perusal of this address that the fire of his patriotism
burned brightly to the last, and that this final effort
of his original genius is worthy of perpetuation as
not the least effective shell exploded in the citadel
of treason. On his return to the North in June, 1865, his
growing reputation as an orator was evidenced by
the large number of invitations which he received
to address the people in different pai'ts of the coun
try, on the ensuing fourth of July, but his last oration
had been delivered. He seemed to feel that his
brief period of activity was nearly over ; and declin
ing to accept any of the many invitations on account
of his rapidly failing health, he retired to his
favorite resort at Saratoga Springs to pass the
summer. His visit there in 1865 will be remem-

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. XXV
bered by hundreds of the habitues of the place.
He was unusually lively in his manner despite his
illness, and brilliant and witty in his conversation
to a degree which caused many of his friends to fear
that it was the increased, but flickering brilliancy of
the dying lamp. This fear was too well founded ;
and on the morning of September 2d, while at Sara
toga, Mr. Coddington very suddenly, but evidently
not unexpectedly, began to fail, and shortly after
died calmly, and without a struggle. The news of
his decease came with painful suddenness to a large
circle of his friends, and was the subject of general
notice, and profound expressions of regret on the
part of the press and the people.
David S. Coddington was in very many respects
a remarkable man : and died too soon for the coun
try and his own reputation. Nature had enriched
his mind at the expense of his Jbody. He was one
of those peculiar persons seldom met with whose
energy is of the brain not of tne biood, and who go
down to posterity under the distinctive classification
of " men of genius." He was one of those characters
described by Dryden as :
" A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to de^ay
And o'erinformed the tenement of clay."

XXVl BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.
Without an ostentatious display of knowledge
received from books, he allowed the ripe fruit which
he had stored away in his years of study to mingle
with the experience he had derived from a life not
passed in viewing all things as golden. A physical
infirmity with which he had been afflicted from
youth had imperceptibly its effect upon his temper
ament, and while he was as sensitive as Byron, he
was not as cynical. Had he possessed the bodily
vigor to have grappled with the labor, he would
have won a splendid position in any path of life
which he might have chosen as congenial, for he
possessed the mind to grapple with problems of
every character, and of the deepest intricacy. He
was a man in whom the intuitive was strongly
developed ; he was always right in his judgment
from being right in his principle, and could do no
wrong, because -he so strongly and deeply loved
truth and justice. His first judgment on great
questions was his best, because prompted by this
intuitive love of the right ; and nothing could
reason or lead him away from the convictions
thus instantaneously formed. His mind was of
that kind that quickly and clearly perceives the
salient points of a question, and he was a man who

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XXVll
as quickly acted upon impressions thus con
ceived. In private life, he was remarkable and much
appreciated for his social and conversational powers ;
and among his intimate acquaintances, he shone with
more brilliancy than he appeared to the public.
He was very quick and brilliant at repartee, easy
and fluent of language, unusually forcible and ex
ceedingly epigrammatic in his construction of his
sentences, and at all times witty ; and these qualities
made his society much sought after. Few men have
been more courted and admired in society than Mr,
Coddington, and few possessed greater qualifications
for instructing or pleasing a social circle. But he
was not merely admired in society ; David S. Cod
dington was loved in his social circle even more
than he was admired. A gentle, enthusiastic spirit,
always earnest and often impetuous in his enthusi
asm, of great generosity, kindness and affability,
very tender in his manner, and affectionate in his
disposition, he drew others towards him in sympathy
and gentleness, and was even more lovable than
fascinating. His 'wit was playful, had nothing of
the bitter in its composition, and nobody feared while
all laughed at his satire. His repartee was so good

XXVlU BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.
humored and so kindly uttered that it gave no pain.
He made himself more frequently than others his
object of ridicule, and the shafts of his satire spent
themselves either on himself or such generalities as
left his companions no opportunity or occasion to
construe aught offensive in them. With all his
bodily infirmity, he was still full of fun and frolic,
and with younger persons and children occasionally
indulged in playful romps, and innocent games. He
rarely thought of himself, was disinterested in his
frequent efforts for others, and the charity and
generosity of his character were not less noticeable
than the qualities of his mind. He has left behind
him many an anecdote, letter, bon mot and pleasan
try illustrative of these qualities, many of Avhich
will be recalled by this allusion to the recollection
of his friends, but few of which were preserved by
him. In his younger days he composed a great
deal of poetry, wrote many little epigrams, sketches
and letters for publication, and for the persual of
his friends and acquaintances, but he seldom kept
copies of them. The methodical was very little
developed in his temperament, and he was rather
careless in preserving his papers, so that many of
them ai-e lost, but what remains to us of his poetic

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. xxis
and other contributions to the press display the
same peculiar vigorous and epigrammatic style which
is so remarkable in his speeches herewith pub
lished. Mr. Coddington's reputation with the general
public must depend on his achievements as an
orator ; for in this capacity chiefly was he known to
the people. It is a little difficult to decide to what
class his style of oratory belongs, whether to the
demonstrative, deliberative or argumentative {Judi-
ciaT) of the ancients, or that of the Senate, the bar,
the pulpit or the platform style of modern oratory.
His style was very peculiar, ^nd there is no modern
orator whom he can be said to have imitated, for in
thought and matter and manner, he was most
original. He was not argumentative. His speeches
are wonderfully compact, terse and elegant combina
tions of facts hurled at an audience in successive
explosions of most effective eloquence. His orations
are grand pyrotechnic displays of eloquence or
grand artillery bombardments, with solid facts for
missiles. His language has the effect of the best
stump oratory and the elegance of the most classic
Senatorial literature. The most effective stump
orator of this country, Tom Corwin, did not win

XXX BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.
greater triumphs in the Log-cabin campaign in 1840,
or more thoroughly arouse the enthusiasm of his
political audience than did Mr. Coddington with his
patriotic audiences of 1861. But the occasional
elegant flights in which Corwin indulged pervaded
the whole oration of Mr. Coddington ; and the most
studied and classical orations of the Senate are not
superior for beauty of flnish.
Mr. Coddington — as an eminent statesman once
declared — ^ought to have been one of the first orators
of the country. Without a commanding presence,
he possessed that graceful gesticulation so well
becoming the orator. He had a clear, well modu
lated voice which imparted distinctness to the utter
ance of ideas which in terseness and originality, in
boldness and trenchant sarcasm have rarely been
surpassed by any public speaker of. the day. In
debate he wielded his facts with great force and
precision unaccompanied by that studied ornateness
so often characteristic of the student and man of
letters. On the occasion of his great speech in November,
1864, some criticisms appeared in the daily papers
of New York which admirably illustrated his style
of oratory. The Herald^ after alluding to the

BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. SXXl
speeches of General Dix, Judge Pierrepont and
General Sickles, said, " but the gem of the occasion
was the splendid speech of Mr. Coddington ... we
have heard nothing from the stump for many years
superior to his admirable oration. During this
canvass, there has been no speech that can at all
compare with it either in matter or manner. Its
style is terse, vigorous, pungent and epigrammatic.
Its logic is unexceptionable. Its sharp, attic wit,
bitter satire and vehement invective are capitally
relieved by most appropriate poetical imagery and
by passages of classical eloquence. In contrast with
this bright, fresh, sparkling, impassioned address
the labored and elaborate efforts of others appear
dull and tedious ... we can draw no comparison
between them and the apt, pithy, telling speech of
Mr. Coddington, who exhibits many of the qualifica
tions of the highest school of oratory. Indeed his
keen, piercing style and the nervous energy of his
statements and illustrations remind us of John
Randolph, while his speech is as brief, comprehen
sive and compact as those of Calhoun." The New
York Times speaking of it says : " Passages of it
are as full of fervid eloquence as anything in the
speeches of Rufus Choate, who was the greatest

XXXU BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH.

master this country has ever seen of his rich and
peculiar style of oratory."
Had David S. Coddington possessed more robust
health, he would have taken a position in the first
rank of statesmen. He possessed a clear head, a
keen wit and a silvery voice wherewith to impart
his vivid conceptions to his hearers, with great
culture and application, and a fund of varied know
ledge and information, which readily supplied
material for argument or illustration. As a lawyer
he would probably have gained with little exertion,
an eminent position as an advocate. As a friend,
he was devoted and reliable, of a kind and gentle
heart, and a man of the strictest honor in his deah
ings, valuing his promise as a sacred pledge. Had
he lived his friends looked confidently forward to
the period when he should once more be called to
serve his country in some capacity where his
abilities would find proper scope. As he died so
early, they are consoled to find that he achieved so
much in the sphere open for his action, and left such
memorials of his patriotism and genius as those
which this sketch is intended to preface.

THE

BURNS CENTENARY FESTIVAL.

SPEECH AT MOZART HALL,
JANUAET 25TH, 1859.

Me. President:
Why is it, sir, that the tear and the goblet are
sparkling to-night on two hemispheres by moorland,
highland, and street-side ?
Why is it that the scattered clans, wherever they
roam and whoever they serve, know hut one chieftain
to-night, as they rally around these far-apart banquets
of joy and devotion, where the spell of one sacred name,
one holy hour is upon us all ; so thoughtful, so grateful,
so commimicative, have we not come to pour out our
souls for the soul which Kobert Bums has given us, for
the sweet strength he has added to whatever grace of
feeling we possess ?
Is he not the only man in all Scotland, be he a
Wallace, Bruce, or Stuart — is he not the only poet in all
Christendom, though he were Dante, Milton, or Shake
speare — who can command these continuous jubilant
1

2 ADDEESS AT
birth-nights— these clasped hands, these leaping pulses,
those rich old Scottish songs, so fragrant with truth and
fellowship, and which have gushed forth so spontaneously,
so convivially, anniversary after anniversary, until they
have at last reached this sublime epoch of remembrance,
this centennial climax of appreciation which binds the
hundredth year around the brow of his beauty and his
immortality ?
It is not because Kobert Burns has added a few
Scotch rhymes to Enghsh literature, that this humble
tax-gatherer levies so deeply upon our tears, our memo
ries and our love — it is not merely because a great poet
has turned all the rivers and the flowers, the duties and
the dreams of his, country into harmonious and imperisha
ble verses, that you have summoned around you here
to-night the eminent and the cultivated of this land to
assist us in saying classically what we all feel so impul
sively ; but it is because he has touched the great com
mon heart by his identity with the common lot, through
the whole varied range of high intellect, profound feeling,
and lowly experience; because his muse has dropped a
rose in every withered breast, and charmed the rough
hand, the breaking heart, into graceful hai'mony mth the
necessity of their condition — shedding his songs, as
patriots shed their blood, for the glory and honor of his
country, the peace and purity of its homes.
With all his faults, (and they were many,) with all his
virtues, (and they were more,) stranger and native, classic
and rustic, do we not all see the angel of a loving human
ity walking in the flames of his genius, and lighting up
the vast domain of Anglo-Saxon thought and feeling with
new hope and power, ever invoking national unity, indi
vidual sympathy, and universal brotherhood ?
We know that Campbell is a deathless songster.

THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 3
Ilohenhnden, though a German battle, still reddens with
the fire and shudders with the thunder of Scottish genius.
We know that the poetry of Scott will ring along the
centuries chivalrously and heroically immortal. Lord
Marmion, though slain in story, still lives in the memory
of it, and the young Loehinvar, if he got away from the
Graeme and the Netherby clans, he cannot escape us.
Yet we know, too, that the genius of these poets, without
being any more comprehensive than that of Burns, is less
identified with the local hfe and native language of their
country. They have said fine things of Scotland, and
Scotland is both proud and grateful, but they have sung
the twin tale of her glory and her sadness, more as
admiring foreigners than loving natives. For them the
laurel crown, and the cordial hand; — but the quivering
lip, the heaving breast, and the embracing arm, — these,
these, — are thine only, oh, bard of Ayrshire !
Every vicissitude of fortune or temperament in Burns
finds a congenial mouthpiece. If a Scotsman falls in
love, he sends Burns to do the courting, and " Mary in
Heaven" comes down and helps him love Nelly in Dum
barton. If a Scotchman is wronged, he seizes a sonnet
rather than a musket to vindicate himself. Many a
skeptic has turned from the confusing jargon of the
churches to find himself, with a few helpful verses of
Bums, lifted up into the peaceful regions of a pure and
permanent trust. How calmly does the " Cotter's Satur
day Night " glide us into the Sabbath morn, of a holy
reverence for its pictures of piety and domestic virtue !
So deeply, too, is the genius of Burns imbued with the
spirit of patriotism in his war song of " Scots wha hae,"
that had he lived at the battle of Bannockburn, it is
impossible to say who would have contributed most to the
deliverance of the country, Bruce with Ms impetuous

4 ADDEESS AT
charge of claymores, or Burns with his vigorous thrust of
sentences. One thing is certain, he was the first Scotch
man in modem history, who successfully invaded England
with his native dialect. Not like Charles Edward, to
retreat when within a hundred miles of the capital, but
pushing on to London, captured the King and the whole
royal family with the magic of bis Gaelic inspirations.
Earl Grey is said to have remarked that his persever
ing efi'orts in behalf of electoral reform had been much
stimulated by the reading of Burns. Is he not the true
legislator, wlio so shapes the heart of statesmanship ?
What versatility of genius, too ! With all his gravity,
how he revelled in the ludicrous! The Duchess of
Devonshire is said to have been cured of an ague by
laughing over Tarn O'Shanter. Tam reeled so comically
into the presence of her Grace as to bring on a princely
perspiration that broke the fever. Thus, in one breath is
he shaking thrones with his appeals to fi'eedom, and in
the next, shaking sides vpith his attacks on our risibilities.
There are those who decry poetry as being illusive
and unpractical, and in the same breath employ it^to
strengthen their practicahty. '"The clerk comes late to his
counting room, and the practical merchant particularly
reminds him that " the early bird gathers the worm ; " or
perhaps he would change his business, again the practical
man is ready with the poetical reproof that " the rolhng
stone gathers no moss."
Poetry, next to Christianity, is the richest gift of God
to man. All Art, all Science, the spirit of discovery and
invention, and even religion itself, depend much upon the
enthusiasm and the energy prompted by that union of the
thoughtful and the beautiful which we call the poetical
element ; not only does it cheer us with images of tender
ness and sublimity but it relieves truth from all sordid

THE BIJENS FESTIVAL. 5
and conventional restraints, by applying the universal
law of appreciation to every form of excellence, indepen
dent of partial distinctions, searching out beauty not only
in the star that shoots across the heavens, but in the pass
ing acts that flit before our Kves, reducing the gold mine
to its proper level in the landscape, and elevating the
gentlest flower and the humblest effort of duty to kindred
communion with the grandest achievement. How much
we tolerate in poetry what is forbidden in society ! We
hang the beggar in our parlors and admire him as an effort
of art, while as an effort of nature he is thrust into the,
street. The genius of Burns assumes neither the firamatic
nor the epic form; with much of the subhmity, he has
none of the audacity which aspires to occupy fields Homer
and Shakespeare have exhausted. His genius is too direct
and didactic, too personal and spontaneous, to bear the
restraints of grouping and combining character. What
he teaches us, he teaches separately and by itself, through
genial statements, rather than exciting incidents. «
He never would have conceived the madness of Lear,
in order to intensify our horror of filial ingratitude, but
he would have taken Goneril and Kegan by themselves,
dismissed the attendants, hushed the drums, put out the
foot lights, and streamed such a flood of heaven-sent
truths upon their conduct, as would have shamed all the
daughters from 'John O'Groat's' to the Fifth avenue.
The great aim of Bums' genius is to make us feel truth
as lovely, rather than to strike us as grand : not with the
imposing artistic complications of the orchestra does he
break upon us, but like a lonely bird who has soared into
the heavens, and sings to us of their purity, who has
lighted on tree top, streamlet, and flower bush, with a
loving word for their beauty and their freedom, who has
pecked at the palace gates, and knows of their barrenness,

6 ADDEESS AT
and who at last falls bleeding and wounded upon our
bosoms to be guarded and loved ever more.
The poetry of Burns is simply the steps of a poor
plain man keeping time to the richest music of the human
soul, where obscure joys and uninteresting troubles are
sublimed into universal beauties. Every trivial circum
stance in his path seems strung with the strings of a harp,
so melodiously do all ordinary facts play about him.
How many daisies have been buried in the plough
man's furrow, and yet only one shall rise again to bloom
on forever in the Heaven of the poet's inspu'ation 1 How
many dogs have barked and blest their masters with their
knowledge and sagacity, yet only " two dogs " shall wag
their tails at the coming ages !
Is it not usual for the morning light to play upon the
graves of the humble departed ? and yet there is one tomb
and one form where that "lingering star with lessening
ray " shall come and deck that crumbhng memorial, for
loving companionship, with princes and rulers, and all
who feel in its purity that universal passion which has
gone through the world, bearing its electric fire into the
human breast, and dashing its scarlet spray into the
human countenance ever since man's first heart-throb
broke on the deep calm of Eden.
The love of Burns, unlike most men's love, was neither
a transient passion nor an effeminate crisis in his hfe, but
it formed the basis of his character, prompting and per
vading all the better flights of his imagination ; even his
satires were battles for the heart, (the thistles defending
their flower ;) at one time this love is a private passion,
struggling in the ranks, side by side with other emotions,
at another it is a Generalissimo leading on ah. the forces
of the soul to vast and varied aims of comprehensive good ;
when woman's beauty quickens it, how it shrinks into a

THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 7
personal fancy, ending in a ditty, or a wedding, as in
Mary Morrison; when philanthropy moves it how it
expands into universal sympathy, into the sermon of the
" unco-righteous," and that deathless line — " A man 's a
man for a' that."
Love is a part of the genius of Burns, and cannot be
separated from it. Indeed, is not genius itself the love
of the mind, making earnestness and sensibility the law
of all high thought, as love itself is but the genius of the
heart, sending the richest graces of thought and imagina
tion, in the very centre of our emotions for another ?
Like life, love's highest hope is to'be immortal.
Like death, it is no respecter of persons, for it steals
into the ball-room without a card of invitation, and
edging its way up to the head couple, rummages under
all the diamonds and point-lace embankments of the
Duchess until it reaches the stripped-naked heart, shaking
it with the most plebeian vigor ; then it descends into the
kitchen, weaves the dish-cloth into a canopy, and seats
down the cook royally under it ; indeed, the bell is ring
ing to replenish the parlor fire, at the very moment when
the footman is throwing a scuttle-full of sentiment on his
own flame. No nature is complete without this element
of character. No zone has escaped it. Now it breathes
o'er bustling nations the genial sedatives of peace and
good fellowship ; now it tempers the awful glaciers of the
Alps with the dissolving flame of catholic hospitality ;
now it breaks meekly upon the earnest heart of Wilber-
force ; and now it plays its lightning tricks under the flashy
waistcoat of " Mr. Toots." It is freer than Charity, for it
giveth away itself; it is broader than faith, for it beams on
the faithless ; it is wiser than reason, for, while reason is
groping for a God, love is beaming upon his bosom, and,
with outstretched arms, calling upon the true and the

8 ADDRESS AT THE BURNS FESTIVAL.
treacherous to hurry under the shelter of its all-embracing
presence. Such was the love and such the teachings of Kobert
Burns, a crushed and trodden spirit, who, like the sunken
mines under our feet, has poured forth his wealth to bless
the nations. The age is bristling all over with sharp
questions about right and duty. Man is ever calling for
a broader and deeper recognition of his humanity, the
loftiest brows in every land are wrinkhng with schemes
to dethrone the crowned errors that baffle the brotherhood
of races. Washington's sword has cut away the outer impedi
ment, Jefferson's pen has framed the outer charter, and
as long only as such sphits as Robert Bums' shall follow
in their path, moulding the inner life of the nation to
beauty and fellowship, so long will humanity be hopeful,
reform possible, and freedom safe.

ORA-TIOISr
DELIVKEED AT MONTIOELtO, VA., AT THE
TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFERSON,
JULY 4TH, 1859.

Fellow CmzENS :
I HAVE come from the city of ten thousand masts, I
have come from the golden shores of the commerce-king
and the palace home, where the roar of trade and the
revels of fashion, the waving flag and the beating heart
are busy with the beauty and the wealth of this hour. I
have left them all to invoke the holier inspirations of this
spot — to gaze with those distant mountains upon the
grave of a loftier peak — I have come to bow my pilgrim
breast before the cold grey tomb under which lies the
withered hand, that penned the fortunes q^ this day. A
hand that drew no blood, led no charge, pjerced no foe,
yet riddled an ancient monarchy with the buUeted vigor
of its virtue and its logic.
Was it not meet that so majestic a reach of character
should have enthroned itself upon so imperial a sweep of
scenery. And is it not possible that the bold freedom of
the Declaration, owes something to the comprehensive

10 ORATION AT THE
grandeur of the scene where it was first conceived and
partly indited. These wide-spreading undulations of
plain and upland, these startling contrasts of grassy slope
and high roaring precipice, where you cannot move with
out the spirit of beauty getting up to accompany you,
where you cannot do a mean or little thing without
something lofty looking down upon it — ^mountains rising
¦with us in the morning and stretching up with our top
most hope into those impenetrable mists that skirt on
immortahty, while in the evening, dying suns are shower
ing the rugged summits with a light that shall cheer and
chasten our own inaccessible aspirations. Would not
such inspiring elements, prompt a great soul to grasp the
magnanimous elevations of a great cause, and with cor
responding breadth of view diffuse himself more sub
limely over the vast range of his country's hopes and
interests. As I stand here this evening upon this consecrated
summit, so sacred to that one death, second only in Yir-
ginia's love to Mount Yernon's dearer dust, I sink in
memory behind the high places of our present fortunes, I
pass beyond the formative periods <^f the Convention and
the Constitution, I go back to where no smoke of fratemal
battlefields choke the hght of peacefully descending suns,
to where no Anglo-Saxon sword has pierced the Anglo-
Saxon heart, and as I reach that earlier calm, that brood
ing pause which mentally moulds though it physically
waits the dismembering moment, I see before me, breath
ing this bracing air, contemplating this inspiring view,
standing thoughtful, admfring upon this lonely eminence,
a young man whose worldly means and heavenly gifts
have brought him here to settle, the permanent spirit of
this spot. And this is in the year 1769, that year of por
tentous and gigantic births ; that year Avhich gave new

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, 11
conquerors to empires and new discoveries to science ; the
year which rocked the cradles of Napoleon and Welhng-
ton, of Marshal Soult, Mehemet Ali, and Yon Humboldt.
Later, in 1772, 1 see him again as your fathers saw him,
toiling up this declivity, through the deep snow of that
year. But he is bearing a melting antidote upon his arm.
He brings a warmer flame to kindle at the hearth-stone, a
softer bosom to mingle with the undulations of the land
scape. In the calm preceding the shock of the Kevolu-
tion, the flower of his affections had sprouted. Without
a pound of powder, or a single regiment, the widow
Wailes, brought down this stiirdy opposer of tyrants, and
future ruler of prosperous States upon his knees to a
weaker race, that conquers without humiliating the lords
of creation. The graver dignity of history has not suffered by iden
tifying Thomas Jefferson, with a sentiment which cannot
be kept out of boarding schools, and will slip into the cir
culation of kings. Kefining without enervating, exclusive
but not selfish, impulsive yet conservative, the wildest
joy and the soundest policy, that shakes the nerves but
steadies the State, melting the citizen into the lover,
swearing the lover into the husband, and giving back the
husband with renewed dignity and efficiency to the dis
charge of the civic and domestic relations, this profound
political philosopher looked upon personal affection and
its legal consequences, not only in the light of a definite
and enduring partiahty of one to another, but also, as a
solid political virtue which armed the patriot with a
deeper strength and a stouter pulse to serve his country
and perfect his character.
No man has ever administered the general rights or
swayed the political thoughts of so many millions of
beings, who more closely identified himself with the tastes

12 ORATION AT THE
and interests of each member of his own family. Jefler-
son felt that he was serving his cause as much by the
judicious rearing of a child, as by drafting stirring resolu
tions against a tyrant, or discharging the more pompous
functions of Supreme power. He knew how one depended
and reacted upon the other. He knew how the justice
and humanity which come to us through good laws, do
not confine themselves to mere out-door life, but like the
invigorating breezes of heaven, go whistling through door
way and window pane, down to the very hearth-stone
with their chastening music. He knew that if home is
the rich contributor to the moral wealth of the nation, so
does the government react upon the home, infusing into
domestic disciphne something of the dignity, the intelh-
gence, and the forbearance which belongs to public
authority. How the boy's romp would one day be the
nation's energy. How the bounding vivacity of girlhood
must calm into the serener enthusiasm of motherly devo
tion, and how responsible he was, ruler of milfions though
he might be, for the sensible moulding of their dawning
forces. Indeed it may be literally said, that Thomas
Jefferson brought up both simultaneously, his family in
one hand and his country in the other ; alternately con
tracting himself to the meeker circle of home joys, the
more genially to expand into a national blessing. This
intense sympathy with individual life, constitutes the
groundwork of that deeper faith in mankind, that con
stant courageous outpouring of self, for all, that behef in
the instinctive power of the lesser minds of the masses to
strike their o'svn hght, and work their own way to knowl
edge and happiness. This union of mental power and
social interest ever moulded his creed to loving dimen
sions with all mankind, enthroning justice to all men, and
room for all men in all places, as the sterling law of pub-

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 13
lie duty as weU as private feeling, wherever the brain
brings the chartered right to rise. In his dialogue be
tween head and heart, he makes the heart say, the world
is full of trouble, to relieve its burdens we should share it
between us. This with proper modifications is the key to
his political system. A creed so grand, so safe, so broad,
did it not shape the current of our earlier glory, and does
it not plan the theory of our purest passing hfe ? Gleam
ing paramount through ode, ordinance, and essay; con
centrate in motto and proverb ; transfixed in medal and
statue, glittering on the' festal drapery, rolling from the
righteous canon, thundering in the deathless speech, the
spear of all pohtical fallacies, the hope of all political
progress, rising with our prayers, dropping with our tears,
difficult as a system, beautiful as an ideal, sometimes pos
sible and always wise, has it not from the golden days of
Athens, from Aristotle and the Amphyctionic assembly
in the dark deluge of the invasion, through the communal
revolutions of the middle ages, under crescent, cross, and
feudal tower, the outward myth, the inward hope, shrink
ing, sinking, yet holding on by no severed link, with
buried but dauntless tenacity, all the way from the Tar-
peian to the Plymouth rock, landed at last, picking
crumbs of privilege from the rich George's table until
with its own bright flame it learns to bake its own loaf
and lies down to be stunned and starved no more. Did
not this sentiment shine like a miner's lamp on Jefferson's
brow at the damp, dark commencement, and does it not
redden along the heights of a fame second only to Wash
ington's in popularity, and beyond all modern or cotem-
porary statesmen in breadth of political sympathy and
sagacity? In contemplating human greatness, mankind
will be most healthfully influenced by those who have
been true as well as wise in the measure of their achieve-

14 ORATION AT THE
ments; who have exhibited most harmony between the
greatness of their deeds and the purity of their lives.
Does not the worship of great men constitute the only
religion of a large portion of the human race, and are not
these fair ideals too often shattered by abrupt inconsisten
cies of career, by painful contrasts between noble thoughts
and ignoble weaknesses, which acting on lesser minds
tend to content and conform them in their own predis
posed and now high-sanctioned degeneracy? Could all
the sententious eloquence of the accuser of Catiline vindi
cate the morbid vanity so apparent in the biography of
Cicero ? How the " Common Sense " of Thomas Paine
brightened and braced up the old colonial spirit, yet did
not this Paine defy Christ, embrace the bottle, and leave
America no safe spot to date his eulogy from ?
Is a distinguished author of our day quite sure that his
"Household Words" are not loftier than his household
deeds? Thomas Jefferson was a "plane of continued
elevations," a complete harmony in life, mind, and charac
ter. His fame does not rest upon an eminence reached
by the spasmodic upheaval of a few excellencies which
often leave wide chasms of defects yawning beneath their
higher traits.
He did not, like Seneca, declaim against avarice with
a million at usury. He will not like England's great
chancellor astonish all mankind with his wisdom in dis
covering the truth and his meanness in taking bribes to
suppress it. Nor like the great orator Fox, who poured
forth such golden sentences upon the public credit and
dropped not even one copper into the ear or hand of his
own private creditors. Thomas Jefferson not only paid
his own debts but beggared himself in discharging the
obligations of others. He endorsed his name upon his
country when she most needed the credit of that name,

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 15
and those services and this make him immortal. He
wrote that name upon his friend's paper, and had he lived,
it would have driven him from these lofty halls whose
roof for more than half a century had domed his dearest
joys and noblest conceptions. Halls which have wit
nessed the confidential consultations of some of the wisest
and best men who have ever been called to the govern
ment of any land. Here for weeks and months passed
many of the secluded hours of President Madison, one of
the ablest framers, and President Monroe, one of the
safest administrators, of the American Constitution. So
frequent and familiar were their visits, that yonder door
opens upon the " Madison Chamber," and farther on, the
" Monroe Koom," designates how closely those co-workers
in a glorious statesmanship, were linked to personal sym
pathy and social brotherhood. How often have those
three Presidents paced these halls with anxious solicitude
and in deep patriotic communings for the success of mea^
sures which should counteract less wise and less temperate
efforts of party feeling and selfish rivalry. How often,
where I now staud, have these three Presidents drank
their tea, invoked their God, and determined those mea
sures of public utility which have gone forth to disarm
faction, strengthen the Kepublic, and immortalize them
selves. Was it not in this hall that Lafayette stepped
from the unfinished portico, on his last visit' to the United
States, and clasped in one long speechless embrace the
associate of his earlier and surer triumph? I see them
now only a few feet from where I stand. I behold the
meeting of Jefferson and Lafayette; I witness their em
braces. They cannot speak; then hands are clasped,
their breasts heave, their lips quiver ; they cannot speak,
for a loving, helpful, deathless past is filling them with
tears and choking them with memories. They are think-

16 ORATION AT THE
ing of the great friend who has crumbled away, since long
ago in field and counsel they planned and won the right
together. They are thinking of this great cause which
went forth an armed and tattered hopcj now returned a
peaceful, well-dressed fact, which shall bind for all time
in America's grateful glory that host and that guest, as
there they stand locked in each other's arms, the founders
and the compeers of America's better life.
The genius of this spot seemed always to reassure the
republican sentiment, and no matter how despondent or
exhausted the owner might seek his home from the per
plexities of official life, or the acrimonious assaults of poli
tical enemies, there was always something in the calm
beauty and purity of the scene to cheer his faith and
scatter the bolt.
Perhaps the most enduring memorial of the variety
and reach of Jefferson's powers are to be found in his ex
tensive correspondence upon Mechanics, Metaphysics,
Natural Philosophy, Keligion, and Politics with the great
and the learned of his time in Europe and America.
And always with a depth of knowledge and a force of
reasoning without a parallel in one whose life had been
devoted to the comparatively superficial and distracting
duties of active political leadership. He reasons with
Cuvier and Buffon on natural history and zoology;
against Cuvier he maintains his theory upon the size and
physiology of animals with an ability and pertinacity,
which in one instance verified his accuracy, by producing
at an enormous personal expense the horns of a moose, 20
feet longer than Cuvier had declared it possible to exist.
With Clark, when about to explore the Louisiana pur
chase, during his administration, he urges upon the intrep
id traveller the advantages of the equatorial time table
in determining his longitude, and with an ingenuity of

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 17
argmnent and illustration that prove how much he must
have observed and experimented upon the subject. In
farming, engineering and architecture, the chemical treat
ment of soils, the growth of tobacco, the importing and
transplanting of trees, the possibilities of wine and grape
culture, banishing the doctors, and curing the measles
with his own prescriptions, inventing games for his chil
dren, advising with them in the minutest offices of dress
or conduct, from the tying of a ribbon bow to the keeping
of a commandment; and all this, too, while his whole
energies seemed to be absorbed in the graver duties of
administering the government : in founding a great
party, cementing a durable policy, supporting Washing
ton, supplanting Adams, nullifying Hamilton, warring on
the throne threateners, bargaining with the god of war, at
Paris, for a vast territorial support to his logic and his
country. Corresponding, too, with Dr. Priestly upon
religion, in a tone of discriminating reverence that refutes
those bilious volleys against his Christianity, which in
duced a certain New York clergyman, who visited his
grave, to declare that he lay buried like a dog as he
should. There was more religion in one wag of that dog's
tail than in all the barking orthodoxy of such letters.
Jefferson's religion, like his politics, his philosophy, and
that unerring good sense which he brought to bear upon
every form of duty, was the result of conscientious con
viction. And these convictions were the uniform prompt
ings of that full, rounded, thoroughly developed manhood,
which impressed a successful individuality upon every
element with which he grappled. With great men great
actions are but the necessary fulfilments of their own
natures, and these outpourings of soul which startle the
world only relieve them. Even the Declaration of Inde
pendence, the most prominent point in his career, which
2

18 ORATION AT THE
sent his name echoing to the Pyramids, dropped serenely
and naturally from him as his obvious share in a great
crisis. What a fine subject for an historical painting, the
grouping of that sub-committee of three who were de
puted by their associates to report a draft of the Declara
tion. John Adams, the Colossus of the Eevolution, and
Benjamin Franklin, the greatest philosopher of his day,
turning involuntarily to Jefferson, as the ablest mouth
piece to the world of the difliculty and the remedy. Does
not Franklin seem to say, I brought lightning from
heaven, but yours is the hand to hurl it in graceful
periods at the enemy? Without Washington's serene
blending of the thoughtful and the heroic, he was equally
devoted by will and mental adaptation to the civil side
of a reconstructing era. It will be always to the interest
of American emulation distinctly to preserve Washing
ton's character above and apart from critical comparisons
with his Kevolutionary associates. If any one of them
developed a faculty or a form of success greater in any
particular direction than Washington exhibited, if Jeffer
son was the greatest expounder of the democratic creed,
if Hamilton stands to the Federalists as the unapproacha
ble exponent of their centralizing faith, if Otis and Adams
wooed the goddess of liberty with the prompt, fiery rhet
oric of gods, if General Greene achieved a masterly
retreat and overcame almost insurmountable obstacles in
generalship, if Allen and Putnam performed almost in
credible feats of physical hardihood, these individual
characteristics, as elements of instruction, as subjects of
pride and gratitude, should always, and will always, hold
their place in the appreciation of posterity. But Wash
ington not only led armies and settled States, but, by
harmony of mental and moral organization, fused all these
individual excellencies and particular antagonisms into

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 19
one grand complete military and civil success. While
others stand to America as types of some special relation,
he represents the highest and most complete form of ab
stract excellence known to practical life. To the proud
worldly business man, he is the grandest American form
of successful ambition. To the theorist, the Christian and
moralist, the most exquisite reahzation of duty in love and
sacrifice under the severest of earthly temptations.
While with hushed awe and impotent analysis, we
leave Washington upon his lonely peak, the merits of
those who surrounded him, who have more or less deter
mined since the civil polity of the government, will be fair
subjects for criticism, as well as gratitude. To be dis
criminatingly grateful we must be cognizant of the extent
of service which each one has rendered. All the great
lights helped the crisis, and all have admirers. But what
Henry, dropping the spirit of a giant from the lips of a
seraph ; what Jay, delicate, conservative, and intellectual ;
what Lee, finished, forcible and fastidious; what Kan-
dolph, his eye rolhng like a globe with the Union on fire
in it, with fervor pungent, peculiar and satirical ; what
Madison, so modest, so pure and comprehensive; who
among them all, like Jefferson, have left patient students,
determined vindicators, constant quoters, lasting followers
of their creed and life ? Whose name is next to Washing
ton's, is so deep in the patriot's heart, whose name so helps
the partisan's cause and yet so rebukes the violence, the
malignity and the selfishness of the partisan's life? If
Hamilton left a policy or a party, like the king at a
masquerade, it was killed in one of its disguises, and now
lies mouldering with the remains of the late Whig organi
zation. Many and contradictory have been the compari
sons drawn between these great chiefs and founders of
America's constitutional statesmanship. In theh lifetimes

20 OEATION AT THE
both looked upon each other as deranged giants. Hamil
ton viewed Jefferson as a patriotic but dangerous, because
inordinate believer in the good sense and morality of the
people. Jefferson distrusted the republicanism of a man
who was the affianced lover of British institutions,
and though his intentions were honest, he believed the
policy of Hamilton tended to a reaction against liberal
principles, which must render all they had suffered, and
all they had accomplished, only a dramatic episode, a
temporary cessation in the hopeless permanency of re
established tyranny. Yet the very alarm of each was a
benefit to both. The fear of others is often the cure of
ourselves. As homoeopathy has frightened allopathy into
small doses, so Jefferson's confidence in the people was
possibly prevented from degenerating to extremes by the
equally intellectual antagonism that confronted him.
And there is no question but that Hamilton could never
have retained his high position as the equipoise of Wash
ington's administration, without that pacifying modifica
tion of doctrine so imperative in the harmonizing atmo
sphere of the chief.
Washington's administration was born of the unanimi
ty of national gratitude, and demanded a corresponding
conciliation in framing the national issues.
It was a government of hope and thought, where
policy should exist without rancor when it is urged with
out experience, where trade and currency, bank and
tariff, must be intellectual disj)utes before they can settle
into conceded truths.
In organizing periods of government when thought is
active and experience limited, every ably supported
theory will have its champions. The alien and sedition
acts were believed by many to be a healthy check on the
abuse of free speech; laws against witchcraft, in New

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFEESON. 21
England, seemed indispensable for the protection of good
society, against the return of absolute monarchy under
Lucifer ! and the followers of Jefferson and Hamilton, then
nearly equally divided, how stand they all now in the
popular regard. After long years of trial and develop
ment, after more than doubling the number of States and
increasing the population eight hundred per cent., does
not the pohcy of Jefferson control and has it not con
trolled the government for more than fifty, out of the
seventy years of its existence? Is it not the father of
every liberal act which has rectified the early crudities,
and calmed the early and later fears of less wise, less
hopeful periods of public sentiment? Has it not, with
one or two accidental exceptions, seated its chiefs quad
rennially in the central chair ? Has it not administered
our foreign relations in a spirit at once watchful, vigorous,
and abstemious ? has it not fought its way to the throne
of popular approval, through the rain and lightning of a
supreme adverse eloquence, of stump, press, and tribune ?
Has it not sobered the intemperance of trade by its stop
and pay policy, crushing with its own veto an arrogant
bank charter, despite of all its silvery defences? And
when the importations were drowned in excess of duties,
did it not shake the overtax from rustling silk and weak
ened tea? Under the storm of your passing politics,
under the temporary struggles of Goggin and Letcher, of
opposition and administration, beneath dark lantern and
dark skin, and every wave of sectional and national agita
tion, lies the calm, perpetual pearl of Jefferson's liberal,"
admonitory. Union-loving, love-enkindling faith.
The sun which rolls once a day over this dull clod,
dispenses no more comforting beams than his words have
shot into the dark bosom of suffering nations. The fruit
that buds so temptingly pendent in the surrounding

22 OEATION AT THE
prospect shall yield no such grateful plenty, as the cluster
ing truths that still drop from the ripened reach of his
philosophy. The birds that come and perch upon the trees
planted by his hands, and soothe with their gentle cadences
the disembodied complacent shade, warble no such free
and joyous melodies as those deeper tones in which he
called a drooping and discordant people to redemption.
Is not the grave wise as well as cold, and does not this
hacked and pilfered granite, so significant of that rapacious
gratitude which breaks the tomb to prop the recoUections
of it, does it not lift us with a grander strength to the
heroic level of the day, and stir our hearts warmer and
deeper than bugle strain, or bannered march, or measm'ed
speech, or any of those explosive stimulants to remem
brance with which praise has summoned art and genius to
share and shape the current gladness ? Does it not say
to us. Here lies the crumbling husk of a truth that is nour
ishing us all? Here lies all that can die of that philoso
phy which gave to your politics an enduring party, and
of that patriotism which assisted us to a country ; fulfilling
in One age the deep want of all the ages ?
Can there be a holier help to the programme of this
commemoration, than to chasten it with the dust of him
who was the central figure in this day's convention, the
classic spokesman of this day's resolve. Who plucked
from their gloomy foreheads the brooding thoughts of
three millions of colonists, and with the richest grace of
England's speech, shapes the tale of England's wrong,
defies the peal of England's gun, snaps the stretch of
England's chain, and from a wider, warmer, bolder angle
of revolutionary light, streams upon the world that death
less string of glittering generalities, which an eastern ora
tor has so devoutly designated the Declaration of Inde
pendence. Aye, and it did glitter, like the morning sun

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFEESON. 23
as it shone upon the bayonets of our advancing army, and
through the gushing tears of an anxious, suffering, reviv
ing people. Aye, and it did glitter as it rose in the high
est atmosphere of our achievements, and dropped like a
ball of fire upon the startled throne of the royal tax-gath
erer, elevating complaint into statesmanship, disciplining
provincial murmurs into national rights, rounding off
dejected, disjointed rebellion into vigorous, hearty, com
pact revolution, and reducing the lawful sovereignty of
an oppressive prince to the meaner' antagonism of an out
lawed and discomforted innovation. Thus for all time
wifl this string of generalities ghtter a rosary where
kneehng nationalities shall tell their beads to the holy
spirit of hberty, as it beckons them on to freedom, truth,
and progress. It is for this that thirty-three States turn
their faces towards that grave to-day. It is for this that
the grateful tear rolls down Pennsylvania's iron cheek,
and Cahform'a bends here in sphit her golden knee. It is
for this that Maine and Georgia nod their acquiescing
pines, and the kid glove of the Fifth Avenue, and the
hard, bare hand fresh from the crash of a frontier oak,
clasp in concurrent pressure over the benefactor of all.
Why else is it, that the powder and panegyric of the
past have not exhausted the enthusiasm for this day ?
Why else does the rocket of oratory still stream into the
heaven of this inspiring theme, and breaking into stars of
eulogy, fall like the early blessing in golden showers, upon
ever receding and advancing anniversaries ? Has not this
day, too, helped to mould that Constitutional bullet which
is now tearing its mangled way along the broken columns
of the oppressors of Italy? And does not the Franco-
Sardinian triumph pause and part its bleeding ranks, that
the healing spirit of this day may pass through, to cheer
and sanctify a kindred purgation ?

24 OEATION AT THE
I do not mean to say that the spirit of this Declaration,
so brave, so thoughtful, so appropriate, would have seemed
aught else than an ambitious paradox, had not the blade
of Washington gleamed in front of it, and the sturdy forti
tude of the people bristled behind it ; I do not mean to
say that even then, with the dead all buried, and the foe
all gone, swords dropped, heads raised, the embraces, the
congratulations, and the huzzas for a common flag un
furled, and a common hope secured, I do not say that
even then, there would have been anything in the specta
cle, but a fine embarrassment, a successful discord, a wide-
reaching sense of something gained, but nothing sure, had
not our ancestors wisely conceived that a flying, acquiesc
ing enemy was only one side of a true battle ; that there
is a constructing as well as a destroying element in all
substantial victories; that a people who would retain
calmly and permanently the elevation reached through
mere temporary excitement of mere physical effort, must
be capable of forbearance as well as assault; must be
lovers of peace as well as heroes of war ; must be ever
ready with the thought before the blow ; must feel deeply,
and feel habitually and practically the necessity for order,
for intelligence, for obedience to law, for patience in bear
ing with trials as well as hope in looking for blessings,
whose alternating possibilities so cheer and imperil the
life of a new truth.
To secure all this, much was to be accomphshed, and
something to be forborne. A vrise people will remember,
in constructing a new system, how much of the old diffi
culty deserves to be respected, how much of the past must
be dropped, how much of the future should be anticipated
and incorporated into a government destined to be admin
istered widely and permanently, for many equal sovereign
ties, with their sharp, watchful, local life, their ever-

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFEESON. 25
changing politics, their sectional antagonisms and their
varied conflicts of peaceful but perplexing interests, look
ing to this wide, general, federal life, for the harmomzing
element, which should mould them into one common
brotherhood of feeling and fortune, at. once the umpire of
their differences, and the symbol of their nationality. To
achieve such a consummation at such a period, divides, i^
it does not distance, all the glory of the battles that pre
ceded it. Not that we would or could underrate the
merits of that seven years' conflict. A war, intimate and
individual, because a war for existence rather than policy :
a war with less of the dignity of great battles than the
dramatic intensity of fugitive encounters. A war often
with only a wagon tongue for artillery, God for a judge,
and all history for applause. A war with bleeding feet
for a surer footing, a war that could live upon a potatoe
to rout a king ; a war behind fences, behind barns, on the
old haystack, under the tottering shed, charging with a
regiment or a dog, hurling a brick, whizzing a stool, de
stroying the harvest, blighting the fruit, darkening the
sun, anything, anywhere, so it crush the foe, shatter the
wrong, and clear the land.
Would not such a contest require more judgment in a
commander and more nerve in the troops, where ambu
lance and ambuscade rendered numbers almost powerless
and tactics often useless ? To rush up to an enemy with
miles of companions cheering on your courage, with thou
sands all around you ready to help you strike, and ready
to help you die, to be provided with every camp and field
equipment, well fed, well clothed, glittering with expen
sive armor, thirsting for expectant booty, with all the
tramp and pomp of stirring drum and streaming flag and
rushing hosts, to make death look grand as well as dread
ful, with such surroundings when the soldier sinks away,

26 ORATION AT THE
brave battalions go down with him, silken banners droop
hghtly over him, and far-off tears fall for him, sad but safe
from the ruthless carnage. But when Freedom calls her
sons to battle, the fight is less for victory than for safety.
It does not wait always to hoard itself on pompous battle
fields, it has not time always for dainty selections of posi-
tipn for strategical manoeuvres, for reconnaissances, for
artistic feints and counter-movements. It is too busy
with nature to wait for science. If it sees the foe, it feels
the wi'ong and strikes the blow, whether it be to bleed, to
die, or to triumph. In mass or in detail, debouching or
encamping, asleep or awake, through burning sand, on
cracking ice, over the unfathomable, up the inaccessible,
round the impervious, the spirit of liberty moves on with
shoeless feet, cheering the foodless body through the path
less forest. The pillar of fire is there to light the way,
the manna has fallen from the approving heavens, the rod
has come to strike the rock, and as the dying patriot's
life-blood ebbs away, his glazed eye sees the martyr's
crown descending. He fights not for fame, for adventure,
for family compacts, for old traditions, or new acquisi
tions, for Hapsburg, Guelph, or Romanoff. He strikes
for his home, his shop, his farm, his blushing bride, his
prattling babe, the grassplat where he rolled when a boy,
the old family Bible, the tin-cup by the well, the smile,
the ease, the calm of sure possession, the right to speak
when he thinks it, and to do right when he knows it.
This is not a mere war. but an insurrection of humanity to
readjust the lost harmony of creation. Yet wars for free
dom are common wars. Every nation under the sun has
fought them and won them at some period of their lives.
Have not the passive nations, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
and Scandinavia; have not the wild notes of freedom
rung through' the Cymbric forests and awakened the

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 27
earlier but less degenerate German, from the gloom of his
paralyzing dynastic metaphysics? Have not the sensa
tional nations, have not France and Spain and Italy and
even wiltering turbaned Turkey, with the loaded muzzle
of the Slavonic gun at her breast, have not and do not all
these taste the sweet waters of self-won independent
national life? Has not shivering Poland and melting
Hayti and silver-veined, blood-freckled Mexico unfurled
to different zones a humanizing as well as a depraving, a
gracious as well as a ghastly epoch, of E Pluribus Unum ?
Do we point to the bleeding feet, the empty purse, the
powerful foe, and the undeveloped strength of the coun
try, as the test of superior results with adverse means,
but does not the poor, hardy Briton contend for ages
against Koman, Scot, and Dane, and did not the Caliph
Omar conquer all Asia on barleywater ? What then sets
the broad, common seal of universal applause upon us ?
It is that having won independence, we organized the
victory into a destiny, instead of permitting it to evaporate
into a tradition. After the battle over the enemy, we
conquered ourselves. I do not mean to say that we
merely framed a constitution, that was commendable, but
that was also usual.
France constructed beautiful theories of government.
The Abbe Sieyes' pigeon-holes were full of brilhant con
stitutions. And is not Mexico gifted with a like facility
of political expression ? But did not France and Mexico
forget that the constitution of the individual must come
to the support of the constitution of the state ? — " You
must and you shan't" on paper is nothing without "I
ought and I will " lies deep in the heart and faith of the
man. One of the gi-eat leading virtues of republicanism, is
the moral abstinence of its leaders, who can avoid the

28 ORATION AT THE
temptations to overthrow their own great work, when
it interferes with their own love of office. This selfish
thirst for prominence, .this intense personal egotism which
thinks " I " so necessary to the state, a weakness as tell
ing in war, as it is threatening and embarrassing under
the calm, wise rotation of official life. Did it not help
to destroy French liberty by confusing and over-working
French glory ? Was not the Mexican constitution of 1824
in the main a liberal, genial moulding of its national life,
and was not the first term of the chief office the last free-
working of the instrument ? Why ? Because the end of
official victory was the beginning of personal treachery.
Because the animal love of pelf came before the thought
ful remembrance of right, and when the ballot dropped
the candidate, the candidate seized the bayonet to pierce
the ballot ; forgetting that his country was greater, his
glory surer, his interest more secure, and his children
certain of a prouder inheritance, by obeying that ballot,
than could be secured through any temporary ascendency
of successful treason.
The difference between American liberty and the
liberty which other nations have attempted, is the differ
ence between patience and self-denial, in waiting for the
fair working of a system independent of all personal
defeats, and that seMsh liberty which concludes a system
exploded, because a man or measure is for a time unsuc
cessful. When an American loses his office he keeps his
temper. If he goes home disappointed he is not disaffect
ed. If troops are to be summoned they consist of well-
mounted arguments. If banners are to wave, they glisten
with the issues of the next contest. A better sagacity
teaches him his truest revenge is in watching and expos
ing the defects in the policy or powers of his successful
adversary. This revenge is mounted upon a stump.

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 29
buried in an article, passed in a resolution, and diffused
in intense hand-bills through the land, where thought
may resolve the truth, and opinion decide the contest.
Thus the system lives, power rotates, and Anierica is safe.
Not that we are exempt from any and all the vices of
other nations, — not that we do not love money equal to
the Jew, and power as much as the Hapsburg, — not but
we have jurists that misconstrue the statute, and officials
who degrade their office, great crimes and little mean
nesses which no civil system shall pluck from this human
system. But we possess the virtue to keep those vices in
constitutional subjection to law, to public sentiment, and
the original compact. And when vices are thus repressed
within the limits of personal responsibility without
molesting a better development, then democratic America,
independent of all incidental weaknesses, has taken one
great step towards the improvement and elevation of the
human race.
It is the fashion of some brilliant European satirists to
ask what has the great Kepublic accomplished besides
geography and gasconade. Your pride dilates, your
population increases, and your empire widens, but does
truth expand with them ? You build fine ships, you raise
good cotton, and play a strong game of chess, but is order
as well preserved as in France, has opinion as fair play
as in England, are not high taxes and low morals, grog-
bought votes, hght fingers and heavy speeches, the laws
of your political life? Where is that millennium of mo
tives, that approxim ation to perfection promised by free
institutions ? Democracy means perfection no more than
revolution in government means revolution in human
nature. Our democracy does not pretend to reconstruct
the human mind, hut it removes the hereditary power,
crushing 'excuse for not reconstructing itself It says to

30 ORATION AT THE
the individual hfe and to the national life, I have removed
the great central hinderance to the liberal development
of your thoughts and interests. I have purged your land
of imperial self-elected arbiters; I have thrown open
every attainable position to your ambition, your industry,
your genius and your sense of duty. If the humblest
man keep the law he shall help to make the law, and to
rise by the law. If the greatest man break the law he
shall feel and fall by the compact outraged, the truth for
gotten, and the boon forfeited. Would you be great
among the nations, great among yourselves, true before
God, and the progress for which you are striving ? Would
you justify this radical deviation from the established
systems of the older nations? Would ^y on leave anarchy
no chance, tyranny no plea, envy no snoer, then let the
shivered dream of disappointed Europe be the sweet
realization of successful America. Raise yourselves up
to the level of the good man's hope, above the range of
the bad man's logic. Read, think, watch, work, pray
and wait. Accept all men's thoughts, reject all men's
chains. While you refuse England's tax invoke Eng
land's genius. Call on Shakespeare's deep heart and
brain, born for Lion, Lily, Shamrock, Thistle, or Eagle,
sinking so mysteriously into the whole reflective life of
humanity^ — call on Milton, who shall come to you with a
deep strength that shall do its part in making this liberty
a paradise regained, as to other nations it has ever been
a paradise lost. Call on the Apostles fresh from com
muning with a God. Their faith and their love shall be
the arches of your own amelioration. Let science that
disciphnes, and trade that sharpens, and art, and poetry,
and eloquence which warm and beautify the valley of the
shadow through which you are passing, — let all these
and the failures, and the little wealmesses that add to the

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 31
common experiences, and the great examples which stir
life's better moments, — let the example of Washington,
whose calm features invoke you as they lie looking out
from every letter sent, from every letter received, a per
petual admonition that your confidential as well as your
open purposes be pure and patriotic, — ^let the good and
true of all times and regions, despite of boundary, pass
port or clanship, pour their vast wealth of help into the
advancing march of this hopeful, possible experiment
of American liberty. This is what democracy promises,
justice demands, and humanity deserves. Our democracy
then is non-intervention. Keep off others while you
help yourselves.
It is the fortune, of our political system that the avail
able intelligence of the country has increased more rapid
ly than the evils inseparable from the existence of an
unrestrained hberty of thought and action. Before the
licentiousness of the press came the healthful freedom of
the press. Anterior to official corruption, there presided
over public employment a spirit purified by the memory
of its sufferings, and which prompted the holders of
public trusts to become rather the tutors than the robbers
of those who confided in them. The moral side of our
adversity has raised the community of these States above
and beyond the degenerating influences of our prosperity ;
official life is no longer the leading life, because it has
dissevered thought from place, and has ceased to satisfy
the mental cravings of the unofficial intelligence that has
grown up silently but solidly beyond it.
Notwithstanding the Declaration of Independence,
every man must bend his knee to some one ; yet you will
seldom hear those hinges creaking to a mere " Honorable,"
or " Excellency." A good preacher, a brilliant lecturer,
has more personal influence than a President of the

32 ORATION AT THE
United States. And he keeps longer possession of that
better White House, a substantial duty-domed apprecia
tion. In early days politics were respected for what they
had achieved, now they are tolerated for what they sug
gest. The earher founders are gone, the later and pro-
founder interpreters have sunk away without leaviug
hardly an heir, or a ghost, to their intellectual thrones.
These gigantic elevations have disappeared to be repro
duced in the average elevation of the nation. Denuded
of her great men, America falls back upon the general
splendor of her destiny. No longer relying upon the
gifts of a few superiors, she works more and worshipsless.
To you, O Yirginians ! in times past was soon com
mitted the milk, the brain and the spear of this democ
racy. Your Washington achieved it ; your Jefterson
expounded it ; your Madison and your Monroe admin
istered, strengthened and distributed it to new eras and
to new States, the bread and Bible of their expanding
political life. If Yirginia has been content with this
deeper glory — if she has forgotten to grasp, in her ability
to teach — if, for the ship of State, she has neglected all
other shipping, and like those gifted spirits who have
been too busy with thought to load the body with jewelry
and laces, then has she at least a share in the glory of the
material grandeur that encompasses her more busthng
sister States. If New York city has accumulated more
gold, does not Yirginia's earlier soul put the pulse into
those dumb-shining power-gods, and make them throb
with a truer value. We have streets that could buy
States, and alleys that might purchase Territories. In
this western world. Wall Street is the fiscal crutch upon
which lame Commonwealths limp to fortune. But is not
Yirginia the moral bosom from whence America draws
the nerve and the nourishment of her loftier fate ?

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 33
Like the sun, New York capital penetrates every
crevice of the confederacy, gleaming through the forest
leaves and along the hunter's track, stopping the fire of
the prahie with the lire of its own circulation, and hush
ing the cry of the panther and the wolf in the safer roar
of legitimate trade. Does it not build cities, launch
navies, send the warm heart of philanthropy shivering
into the Arctic circle, where this ever restless capital feels
with its golden hand, among the lonely ices of the North,
for the lost navigator of England? And yet, has not
Virginia's thought and heart, not only sought for, but
found that lost navigator of humanity and the world, the
truth which has made love and happiness possible through
a wisely guarded liberty ?
How poor and cheap seem the rich man's wealth, and
the pioneer's axe and muscle — how weak and inefficient
all the tools and the toils of settlement, clearing a copse,
dodging a tomahawk, breaking a plough, losing a wife or
a crop — how unrecompensed the loss, if Virginia's charter
is not there to cheer and chasten the vicissitude ; if such
sweet music as the Declaration and the Farewell Address
break not once a year upon the new atmosphere to edu
cate the emigrant's ear, his heart and his child, to do their
part in the building up and advancing of this multiplied
galaxy of sovereignties. Yet Virginia is not merely a
great memory, her present facts lie bold and beautiful all
around us. This lovely scenery is full of them ; your up
lands covered so unusually high with available soil ; your
fertile valleys that hoard all the descending nourishment
of the AUeghanies, that boundless mineral wealth, which
near and distant enterprises are plotting to pluck from
the depths of your western ranges ; while from a thousand
intersecting angles innumerable water courses are spark
ling and bounding, and calling with all their passionate
3

34 ORATION AT THE
poetry of liquid utterance for the wheels that shall turn
their beauty to good account. And does not the increase
of plank and railroads projected and accomplished, tell of
the newly awakened energy of the people, and point to an
early removal of those temporary obstacles to an extend
ed and equally diffused prosperity ?
And now, after all that has been uttered and hoped
of this 4th of July, what invoking influence has it upon
the people ? After all the logic, the sentiment, the
exhaustive analysis, the broad reach of national duties
enjoined, the near possession of personal rights commended,
the imagery, and the pathos with which genius and grati
tude have gorged this heroic hour, does it really tone and
admonish the advancing fortunes of this nation ? are we
a wiser and better commtmity for its coming ? Does it
drop its wholesome example of love and faith into the
unseen rills of private conduct, purifying both business
and pleasure? Does it pour its glorious examples of
courage, magnanimity and self-sacrifice into the wider
channels of public achievement, winging our leaders to a
loftier patriotism, and so chastening the temptations which
beset them, that purity and honesty shall become the
most fascinating forms of prominent endeavor ? As the
earlier and the earnest Fourth recedes, will not the daz
zling glare of a rapidly expanding success by degrees efface
the instructive gloom of the past, until the later Fourth
retains only the noise without the moral, the cracker
without the flash of high warning ?
Is not every individual freeman by nature a despot,
and is not freedom really the promptings of a disappoint
ed love of tyranny, that writhes to see the one despot
enjoy what all crave but cannot share ? Is not New Eng
land with her overwhelming anti-slavery majority, the
bitterest slave-driver, when she emigrates southward ;

TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFEESON. 35
and do they not say that Howard the philanthropist was
exacting in his own household ?
The salvation of our system so far is, that wealth does
not act in politics, and therefore it cannot plot ; while
wealth only thinks in trade, it may be sharp, narrow and
selfish, but it is not dangerous to the State, because it
does not attempt to corrupt the State. Its money bags
during the rich man's life are but the harmless furniture
of a bank vault, a railroad contract, and when he dies, it
only sends a few light headed-heirs reeling to the Colise
um or the Boulevard. But let us imagine Mr. Astor
smitten with an active persevering passion for politics.
Shall I say, or you say what office he could not buy ? If
a man with one-tenth of his wealth, and no more intellect,
could be a Governor and a U. S. Senator, I do not pretend
to point to the harbor his golden rudder would not steer
him into. Not that corrupt politicians for the present
are anything but laughable nonentities, with no great
men to think for them, and few rich ones to pay for them,
yet the great danger is that, with the immense facilities
for accumulating wealth, a class of rich intellectual men
must rise between the great present strength of the coun
try, the honest working man, and the penniless dema
gogue. The rich man too thoughtful to be idle, too
wealthy to work, must do something, and that something
will be the plotting for power ; this has ever been in all
countries the destiny of that class, because politics is a
compromise between sensuality and Hterature. It has the
excitement of dissipation with the thoughtfulness of a
mental effort. All experience proves that our virtues
thrive best upon a threatened competency. When we pos
sess enough to be comfortable but not the overplus that
begets self-sufficiency and indifference. Now the mo
mentum of the old truth is still upon us. The great

36 OEATION AT THE TOMB OF THOMAS JEFFEESON.
names burned in fire upon our hearts still infiuence us.
We are a working and acquiring people. Idle wealth
has not yet begun to actively influence industry nor way
lay honesty. But must not that dread day come, when
the replenishing element of emigration has ceased, when
the vast solitudes are exhausted of their fertility by the
drain of central cities, and silk skirts are trailed upon the
Rocky Mountains, when those great names of our past
that look so solemn and so beautiful to our present grati
tude shall be somewhat dimmed by years, and newer eras
of experience, and more dazzhng forms of selfishness
shall have brought by contrast distrust upon the existence
of Washington ; are there any elements or symptoms in
our present life that give us the right to place ourselves
above history, that we shall not sink back again, first to
demagogues' dupes, then autocrats' serfs, as surely as the
freest land touches at its farthest extremity, geographically,
upon the despot's vast cold iron home ?
Yet the sphit of the day is hope not history ; before
we reach that far alternative and descent, let us believe
that new and greater elevations beckon to us from the
mists of the future. Let us beheve that we are to be the
founders of purer races, discoverers of greater truths, the
destroyers of evfls that have obstructed the better growth
of past ages ; and with the inspiring faith lifting us above
the meaner promptings of this material life, we shall reach
& deeper possibility of deviation from the revolving
periods of decay.
Then, if that decay must come. He who holds us in
the hollow of his hand wiU but fold his dissolving children
more warmly to his central bosom, and we shall feel how
good it was for us that the shadows of lesser worlds should
pass over us, and through change make us fit for the un
changeable.

SPEECH

AT THE

GREAT MEETING IN UNION SQUARE,
APKIL 20TH, 1861.

Fellow-Citizens :
The iron hail at Fort Sumter rattles on every northern
breast, and has shot away the last vestige of national and
personal forbearance. A loaf of bread on its way to a
starving soldier was struck from his mouth by a shot from
his own brother. You might saturate the Cotton States
with all the turpentine of North Carolina; you might
throw upon them the vast pine forests of Georgia, then
bury the Gulf storms' sharpest lightning into the combusti
ble mass, and you would not redden the southern horizon
with so angry a glow as flashed along the Northern heart
when the flames of Fort Sumter reached it. To-day,
bewildered America, with her torn flag and her broken
charter, looks for you to guard the one and restore the
other. How Europe stares and liberty shudders, as from
State after State that flag falls, and the dream breaks!
Hereafter Southern history will be as bare as the pole from
which the sundered pennant sinks, and treason parts with

38 SPEECH AT THE
the last rag that concealed its hideousness. I know how
common and how easy it was to dissolve the Union in our
mouths. Dangerous words like dangerous places possess
a fearful fascination, and we have sometimes looked down
from the heights of our prosperity with an irresistible dis
position to jump off.
This old ghost of disunion is at last a verity. For
years it has been skulking semi-officiaUy about the Capitol.
Through the whole range of our parhamentary history
every great question, from a tariff to a Territory, has felt
its clammy touch. Did it not drop its death's head into
the tariff scales of '33, hoping to weigh the duties down
to a conciliation level ? Did it not shoot its ghastly logic
into the storm of '20, and frighten our soundest statesman
ship into that crude calm called the Missouri Compromise ?
Did it not sit grinning upon the deck of all our naval
battles, hoping to get a turn at the wheel, that it might
run the war of 1812 upon a rock ? Did it not stand up
upon the floor of Congress and shake its bony finger in
the calm face of Washington ? And did not our fathers,
who stood unmoved the shock of George the Third's
cannon, shudder in the presence of this spectre, when they
thought how the infant Republic might be cast away upon
its bleak and milkless breast ? Then it was a thin, skulk
ing, hatchet-faced ghost, living on the crust of partial local
politics ; at last, fed upon the granaries of Northern and
Southern fanaticism, it has come to be a rotund, well-fed,
corpulent disaster. Southern passion may put on war
paint ; Southern statesmanship may attempt to organize a
pique into an empire, to elevate a sulk into a sacrament,
by marrying disappointment to revolution and reducing a
temporary constitutional minority into a hopeless organic
political disaster, yet Northern interests and Northern pride
will never, while there is a dollar to spend or an arm to

GREAT MEETING IN UNION SQUARE. 39
strike,' acquiesce in the disruption of this world-envied,
God-favored, and gulf-bound Confederacy.
Talk of the wise statesmanship of the South ! Had
they allowed Kansas to become a Free State, without that
vindictive imperiousness of opposition which proclaimed
them to be quite as much opposed to Free Government as
to Free Soil, Jeff & Co. would have been in possession of
the National Government at this moment. Although the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise awoke the North from
its deep sleep upon the slave question, yet the most eco
nomical outlay of prudence would have continued them
in possession of the Government for an indefinite future.
Then Mexico would have been possible without the awful
leap which copies her morals without the hope of possess
ing her territories. South Carolina once lived upon a
potato to rout a king, and she is fast going back to that
immortal vegetable, in order to crown a fallacy. Our
Republicanism means the whole nation, or it means
nothing. Together the parts temper each other, asunder
the aristocracy of the slave power makes equality a myth,
and the free radical North less safely Democratic.
You may break friendship, break hearts, and call
conventions to break laws, but nature stands and runs on
through the gap you have made with tongue or pen.
What! split the Blue Ridge that joins Pennsylvania to
Virginia! No Mississippi winding through our States!
No Gulf wave moaning on our sand-beach ! No sugar
cane sweetening our landscape !
When the South seceded, not a contract made for the
meanest consideration in the farthest Northern village, but
feels and is wronged by an act which withdraws the great
enfolding area of the Union from its promised and univer
sally supposed protection. If Washington is to be no
longer known as the successful contender for a combined

40 SPEECH AT THE
and self-regulating nationality ; if Bishop Berkeley's star
of empire has crumbled away into belligerent asteroids,
and we are to fall, like Caesar, at the base of this black
Pompey's pillar — we shall at least go into this holy battle
for the Constitution with no law broken, and no national
duty unfulfilled. We have not stolen a single ship, or a
pound of powder, or a dollar of coin to sully the sacred
tramp with which patriotism pursues robbery and rebel
lion. All the ills of the South could have been remedied
within the Constitution — all their wrongs righted by the
victory of future votes. Shall I tell you what Secession
means ?
It means ambition in the Southern leaders and misap
prehension in the Southern people. Its policy is to
imperialize slavery, and to degrade and destroy the only
free Republic in the world. It is a fog of the brain, and
a poison at the heart. Dodging the halter, it walks upon
a volcano which may explode if ever a law-loving people
are driven to extremes in maintaining its own national
life. We have not come here to talk up a man, but keep
up a flag; not to vindicate a creed, but nullify a crime ;
not to seek the falling fruits of patronage, but to save the
beautiful and wide-spreading tree upon which all our
blessings grow. Party and partyisms are dead ; only grim,
black powder is alive now. Who talks of Tammany or
Mozart Hall? Who haunts the coalhole or the wood
pile, when all our soul's fuel is on fire for flag and country ?
Did not Washington fight seven years, break ice on the
Delaware, break bones and pull triggers on Monmouth
field, send ten thousand bleeding feet to where no blood
ever comes, and pass from clouds of smoke to archways of
flowers — for what? That States should defy their best
guardian, M'hicli is the nation, insult history, and make
Republicanism impossible ?

GEEAT MEETING IN UNION SQUARE. 41
Here in this city of our love and pride, this cradle of
the civil life of Washington, where despotism sheathed
its last sword and constitutional liberty swore its flrst oath ;
where steam first boiled its way to a throne, and art, and
commerce, and finance, and all the social amenities
marshalled their forces to the sweet strain of the first
Inaugural — here, where government began and capital
centres, is the sheet-anchor of American loyalty. Nothing
so disappoints secession as the provoking fidelity of New
York to the Constitution.
Jeff expected to pay his army in Wall Street, and
pick up a secessionist under every lamp-post. Fifty
thousand men to-day tread on this fallacy. Gold is
healthy, gold is loyal, gold is determined ; it flows easy
because the war is not to subject or injure any one, but to
bring back within the protecting folds of the Constitution
an erring and rebellious brother ; a brother whom we have
trusted and toasted, fought with side by side on the battle
field, voted for at the ballot-box, showered honor after
honor upon his recreant head, while that brother was
poisoning the milk in his mother's breast and striking a
parricidal blow at a paternal Government which has
protected and prospered us all as no people were ever so
prospered and protected. Heretofore in our differences
we have shouldered ballots instead of bayonets. With a
quiet bit of paper in our hands we have marched safely
through a hundred battles about tariff, bank, anti-liquor,
anti-rent, and all those social and political questions about
which a free people may amicably differ. If slavery can
not be appeased with the old life of the ballot, depend
upon it the bayonet will only pierce new wounds in its
history. We have heretofore kept all our lead moulded
into type, that peaceably and intellectually we might
enter the Southern brain, until passion and precipitation

42 SPEECH AT THE
have forced us to melt down that type into a less friendly
visitor. Kossuth says that bayonets think, and ours have re
solved in solemn convention to think deeply, act prompt
ly, and end victoriously.
Do you wonder to-day to see that flag flying over all
our reawaked national life, no longer monopolized by
mast-head, steeple, or liberty-pole, but streaming forth a
camp signal from every private hearthstone, breaking out
in love-pimples all down our garments, running like wild
vine-flowers over whole acres of compact anxious citizen
ship ? Why has that tender maiden turned her alabaster
hands into heroic little flag-staffs, which, with no loss of
modesty, unveils to the world her deep love of country ?
Do you see that infant tottering under rosettes, and
swathed in the national emblem by foreboding parents,
who would protect its growth with this holy talisman of
safety ? Do you see, too, those grave old citizens, sharpened
by gain-seeking, and sobered with law-expounding, invade
their plain exterior peacock hues, which proclaim such
tenacity to a flag that has fanned, like an angel's wing,
every form of our prosperity and pride ?
It seems hard for philosophy to divine how any section
of the country, so comprehensively prosperous, could allow
a mean jealousy of another portion a little more wealthy
and populous to so hurry it on into rebellion, not against
us, but a common Government and a common glory, to
which both are subject and both should love.
Does not each State belong to all the States, and should
not all the States be a help and a guide to each State?
Louisiana's sugar drops into Ohio's tea-cup, and should
not every palace built on the Fifth Avenue nod its head
amicably to whatever cotton receipts its bills ? Over-pride
of locality has been the scourge of our nationality.

GEEAT MEETING IN UNION SQUAEE. 43
When our thirty-one stars broke on the 2^orth Star,
did not Texas as well as Pennsylvania light up the bleak
arctic sky ?
When the old flag flrst rose over the untouched gold
of California, did not Georgia and New York join hands
in unveiling the tempting ore?
Virginia has seceded, and carried with it my political
fathers, Washington and Jefferson. The State has allowed
their tombs to crumble as well as their principles. Out
law their sod ! Who will dare to ask me for my passport
at the grave of Washington ?

SI^EECEC

AT THE

WAR MEETING IN UNION SQUARE,
JULY 15TH, 1862.

FELLow-CrnzENS :
In this hour of alienation, tumult, and disaster, no
man, however humble, has a right to sit still when the
nation has sprung to its feet, and the Union lies bleeding
upon its back.
We have come here in the darkest hour of national
existence to declare before the world that the unity and
nationahty of America shaU not be dissolved, either in the
swamps of the Chickahominy or the Council Chambers of
Paris or London. We are all, under moral martial law,
now bound to obey every draft upon the brain, the heart,
the purse, and the hfe, to serve a Government whose
authority has dropped upon us with the gentleness of a
flower, and yet shielded us with the strength of a giant.
We may have our weaknesses, and these weaknesses may
serve to point an Enghsh sneer, or round a Southern
taunt ; but they never yet have succeeded in vitiating the
grander points of our national character, neither have

45 SPEECH AT THE
they, for one moment, obstructed the beneficent action of
our hitherto unassailable institutions.
If secession is right, then all order, all regulated society,
is wrong. If secession cannot be put down without war,
then war is the highest duty and best business of the
American citizen — more profitable than merchandise,
more beautiful than poetry, and, for the time being, as
sacred as the ministry itself True, we may fail some
times ; so do all business and sciences until experience
teaches them. By degress we shall learn the art of blood,
and mayhap the foe will find the Yankee shop-boy an
efficient chronic portable slaughter-house. So far we have
fought half tiger and half brother. No half man accom
plishes much. We must be all tiger now, that we may be
all brothers by and by.
If fevers and blunders have wasted the strength and
tampered with the glory of our armies, the beautiful
enthusiasm of this day's proceedings illustrates how
heartily and abundantly we try to redeem our errors and
relieve our heroes. Was it not a sublime spectacle to see
the President of the United States pouring the balm of his
sympathizing Presidential presence in the serried ranks
of the wearied army of the Potomac — Abraham Lincoln
confronting Geo. B. McCi-ellan? The embodied repre
sentative of the national authority shaking hands with the
genius of American safety — the great rail-splitter reproach
ing the railers against the noble army and its gifted
chieftain. When Abraham Lincoln was nominated, I laughed at
the convention ; when he was elected, I trembled for the
country ; but since he has been inaugurated, I have learned
to love and honor the man who has so faithfully wielded
the national resources. When the South struck at the
President, they fired at a man in the stocks, cooped up in

WAE MEETING IN UNION SQUAEE. 47
judicial decisions, bound down by legislative restrictions,
warned away from all philanthropic mischief by the
wholesome hostility of an adverse popular vote. They
found him in quiet, helpless, party paralysis, and only left
him an aroused, wounded, angry national giant, with all
the resources of all parties at his command.
The South sneered at our poor, under-fed, over- worked
soldiers, who fled from Bull Run; but now the world
laughs at a whole community who ran away from a
shadow. Our soldiers left a few arms and knapsacks on
the field, while they threw away long years of happiness
and prosperity. Dafly are we taunted with their superior
ity in arms and birth. They claim Washington, as if
their deeds had made him. Out of the 200,000 troops
who fought in the War of the Revolution, the South did
not furnish 20,000. But for the North, Washington
would have gone down to posterity with a halter around
his neck. It was Northern hands that moulded his
Virginia clay into an immortal statue.
Compared with our solid successes, what have the South
achieved in this war? Two or three land checks and one
steam fright. The ghost of the Merrimac will haunt the
nation for centuries. By diverting the base of operations
from the James River, it has cost us $100,000,000. That
sum would have built us 300 Monitors, which would have
blockaded all intervention.
The march of events now means the march of armies.
The progress of our institutions depends at last upon the
speed of our bullets ; when they rain the Union is safe,
when they slacken the Union reels. War is a cruel alter
native, but not more so than a peace which removes from
danger without relieving us of disgrace, disorder, and
disintegration. We want not lamentation over this war,
but enlistments in the war. Let us shed no tears but

48 SPEECH AT THE WAR MEETING IN UNION SQUARE.
volunteers. We cannot succeed in this gigantic war until
all classes are worked up to the thrusting point.
There must be a fighting man from every family and
every calling ; a fighting lawyer, a fighting doctor, a fight
ing priest, ay, and a fighting dandy. Now is the time for
white kids to redeem themselves. Now is the time for all
that army of fashionable loungers who have been growling
all their lives for lack of opportunity. Now is the time
for them to rise, strike and be immortal. While the South
have sent a thousand men to battle, we have sent a hun
dred. While they have mounted science to lead on their
armies to victory, we have too often skipped experience
and thrust politics on horseback to save the country.
Twenty-three millions of people are tired of being told
that they are outwitted because they are outnumbered.
If we fall now we will be the oddest ruin on record.
Rome was four hundred years dying of her own corrup
tions. We, instead of being enervated by luxury or dis
comfited by invasion, go down with all our strength and
all our wealth, and all our wits about us. Destroyed by
a remark, our great light blown out by the passionate
breath of partisan oratory. I, for one, can never believe
in such a death. The ablest sword of the age is hanging
by our side. The heaviest purse on the continent is in
our pocket ; the noblest cause for which man can draw his
brother's blood, calls him to the battle-field, and if we
wait patiently and act vigorously the greatest victory of
modern times is in our grasp — the victory of the Republic
over itself, the victory of democrat virtues over aristocrat
vices, the victory of law, order, and Government over dis
union, distraction, conflagration and damnation.

SPEECH

MILITARY AND FINANCIAL POLICY OP THE
NATIONAL GOVEENMENT

LEGISLATURE AT ALBANY,
JANUARY 23d, 1862.

Me. Speaker :
I ought, perhaps, sir, to apologize to the House for
inflicting upon it, last week, a resolution which might
seem inconsistent with the gravity and wisdom of this
body. I should not, sir, have noticed the gentleman's
resolution had it not represented the spirit of a class of
croakers whose feverish officiousness has accomplished
much mischief in the past and may attempt much more
in the future. Towards the gentleman from New York I
entertain, sir, a due regard. His position and worth
entitle him to that regard. But, sir, my risibilities were
too vigorously invoked to restrain me from demonstrating
the absurdity of his resolution by identifying him person
ally with its execution. I came to Albany, sir, in a civil
capacity. Hoping to do my part in legislating for the
best interests of the city and State of New York, I brought
with me only a few plain clothes, without cocked h|it or
regimentals. Croswell's Manuel and not Hardee's Tactics
4

50 SPEECH IN THE
was my guide. But, sir, that gentleman's resolution,
urging an aggressive movement by our army, supposes a
thorough knowledge on our part of the propriety and
possibility of such an advance, the preparations, capacity
and completeness of all the elements composing that vast
array of armed destructiveness. Certainly it implies, too,
that all this formidable force is quiet only because we are
silent ; that it is waiting for our resolution to give itself
resolution to advance. Sir, it resolves this body into a
generalissimo of the army of the Republic — it constitutes
the Legislature of the State the commander-in-chief of the
national crisis — it substitutes popular impatience for the
¦cautious combinations of scientific strategy. In theory it
¦deposes the President — deposes the Secretary of War —
deposes the military plan of the campaign — deposes the
«ommon sense of the country, which is patiently awaiting
the hour when the soldier's drill shall save the nation's life.
George Washington, sir, was seven years emancipating
a less extensive country, and with not half the foes to con
tend against. It took the combined forces of France and
England three times the period our army has been en-
¦camped upon the Potomac to breach successfully a single
fortress by the Black Sea. The Richmond Examiner, I
think, gives us the best practical solution of Gen. McClel-
lan's inactivity. That partial journal declares that these
Northern mudsills and cowardly assassins are by science
and drill becoming rapidly transformed into veteran
troops. What, sir, would be the momentous consequences
of a move of that immense host if it should be defeated.
Sir, the beautiful dream of our unity would be forever
broken — the glorious volume of Constitutional history
ignominiously closed; Europe clamorous for Southern
recognition ; England imperative ; France jubilant ; the
South a nation and we a by-word, laughed at by our own

LEGISLATURE AT ALBANY, 51
children and lorded over by all more fortunate contem
porary powers. The Congress of the United States is
sitting within sound of the drum-beat of the American
army and with its General in conference. Yet that Con
gress has not suggested an advance. The smoke of its
thousand camp-fires intercepts the prospect of the White
House, and yet its inmate urges no forward movement.
The resources of the country have been taxed to their
utmost capacity in maintaining the gigantic struggle, y et the
people are quiet. Though the banker has been attacked
oftener than the traitor — though the sword has as yet only
entered our financial sides and richly has gushed forth the
golden blood — though it has neither reached the traitor's
heart nor shivered the traitor's cause, yet capital is silent,
because it knows how silently the forces for its redemption
are accumulating — how calmly and completely leader and
follower are learning their leaden lesson, so that victory
may follow victory as regiment succeeds regiment steadily
and brilliantly to the final consummation.
I thought, sir, the " On to Richmond " cry was dead.
I thought it was choked in the death-rattle of its own
victims. I thought it died with the shrieks of the dying
at Manassas. Who shall bring back its dead ? Who
shall live down its shame — the pride it wounded, the
nations it shocked, the enemies it made, the money it lost ?
Every home in America rocked under it. It sped the
ball that shattered the heart of Cameron — it forged the
iron that shackled the limbs of the noble Corcoran.
Thousands of Northern heroes were hurried by it down to
Southern dungeons, welcoming famine, fevers, suffocation
and despair, rather than walk forth in God's sunshine
under the sacrilegious shelter of a Southern oath.
Sir, I thought the " On to Richmond " cry was dead-
dead ! — buried under the tramp of six hundred thousand

52 SPEECH IN THE
drilling, loyal troops. I thought it was dead, sir, until I
saw it rise from the resurrection table of the 9 th District.
I hope, sir, that I appreciate that gentleman's patriotic
anxiety for his country's success. I know how hard it is
in these hard times to keep our national sympathies from
overflowing the limits of State duties. Our bodies are in
Albany, but our hearts are at Washington with a suffering,
bleeding, but I hope not a sinking country. For God's
sake let us be anxious, but not officious. We cannot save
the nation by losing our patience or forgetting our duties.
The civfl relations of the Constitution suppose it the right
and interest of the States to contribute advice as well as
money in great national exigencies. Mutual co-operation
and confidence, engendering mutual dependence and
sympathy, tend to strengthen, the bands that bind the
State to the nation; but the genius of war when
in action looks not for statesmanship to aim its iron
blow. Its authority is exclusive and peremptory because its
knowledge is pecuhar, and the danger it is to master
sudden, fearful, and relentless. Confronting no civil argu
ment, it can profit by no civil experience. If European
rulers quell revolt more decisively, they are also less
innocent of the causes which provoke popular commotion.
We may have committed errors in attempting to suppress
this rebellion, but have we not most righteously succeeded
in destroying all arguments for its existence. When the
history of this huge crime is written, the historian will find
but one fault with the United States Government ; it was
too angelic for the fiendish deviltry of the hour. There
was one white head lately in the White House, who might
have planned our deliverance. One trembling hand now
withering in village obscurity which might have shut off
this flow of fraternal blood from the Ohio to the Gulf.

LEGISLATURE AT ALBANY. 53
Stopped it with his pen before he wrote the Lecompton Mes
sage, stopped it with his sword had he dropped it in time
upon the defenceless fortifications. Shall you and I throw
a napkin over the dead body of that man's reputation ?
And, sir, has it come to this ? In the 19th century, in the
country of Washington, in the age of universal suffrage,
with aU the elements of knowledge, with all the imple
ments for its wide-spread diffusion, with a home to love, a
church to warn and a ballot to protect us, the pride and
progress of America has dropped into a cartridge-box. A
voting and debating people have been obliged to place an
eleven-inch columbiad in the chair to decide their differ
ences ?
That animal appeal to which barbarians resort in the
beginning, our enhghtened humanity has been compelled"
to undertake at last. The' brain of the nation has fled to
its muscle for protection. Heaven seems to have decreed
that our greatest blessings should be bom of slaughter and
contention — that the noblest aims which sanctify life
should demand the greatest sacrifice of life. No great
organic political principle, since the overthrow of the
Philistines, has ever been settled without blood — the blood
of the foreign foe in achieving the national independence;
the blood of the domestic traitor in repressing sectional
ambition, and assuring the unity and concentration of
national authority. Hence the alacrity with which good
men rush to righteous conflict. Hence the enthusiasm
with which we have shivered the Peace Party, and care
fully packed away its broken crockery in Forts Warren
and Lafayette. I yield to no man in sympathy for this
war. Over my Democracy waves no white feather.
There is nothing so poisonous as peace when a nation is
going to pieces. There is nothing so healthy as blood
when healthy things are to be bled for. There is no visi(,oi

54 SPEECH IN THE
so welcome as the crimson hquid whose vital flow shall
stop the heart-beat of a nation's wTongs.
On that dark and dreadful current, dethroned and dis
banded States must float back into the safe anchorage of
American unity. Until this comes talk of peace !
You might as well arm a regiment with rosebuds to
storm a battery, as attempt to drop peace into the rifled
muzzle of this iron controversy. Like the conjurer who,
by the firing of his gun, revealed in all its beauty the
diamond ring which had been crushed before our eyes, so
shall the firing of the national musketry restore the
crumbling jewels of our nationality in aU its priceless
worth and purity. While we feel all this, hope all this,
and will aid all this, with our sympathies and resources,
is it not wise in us to leave to the chosen national leaders
the wielding of the national difficulties? The local in
terests of the State are important enough to engross all our
official time and energies. The recommendations ¦ of the
Governor's Message alone Avould conscientiously occupy
all the hundred days. There are the harbor defences to
be completed. Henceforth advancing America marches
armor-clad to her destiny. The gentle robe in which she
has confidingly enclosed her strength is too fragile and
perilous a garment to guard her life from the tragic pos
sibilities of universal selfishness.
Unsuspectingly we have left unlocked our garden gates.
Meaning no harm, we have believed in none. Invoking
the love of aU men, we have invited all to enter and par
take of the rich fruits of this Western Paradise.
Hereafter we confide less, and arm more. Southern
treason has torn down the smile-embroidered curtain which
concealed the gigantic proportions of European malignity.
Yankee republicanism is a dangerous success. Yankee
trade and Yankee ingenuity impertinent competition. No

LEGISLATURE AT ALBANY. 55
state paper can argue down their criminality, unless Parrot,
Minnie and Dalghren, obtrude th^ir gaping mouths into
the discussion. Strew these vigorous debaters, in prodigal
profusion, along every shore, inlet, promontory, headland,
or highway that faces the approach of the storm, and then
a child may sit in the State Department and direct our
foreign policy, with a scratch of its pen. A defenceless
coast is a defenceless and paralyzing point in the wisest
diplomacy. How morosely European statesmanship con
templates us because we will not announce our national
death ; because we will not place our finger upon our pulse
and say it has stopped ; because we will not permit trans
atlantic cupidity to measure our corpse and divide our
assets. Did not a. leading British Minister startle the
world when he so intelligently instructed it, by declaring
that we are fighting to gi"atify a lust for empire ? Had
this " Star of Empire " consented to have crumbled into
submissive asteroids, how the virtuous statesman would
have recoiled in horror at these dollar-drowned, gain-
loving, self-abased cravens. If the old Napoleon's fiotilla
at Boulogne had landed the Grand Army on Portsmouth
beach would the lust of empire have marched the Cold
stream guards in double quick from London ? Are St.
James's or Hyde Park any more England's household
possessions than are Florida and Louisiana oiu's by right
of material purchase, by intention of one theoretical and
constitutional interlacing of all interests, rights and terri
tories, into that grand indivisible assimilation which we
feel and know to be the great indestructible National
American Unity ? Florida with all her swamps and
alligators cannot break this charmed circle of States with
out detracting so much from my wealth and my power as
the citizen of a guaranteed and unbroken national posses
sion.

56 SPEECH IN THE
New York with all her elements of empire has no option
that releases her from the irrevocable contributions of her
varied power to the common Union. Never can we stand
as an equal before all nations unless we firmly insist upon
the full proportions to which our nation's manhood has
expanded. No government in the world is more interested
in maintaining the ascendency of compact national author
ity over aspiring local dependencies than that of the
British Empire. Unity is the source of all its political
supremacy. Unloose these bonds and the charm of its
invincibflity vanishes. If former English statesmen could
spend $1,500,000,000 to deter the theory of the French
Revolution from reacting on the stabihty of the English
throne, surely our position should invoke the sympathy
of all who are not merely interested in thrones, but what
is far more important, the preservation of national life
everywhere. When the dissolution of the Irish Union
was discussed in the House of Commons, George Canning
startled the whole British people with what was then
thought to be the strongest historical argument that could
be opposed to it, when he said, " What ! dissolve the
Union ? Restore the Heptarchy ! " The ghosts of seven
weakened and helpless kingdoms were artfully stalked in
upon the debate to frighten down the logic of the opposition.
I am not one of these who predict or prefer England's
downfall. If there must be among nations, as there often
is among families or sects, one master power of the world,
England's supremacy is least detrimental to civilization.
Her selfishness is grasping but her intelligence is reforma
tory. She educated us to obey and then defy her. There
is more merit in confusing her strength than lording over
her decline. England knows that the loss of our unity is
the only safeguard for the perpetuation of her supremacy.
By degrees we are underselling her in all the markets of

LEGISLATURE AT ALBANY. 57
the world. Soon we shall be the exclusive manufacturers
for this continent. As long as slavery was a part of our
united strength nothing could be so loathsome to British
morahty. But when the subjection of an inferior race
became the means of destroying the rivalry of a kindred
people, no fabled fairy every sprung suddenly upon a
desolate moor so entrancing to the British gaze as the
once deformed and degraded features of American Slavery
rises out of the dreary contest. Thus we find England
coaling disunion at her islands and shaking hands with it
in her palaces. Yet at last we shall explode the diseased
sophistry of Southern State Rights with one hand, while
we brush with the other from the white foam of the
Atlantic the dark monopoly of her imperious flag.
Twenty-three millions of free compact invincible people
have decreed it, and God Almighty will ratify it. Denuded
of this morbid yearning for universal possession, Britannia's
destiny is still a noble one. Let her civilize India,
emancipate Ireland, and respect America.
In connection with the great calamity of the hour, we
are to consider the serious question of increased taxation.
How to pay the expenses of national salvation. How to
give up our money, in order to keep up our Government.
Freedom from heavy taxation has been a crowning exulta
tion of American institutions. No nation ever embraced so
many facilities for acquiring wealth, with so little cost for
its protection. It is no wonder that we have clutched iron
blunderingly, when we have been so gorged with gold.
If the war continues until July 1863, our debt will be
$1,200,000,000. This includes all accrued, audited, or
outstanding liabilities of every character. Now it is as
sumed that the property of the nation is worth $16,000,-
000,000, and that we have in our immediate possession
$10,500,000,000. So we part with less than one-tenth of

58 SPEECH IN THE
what we possess and a little more than one-sixteenth of
what we own to secure all that remains. Cannot this
thrifty sum ensure the continuance of national existence ?
Why, sir, Lord Macaulay tells us that the Caliph Omar
conquered all Asia on barley water — showered the wealth
of twenty kingdoms among the crown jewels of the de
scendants of the Prophet. Allowing the greater expense
in the outlay for implements of modern warfare, and the
habit of extracting from our barley something stronger
than water, shall we not bring under the plain bunting
of the Union a more magnificient empire than ever bent
to the red turban of the Infidel ? Most of our debt abides
with us, and is never really subtracted from the sum total
of our possessions. Seven per cent, interest upon the
whole debt in '63 will be less than one per cent, upon all
our available means now. Without allowing for the
natural though of course diminished increase in the coun
try's resources then, if unforeseen difficulties should run up
our total indebtedness to $2,000,000,000, the successful
achievement of all we have warred for and been taxed for
would impart a prestige and inspiration to our position, the
impetus of which would largely increase the facilities for
liquidation. Nowwe are to raise bytax $150,000,000 for the
ensuing year, to pay interest and civil and war expenses
then we could certainly raise $200,000,000, paying the in
terest on the whole debt, the current expenses of the Gov
ernment and giving us some $30,000,000 or $40,000,000
annually to the sinking fund for the gradual extinction of
both principal and interest. Since the beginning of the
war we have saved $100,000,000 in imports and gained
$30,000,000 on exports. This $100,000,000 of imports, em
ploying so many seamen and so much tonnage to freight
them, are all diverted, more or less, into the expense and
material of the war. It is fair to presume that 20,000,000

LEGISLATURE AT ALBANY. 59
of Northern people can wean five dollars a head on an
average from their usual expenses to the service of the
Government annually. The amount saved through
economy and timidity, when brought out by tax laws, will
almost pay the whole interest on the accumulatory debt.
We buy one pah less of patent-leather boots, the difierence
loads and fires a 64-pounder. The waste of war after all
is not much greater than the extravagance of a prosperous
peace. I doubt if there is much difference between the
loss of money for balls which do not hit the enemy and
the waste of purchased articles which do not benefit the
individual. Almost all luxuries enervate, and destroy
life. One 32-pounder costs $9 to fire it, this is not a
greater total loss than 6 bottles of champagne uselessly
rioted over. The saving from toys, confectionery, bouquets,
extravagant sOks and laces, is simply a diversion of invest
ment to more iron, wood, coal and powder. A greater
variety of investments, of course, diffuse more wealth — but
there is not in this case so vast a disparity that we cannot
tolerate it for a long time, contemplating the blessings at
issue. The outlay for bread, clothing, and healthful
luxuries and pleasures, in moderation, do not more benefit
peaceful citizenship than the sacred expenditure of powder
and shot to blow out of existence the disturbers of a bene
ficent government, benefit society everywhere. All
discussion on this momentous question of revenue resolves
itself into the form, and not the fact of acquiring it. Un
expired whiggery revels in the memory of the old inflation,
and is delighted that the pressing necessities of the govern
ment rush to the legal tender of an unsupported treasury
note issue.
The old deposit-moving Andrew Jackson Democracy
were alarmed to see the ancient cautious, pay-as-you-go
policy, that so long mled the country, now obliged to be

60 SPEECH IN THE
swept away by the awful tempest that prostrates all peace-
framed precedents. Necessity puts finance as well as men
under martial law. If money must be had, the issue must
come first, and taxation come afterwards.
As blood is the essential element of all animal life, so
is taxation the golden life-stream that supplies the veins
and arteries of all healthy governmental action. But
supply from taxation is slow, and exhaustion from war
constant. The gap between them then must be bridged
with paper. In time of trouble gold, though hard and
enduring, is the first to fly from danger, and rush timidly
behind bars and bolts, down into old stockings, and up into
sly chimney corners, leaving poor weak paper to equip
armies, fight battles, and save nations. Yet with a willing
and able nation, there is no excuse for a single dollar of
paper not being followed up by a corresponding tax to
meet it. I beheve that the pressure of a healthy public
sentiment will be too great for our federal rulers to hazard
their good fame, by neglecting to throw immediate and
substantial safeguards around an emergency that is so
deeply to affect the interests of ourselves and our posterity.
Tax now, and the debt of our children will not be wanton
ly increased by the necessity of paying interest on the
principal borrowed to pay interest on the original principal.
Tax now, and you check the temptation inherent in all
public life and human nature to squander freely what is
to be paid back indefinitely and to be watched indifferent
ly. Come on then, 0 tax.
The journey of an Alpine traveller, though often ob
structed by the grand and dangerous chasms, is less fearful
than the awful void of an empty treasury yawning before
a nation marching to its own deliverance.
When bankruptcy takes the field, famine drops the
sword and valor yields the conflict. That pale hand

LEGISLATURE AT ALBANY. 61
stretched forth from the ghastly ranks, tells us the soldier
is there to strike, to bleed and die, but not to starve.
Taxation is the Nation's consent, spoken in gold. Let
it flow freely from the long accumulations of plethoric
peace. Leave nothing untaxed, that would boast its
purchased share in the victory it shall secure.
Tax the boots upon our feet, that we may walk forth
more freely in this free land. Tax the handkerchief in
our pocket, that it may help buy off as well as wipe off" the
tears that gush from our national troubles. Tax the lover's
love letter, for no snowy bosom will he embrace more
soft and nourishing than the gentle government that en
folds him. Tax the cradle of the sleeping infant, that the
mother's foot may rock more safely the generation which
is to be blessed by its fruits. Tax the commimion-cup,
for next to religion there is nothing so sacred to the heart
of humanity as the Republicanism we would snatch from
desolation. Perhaps there is no levy we will be called upon to pay
more interesting in its outlay than those ordinances of the
New York Common Council appropriating the first mil
lion at the commencment of the war. That money paid
for the first drum-beat that called the loyal North to arms.
It brought out the jaunty 7th and the sterling 71st and
the heroic 69th and other armed heroes equally ready and
devoted. We all remember the anxiety of friends for their
safety — while they were ensuring the safety jjf the national
Capitol. A part of this money had been expended for the
support of the familes of those volunteers. The Comp
troller will soon stop payment for want of authority from
this Legislature. Many of these poor families have in
curred debt for necessary expenses, on the faith of these
ordinances. Some are shivering without fuel, and some

62 SPEECH IN THE
are starving for want of bread, while their husbands and
brothers are marching on every battle-field, from Ship
Island to Harper's Ferry, protecting the nation's coal and
bread wherever it can be found. From the smoke of those
battle-fields, through the dense forest of these gleaming
bayonets, they are looking into this Chamber to cheer
their dark and bloody way, by invoking our aid to help
their helpless friends.
The Committee to whom was referred these ordinances
will report upon them unanimously recommendatory, as
soon as the authorized parties shall lay the proper vouchers
and certificates before them. Besides all these pressing
duties, we have banking interests to regulate, sanitary
systems to organize, city charters to create and amend,
and a thousand objects of legislation to accomplish, with
only a few days to effect it, and we swim off into that vast
sea of national pohtics, where looms a President, Cabinet
and Congress to attend to these sworn duties.
Look at the lobby that we have to watch — the bribery
and corruption to punish and prevent. Sadly and surely
it is becoming a disheartening question with high-toned
citizenship whether, after all, it is worth pouring forth
these thousands of millions, only to pass from heavy-armed
treason to stealthy-stepping robbery. Everywhere the
cry is, and the conviction is, that the virtue of the country
is receding from politics. Little good men are turning
their backs on the ballot-box, and great good men are
turning their backs on the State House, and with their
sense of duty and their hopes of humanity, retreating into
less corrupting forms of usefulness. They are falling back
on those inner intrenchments of liberty, the school, the
church, the periodical press, the chair of learning, the farm
and the home where politics come not, save to relent or
expire, and where, higher than station, stronger than

LEGISLATURE AT ALBANY. 63
patronage, broods the calm, conservative spirit of moral
power, which although it shuns official power, and warns
official power, shall yet save both State and office from
threatened absorption by sophist, knave or demagogue.
Should not such reflections invoke a sterner sense of moral
and legislative obligation, and admonish us that our best
military manoeuvre is to fall back from Washington and
McClellan on New York and the Knights of the Shoddy
and the Lobby. Let us leave the question of the poor
war prisoners in the righteous hands of President Lincoln, i
while we attend to the prisoners that are to be taken at
home. Our mission is to strike down Northern rogues, while
others are preparing to charge Southern traitors : when
both are extinguished, let us disappoint croaking Europe
by beginning anew the beautiful effort of a purer, vriser
and more harmonious self-government.

si*eech:
OJT Tns
CELEBRATION OF THE ANNIVERSARY
OF THE GREAT UPRISING IN APRIL,
1861,
DELIVEEED AT MADISON" SQUAEE,
APRIL 20TH, 1863.

Fellow Citizens :
Would to God I could call you all fellow-soldiers !
Would that my oratory was bright enough to braid every
plain coat here into the livery of the national army.
Would that the breath expended on so many speeches
could waft all these mass meetings into mass regiments
for the field, where duty and safety demand them.
There is no star that shoots in beauty along the mid
night sky, so reverently gazed upon as the passing soldier,
who flits through the darkness of his country's fortunes
to the scene of her glory and her salvation. Is that
soldier rude and illiterate? the wisdom of Hamilton and
Jefferson is crying to him for help. Is he poor and un
fortunate ? the fortunes of this great Republic have been
swept into his camp for safety.
Will sneers and copperhead badges redeem us ? If
this war is wrong, where will you search creation for a
5

6G SPEECH ON ANNIVEESAEY
righteous conflict? Because dainty editors dislike or
distrust some who participate in these " Loyal Leagues,"
shall we be dumb before the thousands who come here
with beating hearts to cheer and strengthen their love of
country ? I do not say that this meeting will capture
Richmond or sink the Alabama, but surely the enthusiasm
evinced on the resolutions announced, and the strong
names associated with so much persistent determination,
must have its weight on those who are looking for divi
sions here, as the last hope of a fading heresy whose props
are Northern blunders and Southern shinplasters. Do
we not almost hear our enemies exclaim, Ah, those
Yankees ! their gold is at 150 iu the war, but their pulse
is at 200 for the war.
The balls hurled at Fort Sumter two years ago, did
they shiver a principle or only a parapet ?
The first trigger pulled on this nation asked America
this iron question, " Will ye go forward with Lincoln, or
backward with Beauregard ? Will ye cling to the unity
and safety of an invincible empire, or wiU'ye accept the
poisonous sophistry of a Southern construction of consti
tutional duty, and dwindle away into the frivolous frag
ments of a helpless, diluted, and indefinitely dissolving
destiny ? "
Is self-destmction so obviously a national duty, that
England frets and Richmond foams because we will not
embrace it, because with a scratch of the pen, we will
not proclaim that the pen itself has failed in Govern
ment? This right of suffrage, so grand, so safe, so simple, so
soothing to American pride, so helpful to American inter
ests, Avas it not our boast, that it provided a remedy for
all our troubles ; that it gave thought the victory over
arms for evermore ?

OF GEEAT UPRISING. 67
What right, then, had the sixth of November to strike
the fourth of March until it reeled, and the Inaugural al
most became the Requiem of the Republic ?
Two years ago you answered these questions with
armies as well as arguments. Then capital sprang to its
feet and cried. Here is my gold, take it, and restore the
golden circle of the States. Then patriotism sprang to
its arms, exclaiming. Here is my life, take that, too, only
preserve the principle which gives to all our lives in
creased dignity and happiness.
So far your resolve was a hope, now it is an experience
— the experience of development as well as of disappoint
ment; the experience of errors often reformed, and as
often repeated ; the experience of a Government fighting
for liberty, and yet not always careful of liberty ; the
experience of some triumph, some defeats, and many
tears. We have lost friends, lost treasure, lost battles ;
but when the smoke of the contest cleared away, the
world looked in vain to find our courage and our perse
verance lying among the killed and wounded. No raid,
however clever, has been able to cut us off from those
suppfies. No capture so extensive as to parole our de
termination to succeed.
Are we fighting merely to recover so much population,
jurisdiction and territory ? Is the community we would
reclaim so very amiable as to justify this awful outlay ?
Has not the sugar-cane we would lose, soured more than
it has sweetened our tempers ? Does not the cotton that
seceded inflame om* politics quite as much as it warms
our backs ?
We insist upon the old Union simply because the
principle upon which the South destroys it, makes any
other union impossible. In the progress of the war we
are apt to forget the purposes of the war. We go before

68 SPEECH ON ANNIVERSARY
the v/orld upon the issue that as we came together by
convention, we can only part by convention; that as it
required more than a minority to make the compact, it
takes more than a minority to break the compact.
The South may wrest from us ten thousand leagues
of territory, capture $1,000,000,000 worth of property,
and destroy a million of men, and it would be nothing to
plundering us of the principle, that the majority must
rule. It is the only prop and hope of free government
anywhere. This is the great crime of the crash.
If I was a Democrat before the war, trying to prevent
the war, how should I insult that Democracy now by em
barrassing a contest upon which depends the preservation
of democratic institutions — where our success is all that
can save us from a blotted name, a broken country, and
a threatening neighbor. Who says that the real Demo
cratic party are opposed to this war ? Has it not taken
the lead in all our wars— the war of 1812, and the Mexi
can war ? Was it not foremost to defend the position
that almost led to war on the Maine boundary, the Ore
gon territory and French indemnity question ? Has it
not won half its popularity by its bold attitude in our
foreign relations? and will it play into foreign hands
now ? will it be found raffling for a goose in the coal-hole
while the house is falling over its head? Let not the
hatred of Republicans embarrass the safety of the Repub
lic, or the loss of power cause us to jeopardise the very
existence of power.
If it be true, as is alleged, that the Republicans blun
dered in bringing on the war, and blundered in carrying
on the war, shall the Democrats blunder in opposing a war
that, in spite of all Abolitionism, is to restore the consti
tution and the Government I know they reverence ? Their
best blood is in the army, and their best brain is on the

OF GREAT UPRISING. 69
stump for the war. - AViiere the king is, there is the court.
And where the best Democrats are, there is the Demo
cratic party. With all its faults, that party has been the
glory of the past ; with all its responsibilities, it will not
be the shame of the future.
Where does the peace Democrat see the least prospect
of an honorable peace without successful war ?
Does he see it in the hopeless unanimity of Southern
misapprehensions and malignity ? Does he see it by the
light of the burning merchahtman on the lonely ocean ?
Does he see it in the sneers of the Southern leaders at the
efiorts of the Northern peace party ?
If they wauit peace, let them drop their arms and
melt back their angry cannon into church bells, to ring
them again to the holy worship of the Union.
If the South have any grievances against the Federal
Government, they will find at last, after all their prowess
and victories, that the civil was more effectual than the
military remedy.
If after the war the people choose to call a convention,
and in that convention decide, and the people constitu
tionally ratify that decision, that certain States may
secede, then we would say. Go willingly, because you go
legally. But if the convention and the people decide
that they shall not go, then not all their forces, aided by
the ships of England and the armies of Napoleon, with
the ghost of his uncle at the head of them, shall wrest one
State or one foot of earth from the Union of om* fathers.
Let Earl Russell and the gracious lords of neutrality
remember that this vast war and all its immense imple
ments of destruction — in spite of all blockades, all Eman-
ripation, Confiscation and Conscription Acts — in spite of
cavalry and infantry, of Monitors and fifteen-inch guns —
all are simply ta give a harmless piece of paper a chance

70 SPEECH ON ANNIVERSARY
to perform its usual election office of eighty years' stand
ing, from the lakes to the gulf Notwithstanding all the
English sneers about the lust for empire, and the despo
tism of Fort Lafayette and suspended habeas corpus — in
spite of the disease of camps and marches, the vast stretch
of army movements, the slaughter at Corinth and Fred
ericksburg — all are only ghastly highways to the filling
of a few empty chairs in the National Capitol Avith plain
citizens, and to entrust them with the rights and privileges
of sovereign power.
This whole war is simply the paying of two thousand
millions for Southern mileage to the capital. I admit it
is a high rate of passage-money, but we intend to pay it,
and to insist upon their presence. Are we not execrable
Unionists, oh ! plunderers of Ireland ! oh ! torturers of
India ?
We have come here to strengthen ourselves at the
fountain of our first determination. The conflict we
resolved on two years ago- with such thoughtless enthusi
asm must now be carried on in the calm of thoughtful,
inflexible perseverance.
At first the war was a holiday sensation — novel, blood
less and exhilarating, with no defeats, no tears, and few
taxes to disenchant us. Now this anniversary of the great
uprising is shining on our bloody hands, our weeping
homes, our wrangling words, our growing debts, our
blundering deeds — shining down into the dark bosoms of
a patient, suffering and bewildered people, and touching
us all with a deeper conviction .of how much we have
gained in possessing Washington, how much we have lost
in forgetting him ! The spell of empire broken, the sense
of safety shaken, the pride of power wounded, the hopes
of progress checked, the desolation of America the only
birthday gift to the savior of America on the anniversary

OF GREAT UPRISING. 71
of his coming ! It is well that the spirit of such a memory
should waylay our descending fortunes, and lift us, if but
for a moment, above the snappish policies, the wild phi
lanthropy, the tempting contracts and the sinking char
acter of our country, into kindred elevation and instruc
tive communion with him who loved all sections, saved
all sections, and warned all sections, how much we must
do and undo, how much we must bear and forbear, if we
would remain a peaceful, helpful, united commonwealth.
A business people have been nearly destroyed by not
minding their own biisiness; a practical people almost
engulfed in a theory — the theory at the North that it was
necessary to make laws in order to keep slavery out of the
Territories — the theory of the South that it was necessary
to break laws in order to carry slavery into the Terri
tories. From the heights of our own united follies these
dark blunders are now shelling each other.
Yet with all our faults of peace in the past, and all
our faults of war in the present, war is the great virtue
of the hour— the costly, ghastlj^, battle-stained business
of American duty, from whose ferocious investment in
bones and powder shall come forth the return profits of
State fidelity, national security and general prosperity.
A people who have stretched over a vast continent,
and settled the borders of two oceans, are not to be
stopped by a wooden stake in Charleston channel. If
nine Monitors are insufficient to reduce that stronghold,
nine hundred Monitors must. If we cannot blow them
out, smoke them out, nor starve them out, we must wear
them out by the prompt and ceaseless pressure of the
national retribution. Washington was seven years found
ing a nation, and can we expect Abraham Lincoln to save
it in less than half that time ? The British people bore
the blood and taxes of twenty years of Avar to assert the

72 SPEECH ON ANNIVEESAEY
right to meddle with their neighbors on the continent,
and shall we be disheartened by a two years' conflict to
maintain our. own existence? We are not fighting the
distant Englishman, nor the degenerated Mexican, nor
the poor, fading Indian, but a daring, dreadful and defiant
Anglo-Saxon equal, Avith our knowledge in his head, our
blood in his veins, our glory in his history, our God re
ceiving his oath, and our West Point pointing his gun.
This is a Avar of resources more than of genius — of so
much material hurled against so much other material;
and he who hurls most Avill live longest.
The great truth that underlies the contest must be
some compensation for the lack of great victories and great
commanders. As all of us helped to build up the Repub
lic, so is it to be saved by the strong arm, long purse, and
clear heads of the united masses. Thus tar our greatest
general has been our general greatness. If pride is the
most sensitive of human passions, the Avise man's pride of
institutions, and the strong man's pride of muscle, are
deeply involved in this contest. Will the northern youth,
who glories in his manly strength and pluck, let history
record that he was overcome by foemen not half so nu
merous? Will the student, or the statesman, whose study
of other nations only makes them turn more fondly to
their own self-adjusting system — will they see their beau
tiful ideal dissolve like a dream, and not stretch forth a
hand to save it ? Will the merchant, who has kept his
faith in the great contract, consent to lose his share in a
bargain that acknowledges him joint owner of a thousand
leagues of territory ? Will the northern laborer, whose
toil and sweat are at this moment paying for the purchase
of Louisiana, Texas, and Florida, cry out for a peace that
robs him both of his money and his country? Eight
inches of every foot of land in those States were paid for

OF GREAT UPRISING. 73
by a Yankee invasion of brains and dollars. And-Avhen
Ave march to the protection of our own possessions, and
to enforce obedience to our OAvn existing laws in our own
country, and to the fulfillment of our oAvn oath and life
long habit of jurisdiction and authority, that is the com
ing of the invader. And for Avhat purpose do we march ?
To subjugate. Subjugate who and Avhat ? Subjugate
our southern brethren to be our equals in everything.
Subjugate the meanest of their people, by recognizing his
right to the chance of being our President and ruling oA^er
us, our General and commanding us, our Judge and con
demning us, our legislator, and help shape our vast inter
ests and resources. This is the yoke the South are said
to be living on half rations to avoid. This is the subjuga
tion the masses of Europe would wade through seas of
blood to enjoy.
Flora McFlimsey with a house full of clothes had
" nothing to wear," And the spoiled South, with all the
richest privfieges of the Constitution strewn in profusion
around her, drops in scorn the starry mantle of her free
dom and her glory, and waits with haughty impatience
for Paris and London to wrap around her the later and
flimsier robes of intervention.
That millenium of southern hopes has its realizations
as often adjourned as the Millerites' predictions of the
destruction of the earth. When such a day of peril comes,
it will be but a new form of American investment, in con
flict, suffering, and final success. If England will only
wait till we complete the implements for her reception,
then Seward and Palmerston may roll up their pohshed
platitudes, and Ericsson, Dahlgren, and Armstrong un-
limber the crashing diplomacy that is to fight out the
great question of who shall be the master nation.
In yonder window sits the spirit of our past victories.

74 SPEECH ON THE GEEAT UPRISING,
His form is crumbling, his sun is setting, his light will
lead our ai'mies to no more triumphs. As he gave his
youth to England's punishment, and cradled his renown
on England's discomfiture, it may be that his last days
shall yet behold the grasping selfishness of this twice-chas
tised power again humbled before a reconciled, indignant,
and irresistible America.

A^DDRESS

PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS,
DELIVERED AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE BEFORE THE TTAE DEMOCRACY,
NOVEMBER 1ST, 1864.

[Maj.-Geneeal Sickles having eoncludecl liis speech, after waiting
for the suhsidence of the tumultuous enthusiasm wilh Avhich the
patriotic and eloquent victim of the war was greeted,]
Mr, ConniNGTON rose and addressed the assembly.
Felloav Citizens :
I FEEL the disadvantage of succeeding a hero. I bring
with me no deeds and no wounds to sanctify these verbal
contributions to the exigency. We lose our hearts with
those who lose their limbs for a cause that cannot be lost^
In this ghastly crisis of our broken and bereaved
America, a patient, suffering, and bcAvildered people are
anxiously asking each other, in whose ballot is wrapped
the honor and safety of the nation, which ticket AA'ill admit
us to the theatre of a restored and renovated common
wealth ? Does the angel of redemption beckon to us from
the platform at Chicago or Baltimore? almost the exact
distance between self-destruction and self-government. _

76 ADDRESS ON THE
While the tempest is sweeping away old party obliga
tions and raining down upon us new duties, shall we, as
Democrats, drop helplessly into the flood, tied to the dead
body of an organization whose anti-democratic conduct
and anti-American spirit, would only entail upon us ridi
cule, degradation, and suicide? Had the Democratic
. Party braced themselves up to the heroic height of the
difficulty ; had they grafted the pluck of the ballot on the
bravery of the bayonet, by insisting, without an "if" or
a " but," upon the inviolability of the national unity ; had
they joined issue with the administration upon mere ques
tions of administration, going before the country Avith
different candidates, to vindicate the same national prin
ciples, asking a verdict of the people upon the propriety
or impropriety of test oaths, upon the question of a sounder
financial policy for the war, upon a more careful suspension
of the habeas corpus, upon the best mode of reconstructing
States and ameliorating acts of confiscation, so that the
South might not pass from a slaughter-house to an alms
house, so that we might bind up the broken links of our
common brotherhood Avitli discrimination as well as deter
mination ; had they planted one foot on the crimes of the
South and the other upon the faults of the administration,
and said : " Here we stand, this is our platform, we will
punish the one and avoid the other ; " such an opposition
would have been seasonable, healthful, and perhaps suc
cessful. Party men and no party men, discontented
Republicans and contented Democrats, all could have
joined heartily, because safely, in so legitimate an an
tagonism. Do not the virtues of the Avar and the vicissitudes
of the war admonish us to remember that Avliile both
parties are falhng and dying upon the same bloody field,
struck down by the same dark hand, for the same bright
cause, both parties should adjourn their less urgent differ-

PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS. 77
euces and unite upon the one fearful overshadowing neces
sity, so that citizen and soldier, partisan and patriot.
Republican and Democrat, hand in hand, thoughtfully as
well as pugnaciously, we may snatch from this gory
hurricane of righteous confiict the sweet sugar-cane of
perpetual peace ?
We sympathize, naturally, Avith Abraham Lincoln.
We appreciate the aAvful magnitude of his trials and
temptations, his danger and his duties. We thank God
that a Scotch cap saved the American Cap of Liberty
from sudden and sacrilegious spoliation. We know how
eagerly a jealous opposition have been watching him to
make capital out of the blunders and losses of this war, in
order to obtain that power Avhich their own blunders lost.
An executive without experience, Avithout the larger range
of statesmanship to grasp so comprehensive a calamity, is
suddenly called upon to thrust out his village hands to
catch a falling empire.
I defy any man, even Napoleon himself, to pass
instantaneously from an Ilhnois lawyer to a Washington
Commander-in-Chief without committing grave errors.
Has his policy prolonged the war ? Which prolongs war
most, the McClellan theory that returns to the enemy
the live ammunition of a working negro, or the Lincoln
programme that keeps the African and hurls back only
the avenging sweep of musket and mortar? Did he lay
his hand on the military elements? Just in time for
Presidential common sense to save Chickahominy strategy
from losing Washington, Who doubts uoav if McDowell
had reported for duty on the Peninsula, Stonewall Jackson
would not have thought it his duty to file up Pennsylvania
avenue ? Has the President sanctioned arbitrary arrests ?
So did Washington and Jackson; so ipust all rulers who
would save a State in danger. Where one innocent person

78, ADDRESS ON THI.
has suffered, a hundred guilty ones have escaped. Does
he favor acts of confiscation ? The South have confiscated
every Northern thing, from a pin to a principle. Has he
uttered the fearful word " Emancipation ? " It was a
trumpet in the storm calling all hands on deck to save the
ship. When the storm subsides the pen will shape into
consistent proportions the security and humanity of the
republic. There must always be a despotism in the Con
stitution to meet the dangers of the Constitution. If the
beautiful charter cannot defend itself, it is merely a pass
ing remark, instead of a reliable instrument. Accustomed
only to the practice of its peaceful provisions, we forget
that it is not merely a temple in which to worship and
administer, but an arsenal to load and fire. The war
power of the Constitution — the right to suspend habeas
corpus, to raise and support armies — is an awful recogni
tion of the necessity for despotism in danger ; not a wanton
and reckless employment of force, but an eff'ective and
peremptoi-y use of power to meet sudden and perilous
emergencies, I do not say that Mr, Lincoln has always
Avielded this power judiciously. Yet, if there is but one
person in the crowd who will save my life from an assassin,
I will not stay his arm to criticise his character. If we
cannot endorse his errors we may at least adjourn their
accountability. We looked around in vain at this election
for any one else to strike such bloAvs for the Union as
Abraham Lincoln, The extremest Avar feeling is in poAver
at the South, and the extremest 'Avar feeling must be in
poAver at the North, or there is no equality in the energy
that wields our respective resources. Moderation and
compromise are strength in peace ; they are weakness in
war. The South mean every means of destruction ; and
if we mean less we vfill gain less than we are fighting for,
Mr, Lincoln is a long man, but he is the shortest cut to

PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS, 79
the enemy. If we mean war we must vote for him. We
opposed Abraham Lincoln in 1860, because he was only
the available candidate of what seemed then a still more
unavailable party ; but the fiood of insurrection in 1864
has swept him upon the Ararat of the argument, and the
Chicago party have made his election the only test of true
citizenship. You cannot inflict upon the Southern crime
so severe a Presidential punishment as the re-election
of Abraham Lincoln. Whatever that guilty community
have suffered, of desolation or slaughter, of weeping homes
or broken hearts, have fallen upon them in streams of
national retribution, poured from the chartered hand of
Abraham Lincoln. When you re-elect him you re-elect a
restless chastening rod — you re-elect the unbroken and
uncompromising march of the sovereign supremacy.
Few men could have carried this Government through
such a conjuncture without committing errors enough to
have insured the success of any opposition, candidly and
patriotically marshalled. Unfortunately for us, unwisely
for them, the Democratic leaders have so shaped the
canvass that we dare not change our rulers for fear of
changing our institutions. Vitiated by long habits of
pofitical intrigue, they judged the popular intelligence
from their own degenerate stand-point. Because the
people asked for reform, they thought they would bear
revolution ; because some Avere willing to accept an im
provement on Abraham Lincoln, they imagined it a good
time to administer a platform dissolved in this weak decoc
tion of Vallandigham, Jeff. Davis, and Benedict Arnold.
The American people are a people of sentiment. They
are gazing doAvn into the profoundest depths of this ques
tion. As surely as the springs of the earth are gushing
pure and sweet beneath the blood of battle, just so sure,
under all the horrors of Avar, do we behold the refreshing

80 ADDRESS ON THE
streams of future order, stability, and peace. The Amer
ican people are also a business people. They have esti
mated the profits and losses of this war ; they have dropped
in one scale the tears, the graves, the debts, the taxes, the
crippled limbs, the ruined homes, the demoralized habits,
and the depreciated constitutions ; and in- the other scale
they have placed the unity, the progress, and the prosperity
of America ; and they know how such profits outweigh all
its losses. They see rising from the crimson mist a firmer,
securer nationality, no longer at the mercy of the sophist
or the conspirator, just as restricted, but more respected
of all States and nations. They see, too, the States —
always inviolate within their just sphere — no longer, with
an arrogant intrusiveness, aspiring to unsettle the grander
guardianship of the nation. If Abraham Lincoln is the
tyrant and imbecile they call him, the Democratic Party
had a great card in their hands, and the people will hold
them responsible for trifling Avith the crisis and throwing
away the game.
If the President is weak, better a weak man with a
strong cause than an indifferent man with no cause at all.
Professing to be horrified at the usurpations of the
administration, the Chicago party have left the people no
alternative but to hold on to Mr, Lincoln, or give up the
country. What kind of a country is it which elects the
Chicago ticket? A majority of the people will then have
decided that the principle of obedience to the wfll of the
majority can no longer be maintained; that it failed by
peace in 1860 ; that it has failed by war in 1864. Elect
that ticket, and you elect a laugh at our own arrogance,
imbecility and cowardice ; you elect an acknowledgment
that eight millions of people, armed with an impracticable
sophistry are too much for twenty millions, backed by the
eternal truths of republican faith and national sovereignty.

PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS. 81
Oh ! but McClellan's letter is sound on the war. When
was the Democratic machine ever stopped by a letter?
Franklin Pierce's inaugural declared that the slavery
question should never be revived during his administration,
and in one year the land was wild with the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise. James Buchanan made a similar
declaration, and the blast from Kansas almost blew out
the light of the republic.
" Union," writes McClellan, " is the one condition of
peace," ah ! but what Union ? The Union that appeases
Southern hostilities by surrendering to Southern dogmas
about States doing as they like, or the Union that insists
firmly on a firmer adherence to national obligations ? He
dare not tell us which, Union he means, and Ave dare not
trust him without knowing.
Besides, a scratch of the pen does not prove a man.
A campaign letter is not a candidate's character. If you
want to know McClellan, you must find out his habits of
thought and feeling. Who are his friends ? What are his
associations and surroundings ? They make the man, not
electioneering words. The very virtues of the individual
would be the vices of the administration. The men who
made McClellan are heart and soul with the South, If he
is grateful, he will be true to them, and so, false to the
country. Elect the Chicago ticket, and the Democratic
Party will tell you that the people have decided in favor
of negotiation. You know, and I know — and all the
world knows — that success in negotiation depends on suc
cess in war. The South will say to your commissioners,
" We went to war for our independence — ^you went to war
to prevent it. You have been throwing shot and shell
upon us for three years and a half without our crying
enough. If your war is a failure ours is a success, and we
demand the fruits of it — the acknowledgment of our inde-
6

82 ADDRESS ON THE
pendence," What other guaranties could you give them ?
They have had everything but this acknowledgment?
The Republican Congress of 1861 unanimously guaranteed
slavery in the States, and refused to disturb it in organizing
new Territories, If the South wanted more at the com
mencement of the war, in God's name, what will they
demand when you have pronounced that war a failure ?
McCleUan could give them no more than Lincoln
oft'ered them through the first eighteen months of the con
flict. He gave them back their negroes ; he guaranteed
them every right under the Constitution, and Avhat was
the answer ? More armies to invade us, more pirates to
burn our helpless merchantmen, more importunities for
foreign aid to co-operate against us, and if these fail, the
last ditch more welcome than the teniple of Washington.
General McClellan in repeating Mr, Lincoln's past is only
Avalking through the canvass in that gentleman's old boots.
If elected, backing his car on the Avorn-out rails of 1861
and 1862, to end where the colonies began, amid the con
fusion and anarchy of aboriginal confiicts,
John Van Buren, in a speech at Hudson, told the
people that Mr, Lincoln Avith his emancipation pohcy, had
perverted the objects of the war. More than a year ago,
on Madison Square, he declared slavery deserved its doom.
Before the war that prophetic politician informed the
North if secession took place it would be only a holiday
task for us to go South and reannex them Avithout slavery.
Where are we to place a ticket with such summersault sup
porters ? Here is one of the original founders of the later
anti-slavery party going about the country denouncing his
own offspring. Are not eighteen months long enough to
play with war, fritter away our strength and jeopardise
our existence ? Depend upon it, a people Avho could fire
on a President struck with the paralysis of judicial and

PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS. * 83
congressional restrictions, drop two houses of Congress,
throw away a supreme judicial bench, turn theh backs
upon a popular vote ready to sweep them again into
power — a people who have emptied their hands of all these
blessings that they might tear up the foundations of
American prosperity, and float their ruins in the heart's
blood of the North — such a people are not to be brought
back by an armistice, but on a stretcher.
Never but once have the citizens of the North A^'oted
directly upon the slavery question, and then they gave an
overwhelming majority for Southern rights. In the contest
of 1852, the Fugitive Slave Law and the Compromise of
1850, were almost the only questions before the people ;
yet every Northern State, but two, voted solid for the
South, That was the real test of Northern feeling for
Southern slavery under the Constitution, In 1856 the
large vote of Fremont was neither for the woolly horse
• nor for the woolly head, but the recoil of a business people,
from the breach of contract in the repeal of the Com
promise of 1820. The election of Mr. Lincoln was a judi
cial verdict against the corruption of politicans and the
wiles of conspirators under the Buchanan administration.
The anti-slavery vote was not the increase of anti-slaveiy
feeling ; but the people driven into the anti-slavery J»arty,
as the only organized means of breaking down depraved
statesmanship, corrupted by the slave power. France has
been called a monarchy, modified by songs ; Russia a des
potism, tempered with assassination; and is not the
'American republic a democracy, cheeked, not Ohicagoed,
by watchful minorities ? The great distinction between
despotism and democracy is, that in the first, the minority
is dominant and stationary ; in the last it is patient, sub
ordinate and fluctuating. The minority of to-day, fresh
from commxmion Avith the people, may be the majority of

84 ADDRESS ON THE
to-morrow, administering their sympathies in the govern
ment; and the majority, relieved of the elevation and
importance of official life, go back to renew and strengthen
their affections with the peojfle. Thus the system har
monizes, power rotates, and the repubhc is safe. Great
benefits are sometimes in the minority, and great evils
often in the majority, but with a little patience they
inevitably change places. No man in this Union ever
advocated a policy or a party that was not at some time or
another in power. And no man or party has a right to
rebel against a principle whose alternating possibflities
may ensure their return to power.
First it is Riddle's bank, then Benton's hard currency,
Massachusetts' tariff and South Carolina's free trade, anti-
liquor, anti-rent and Know-Nothing, Wilmot proviso, and
Dred Scott decision, each by turn swearing in their hobby ;
and last to come — and yet to last always — Emancipation
— poor, wild-eyed, closet-ridden fanaticism. Constitution
ally, pertinaciously despised abolitionism ! Alternately
the fanatic's dream and the politician's grave, the states
man's crime and the nation's goal. Humanity driven into
a corner, reduced to a seventy years' whisper, started to
its feet by the cannon of Davis, and fioated by the blood
of both North and South into the fireside possession of
every slaveholder or hater in this serf-banished land.
Negotiation means nothing now unless it means inde
pendence out of the Union, or insubordination in the
Union. It means a foreign power built upon the ruins of
our domestic hearth-stones or the whole repubhc, with the
vital element of all repubhcanism gone — obedience to the
will of the majority; Union, with the principle of unity
dissolved ; and when that dies, who will calm the jarring
States? What will give us dignity and consideration
abroad? Where, then, is the great republic? What,

TRESIDENTIAL CRISIS. 85
then, do you mean by an American citizen ? Because one
party favored the African, must all parties give up this
beautiful Anglo-Saxon America ? Because the Constitu
tion reserved to the States powers not necessary to the
General Government, shall those powers which are neces
sary, and which it did delegate to the General Govern
ment, be at the mercy of the sophistry or the iniquity of
any State which imagines somebody at some time intends
to injure them ?
What do we mean by State sovereignty and State
pride ? The States are spontaneous communities, born of
the accidents of migration and settlement. The Union is
the deliberate act of the best wisdom of all the States.
The national power is so much of State rights surrendered
to protect the rest. And the States that strike at the
nation strike at the rights of the States that make the
nation. A citizen is born in South Carolina, raises cotton
in Alabama, and dies in California. His cradle is rocked
under one jurisdiction, his pocket filled or emptied by
another, and his coffin lowered in a third ; but he is always
in the Union — that most continuous, overshadowing and
comprehensive home, into which reach his loftiest pride
of empire, his deepest dreams of progress, his most varied
and interlacing pursuits of business, ambition, or pleasure.
Which State did Jeff. Davis risk his neck for ? Kentucky
bore him, he studied treason all his life in Mississippi,
commenced, to practice it in Alabama, graduated a classic,
fuU grown culprit in Virginia, and is fast advancing into
those states of despondency and despair which are resum
ing their sovereignty over him.
How came the Democratic Party to father so distract
ing and decimating a heresy ? I confess I see nothing so
attractive in the present position of that party to stand by
it when Democracy itself is perishing in their hands. Let

86 ADDRESS ON THE
US distinguish between the Democratic community and
the Democratic organization. The Democratic community
are sincere, patriotic, and credulous. If they vote wrong,
they mean right ; if they follow knaves and demagogues,
they believe them champions of the principles they love
and cherish. How well the Democratic organization know
how to play on these patriotic chords. By vigorous cries
of " traitor," " turncoat," " go with your party," " he is a
Black Republican," " stand by the Democracy " — these
are the magic phrases upon which they presume to whip
into line all who would rebel against fraud, treachery,
imbecility, and disunion. We knoAV Avhere to find the
peace party. They are open and honest. Strong advo
cates of weak governments, they hanker for ruins as Eng
lishmen do for tainted cheese. Muddled with Calhoun
metaphysics about State sovereignty, in the winter of our
fortunes, they go South for their politics, as invalids go
for their health. The larger and adroiter Aving haA^e no
theories and no principles but for power. They talk Avar
for Northern votes, that they may make peace for South
ern votes. Lusting for Southern support, they would
legalize Southern treason and rob the North of the right
to a stable government, by turning this Union into the
hall-door of a tenement house, where States may go in and
out and track theh dirt as they please — while we intend
that it shall be a hermetically sealed jar to preserve the
fruits of our fathers from so destructive ah atmosphere.
I charge the Democratic leaders with acting in this
crisis Avithout dignity, consistency, common sense, or cour
age. With increasing through envy and disappointment
the very evils they themselves helped to produce. I charge
them with going to the Charleston Convention in 1860,
and with their numerical minority as voters, and their
numerical majority as delegates, attempting to force on

PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS. 87
that Convention a candidate who, by his part in disturb
ing the Missouri Compromise, could not succeed at the
North, and because of his vote on the Lecompton bill
would fail at the South. Refusing all compromise at that
time, when concession might have saved the party and the
country, and then denouncing the Republicans because
they would not conciliate and compromise with violence
and treason, when such concessions would have been de
grading and useless. I charge the Democratic leaders and
presses with pretending to advocate the war, stamping the
" Union at all hazards " on their banners, and then
nominating peace candidates who, after being smuggled
through the ballot-boxes with the war-cry, seat themselves
down in Congress to vote the soldiers in rags and the
country in ruins. I charge them with trying to wean the
people from a just Avar, by artfully exaggerating its faults,
underrating our resources, sneering at our victories, and
sending their governors and ex-governors whining around
the country to tAvaddle about the miseries and expenses
of this conffict, as if all wars were not miserable and ex
pensive, until by hearty co-operation, shoulder to shoulder,
heart to heart, we bring them to a healthy conclusion. I
charge this Jacobin junta with striving to drown the sound
of their own blows upon the country in the cries of " lib
erty in danger," shrieking against arbitrary arrest, with
the whole pack loose upon the land ; with attempting to
bring the military and civil poAver into collision, with de
nouncing taxation and high prices, as if high prices did
not bring high wages, while the inexhaustible resources
of mines and lands, and tariff and trade would sink twice
the debt to a mere bagatelle in a few years. I charge this
beautiful crowd Avith essaying to degrade the Government
and excite the prejudices of labor and races, by calling this
a war for the negro, when they know that the white man's

88 ADDRESS ON THE
republic depends for its life upon the red blood that is
spilled for it now. In vain do we look for any leading
idea, any profound national sentiment or principle under
lying this selfish opposition wrangle for power.
No foreign policy, save to snarl at the policy which
keeps us from foreign war. No domestic censure for those
who would for ever uproot our domestic rights and interests.
No theory of treatment in dealing with the deluded de-
spoilers of our national inheritance, unless we give up all,
to those who Avould break up all, that keeps us all, — a
People — a Country — a Power. Nothing but an appeal to
the lo^vest passions for the possession of the highest offices.
"Vote our ticket because we are opposed to the war.
Rich man, war is expensive, it snatches away your Avealth.
Poor man, war is impoverishing, it takes away your work.
Brave man, war is degrading, there is no glory in certain
defeat." Such is the paralyzing programme a spirited
and sagacious community are called upon to seat in the
chair of George Washington.
Where is that insphed, courageous old Democratic
Party which Jefferson founded, Jackson immortalized and
James Buchanan buried? Some years ago there could be
seen stranded on the shores of Long Island Sound the
shattered remnants of a once noble steamer. Its guards
were down, its rudder gone, its machinery broken and
useless. Half blackened and consumed by storm and
conflagration, its name still glared out in full capitals ; the
bell which had so often rang the public to harbor and
home still sounded meaninglessly with every shifting gale.
Just so stands the Democratic Party. The same sound
still calls to us ; but it is the toll above the wreck. The
same grand old name still waves upon the campaign
banners, waylaying us for our suffrages ; but the vessel we
trusted to carry us through every sea — once so powerful

PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS. 89
and popular — now drifts before the storm, a shrunken,
helpless and snarling minority. Why is it that every east
wind drizzles upon us a Democratic defeat ? Why is it
that every northern blast whirls down upon us a Republi
can majority ? Why is it that the West, to which we are
told to look for clear skies and fair weather — the West is
black with the popular refusal to restore this so-called
Democracy? Alas! Uninterrupted prosperity has wean
ed patriotism and wisdom from politics. Little men have
been pernutted to trifle with great principles, and death
or disgust swept all the Democratic giants from the helm.
The Democratic Party came into hfe to give life to free
institutions. Many heroes of the Revolution who fought
for independence had no faith in popular government.
After the formation of the Constitution this distrust ex
hibited itself in the support of aristocratic privileges and
monopolies. The Democratic Party Avas organized to
protect the constitution from the misconstruction of oli
garchs, and the people from all oppressive and illiberal
tendencies, and not to play into the hands of despots and
traitors. It began the world Avith the fears of Washington,
the hatred of Hamilton, and the adoration of Jefi'erson
and Madison. With its infant hands it strangled the
Colossus of the Revolution, John Adanis, and threw his
party and his policy into the grave of the eighteenth cen
tury. Has it not advocated and administered every war
since the revolution ? Did it not banish the Indian and
silence the nullifier ? Did it not chastise England, thi-eaten
France, and conquer Mexico ? and must it go down under
the red waves of a still more righteous confiict ? The old
Democratic Party has added more territory to the Union
than the peace of 1783. It purchased Louisiana, negoti
ated Florida, annexed Texas, and droj)ped all the gold of
California into our pockets ; and shall such a counterfeit

90 ADDRESS ON THE
pinchbeck successor leave it hardly a State on which to
lay its dying head ?
I stand by the Baltimore ticket, because there I find
my country, and nowhere else in this election do I know
where to look for it. It plays no tricks with the crisis.
It is bold, open, manly and national. On that platform
sits the courage of the North, the spirit of the age, the
genius of war and the safety of America. It cahs guilt
by its right name, and proposes to deal with it in the
right Avay. It holds no parley with those who ask no
quarter and mean no Union ; whom if you face you must
' fight, and if you treat Avith, you must yield. The Balti
more resolutions represent the highest point to which
courage and soul have raised endangered citizenship. The
Chicago resolutions proclaim the most diminutive propor
tions to Avhich political demoralization has shrunk Ameri
can character. I see there only an English libel copied
from the London Times, and pronounced by a few shaking
American politicans as their standard of political duty.
They call the war a failure, then nominate a failure to
prove it, then get that failure to write the platform a
failure, and now it only wants one more failure on the 8th
of November to finish the concern. Indeed, has all this
tramp, and shot and blood availed nothing? Speak,
howling Jeff., with your falling spirits and your disband
ing armies. Speak, ye thousand miles of sea-coast, with
but one port to welcome the sneaking smuggler to your
traitorous breast. Speak, Sherman, with your firm foot
upon their guilty hearthstones, Avhere you but stamp it
and insurrection, starved and ragged, flies wailing before
you. Speak, pinching penury, useless energy. Speak,
Avorthless currency, hopeless heresy, heart-broken com
munity. Your falling tears, your running slaves, your
dying brothers. Northern traitors stunned, foreign inter-

PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS, 91
vention dead, do you tell me Abraham Lincoln's gripe has
no vigor in it ? You have tried him in war, you have
tried him in diplomacy, you have wrestled with him at
the foot of every throne in Europe. You have confronted
him for thousands of miles along river, marsh and forest,
where he has tracked you with the Indian's scent to save
you from the Indian's destiny. You have summoned to
your aid swamp fever, ambush, tomahawk and torpedo.
You promised the world that you would strap the North
to your pole, driving the continent in double harness, and
where are you now? A nameless, penniless, shivering
outlaw ! shrinking from the charter signed " George Wash
ington," and dying by inches with the powder and ball
of Abraham Lincoln. Is this a failure, oh, successful
Vallandigham, with that hundred thousand adverse ma
jority gazing down upon your sinking platform ? We who
have gone back to the barbarism of blows to secure the
civilization of votes — we who love the contention of thought
better than the contention of arms — who prefer always to
conquer rather by convention than collision, we who have
had no heart in mowing down any portion of the soul
and strength of this nation, if that soul and that strength
could be captured by a principle instead of an army —
shall we not to-day, profiting by the lessons of this war
and this election, hold up that which best keeps us up ?
The soldier from his farthest front of danger is watching
us from our highest stand of civil duty. Can we drop
the national fortunes into the slippery hands stretched
forth to grasp them ? Would we not half-mast the flag
on every battle-fleld, for the fruits of victory vanished, for
the dead too uselessly slain, for the hving too hopelessly
dethroned, divided, debt-ridden and degraded ? No ! we
Avill treat our party as a loved mistress who has jilted us ;
as a favorite gun that will not fire ; as a match too damp

92 ADDRESS ON THE PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS.
Avith Southern tears to light. We will huddle under this
Lincoln shed imtil Democracy finds a better roof to shelter
us from the tempest ; until better times and better men
shall give us back our party, purified by defeat, and our
country, relieved of the sophist and the traitor, walks forth
once more among the nations of the earth, a redeemed,
invincible and united commonwealth.

EULOaY ON
ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
DELIVEEED AT OHAELESTON, S O V T n OAEGLIITA,
MAY 6TH, 1865.

SoLDiEKS ! who have saved the national life, why do I
stand here to-day the orator of desolation and death?
Why have ye half-masted that flag which now waves with
new meaning over our whole America ?
Your arms are reversed, and yet there are no reverses ;
your shields are craped in gloom, and yet the prospect is
clear and bright before us ; no one dares to doubt your
subhme courage and heroic devotion, and yet you shrink
here to-day, unnerved and helpless, before the majesty of
this bereavement.
Alas ! our national deliverer has fallen at the very
gates of the national deliverance. He who brought down
the great conspiracy to the dust is himself but dust. He
at whose beck a million of armed men moved upon the
foe, had not one arm to stay the cowardly trigger that
swept him from the earth.
For four years crime and science sent forth their
hulleted thousands to crush or capture that hfe which a
single finger has reached and rended. Why could not

94 EULOGY ON
the genius of disappointment capitulate gracefuUy ? Why,
Avhen it had lost its cause, did it not preserve its self-re
spect, and so descend to a decent instead of dastardly
grave? Not that we would hold an entire community
responsible for prompting this deed, yet the teachings of
its leaders, the calumnies daily and hourly heaped on
that head toiling only for the public weal, acting on a
weak and insane temperament, produced their natural
fruits in this culminating crime. The purity of our Re
publican faith, the golden stream of our returning pros
perity, has been stirred and stained for the first time with
the murdered life-blood of our first Citizen.
Just as we were sitting down to our second Union
wedding feast, a skeleton stalks in upon the banquet.
Just as we had reached that bend in the river of Re
tribution, that angle of anxiety, where the implements of
adjustment were succeeding the elements of destruction;
just as the blood of contending armies was drying up and
healing up on those silent and deserted battle-fields from
Avhich the South was limping away crushed and helpless,
from whence the North was stalking forth strong and
magnanimous, the demon of assassination soars to the
very pinnacle of our triumph, treads the sacred summit
of our civil system, enters with its grave venom the thea
tre of social recreation, where sits om* great actor on the
theatre of events ; with stealthy step and ghastly cheek
it leans over into the charmed circle amidst which power
had forgotten everything but humor and friendship ; its
arm lifts — and our great and good friend vanishes forever.
The chair of state sinks into the bier of death, on which
lies the cold and clammy clod that was once the warm
and useful life of Abraham Lincoln. Oh ! who could
have the heart to stop the beating of such a heart, whose
every throb was for the glory and unity of our whole

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 90
America ! What brain could plan the dashing out of
such a brain, that so thoughtfully, so deeply, for years,
had been planning our redemption 1 No quarter for him
who never drew a drop of blood beyond the lines of war !
No hope, no help for him who spared guilty thousands !
On that day, all the pride of power, all the glory of vic
tory, all the sense of superiority over foe and faction
vanished. We heard not the tramp of our irresistible
hosts, we saw not the glittering spears of our successful
heroes as they moved in majesty over rebellion's prostrate
and punished hordes, we saw nothing through our falling
tears — nothing but a breathless martyr and an empty
chair. Thousands had fallen to help victory ; one, one
death only could mar it, and that one nursed, cheered, led
us up the mountain of our trial to leave us lonely and
weeping at the peak.
Did the shallow soul who took this life, imagine that
he could obstruct the current of Abraham Lincoln's cause
by choking it up with Abraham Lestcoln's corpse ? Was
he so ignorant of his victim's past as not to know that he
who was to be injured was of all souls the most ready to
forgive injuries? The South, which was to haA^e been
avenged by his death, was sure of more mercy, more help
in their helplessness from this doomed man, than any un-
knoAvn succeeding chief whom the exasperation of the
North might precipitate in judgment upon the culprits.
And even if the card sent by the assassin to the Vice-
President had brought him within range of his shot, had
the Speaker of the House, the President pro tern, of the
Senate, the heads of departments, all in their turn vanished
from the official helm, there would have been so much
merit to deplore, so many funerals to attend, but nothing
else to miss or bury. No revolution to announce, no sys
tem to be swept away, whose roots are not in Washington,

96 EULOGY ON
but in the hearts and habits of American citizenship.
The constitution of the United States has worked its way
into the constitution of every individual life. What is
grounded in human nature, can only be eradicated by
human nature. The habit and the influence of this
republican system is so sure and so constant that the
transition from one incumbent of office to another, is too
natural, too necessary, to be disturbed by any violent
displacement. For every Lincoln dead, there is a Lin
coln to follow, without jar or disconcertion, beyond the
sentiment and gossip of the hour. A Lincoln, too, insist
ing on the same righteous conflict, the same redeeming
policy ; a policy reached and shaped thoughtfully, gradu
ally, at first reluctantly, feeling its way timidly through
the slow relaxing labyrinth of popular approval, until
Avidely, almost unanimously, not by the freak or fanaticism
of a man, nor in the hour of sure and exultant conquest,
but proclaimed in suffering and in doubt, as the majestic
resolve, the political and moral necessity, the deep self-
convinced, self-defensive experience of a people deter
mined not to come out of this fearful tempest with a right
half yielded, a wrong half mended, and so a community
wholly again insecure and vulnerable.
When a government depends upon an intelligent head,
rufing an ignorant mass, the death of the one may be the
upheaval of the other ; but when the Chief of the State
is but the type and the epitome of the average communi
ty, that whole community, must die before the system
perishes. Like most of the blunderers who have attempted
to reason on the results of our war, the assassin under
rated the republican system in educating the repubhcan
character. Calumny has erred more than it has benefited
by reading history ; because Rome split and Europe usu
ally emerges from her great convulsions with old political

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 97
lines obliterated, and a new construction of her civil rela
tions, the great American Republic must degenerate into
the same disruptions and divisions — forgetting that uni
versal suffrage and universal knowledge were arches oi
salvation upon Avhich no other republic had ever rested.
A people who have the intelligence to see the right and
the implement to secure it, are not born to meet the fate
of nations who pass from commotion to commotion, with
no interest and no voice in the result, because with no
means to guide or influence it. " The great republic is
gone," says the wise European philosophy of 1861.
" Years of war, four or five republics, and then universal
monarchy," exclaims the Count De Morny. After the
first six months, England was to interfere; then came
another flash of prophecy ; the mihtary was to crush the
civil power — a new Napoleon was to drive both houses of
Congress out of the windows of the Capitol.
Thiers' French Revolution and Headley's Na/poleon
and his Marshals flUed the weaker intelhgence Avith these
nightmares, as if soldiers, growing up and blooming all
over with the blessings of such a government, possess the
temptations to lawlessness of the French soldier, who
knew nothing of the civil life of the past but by its op
pressions ; and who had acquired no discipline or experi
ence of years to shape or steady whatever better pohcy he
might think he was contending for. Then came the plau
sible financial prophecy — that the national purse could net
stand the expense of the national safety — the difficulty
was too vast, the outlay too enormous. No other people
had ever met such a strain upon its resources without
bankruptcy. As if any other people ever possessed such
boundless resources to draw from, such floods of emigra
tion, such freedom from debt, such vast undeveloped
treasure from ocean to ocean, such awakened industry,
7

98 EULOGY ON
and such universal enterprise, which no nation in any
hour of civil peace or civil commotion could call upon to
prop up its princes or its principles.
And now comes this most foul, fatal, and depraved
prophet, who, more cruelly and terribly personal in the
application of his theory, imagines that if he can only
strike doAvn some of the higher officers of the government,
the confusion, the perturbation, the embarrassment that
succeeds the bloAv may topple down the principle and the
structure of the government itself; and so his dear South,
lying helpless at the far end of the plank, suddenly, by
the weight of the fall, is lifted again to rise and rule by
anarchy if not by victory. Never before has this stealthy
state corrector — born of Mexican confusion and European
oppression — aimed its ghastly reform at America's benefi
cent republicanism. The spirit of assassination is not a
reasoning spirit ; if it had the mental energy to think, the
agitation of ideas would purify it. It is a senseless,
nerveless, mindless monster ! too weak to argue, and too
timid to fight its victim ; so it conceives its blow in mean
ness, and strikes in darkness. Every assassin is a morbid
egotist, who, brooding on one idea, whether of revenge or
reform, reduces to a selfish personality the cause of his
differences. Great minds take their chances with great
principles. If they fail, the great man is appeased by the
consciousness of right or the martyrdom of failure. The
little mind, with no vision to comprehend either, substi
tutes nervous excitement for mental contemplation ; and
so, from love of notoriety or hatred of those who differ
with, or sui-pass him, becomes an assassin. Calhoun could
stab a nation Avith his logic, but how his nature would
have recoiled at such an enforcement. In the whole his
tory of assassination no striking man ever strikes the blow ;
the obscure Brutus and his accomplices fiow doAvn to us

ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 99
only on Caesar's blood. Richard the Third threw on de
graded royalty no brighter gleam than flashed from his
perpetually descending blade. Ravillac, who murdered
Henry of France, was a low, irresponsible fanatic. The
murderer of the Due de Berry, in depriving France of an
amiable sovereign, blasted more on that day, than he had
ever benefited in all his days. Russia's Peter and Rus
sia's Paul and England's Perceval, all fell by men who
never lifted themselves by word or deed above the little
light that guided thfem to another's heart. And now,
to-day, America's LnsrcoLN comes down from a height
loftier than his office, torn from the embrace of two mil
lions of uplifting votes by the blow of a second-rate mem
ber of a second-class profession. The people who turned
their backs on his acting have had to face his crime. He
who knew nothing of government has succeeded in em
barrassing it. He who spit upon the flag has half-masted
it from Maine to California. The player who could not
secure the attention of a single house has shook a conti
nent and startled a century.
Yet when we remember how every life at all times is
at the mercy of whatever insignificance or malignity
chooses to assail it, we should thank the assassin for spar
ing Abraham Lincoln to us so long. A life that has
passed through so many phases of public sentiment, so
many important and momentous public actions, that life
needed to be spared if it would be tested as the represen
tative of the peculiar perils and novel trials of the Ameri
can people — this life whose first official mission was to
prove the right of the people to change theh past peace
ably in the orbit of the constitution ; to renovate the old
routine, to vindicate a new policy, to raise up and warm
up more earnest men in the channels of public communi
cation, to face anger without fearing or provoking it, to

100 EULOGY ON
rebuke without wronging a community who had nothing
to fear because no one to injure them. Let us thank the
assassin for sparing him in that trem'5ling interval between
the bahot and the oath, between the 6th of November,
1860, and the 4th of March, 1861, when the elect of the
people was permitted to take the people's chair before it
was wrenched from him by the people's foe. Let us be
grateful to the forbearing fiend for withholding his hand
during that long range of eighteen montjis of mere defen
sive peace-beseechmg Avar, when the innocent purposes of
the President's election were so fully proved by the perti
nacity with which he refused to distm-b slavery. When
that faithful hand, now cold in death, held on the rocking
and reeling institution, through all the crimson sleet and
blinding mist and fire of those murderous legions, and the
lurid blaze from those incendiary ships which were shoot
ing and burning out of the heart of the North all the for
bearance which self-defence dictates to either policy or
humanity. Let us thank the wretch, too, for that further delay
when the hour came for changing the government policy
without changing its sense of duty ; when the foe is to be
punished more effectually by withholding the element
that encourages his crime ; when, having spared to the
enemy more than he deserved, he could now concede to
his friends all they asked ; could help the fallen and the
faA'ored race, help the cause, the flag and the age, by one
word, and that word. Emancipation. It was something
to be permitted to pronounce it, to shut up a crime by
opening our mouth, to break a chain as Avell as a conspir
acy, to shoot this redeeming ray in the face of the thou
sands who died to stifle it, to throw such a light on this
nation as no sun of genius or glory had ever shot along
our American sky.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 101
And now, after all the toil, the anguish, the doubt, the
inexperience, the faith, and the courage of four years of
conscientious labor in unparalleled fields of statesmanship,
it was something, too, to be permitted to go, with all his
Avorks, his fears and hopes, to the baUot-box, and from out
its deep tones to hear that sweetest music in the ear of all
candidacy, " Go forth, thou good and faithful servant, to
a new lease of labor and glory." We thank our stars
that this star was not quenched until the darkness which
brooded over us had been scattered forever, crime pun
ished, freedom safe, and the nation paramount. These
were the aims of his policy and are the results of his
efforts, and no bullet stepped between them and the
crowning consummation of his life. They conclude his
history, they round his eulogy, and they must crown his
immortahty. The scholar cannot read his annals and
doubt that he was equal to the events which he adminis
tered, or that the events themselves were equalled by any
thing American since the advent of Washington.
If we look closely into the history of preceding admin
istrations, we see how obviously connected was their line
of pohcy growing out of the events that preceded them ;
how, in the unresisted exercise of its functions, the execu
tive office is but comparatively plain sailing, despite of
errors, and wranglings, and threats, which an appoint
ment may modify, a message influence, or a veto arrest.
The nulhfication of South Carolina in 1833 never dis
turbed even a sheet of paper in the War Office or State
Department. Most of our constitutional disputes, hereto
fore, have pointed to an increase or decrease in the powers
to be exercised under that instrument ; never to an extinc
tion of its functions over any State or section. Since
Shay's very trivial rebellion, not a pistol had been
snapped in the face of the grand old charter.

102 EULOGY ON
No one administration since the adoption of the con
stitution has been confronted with any graver question
than the charter of a bank, the reduction of a tariff, the
status of a Territory, the negotiation of a treaty, or the
admission of a State, out of which logical convulsions
often have arisen, but which the good sense of the people
or the government have invariably adjusted. Mr. Lin
coln's administration was the most trying, because it
found itself not with the measures of government disputed,
but its very existence denied. With the oath over him
to administer for all the States, he found State after State
renouncing a jurisdiction he dare not release and could
not control. In being peremptorily called on to accept
the secession of States, he was invited to arrogate powers
not granted to him in the instrument he was bound to
support. Washington's term of office was a period of
serious trial and anxiety to the friends of republican gov
ernment. Nothing less than the influence of such a hero
could have secured the successful adoption of a constitu
tion with Avhich so many wise men differed.
To secure a public opinion that would acquiesce in its
j urisdiction, to reconcile the antagonism of leaders who
distrusted each other's motives, and differed in their con
struction of the instrument they were aiding to administer,
to substitute personal character and personal respect for
tradition and experience, required a force of will, a delica
cy of tact, an elevation of character, a superior confidence
in the man which only such a hero could inspire. Popu
lar intelligence in the time of our fathers would never have
accepted this constitution from a conviction of its bene
fits. One party, fresh from the memory of British injus
tice, Avere for construing away all constraint on theh
actions; the other, more thoughtful, and fearful of the
caprices of the multitude, insisted on approximating to

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 103
the conservatism of monarchy. Washington, calmer and
clearer than either, admonished them of both extremes,
strenuously administering the government in a spirit of
moderation and harmony that permanently secured us the
beautiful system under which we have lived and prospered.
The administration of John Adams involved no more im
portant question than the necessity of reheving the nation
of a Chief who had no faith in popular government. He
was merely an eloquent, defiant electoral accident, a sort
of intellectual isthmus between the harmonious grandeur
of Washington and the great popular leadership of Thomas
Jefferson, The presidency of Mr, Jefferson originated
that democratic policy which for fifty years powerfully
influenced the nation, and settled on a more comprehen
sive basis the influence of the people in public affairs — the
grave of Federalism and the nursery of a new political
organization, which, under different names, has preserved
its distinctive national disorganizing features ever since.
Who now had the keener vision, Hamilton or Jefferson ?
In that storm of contending statesmanship, which almost
shook the great chief from his chair, was it not Hamilton
who prophesied that the Federal Government had most to
fear from the encroachments of the States ; and was it not
Jefferson who, in his dread of central power, encouraged,
under the captivating and popular terms of " State
Rights," " Federal Usm-pation," all those little local laxi-
tudes whose continuous buzz has so impeded for fifty
years the music of the Union, and at last, through ambi
tion and cunning, and the slow but sure unloosening of
national ties by the intellectual training of the Southern
young American in this plausible but perilous political
school, brought us to this doubly perilous brink ? Our
real destiny, both political and geographical, begins with
this administration. To it we are indebted for all that

104 EULOGY ON
portion of our possessions included in the States of Louis
iana, Arkansas, Kansas, and the Territories of Nebraska
and Washington, It laid the basis of our future states
manship, and with it many of our subsequent trials and
dangers. James Madison succeeded to the legacy of Eng
lish difficulties bequeathed to him by the preceding rule.
Though a statesman of profound talents and amiable vir
tues, no man was ever more abused for timidity and in
consistency. One of the principal framers of the Consti
tution, he felt too deeply the responsibility that authorship
involved not to act cautiously in any matter affecting its
security. The issues presented during his administration
— war with England and the assertion of our freedom on
the sea as well as on the land — were of a nature rather to
unite than divide the nation. It was in his time that the
famous Hartford Convention met — the body to which
Southern Secessionists proudly pointed as a proof that the
Northern States had contemplated resorting to secession
as well as themselves. Unfortunately for the argument,
the Convention, which peaceably assembled, as peaceably
dissolved, without resolving to raise even a finger against
their best friend. If the North ever talk rebellion, they
talk on till they talk themselves back to a more dutiful
allegiance. In the administration of James Monroe,
Avhich is called by historians the era of good feeling,
occurs the fiLrst warning of that terrible rending which
slavery had in store for us. Yet the storm of the Mis
souri Compromise was quelled by a healthier public feel
ing than felled us. The succeeding President, John
Quincy Adams, seated in the trough of the sea, between
the wave of the Missouri difficulty and the billoAV of Nul
lification, moves on an easy swell to peace and oblivion.
Then we come to the iron days of our inflexible Jackson,
a soldier by feeling and profession, and no fiercer war on

ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 105
his hands than to hunt the Indian in a swamp, silence
France with a demand for indemnity. South Carolina with
a threat, and the great Bank with a veto. The succeeding
regime is but ein elongation of this master influence, mem
orable for the secession of gold and silver from the cur
rency, and a war of words over the burning Caroline as it
plunged down the awful abyss of Niagara. With the
advent of Tylerism, comes the second instalment of Abra
ham; Lincoln's future trials, in the annexation of Texas ;
then the election of Polk, with the sweeping down of the
great and goqd men of both pohtical parties; the war
with Mexico; the coming in of golden lands, and the
going out of the golden leaders who had kept up the
health, the vigor, and the integrity of the national senti
ment. Later still, the Fillmore Administration advances
with the Compromise of 1850 — the last briefly successful
struggle against the progressing arrogance of the slave
power, when the dying giants of our land threw the
weight of their names and nerves into the death struggle
for peace and justice, expiring at the very threshold of
their labors and leaving a helpless nation to drift on
towards blinding darkness and blood.
With the Pierce Administration arrives the era of
little men and great conspirators, of harmony disturbed
and compacts broken, of fresh graves opened and jewels
robbed from our illustrious dead.
In this administration the Republican party was born
— in this administration was cut the timber from that
Black Forest which was to kindle our recent unholy con
flagration; and thus these master mischief-makers pile
high the burden under which the later Lincoln is to
stagger. Soon the banner-blunderer, Buchanan, breaks
on the lowering sky ; around him gather all the ghastly
gamesters for empire, who read their doom in the threat-

106 EULOGY ON
ening minorities soon to rise to chastising majorities
against their sacrilegious plottings.
Here was woven the cotton shroud in which we have
laid the dead South of the past — ^here was born in the
Convention and vote of 1860 that pillar of fire for our
night, that Abraham Lincoln whom this day we mourn
and bless. This son of the prairie has found a high moun
tain range on which to rest his great and good deeds.
We all remember the contest of 1860. In that crash of
parties conscientious citizens hardly knew under which
fragment to retreat with their bewildered opinions ; whe
ther to go rail-sphtting at Chicago or hair-splitting at
Charleston ; whether to suffer respectable extinction with
Bell and Everett, or to be frantically organized under the
Southern Cross with Breckenridge and Lane.
The storm rose, the sun darkened, the earth reeled ; on
those heaving waves walked the trembling fortunes of
America, demanding to be reassured by the exercise of a
warmer fellowship and a more comprehensive patriotism.
The Republican convention, too full of fear for favoritism,
drops the giant of the Empire State and applies a more
soothing sedatiVe to the nervous commonwealth. Abra
ham Lincoln, though untried, was also uncursed ; though
unknown, for that very reason he could not be unpopular.
And now who is this man they have caught up in a de
spairing tempest and lashed fast to this unsteady wheel ?
One indifferent Congressional term, one unsuccessful Sen
atorial contest, are all the political capital he can drop
into that anxious ballot-box. Yet they knew the stout
character looming behind that lean reputation. They
knew how much power a citizen may exhibit without the
official exercise of power. How the open life of the press,
the stump, and the tribune keep our American citizenship
in constant communication with the men and the states-

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 107
manship of the times. How the active sympathies of the
observing intellectual man broaden and deepen the range
of his vision, and silently accumulate for him a fund of
civil helpfulness always valuable and always liable to be
called upon in great political emergencies. Born in Ken
tucky, a Southern State, reared in Ilhnois, a Northern
State, he possessed just that graft which, quickening with
neither extreme, would rule both in harmony. The sym
pathy of the South in feeling, the energy of the North in
action, a pure life, a tested intellect, a varied experience
identified with a new and growing community, who had
earned by numbers, by patience, by population and
power, a Presidential candidate; proved in general fidelity
to party principles, yet imskilled in all partisan tactics
and aU vulgar partisan schemings; with none of those
weaknesses so common to the most extraordinary men,
without Webster's convivial excess, or Cicero's vanity,
or Bacon's love of money, this spotless sphit rides' the
tempest, grinding no axe, but rebellion, to powder, and
exhibiting no weakness but the lack of instant power to
accomplish it. Where in the long line of our administra
tors will you find more real dignity of character with less
assumption of it? While other Presidents economize
their strength with official reserve and occasional seclusion
from those incessant personal interviews which wear out
the Presidential energies quite as much as more promi
nent exertion, Mr. Lincoln's sweep of good nature blew
down all the fences around his position, and so left him
out in common where the whole herd felt at liberty to
browse. He was the first President who had time to see
and hear every one. In civil war he has been civil to all.
Blood never heated his blood. Place never made him
forget his place. Thoughtful, studious, abstemious, indus
trious, the man of the people. Elected for aU, with an

108 EULOGY ON
ear for all, at home always in, his hand always out, ten
chances to one, if you or I go to the White House with a
new invention to cradle wheat, a telegram from Gen.
Grant's last battle does not surprise him with the instru
ment in his hand testing its merits in front of the White
House.. This is the democracy of manners linked to the
democracy of principles. Sympathy for man which place
cannot displace, and which springs only from the noblest
natures, tested by the trials of the loftiest station. The
war has produced nothing more remarkable than the
growth of this character on the cause and the age. Our
earher chiefs received the Presidency as the crowning
official consummation of the people's gratitude for great
and decisive services in their behalf. The later Presi
dents, from Polk to Buchanan, were men of moderate
ability and of indifferent usefulness. Lucky creatures of
availability, for party favors they performed a party's
behests, imparting nothing to high station, but a warning
against the principle that placed them there. Abraham
Lincoln, born of the same principle of availability, the
nominee and the elect of a mere party, the sins of that
party to embarrass his administration of the cares and
troubles of the country, an unknown man grappling with
and groping through unknown dangers, many trembled
for the vote they had given when they saw the huge black
cloud charged with that extraordinary thunder lowering
down on that seemingly ordinary creation of partisan
manoeuvring. Some believed at first that the people had
elected a joke to administer a calamity; that Ave had
merely caUed on an awkward undertaker to lay out the
cold remains of American liberty, so gracelessly did he
seem to shuffle up to the temple of fame. Every man
Avho found the President differing Avith his little way of
settling our troubles, was sure we must go to ruin with

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 109
such an ignorant pilot. Steadily and surely this per
plexed chief toiled on through this mountain of misrepre
sentation ; ever the result of capacity not yet proved, of
plans not yet matured, of results not yet concluded, and a
country still to be saved. How often, on winter nights.
Heaven's borealian light has been mistaken for some dis
tant barn-yard conflagration; how long, on our winter
nights, we were in doubt whether our light upon a hill
was but a rubbish blaze, to go out with the blast, or the
sun that was to pierce the cloud and light us to redemp
tion. Never had great power been wielded with such
utter absence of egotism and self-sufficiency. Almost
every administration has been a paraphrase of monarch
ical reserve in its communication and intercourse with the
people. Now, in a moment of the greatest peril, when
trouble provoked and provided for the power of a despot,
Abraham Lincoln used authority with the sympathy of a
friend, confronting crime in an odd and artless way, that
pursued it with the restlessness of a fiend and punished it
with the gentleness of a father. With what concise and
plaintive music in his annual messages and occasional
addresses he chants the misereres of our struggle, a model
of new and sympathizing eloquence in statesmanship.
How anxiously and readily he turns to any source,
however irresponsible, for any clue, however insignificant,
that may lead to peace. How earnestly, at Niagara Falls,
he plunges into the foaming question with " whomsoever
it may concern," as to the terms upon which he Avill
snatch them from the boiling abyss. How eagerly he
explores the windings of the James and Appomattox for
the lost jewel, taking the risk of seeming undignified
rather than imyielding. Wilhngly he holds the guilty
hand in his grasp if there is the slightest hope the dove
may perch there. Tims, step by step, year by year.

110 EULOGY ON
through trial, through contumely, ridicule, hatred, the
scorn of a foreign and the target of a domestic foe, misap
prehended even by friends, slowly, hopefully, certainly at
last — the people see and the world acknowledges the
great, good, peerless man that the convention of 1860
unwittingly stumbled upon. The calumniator is silenced,
the battle is finished, the smoke lifts, and there stands our
giant friend on the far height of our triumph, holding in
one hand a captured South, and in the othei the redeemed
bondmen. The grandest painting in all history, because proclaim
ing the grandest aim of all human efibrt, to baffle crime,
which God abhors, and save freedom, which all men love.
Those who threw shells at this life now go trembling
with flowers to his grave, calling on this departed spirit,
this abuse'd saviour, this Illinois ape, this tyrant, this
hyena, to plead with that avenging "judgment," for this
mercy their last great crime robbed them of. Who will
say that the man who achieved these great results had not
greatness in its best sense ? The moral greatness of forti
tude and purity of character, the mental greatness of wis
dom to see farther, and eloquence to express better the
duties and the gelations of the hour, than any citizen,
officially or othenvise, which contemporary America
could furnish. Does not this simplicity, this strength,
this persevering earnestness, this hopeful, joyous, single-
heartedness, this moral humility, this mental indepen
dence, this eloquence, too busy Avith the heart and the
salvation of the hour to be subtle, ornate or elaborate,
this cordial familiar miracle of work and humor, of faith
and fear, of anxiety and energy, this eccentric dispenser
of a most eccentric era, who will say that, with all his
errors, his defects of insight and culture, this man was not
miraculously meant to meet the precise exigencies of our

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Ill
calamity ? Who will say that these high, broad Ameri
can characteristics are not just the needs, with a. little
more official experience, which make up the great com
prehensive American necessities of our peculiar states
manship ?
Abraham Lincoln came into the world during the
early part of this century. The compeer of Napoleon in
power, he is also his cotemporary in birth. Though the
same waters washed the jurisdiction of both, when born,
how vast was the difference in their stations. Louis
Napoleon was the favorite nephew of the mightiest con
queror of all ages. Born under the blaze of that eagle
eye — announced to the world with glad salvos of artillery
— ^rocked in the golden cradle of the luxurious Tuilleries,
he knew nothing of the rude helplessness that struggled
on the far frontier of unsettled America, amid rustic huts
and howhng wildernesses and Indian war whoops, whose
cradle, if he had any, was rocked by the piercing blast
that swept through the unsheltered domicile of an impov
erished home. Behold now that dawning light beginning
only with animal instincts and physical elements to aid
its development. No gentle culture, no intellectual atmo
sphere, no chivalrous and traditional refinement to melt
and mould its higher sentiment and deeper cravings. All
those rules by which great men are systematically trained,
by which Cicero and Fenelon, Fox and Burke, and our
Webster, and even Clay, were unfolded and encouraged
to advancing maturity, were denied him. Behold this
granite will piercing these granite obstacles, through
whose chinks gleam after gleam of helpful light is stream
ing until the stone crumbles, a broader flood descends,
and the whole man, by self-culture and self-discipline, is
lifted above the flatboat, above the rough right hand, into
the higher brain, the loftier reach of legal knowledge.

112 EULOGY ON
political power, and general usefulness. Slowly, step by
step, he nears the far-off prince, whose bhth is so hopeless
ly above his own. The one becomes a needy adventurer,
an exile ; the other is still an obscure attorney, but a man
of local influence, who in dignity and self-respect would
esteem himself equal to a seedy prince. Again they
diverge far apart — convulsions shake the chronic storm-
ridden home of the prince; the outlaw becomes France's
necessity. The Bourbon's airy diadem vanishes — at his
touch the uncle's imperial brilliant sparkles on the dull
brow that brooded for years over its loss. The prince is
the great Emperor of France, and a law to Europe's
crowned imbecility. The obscure attorney grows apace.
He has become the people's representative. Fortune,
too, begins to light upon his lofty patience. By times the
god descends, and the people in their princely capacity,
passing by all the great lights who thought themselves
born and reared, and who talked and twisted into all
shapes, and bent their ears low and often to hear the
SAveet majestic sound that should call them to the Presi
dency, the people passing them all by, this humble,
honest, direct, genuine man is dropped into that chair
where Washington sat, and for which Webster sighed.
And now these rulers' born at the extremes of society, in
France and America, face each other as peers. The one
lifted by cunning, by nerve, and the help of a great name,
to wear through blood the imperial purple of a fickle
people. The other, with the nobler arts of a noble nature,
by wise service, by the advocacy of liberal sentiments, by
abstinence from all sordid devices, comes up from the
depths of the popular class to sway a vast empire, the
equal of kings, with power and resources greater than
France or England. Administering in peace the equal
of several European kingdoms, and chastising with war a

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 113
territory commensurate with half a continent. It may be
that a severe criticism Avould exact a more familiar inter
course with governmental action, a deeper and more com
prehensive reach of intehectual culture in the administra
tion of important political interests; but when we con
sider the sagacity with which our great political and
mihtary struggle has been conducted, the easy grace with
which intelligence by degrees counteracted inexperience,
the vast amount of talent summoned to its assistance, the
overflowing resources and the varied implements now
awkwardly, -now effectively, adjusting themselves to meet
and master the monster wrong; the perfect simplicity,
integrity, and single-heartedness with which our lamented
President's intercourse with the people has been signal
ized ; how healthy his moral and personal tone has acted
on the contest; with what perfect confldence his faith
inspired our confidence; how familiarly and fatherly he
has come down from the stilted formality of austere offi
ciality to take our troubles by the hand ; chucking them
under the chin, and telling them to be of good cheer ;
molhfying the dangerous with appropriate and proper-
turned touches of the humorous, using anecdotes as anti
dotes to keep human nature bland and cheerful under the
constant pressure of the dreadful. This light-hear tedn ess
was not the levity of a frivolous indifference to grave
duties, but a buoyancy born of a sanguine and genial
enthusiasm, confiding in the success of the true and the
good, and looking hopefully and gladly to pleasant results,.
through a consciousness of meaning and acting always for
the interest of all.
No one suffered more intensely in these hours of doubt
and gloom, when a triumph of the foe, on a battle-field or
at the ballot-box, seemed to throw a momentary despair
over the results of the contest. Here was a quiet citizen,

114 EULOGY ON
faithful to every civil emergency, whose pure and perse
vering life, gifted with a terse and pecuhar eloquence,
disposed him to advocate his political doctrines with
quaint and emphatic earnestness ; this fresh and fearless
man is suddenly called from an average routine of useful
and responsible duties, to administer the complex ma
chinery of the highest and most difficult trust of modern
imes. Who will ever forget that awful fall of 1860,
\ hen, amid the golden beauty of autumnal fohage, and
the still more golden splendor of national peace and
national power, we harvested the dark November ballot ?
It fell, the last calm fiow of a nation's will through blood
less channels. It feU, that ghastly Presidential suffrage,
amid the secret shudderings of a foreboding, yet still
faithful, hopeful, and peaceful Commonwealth, Bad men
had promised to break up a good government if this good
man succeeded to it. They had consented, voluntarily, to
sit down and play the game, and when the Lincoln ace
turned up, attempted, like reckless blacklegs, to overthrow
the table, and in the confusion snatch the stakes and enjoy
the plunder.
Whence comes the philosophy of this dark suicide?
Surely first in egotism. A people who hold another race
in absolute subjection soon exaggerate their self-impor
tance and believe all races their inferior. Because they
could flog one people at wiU, they thought they had only
to tie the North up'by the heels and bring it to any terms.
Northern Democrats could have no feeling of patriotism
for their section when such august allies demanded sub
mission. The next cause of their ruin was ignorance.
Where was their arithmetic when South Carolina seceded ?
Who told them that one was greater than two ; that the
vast resources of the North would tremble before a Pal
metto leaf; that the mud-sills could drive a bargain, but

ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 115
not an enemy; the shop-keeping crew might charge
prices, but not batteries or bayonets ? Had they forgotten
or never read Kevolutionary History ? Was not the deep
love of country drunk in with our mother's milk, now
tenaciously upheld with the red flow of om* ready blood ?
Would the children of Warren and Putnam, of Schuyler
and Greene, see this heritage swept away by the Davises
and Lees of a more dastardly age ?
Let those who are so proud of a separate South remem
ber who gave them a South to be proud of Who, when
Marion was vanquished and Sumter and Lincoln swept
from the contest, sent down our Greene and our hardy
Northern help to lift their chain and restore theh freedom
and theh fellowship with States, never for an hour know
ing a country or a home distinct from the stronger and
more protecting North. Thus they drifted on this frantic
fraternity, with no light but phrensy and whiskey, to their
dark doom.
Pubhc opinion was confused and bewildered by the
senseless howl of State Sovereignty from this State bought
for $17,500 by a company of English merchants. Look
at the grievances aUeged by the declaration of the South
Carohna Convention. The North had all the ships and
commerce, that was the crime of competition committed
by their hard hands and honest labor. The North forced
upon them a high tariff, and yet it was this South Caro
lina that insisted on a high tariff on cotton when we im
ported instead of exported that belligerent little fabric.
The South had to help pay the $200,000 a year for fishing
bounties to our seamen who sailed with their cotton and
defended it on the high seas, while the North was paying
theh greater share of the million and a half of dollars it
cost to carry the Southern mail, above its earnings. The
North, in one or two States, refused to execute the Fugi-

116 EULOGY ON
five Slave Law, that is those States claimed the South
Carolina privilege of nuUifying an obnoxious Federal law,
which the Federal Government faithfully fulfilled. These
were the senseless arguments why the government of our
fathers should be destroyed, why the whole fabric of
organized society should be startled and loosened, why
the nation should shake with the tramp of hostile brothers,
why graves should be opened, homes desolated, and
hearts broken. Why Abraham Lincoln, an angel in
feeling, and a Democrat in action, should be caUed by the
Southern press and the Southern rulers a tyrant, a baboon,
an ape, a lord over hyenas, and the sure prey of those
giant reformers who were so skilfully and surely tracking
him to his lair.
On the 4th of March, 1861, Abraham Lincoln swore
to stand by the charter. He walked from the ballot-box
to the inaugural over broken oaths and dissolving States,
Under a Scotch cap he drifted by a threatening mob to
find himself in the presence of a confounded people and a
paralyzed government. Every aid was needed and no
one could be trusted. Like the air, secession had insin
uated itself into every crevice of public employment.
Army and navy officers were resigning, and carrying off
both experience and material. Clerks entrusted with the
most important State secrets were sending them to the
enemy, and if displaced the new might be equally as cul
pable. All enterprises were at a stand-still. Blood
seemed the only business likely to thrive. Every one
looked to hhn who had been accused of all this to remedy
all this. There he stood, calm and anxious, A quiet
man, who had come to perform a plain task, to execute
laws which no one before had ever questioned, to satisfy
the voters who had sent him there, and then leave it all
as sacredly and securely safe, the rights of each and every

ABEAHAM LINCOLN. . 117
section as he found them. Yet the storm howled on
around this novice in statesmanship and in crime. More
inroads on the holy temple, more whirling away of States,
more faithful citizens renouncing their fidelity to a com
mon mother. The contest deepens. Brothers are sharp
ening for their brother's blood. Statesmen who could
easily solve ordinary questions, shake theh heads at the
shaking fabric. Public sentiment is divided as to the
powers of a government founded on sentiment. Can you
punish the author and the OAvner for what they do with
theh own ? Has not a Sovereign a right to its sovereign
ty? Thus A^as a nation bewildered, staggered, lowered,
and drunk with the sophistry of Southern phrases, until
one day a lunatic in Montgomery telegraphed to another
demented to fire on that sacred bunting. The ball comes
on and knocks the film from our drowsy Northern eyes,
lifts the clouds that had obscured our self-defence, and we
rise to the height of both our danger and our duty. Be
fore Sumter all was party. Not the nation, but how
should the Repubhcans act. Would concessions be con
sistent with the rights and results of a party victory?
How dare defeat bully us ? Sumter's ball hurled Abra
ham Lincoln from the Chicago Platform to the Spring
field Armory. It made every American citizen an office-
seeker, asking a place for his country among the nations ;
asking for his own plundered citizenship ; every man was
a government contractor that day, pleading for the Great
Contract, Now Abraham Lincoln is himself; now he
puts on his official pea-jacket, goes on the national deck,
and grasps the helm with that dauntless vigor which God
and his Western life had given him. This bullet of Sum
ter relieves him of all that civil diffidence to which an
unpractised prominence is prone and which even paralyzed
the experience that preceded him. With inore necessity

118 EULOGY ON
of blood comes more desertion of States. All who stand
by the stability of national power need this crumbling
away of the yielding, unrehable material which might
impede or fraternize indifferently with the supreme
exigency ; and now the question is. Who shall awake and
lead the mihtary element. All our hope of glory and
soldierly experience is centered in one tottering, fading,
faithful giant. Scott of the past must be succeeded by
some younger Scott, With a childish enthusiasm the
people adopt and exult over an unknown youth, modest
and cultivated. With the generosity of unaccustomed
war they gorge this untried hero with powder, and ball,
and men, and confidence, and every implement of success,
that could make merit succeed and the lack of it snarl
and fall.
Through all that period of criminal caution and in
competency, how nobly the faithful President stood by
him whom an intelligent impatience was demanding to
be removed. How anxiously his kind nature sustained
this wooden hero, and urged him from splendid retreat to
splendid retreat, to prove himself at last all this hopeful
people hoped of him. With what eager pertinacity his
disappointment turned from chief to chief, searching
under every repulse for the true leader ; poring over that
bloody volume of the War Directory to find the name and
residence of him who was to lead this nation to victory
and unity.
During the first two years of the war, our greatest
general was our general greatness. Alternately checked
and chasing the elastic foe on innumerable battle-fields,
yet still advancing, at last from fire-vomiting impediments,
wide-spread toil and slaughter, are evolved in smoke and
blood, as the genii by the sea rose out of storm and mist,
so rose our Grant, Sherman, and Farragut, to lead back

ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 119
through fields of ceaseless triumph the reeling, staggering
spirit of Union and Liberty. These are the names that
make our cause strong, and would make any cause dan
gerous. We know, too, whose clear eye first discovered
their merits, and whose hand signed the instruments that
sent them forth to hew away all obstacles that stopped
Epl/wrihus wnuwHs path from the Lakes to the Gulf
This unknown man, a stranger to office and statesman
ship, to public praise or public blame, without great
genius or great experience, or great fame, acquired or
traditional, to gild error or confirm merit ; with a name
to make, an oath to keep, a people to save, a crime to
punish, the volcano heaving under his feet, the oath warn
ing him over his head, the dagger at his breast, an empire
in his hands, backed by a divided North, defied by a
seemingly united South, his obscure and spotless name at
once the synonym of England's sneer and Richmond's
curse ; with only a pure heart, a clear eye and a steady
hand to lay without flinching on the inost dangerous
crisis, the most doubtful issues, the most perplexing
duties, the most daring and defiant, the most well-bred,
well-considered, comprehensive, cultivated, hell-engen
dered plot that ever dashed its bloody hand and icy heart
against the elements of law and order. He found himself
heir to a statesmanship confused, shuffling and pusillan
imous, occupied only with the question as to how we
should permit our institutions to be murdered most grace
fully, and he left its, public policy candid, earnest, self-
sustaining, engaged only with the question how the
attempted murderers could be treated most mercifully.
He found American nationality suddenly confronting him
as a disgraceful doubt; he parted Avith it a terribly-
respected fact. He found the government a dissolving
giant, dying of an old cancer that had baffled the best

120 EULOGY ON
physicians ; he lived to cut out the poison with his sword,
and left his well-knit, well-mannered, vigorous, compact
patient a perpetual and healthful mourner at his grave.
Sorely in need of force to meet the arming crime, he found
our little navy had been sent yachting in the Indian and
Pacific Seas, that treason might cruise more seriously
along the streams of our progress. He lived to fill the
Avorld with our swarming ships, original in design, invin
cible in defence, terrible in destruction, able to defend one
continent and defy another. He came into possession of
15,000 regular soldiers, scattered over as many miles, and
1,000,000 of men by him equipped reversed their arms on
his funeral march. He found the people quailing under
a debt of eighty millions and fearing the weight of it must
bar the door to national salvation ; he left them with their
country redeemed, their resources more developed, their
trade increased, and a mountain of three thousand milhons
of debt scaled at all points for investment, without official
ly calling on a single foreign dollar to help us purchase
our domestic safety. He found the pubhc feeling and the
sense of citizenship demoralized, the tone of political re-
sponsib;lity lowered, the suffrage a mere vehicle for par
tisan aggrandizement, the love of country at the mercy
of a State Rights dogma, a party tie, a demagogue's
breath ; national obligations confused and evaporating in
a narrow local selfishness that would part with an empire
to save a hobby, that would not give up a prejudice to
keep up the wisest and most beneficent systems ever
sworn to by man. He lived to see the sun dawn on a
united people purified by suffering ; their sense of danger
elevating their sense of duty and unity. By personal
example of earnest, disinterested public service, by pa
tience, courage and faith in all well-doing, more than by
sermon, homily or proclamation, did this good chieftain

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 121
mould the better life of the nation and preserve it from
false prophets and false issues ; keeping it in the steady
line of calm and inflexible determination to pass through
its perils, to accept its sacrifices, to live np to its duties,
and so save all that heroism had acquired and freedom
and virtue sanctified. He accomplished all this, not
without, perhaps, many errors of inexperience and defects
of judgment ; not Avithout sometimes ringing the little bell
a little too often, or drawing the bolt a little too soon ;
sometimes overworking the war power, in which fewer
mistakes could hardly have been made with so many
crimes to lock up and use up ; the people preferring the
occasional despotism of mistakes to the permanent despot
ism of crimes — ^preferring an incompetent man, sometimes
inadvertently kept in office, to an absurd cause enthroned
forever. He passed through this storm of war, this criti
cism of civil duty, these murmurs of complaint, these
periods of panic, to victory and immortahty, not without
much help from heaven, many friends, brilliant aids and
immense resources. He saw a foreign oligarchy envious
and malignant, banded to write down and wear down the
purest and most powerful type of modern republicanism ;
he saw a home opposition, reckless, wanton and depraved,
showering his most righteous acts with defiant slanders
and cruel perversions in a crisis entitled to magnanimity
and a generous forbearance ; he saw this dastardly tribe
brought down, humbled and helpless, before the simple
efforts of persistent and well-directed achievements ; he
saw the South that had exhausted upon him every epithet
and every feeling of hatred and calumny, who had taught
their slaves to ridicule him, their children to loathe and
lisp the alphabet of never-ending scorn and bitterness, he
saw this South staggering and dying under his incessant
blows, lifting its fainting head to deny and to regret a

122 EULOGY ON
death which might uncomfortably precipitate them from
the chastisement of principle to the chastisement of
revenge. To all these merits of energy, patience, probity, saga
city, eloquence, and aptitude for organization and execu
tion, which distinguished the great emancipator, must
now be added the melancholy merit of national martyr
dom. As in his hfe his achievements render his rule the
most important and conspicuous Presidential career since
Washington's, so in his death he stands alone as the first
public character violently swept from the sphere of its
usefulness ; a great guardian stricken doAvn from the side
of a great tmth, just as it was passing from the perils of war
to the exigencies of peace. Will not emancipation — this
infant, bom in the hail of blood-blinding war — will it not
miss that relaxed hand, that stilled voice, as the orphan
totters through opposing ranks to rank and power?
Abraham Lincoln fell on the very day the old fiag
came down on Sumter; when we stood on that ruin
which was yet more the ruin of the South ; but not till
his soul had gone up with the flag ; not until the perti
nacity of the North had waved a mended principle over a
broken fortress. And now, with this loved one vanished,
this Union saved, this sad Southern people prostrate, this
peace perched on every surly battlement of rebellion, will
the South pass thus sullenly from the eminence of defi
ance to the extreme of apathy and indifference?
Why is it that in all these conquered districts we hear
so much of the people's love of the Union, and no attempt
to work up this Union feehng into State organization and
national co-operation? All ready to cringe to power, to
forswear the past, ready to take rations, take oaths, take
office, take anything to save property and avoid the
last ditch. Where is all that manhood which braved

ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 123
death, defied the world, and staked everything for Jeff?
That rebelled, robbed, hed, slaughtered, hung, and burned
for the right to break up, and will do nothing to make up,
that involves reason, thought, loyalty, and earnest political
brotherhood ?
Come back, oh deluded and defeated South. Come
back in feeling as you are already back by compulsion.
Those who won you with their superior sword would hold
you by the equal charter. For blows and curses, for hard
names and light fingers, for ruin diverted from abroad
and baffled at home, for all but the leadership in your
heUish crimes, we offer just laws, equal rights, and a
common share in that loving government only made more
immortal by warding off the death-blow you would have
dealt it.
With all the desolation of your fields and homes, you
have lost nothing permanently but a traitorous crew and
a poisonous creed ; nothing which industry will not repair
and patriotism secure. Remember, slavery was never in
danger until you lost your senses ; remember, too, that it
never can be restored imtil we lose ours. The same talent
and energy employed in the arts of peace that you have
exhibited in war, the same tofl with your white hands, the
same endurance of fatigue and hardships, of hunger and
danger, through desperate encounters and dreary marches
which made you the slaves of slavery, by peaceful free
labor, wiU restore you to a nobler and more abundant
prosperity than was ever wrung from the toil of others.
You can hire the negro's freedom cheaper than you can
buy his servitude. The interest on his slave value will
almost pay his free wages, wMle his own interest in the
rights of men will increase the energy with which he
develops your wealth. Free labor alone has conquered
you. It invites emigration, it develops and then accumu-

124 EULOGY ON
lates resources too vastly and too quickly for slavery to
compete with. The negro, as slave, failed to keep off war
or to keep up war for your advantage; now try if the
negro as freeman, may not prolong peace and so insure
harmony, unity, and a less sensitive form of progress and
prosperity. Will you forget that you must arouse, orga
nize, and recover your lost civil status? As war has
thrashed out of you the beaten and demolished theory
that a State may defy and destroy a nation, why not
heartily and permanently shape the State law and con
form every local obligation and every moral and political
sentiment to the spirit of national duty ; co-operating in
cheerful concurrence with the great Federal amendment,
so that never directly or by implication shall any clause
be so doubtful in the constitution as to tempt the traitor
or wean the patriot from fealty to the supreme law of the
Union, and thus divert misery and ruin from yourself and
your ehfldren to the latest generation ?
Will not this Southern people call conventions, appoint
elections, send delegates back voluntarily to that Congress
they voluntarily spurned, and thus, in the good American
Avay, by argument, by peaceful investigation and hopeful
reference to representative and judicial adjudication, sub
mit theh rights and wants, under a returning submission
and sense of duty, to those who in their better days de
cided wisely and well for us all ; or else, in stubbornness
and anger, remain under this military post-garrison form
of pupilage, or go forth wanderers to people some more
Southern solitude ; or, like the Arab or the gipsy, intrude
on luckier races branded with the marks of unrespected
martyrdom ? Laws, habits, language, feeling, kindred,
make us one people. Love and trade, as well as moun
tains and rivers, matrimony, as weU as geography, have
made us one people. You cannot form tAvo nations of a

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 125
community with a Yankee aunt and grandmother hanging
up reverently in every Southern parlor, with a Southern
sister or grandfather piously packed away in every North-
em home. Is the Southern pride wounded by defeat?
The very exertions that have been vanquished have made
them famous, and by the industry of the efl'ort prepared
them for that free labor which they could not avoid. If
they have lost their slaves they have gained themselves —
gained knowledge, gained self-reliance, and a surer and
quicker development. Admitting that the whole value
of the slaves was one thousand millions of doUais, which
they have lost, yet it is not one-half the sum the North
has had to pay to maintain the Government. Are they
desolate and impoverished ? Not more so than any des
perate speculator who embarks his all in some such wild
cat bank and fails. If they will invest in damnation, they
must expect their profits to be hell. If the negro proves
himself worthy of free labor it will ensure to Southern
ambition more political power by enlarging the Southern
constituency ; it will make Southern lands more valuable
by increasing their productiveness ; and Avith the generous
tender of Northern capital, this Southern community must
rapidly recover from its depletion.
And now, soldiers ! sons of our North ! saviours of our
nation ! your days of danger and strife are drawing to a
close. No heroes of the world tread more enviable
heights of fame. Your bayonets have been gleaming
spires over that holy church of liberty in which your
fathers and your brothers worshipped.
Through all your marches you have never forgotten
that you were citizens as well as soldiers ; that you were
moving at no unrighteous conqueror's beck. Amid all
the storm of battle, on picket, through the drill, or by the
camp fire, the spirit of your Government was simply call-

126 EULOGY ON ABEAHAM LINCOLN.
ing upon you to perfect your own citizenship. No can
non could drown that voice — no raid capture the resolu
tion to obey it.
The glory of your deeds will remain with you through
hfe ; it will influence your character and insure you
respect. The sight of that old flag, when it flits between
your cares and your dreams and waves over some civil
duty abandoned on holidays or festivals, you will think
how you followed it as it streamed on flelds of fire. How
the nation reeled or righted as you shrunk from or breast
ed the guilty lines that confronted it.
And as your eyes gleam with exultation over the dan
gers you escaped, and the rights you snatched from the
traitors' grasp, you Avill mingle your glad refrain with
loved memories of that great and good chief who first
called you into service, equipped you for battle, and with
a father's care and a monarch's power, followed you with
cheering words through every contest, until the bullet
that spared you laid low his life, fresh from the freedom
of one race and the safety of another.

J^DDRESS

DEATH OF EDWARD EVERETT.

ATEITTBN TOE THE SOLDIEK 8 FKIEND,

Soldiers ! Yon who have mowed down so many lives,
to whom graves are as familiar as wounds, there is one
death that must move you. The lips that have so often
plead for your comfort and your glory cannot moulder
without a tear or a memory for such a man.
Edward Everett is dead ! What a starthng announce
ment to a people who, for so many years, have shaped
their ears and hopes to his graceful teachings. In a dark
hour, when the precious metals are so high and scarce, the
loss of that silver tongue is indeed a calamity. Where
shall the anniversary oration, the hohday festival, the
comphmentary banquet, the political crisis, and, above
all, this righteous conflict, look for so finished, so experi
enced, and so animated a mouth-piece ?
Edward Everett was not an orator in its highest sense.
I will not say he was not profound. It is not the business
of oratory to be profound in anything but feeling, nor to
be original in anything but statement and illustration.
Orators are the medium through which the thoughts of

128 ADDRESS ON THE
great men and the duty of great achievements are ex
plained and conveyed to the masses. Their business is to
inspire men Avith the love of country, of vhtue, of justice,
and of beauty in thought and action, and this can only be
accomplished by employing the clearest, simplest, and
most intelhgible forms of thought and expression. Edward
Everett was not what we delight to call a born orator,
overflowing and spontaneous, like Patrick Henry or Henry
Clay. He had not the bold and massive amplitude of
Webster, nor the rich and vigorous comprehensiveness of
Burke; neither could he compare with Choate in real
earnestness, in famihar candor of manner, and that gush
ing sympathetic sweetness of style, on whose golden stream
swam the whole structure of thought, learning, taste,
fancy, and logic, which the heart or brain of the orator
could conceive or convey. Everett never for a moment
forgot Everett. All that he said or wrote was flnished,
scholarly, intelligent, and informing. It added to our
knowledge and corrected our taste, but neither stirred our
blood nor won our heart. Yet he was artist enough to
use in his orations the materials that inspire sympathy,
and he no doubt was man enough to feel them ; but he
lacked that indescribable something which succeeds in
conveying to others the highest efforts of self-forgetting,
soul-inspiring power.
His oration on the inauguration of the Dudley Observa
tory is a serene master-piece of starry oratory. The sub
ject was peculiarly adapted to his character of eloquence.
It had no immediate connection with the passions or per
sons of the hour. It required some knowledge of astron
omy, fine moral sensibihty, an appreciation of abstract
beauty, and ar^ artistic power of grouping the grand and
the distant into forms which mysteriously link them to
our pursuit of happiness and duty. The celebrated oration

DEATH OF EDWARD EVERETT, 129
on Washington, delivered in aid of the purchase of the
home of Washington, received, and indeed deserved, all
the merit awarded to it.
No orator in our age, or any other age, ever produced
such substantial pecuniary results for the benefit of so
endearing and sacred a cause. Yet, as a great mental
effort, it cannot rank with the ablest productions of the
times, nor even is it equal to some of his own less ambi
tious and less carefuUy prepared addresses.
At Gettysburg there came forth the whole soul of the
orator and the man, to bind up, in undying Avords, the
deathless deeds of the martyred band that lay crumbling
beneath his inspiration. And is there a field Avhose lan
guage could paint achievement more vividly than on the
very spot of its performance ? His feet were soaking in
the still undried blood of the battle ; his lungs were inhal
ing the yet lingering smoke of a thousand cannon ; his
eyes gazed on the trodden grass, the ruined harvest,
the crushed homes, the unburied dead, the ghastly, wide
spread desolation, invoked by the murderous rush of those
angry billows of men that flowed and surged and bore
each other doAvn, that they might save or blast the hopes
of republican liberty. And there Avas that calm man of
speech, succeeding that angry clash of arms, the deserted
implements of destruction all around him, and out of the
havoc of their expired ferocity comes the sweet soft tone
of a power and a patriotism as strong and determined, and
yet more peaceful and beautiful in its teachings than the
glorious blaze of vanished but conquering heroes.
Yet Mr, Everett will stand higher with posterity as a
publicist than an orator. During his long participation in
political hfe, as Senator in Congress, Secretary of State,
and Minister to England, his numerous state papers and
diplomatic correspondence were invaluable contributions
9

130 ADDRESS ON THE
to the pohtical knowledge of the country. Few statesmen
have exhibited more skilful aptitude for diplomacy, or a
more accurate knowledge and nicer skill in dealing with the
questions affecting our domestic and international relations.
We never read an address or a communication from Mr,
Everett, on whatever may be the most engrossing subject
of public interest at the moment, that we do not gain some
new fact, or argument, some new light, to guide and
determine our judgment, after other leading men have
exhausted their knowledge of it. His Fourth of July
Address, in 1861, on the causes and consequences of the
rebellion, contains more facts in relation to that event, and
more arguments against it, than all the rest of the public
speeches on the same subject since,
Mr, Everett's pride was in his oratory, but his real
strength lay in his true knowledge of pubhc affairs ; in his
faculty for industriously collating and impartially com
menting on political questions.
His was not a character of commanding, initiative
energy, that, fortified by will, and impelled by bold moral
passions, founds sects, leads parties, and revolutionizes
creeds. It was a balancing, delicate, yet interested and
enterprising nature, that pursues and perceives, but satis
fies itself rather with commenting than controlling, and so
dies Avithout a follower or an enemy ; sure of some imitators
and millions of admirers. His high American tone, his
unswerving integrity of conduct and purpose, his intense
national feeling and service, insure, while others take the
chair, he will take the niche. No general in the field has
worked harder for the Union than the peaceful, unarmed
Edavaed Everett. He filled armies if he did not com
mand them. His tongue has been the best tax-gatherer
in the nation. First it raised thousands to purchase the
tomb of Washington ; then, chanting a sterner and loftier

DEATH OF EDWARD EVERETT. 131
strain, it raised thousands more to save the Avork of Wash
ington. This is the man, the man of culture and caution, too
wise to love error and too timid to reform it, whom the
temporizers of 1860 tied to their Vice-Presidential ticket.
A ticket that went to battle with an empty musket ; that
in a great moral and political crisis had no creed, a ticket
Avhich clung to the past because it was experience ; shrunk
from the future, because it was experiment ; and paralyzed
the present by vivifying it with neither the dream of the
philanthropist nor the daring advances of the slaveholder.
It was a pitiable sight to see this weak-kneed coterie at
tempting to attain power by dodging the radical storm
that raged between the White House and the ballot-box.
Yet the banner of equivocation waved over a wider
field than the genuine issues. While the Lincoln vote
was stopped at the Blue Ridge and the Mississippi ; while
the Breckenridge ticket swooned and froze under the cold
blasts of. the Republican North, the name of Bell and
Everett, warranted to keep in any climate, rustling alike
over prairie, cane-brake and cotton-plant, fanned the heated
South with the motto of conservatism into a delusive
temporary equanimity. The civil contest concluded, the
conservative wrong is swept away by the radical right.
The Southern votes for Everett of peace harden into
steel against the EA^orett of war. Tlie Scholar Politician,
trembhng and trimming rather to save a people than yield
a place, buries his compromises in the masonry of Fort
Sumter. Out of that smoke by the sea the giant rises ;
stretching his sceptre of speech over the vast commotion,
he calls millions to redeem the threatened nation. Like
white sugar, his oratory needed blood to turn it. For four
years that voice has been loyal, radical and defiant, the
trimmer swallowed up in the exterminator, the iron coining

132 ADDRESS ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD EVERETT.
to the rescue of the silver in his nature. Edward Everett
was not permitted to die until all doubts of his greatness
were removed. He who had spent his life in finding
arguments to keep down the negro in order to save the
white man, at last could speak the word that makes the
slave's freedom the safety of both races.
His coffin sinks between the Proclamation and the
Amendment. Yet so near to the amendment that the
falling fetters of the slave drop close enough to join with
their music the requiem of his departure.
Soldiers ! he was your best living unbraided example
of loyalty, bravery, and industrious perseverance in
battling for the right. Scholar, statesman, and politician,
aspiring for honors, office, or power ; here is one who held
them all not by cunning fraud, selfishness, or corruption,
but advanced and adorned them all, official power with
moral power — the chair of state with the chair of learning,
popularity with duty, the caprices of multitudes with the
steadiness of pure aims and industrious habits. Follow his
example, and you may go to your grave smothered in his
flowers, ringing with his plaudits. Forget him, prefer
cunning to candor, treason to patriotism, pursue the op
posite road to fame, and I care not how high you soar,
Arnold, Burr and Davis will be the dark trinity to whose
degraded eminence posterity will commit your worthless
immortality.

LETTER

ADDEESSED TO

PRESIDENT Ln^COLN,

AT THE BEQUEST OF THE

WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK.

[The Workingmen's Association of this city some
days since passed a resolution requesting David S. Cod
dington, Esq., to address President Lincoln a congratula
tory letter in their behalf upon his inauguration and the
progress of events. Mr. Coddington complied with their
request in the following production :]
" New York, March 4, 1865.
" Abraham Lincoln :
"I am deputed by the Workingmen's Association
of this city to congratulate you, the hardest worker of
them aU, upon the noble work which, through you, free
labor is achieving for free government. To-day your
new administration steps into the circle of nations with a
new America. The obhgations of the past are dissolved.
Reluctance to disturb an especial institution has been

134 LETTER ADDEESSED TO
summarily cured by the awful vigor with which that in
stitution has shaken and disturbed us. That branch of
State rights which gives a State the right to destroy the
nation has been conflscated by the nation. Violated
democracy secures its safety and revenges its wrongs by
withdrawing the right to degrade labor.
" To-day at twelve o'clock you will again lay your
winning hand on that Inaugural Bible, once moist with
the warm, pure kiss of Washington. For thirty years
your predecessors' Presidential lives have expired with
their first term. How is it that you, reeking Avith con
flict, and gory with recreant blood, march to your second
oath with a conqueror's strength and a saviour's applause ?
How is it that you, who have exhausted more treasure,
encouraged more taxes, hurled more thunder, and filled
more graves than all the combined Presidents since the
constitution, than all the heroes and statesmen preceding
the constitution, than any conqueror who has founded or
distracted American empire, from Fernando Cortez to the
German emigrant who struts under the pilfered crown of
Mexico ; — how is it, with the habeas corpus suspended.
Fort Lafayette in good working order, and errors com
mitted, both political and military, you go to the Capitol
to-day riddled with flowers instead of bayonets ; armed
only with a Bible and flag, swept there by no force but
the overwhelming flood of warm and willing votes ? If
to preserve the principles of Washington you have been
obliged to destroy life with the prodigality of Napoleon,
a discriminating people have consigned you to no rock
but the solid constancy of the national approbation. They
believe that if you have stretched power, it was to pre
serve power ; if you are spilling your brother's blood, it is
to save your father's work. They know that the ferocity
and discord of a few years means the humanity and har-

PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 135
mony of centuries. They see the yoke of a guiltless race
fahing into the grave of a guilty South, and they cry
amen to a deed that punishes the rebel's broken oath with
the negro's broken chain. Abstract virtue might exact a
less selfish emancipation. But when we remember the
trials of a people tied up with inherited evils, the struggle
and the deliverance are not unworthy of us.
" Some wise people think that to spare slavery now is
to stop war. But as slavery was safely spared when it
began war, what hope is there that a government which
was defied when its debt was only eighty millions of dol
lars, will not be attacked when it is oppressed with a debt
of two or three thousand millions of dollars? The debt
alone must destroy slavery, or slavery Avill crush us with
debt. Bring them back without emancipation and this
is their argument : ' We hate you as ever, because you
hate slavery, because you are richer than us, and more
than ever now because . you have beaten us. We ground
our arms because you are too many for us — that is no dis
grace. You have grounded your principles to save more
debt — that is contemptible. You have spent three thou
sand millions of dollars, endured great suffering, and here
we are with our old hate and our old institution back
again, ready, if you begin to cant and talk anti-slavery
again, to fight you again, with a better chance next time,
when you are staggering towards bankruptcy.'
" ' Oh, but slavery is dead,' says the opposition. This
time the tomb is a dodge to get into the temple. If the
war should run off every slave but two, and the South
should come back with only Pompey and Dinah, they
would in time breed back the real slave population, breed
back the old brood of fire-eaters, conspirators, and armed
enemies, and, with the lieljp of Vallandigham & Co, here,
and of Laird & Co,'s English neutrality abroad, who

136 LETTER ADDEESSED TO
doubts their ability for increased mischief? Those who
cry ruin if we don't spare slavery, cried ruin if we re-elect
ed you ; cried ruin if you superseded McClellan ; cried
ruin if we resisted traitors. It is the favorite cry against
those who differ with us. In 1824, Webster cried ruin
if a high tariff was passed. In 1842, he cried ruin if it
was defeated. Clay told the world that the Sub-Treasury
was the knell of finance, and when a boy, I heard a dis
tinguished publicist call Jackson a scoundi'el, who should
be shot ; and I heard the same person very lately speak
of him as all that was great and good. Without abohtion,
what do we gain by blood sacrifice ? Not population or
territory, for we fight no foreign foe ; not colonies, or de
pendencies, for we bring back only our equals. It is
nothing to punish unless we remove the cause of punish
ment. Is the great commotion to produce only railroads
torn up and store-houses burned down ? Is that in the 7-
30 and 10-40 contracts? No, sir. The workingmen of
this nation expect to work out of this war with the digni
ty of work fully established. As a skilful pianist only
brings out the full tones of his instrument in touching all
the keys, both black and white, so shall you in using all
the forces of free labor draw out the grand harmonies of
our national march.
" Four years ago you were dodging assassins on your
way to empire. To-day your safe conduct is written with
the blood that oozes from a dying heresy. Four years
ago you only rode to the capital through a gap in the
democratic party ; to-day you are there in spite of the
union of all the elements that threatened the Union. In
that anxious November contest how we held our breath
for fear some other breath of popular caprice might waft
some weaker hand to grasp the difficulty, might hft some
lesser light to chase this southern darkness from our land.

PEESIDENT LINCOLN. 137
The delicate and important point in that canvass was,
how to elect you without spoihng you ; how to trust your
future without sanctioning all your past. Popularity so
often exaggerates self-importance, that self-discipline some
times relapses into self-sufficiency. Heavy minorities are
the healthiest monitors of successful candidates for power.
Rulers will measure their duties by the distance between
the possession of office and the possibility of its loss. In
perflous times, while wielding immense resources, the
temptation to play the despot is always strong. It is so
simple, so direct and so effective. In proportion as
powerful elements are excited are we stimulated to use
poAver in grappling with them. But in the last Presi
dential contest the issues were so wide apart, the alterna
tive so distinct and peremptory, whether we would sur
render to a crime or get along Avith a few faults, many
virtues and much experience, that whatever fear the peo
ple felt of demoralizing you with an extravagant approval,
was lost in the pride of overwhelmingly extinguishing the
degrading ticket that confronted you.
" The people of this country are ever a hopeful people — •
hopeful of victories in battle, hopeful of reform in rulers.
They do not believe that you will misconstrue your tri
umph, although you go back to the chah almost with the
strength of a constitutional amendment.
"You may have shaped the first for this second coming
— your future rule can only prepare itself for a grateful
immortality. Your election in 1860 was a pohtical com
monplace ; the old story of ' available candidate ' and a
party victory, born of Greeley's tactics and Buchanan's
blunders. The North, too humane to love slavery, and
too constitutional to disturb it, meant no mischief until
the mischief-mongers of the South taught us how to beat
them at their own business. No doubt the instincts of

138 LETTER ADDRESSED TO
the nation would have gravitated in time to Avhere war
has hurried it. All great reforms have been precipitated
by the crimes or the weaknesses of individuals. The im
becility of King John gave England Magna Charta a
hundred years before the intelligence of the age could
have wrung it from the average energy of barbaric power.
Habeas corpus was hastened by Charles the Second's love
of women being more ardent than his love of authority.
Common prudence in Lord North and his compeers might
have adjourned the Declaration of Independence until
this very hour that we have so powerfully proved our
right to it. The ball fired at our government has brought
down nothing but the institution which most embarrassed
it. The South thought the North Avas playing billiards
with the election of 1860. Cushioning on the Territories
to carom on the States ; in pushing their cues too vigor
ously they have only pocketed themselves,
" No man ever assumed power so disadvantageously as
yourself. Some Western lawsuits, a few stump speeches,
and one unexciting Congressional term sums up the ex
perience that was to administer a calamity fifty years
brewing. Yet directness of purpose and vigor of under
standing have relieved us from the sad anarchy promised
by the experienced imbecility that preceded you. You
left home with a confused impression that something was
wrong, but that it must all work right. Fond of a joke
yourself, it might be possible they were only helping you
to a new anecdote, A government so innocent could not
be the victim of such guilt. You brought an honest heart
to a deceitful era. You possessed neither the perceptions
nor the wickedness to see the awful depth of the maligni
ty that lay at the base of your election. When you
stepped upon the deck, what wild disorder pervaded the
ship of state ? There lay the old pilot swooning at the

PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 139
helm, drugged with Southern opiates. There lay the con
stitution torn in pieces by the wrestlings of its defenders.
The very freedom of the system embarrassing all freedom
of action, no pretext to justify wrong, no precedent to
need it. How shall authority be exercised against the
authors of all authority? With a bewildered look you
gazed on the ghastly gift of November, in doubt whether
you came to Washington to attend a funeral or execute a
contract. Office-seekers begging for office, patriots asking
for a country ; the rebel commissioners knocking for ad
mission — not for the halter they had earned — but for their
share of the ruins they had made ; not ambassadors, but
grave-diggers came for the body, prepared to bury Ameri
can liberty under the dust of their rubbish platitudes.
We all have our theories how they ought to have been
treated, how much wiser our little wisdom could have
managed the war. Ministers of great emergencies escape
not great calumnies. Censure now, immortality hereafter,
Washington shot in effigy by one State, moved to be im
peached by another, the descendants of both contending
for his autograph. If Jackson regretted at his death-bed
that he had not hung Calhoun, no such sorrow can shade
the dying hour of Abraham Lincoln. The shot he has
poured into Calhoun's successors will rattle along the cen
turies for many eras of American history, to which saddest
and profoundest calamity of that history he is indissolubly
linked. If Jackson immortalized himself by rocking to
sleep the infant disunion, what must be his fame who shall
forever hush the full-grown demon ?
"If George Washington challenges the glory of the
world for lifting up one race, what renown aAvaits him
who redeems two ? Saratoga and Yorktown snapped the
Americo-Saxon chain, but Grant's gripe chokes the wrongs
of two races ; Sherman's march guards the progress of the

140 LETTER ADDEESSED TO PEESIDENT LINCOLN.
fallen as well as the favored color. The South, which
loses its temper in proportion as it loses its territories,
attempts to stamp on the leader in all these reforms the
degrading epithets of 'tyrant,' 'buffoon,' 'Illinois ape.'
Unfortunately for them, unlike the African ape, his anger
does not throw down at random luscious cocoanuts. The
fruit are better aimed, and bear blood instead of milk.
"The contest, though unfinished, is no longer uncer
tain, Calhoun's grave is in our possession. His theory
is under the feet of our armed heroes. What peace shall
parole the captured doctrine? As workingmen respect
fully but manfully addressing the master-worker, this
Association bid you God speed. " David S. Coddington,
" On behalf of the Workingmen's Democratic-Repub
lican Association of New York."

SPEECH

BEPOEE THE

15TH WARD FREE SOIL LEAGUE,
NOVEMBER, 1848,

I might be tempted to apologize for the presumption
which brings either the person or the sentiment of so
obscure an individual as myself before this assemblage,
was I not persuaded that my audacity, like our prosperity,
is the natural result of those intimate relations which the
humblest of us bear towards the government of the coun
try. When wise statesmen, in grave council, place the
disposal of great questions and the selection of great offi
cers at the mercy of the boy of twenty-one, equally with
the veteran of sixty ; when the state in adopting us, as a
necessity teaches us to be proud, by permitting us to
decide; when it gives importance to insignificance, by
associating the ignorant and the inexperienced in a com
munity of privileges with learning and intelligence, I
own the pride of ultimate power reassures my diffident
mediocrity and encourages me, however humble, to claim
of you that indulgence in the discussion of important
principles which the law has so solemnly granted me with
others in determining. For, be it remembered that the

142 SPEECH BEFORE THE
power which places a ballot in our hands is but the recog
nition of that higher power which placed a voice in our
mouths, and that- the security and efficacy of the one de
pends much upon the truth, the freedom, and the energy
Avith which we exercise the other. It is a condition of
liberty that society thall be burthened in proportion as it
is favored, that the decree of the fall shall accompany our
rise ; that man must toil for his freedom as he does for his
bread; that every immunity is the parent of a respon
sibility, and that increased duties are but incidental to
multiplied rights. It is the purport of these duties to
elevate our morals to the level of our fortunes, to render
natures equally as corrupt as the rest of the race worthy
to enjoy institutions far superior, and by making each
man's pohtics the guardian of his personal interests, not
only to preserve but justify the principle that exacts them.
For what is this liberty of which we boast so much but a
presumptuous paradox, until, by discipline and self-sacri
fice, by that magnanimity which will not abuse power,
and that fortitude which, in the moment of peril, can sus
tain it, by ceaseless vigilance and approved sagacity, it
has worked its way to the dignity of a truth and the cer
tainty of a blessing ? What right have we to rebel against
the world's laAV, who appropriate to ourselves the world's
goods, unless we sanctify that rebellion by obedience to a
holier creed ? By AA^hat authority do we build the free
man's privileges upon the Christian's precepts if this sov
ereign discretion is to become an instrument of immorali
ty — if this hard-earned, dearly-prized, never to be excelled
acquisition is, after all, only a new way to perpetuate old
vices,, only a wider path in the same journey of national
aggression, beginning in the pertinacity which adheres to
past perfidy and ending in the extension of inherited pol
lution over tortiously acquired possessions? These are

15th ward free soil league. 143
questions, fellow citizens, which it were well for us had
they never to be asked of a people who are living upon
the fruits of their virtues ; of a people whose land is
covered with the bounty, and whose history is filled with
the glory of considerate ancestors : questions which
Southern recklessness and Southern selfishness have forced
upon us, and which nothing but Northern rectitude and
Northern prudence can determine.
For the first time in the history of popular elections
we join issue upon the public morality. For the first
time in the history of party conflicts we present the sin
gular spectacle of a nation most divided upon what best
preserves it. How melancholy is the reflection, that in a
country settled by Christians, and guarded by patriots, it
should be necessary to organize a separate party for the
rescue of a single vhtue ; to lay down om' old issues, to
abandon old friends, to forego the predilections of habit
ual association, and hasten to the relief of a tottering
principle, which, if it falls, must carry vdth it whatever is
valuable in opinions, whatever is attractive in friendship,
or tenacious in customs : that for placing ourselves upon
the bark of the Wflmot Proviso, the only party which has
dared to meet the elements of pohtical intolerance, in
order to save the justice of the state, we should be
denied a landing in face of an harbor, denied an existence
in spite of the power with which we held our reproach,
threatened with the vengeance of one party, and assured
of the triumph of another, because we dared to be inde
pendent of both,
Mr, Webster, in his late speech, treats our pretensions
as a party with as little ceremony as the Whig party does
his own claims to their favors. With an oracular assur
ance, pardonable in conflrmed intelligence, he has an
nounced to his friends the gratifying information that his

144 speech befoee the
old acquaintance, General Cass, and his new favorite.
General Taylor, are the only two candidates who intend
to trouble this goodly people for their suffrages : Avith a
wave of his august finger he does not merely summon Mr.
Van Buren from his high pedestal, and like the injured
fairy, order him to occupy some less distinguished position,
to assume sonie less honorable shape, to pass from a man
to a beast or reptile or creeping vermin ; oh, no ! he is
even less considerate than the vengeful enchantress, he is
not even so thoughtful as to relieve disease and nature at
some future day of the trouble of disembodying him, not
he. He must deny that such a candidate or his party
ever had existed, or ever could exist.
Perhaps Mr, Webster intended us to believe that if
he had ever recognized us as a party, it was not from
facts furnished by his memory, but a phantom which ex
pired with the gleam of fancy that created it.
That if he ever had appeared anxious lest the Free
Soil question should absorb the best strength of his party,
and had stimulated him to apply his masterly energies to
an unwonted extent, it was rather to exhibit his OAvn skill
in the legerdemain of politics, by making things that
could not be, seem as though they had been — to show^
what might be said of such a party, if it had existed. As
skilful pugilists sometimes practise themselves, by as
suming attitudes, and squaring scientifically at supposed
antagonists, who would certainly have been floored, had
they been present to receive the blows,
Mr. Webster no doubt has brains enough to colonize
another Olympus, but I doubt much whether the weight
of his logic, ponderous as it is, could crush a fact. There
have been Eastern despots who indulged themselves every
morning with the merciful amusement of cutting off" the
heads of the faithful. They have an iUustrious rival in

15th waed free soil league, 145
our own oriental Daniel, who, with one sweep of his
lingual scythe, mows down thousands of the sturdy
democracy who crowd this fair republic, from the waters
of the St. Lawrence to the Missouri, If we are no party,
having no principles, and no being, why do opposition
orators expend so many arguments to preserve their adhe
rents from contact with this nonentity ? Why charge a
cannon to break a bubble? Why fulminate anathemas
against a creedless, bodhess heresy ?
Sm-ely there must be something worthy of counte
nance, something not altogether too insignificant for
investigation in a cause which is most supported when
best understood ; which finds its firmest advocates among
its severest critics; Avhich, though still cramped and
crowded by the pressure of opposing factions, is constantly
appropriating to itself the better opinion of men, and
reciprocating the service which, secures a warm ally, by
furnishing the converted with a creed so comprehensive
and elevated that he will never be ashamed of it. If
principles are to be adjudged by the character of those
who advocate them, who are the exponents of this rebel
faith ? Who the actors in this grand drama of political
and social redemption ? It is not the pohtician panting for
patronage ; the signs are too inauspicious for the gratifica
tion of his voracity.
It is not the man-worshipper whose home is at the
hero's feet. He has a windfall from Mexico, and has
already placed himself in his favorite dust. It is not
the strict, undeviating, habitual partisan who sees no
merit in pubhc conduct worthy of his 'emulation, beyond
the limits of party acquiescence ; he has his duty marked
out and ratified before his candidate is proclaimed, and
will support him, no matter how iniquitous the means by
which that nomination was secured. No, it is not such
10

146 SPEECH BEFOEE THE
as these who fraternize Avith us, and for the simple reason,
that for the present, we can only furnish them with that
Avhich is but a poor recompense to the selfish, a good con
science. We have no splendid military chieftain to allure,
by aggressive triumphs, followers whom the naked merits
of his cause never could seduce. We have no candidate
for the chief office Avho was born of a convention which
purported to sanction old established party usages, and to
represent and respect the united democracy of this whole
Union, and who, in violation of both usages and opinions,
shut out the largest single delegation in that Union from
a participation in the solemn objects of its congregation.
We have nothing about us to attract the greedy, the
senseless, or the timid. Our position reqmres too much
reasoning for the thoughtless to comprehend, and is an
undertaking far more hazardous than the nervous or the
yielding dare attempt. Our advocates are those who
have too little immediate interest in the success of either
of the two great parties not to~ abandon both at the
moment they perceive any other means of benefiting
their country.
To assume any other relations, to advocate any other
questions, and to organize any other system of political
action whenever the policy of the party to which they are
attached is found insufficient to further the permanent
interests of the whole nation. That man who deserts his
party Avhen that party deserts its duty will never suffer
his politics to place his morals in jeopardy. The greater
part of those who advocate our cause are men Avho have
never been jostled from their propriety by the thunders
of a noisy reputation, who will never be diverted from
healthy aA^ocations either to assume the defence of ques
tionable doctrines, or to place their fortunes at the dis
posal of a capricious multitude. Their good sense is too

15th waed free soil league, 147
strong for the sophistries of party, and useful pursuits
place them above the temptation of patronage. Their
fidelity cannot be questioned, because it is only tendered
until conscience summons it elsewhere. Its travelling
clothes are always upon its back, and at the first beck of
truth it sets out for a more congenial residence. We have
men among us sternly and boldly enlisted in this cause,
who in ordinary times are known only as the pliant,
placable servants of the law ; who are noted for the fidelity
with which they discharge social duties, and the modesty
with which they shrink from public honors ; who never
intrude their opinions upon the state, when its safety can
dispense, with them, and who from a contented and a re
spected rethement behold with unconcern the successive
dynasties of the popular wiU, like the stately figures of a
magic lantern, in rapid and regular order, advancing from
the midst and retiring back into the bosom of the people.
Yet when this goodly land is threatened Avith near im
pending danger, and its children are summoned to shield
the purest of governments from the plunder of solemnly
sanctioned powers, these are the men whose dormai.
sovereignty awakes at the call, and are the first to tender
the long-reserved suffrages for the support of the public
necessities. There is the minister of God, who will not
rest in his pulpit until he has deposited his vote in favor
of that virtue which his life is sworn to defend. There is
the scholar, who will consider his time and his oil wasted
until he has added his mite in our behalf; for the study
of all men, in all ages, has taught him the value of the
principles for which we contend. There is the poet,
Avhom we will summon from his dreams of more perfect
institutions, to secure those he already possesses from
spoliation. There is the Christian, whose daily prayer
ascends. heavenA\-ard upon the breath of liberated piety.

148 SPEECH BEFOEE THE
Grateful for his own emancipation, he will not forget the
cause which would arrest a more grievous oppression.
The philosopher, who, in his deepest meditations still
finds virtue the profoundest wisdom, — he wfll make that
result the guide of his political conduct, and it will place
him by our side. The free laborer, who, even in the
homeliness of his occupation, remembers the dignity of his
nature, — he wiU hold his plough firmer and his head
higher, when he has voted for that party which would
relieve him from the bondsman's company by redressing
the bondsman's wrongs. Those men will be with us who
have no prejudices against a new cause because it confides
in old names ; and those names grown venerable in long
and effectual public service; who have the patience to
investigate a good cause, and conscience enough to em
brace it, when abundant arguments are advanced in its
favor. Conscientious Whigs, conscientious Democrats,
who can see nothing so alluring in either of the two great
parties, to deter them from the united support of prin
ciples Avhich it is the first interest of both parties to
advocate, and which both parties have agreed to abandon ;
who look upon the questions of financial policy which for
merly separated them, as lost, in comparison with the
holier ones which now sanctify their union. The former
are temporary expedients to meet present emergencies,
Avhile the latter are comprehensive principles which sus
tain eternal laws. The most splendid schemes ever
devised for advancing the fortunes of this prudent, indus
trious, aspiring nation, are but poor substitutes for the
loss of their virtue.
The world will forgive us mistakes in matters of ordi
nary policy, and in pitying our ignorance will pardon our
blunders; but who Avill be the champion of abandoned
rectitude? Who dare vindicate the ravish er of his conn-

15tH ward FREE SOIL LEAGUE, 149
try's fame ? Is this mere declamation ? Let us see if the
facts are not as large as the words that cover them. The
South claim the right to carry the local institution of
slavery into the territory belonging to the whole Union.
In the name of morahty and our own personal interest, in
common with the other States, in that territory, we assert
our right through the general Congress to prevent it.
The main arguments in support of this right the country
have by heart. I cannot improve upon them. Yet there
are a few of the stronger points which cannot be too often
repeated. Wherever in the Constitution the slaveholder
resorts for his slave privileges, that instrument calls them
by no other name than persons. There are but two
clauses in his favor. The one clause legalizes the posses
sion. It is thus : No person held to service in one State
shall be released from the same by the law of any other
State. The other clause is the granary where he picks
the seed which grows the representative. It says : After
citizens, three-fifths of all other persons, except Indians,
shall be included in the ratio of representation. No men
tion is made of property held to service. Neither does it
say three-fifths of all other property shall be represented.
When the tax-gatherer comes to assess the planter, he
ranges his slave by the side of his horse, his dog, and his
cow, and points to them as a part of his personal estate.
When the census-taker approaches, this slave is led out
from among the four-footed tribe, and placed within the
famUy group by the side of his wife, his sons, and his
daughters, and numbered as a part of his human house
hold — ^for while in the presence of that officer the slave
is three-fifths of a man. After assisting to make a repre
sentative he goes back to his barn-yard brethren, and
renews the toil which furnishes the means to pay that
representative for extending and perpetuating the misery

150 SPEECH BEFOEE THE
of his race. What a pleasant occupation for a human
being — to employ three-fifths of his manhood in making
himself a whole slave. .
I do not mention this as a matter of reproach, for I
believe within certain limits it is unavoidable at present.
But when the South attempts to reduce slaves to the level
of ordinary property, to amalgamate them among things,
to dress them up as utensils, and in this disguise to smug
gle them through the Constitution into the territory of the
whole nation, where we hold them as contraband, eveiy
weapon, whether it be of sathe, ridicule or reproach, is
legal till we drive them over the border into their own
exclusive local jurisdiction.
In all discussions upon the extension of slavery, we
must never forget to summon the moral law to our assis
tance the moment its supremacy can be applied without
interfering with positive enactments. When the South,
as in the case of slave property, can only resort to implica
tion to prove that slaves are property in its strict sense,
we have the right to apply the moral law and say, that
what the necessities of the Constitution have not granted,
in the name of justice we claim the benefit of in our own
favor. This is the only law which will ever decide the
contest for us. Otherwise it is an equal question. For
the supremacy of this moral laAV is never abrogated ; it is
only adjourned temporarily to avoid greater evils, and by
recognizing the moral law as holding the balance of power
between the constitutional law as expressed and the same
as implied, we secure an efficient ally in concluding this
question adversely for the South,
In all matters of general policy affecting general
interests, a moderate exercise of implied powers is absolute
ly necessary to carry on the government ; and upon this
very principle, by admitting implied poAvers as to -this

15th ward free soil league, 151
question, we encourage slave institutions. There is suffi
cient positive authority in the Constitution given them to
protect their rights within the States, Any farther, they
must expect no mercy.
Every slave sanctioned by the general government in
the Territories is a slave of our own, protected by our own
laws, working upon our own soil, and covering us with the
same infamy as if he Avas in our own kitchen. All the
acts of the general government are our acts, and the
moment that slavery passes from under the exclusive
jurisdiction of the States, it becomes a common pestilence,
and every white man is a slaveholder, from Canada to
California. It is the extreme absoluteness of State sover
eignty that saves us noAV. And the world knows this.
But place one foot of slavery upon the soil of the national
domain, and though it be but a handful of dirt, you will
bury in it the shrivelled coi-pse of the public honor. You
may run the boundary line between the States and the
Territory with your finger: the moral distance between
them upon this question is as boundless as the heavens
which made the moral law. In the presence of State
sovereignty, the federal government should be only a
mournful, powerless spectator. When it reaches the Terri
tory its responsibility is resumed. And in the name of
the pubhc probity we call upon it to arrest this public
iniquity. The South tells us that their honor is at stake
upon this question. That nothing can save it but the dis
honor of the whole confederacy. This is pleasant news
for the North. That nothing less than a Tartar expedition
into the consciences of ten millions of men can appease
theh affronted nature. We ahvays supposed that honor
was the dignity which preserved what virtue had acquired ,
and not the recklessness which gloried in its loss ; that it
was not only the discipline but the jealousy of reputation,

152 SPEECH BEFORE THE
not content with being correct but must needs be sensitive.
While we possess our faculties we have a right to our
opinions, and we at the North believe that a truth is as
valuable as a negro. That a prostrate principle is as
melancholy a spectacle as a down-trodden man, and that
misfortune in bondage is far less to be pitied than freedom
in disgrace ; for the one has only lost its rights, the other
has forgotten its duties. If we authorize extension of this
iniquity, whoever calls us free Anil be declared mad.
Whoever cites us as an example for imitation, will be
shunned as the apostle of deception. Wherever our flag
waves it will be the herald of infamy. Wherever our
name is pronounced it will be the signal for reprehension.
The world will be the wiser of our liberties only because
in the worthlessness of the achievement they will be con
soled for their own loss. While Europe has begun a
contest for what we have effected, we are contending
against the spirit of the very evils which they have almost
demolished. Is it not one argument the more for the
oppressor, and one argument the less for the oppressed,
that in the heart of the freest country upon the earth an
acrimonious struggle is raging to perpetuate the bondage
of a race whom the greatest powers of despotic Europe
have spent millions to redeem ? Are not all the thrones
of Europe redolent with the new-blown flowers of conces
sion ? and though some of them have sprouted just in time
to deck royalty for the sacrifice, may not this simoom blast
of slavery extension from the western continent wither up
these fiowers and sweep back the desert where an Eden
had just begun to bloom ? Yet why should we invoke the
pride of the people, or the safety of the world, in behalf
of the Wilmot Proviso, if gratitude for those who made us
what we are Avill avail nothing ? Who is the author of
this ordinance ? The author of the Declaration of Inde-

15th ward free soil league. 153
pendence. Who sanctioned it with his signature ? The
father of his country. Is there a Democrat who reveres
the memory of the man Avho has furnished him with a
creed which has enabled him almost since the foundation
of the government to triumph over every faction or party
arrayed in hostility against him ; is there a man, I say,
that will believe there can be anything unsound in this
measure, where all the rest he has received from the same
source are so durable ? Who is there so presumptuous ?
Who is there so blasphemous, as will dare to reflect upon
the wisdom of Washington ? Would he who gave us an
Emphe, inflict upon us an injury ? Is the South insulted
by its best defender, and he who was one of their own
brethren in interest and in locality? Away with the
sacrilege. When we ask you to pass upon this proviso,
we ask you to acknowledge that your two greatest bene
factors were not your greatest blunderers ; to prove your
gratitude for what you have by sanctioning that which in
their good judgment they approved. If our voices avail
nothing, let the spirit of the departed good be heard. If
you will not hear us rebels, listen for God's sake, listen to
the Patriots who made you what you are.
As for us we are condemned before we are heard — if
we speak of principles, we are told of treason ; if we point
to good men who are worthy of support at this election,
we are told that they want votes to justify wrongs, and
not to advance truths ; that Mr, Van Buren would break
down his party because it would not raise him upon its
shoulders ; that Judas and Arnold are patriots by the side
of him. When they call Mr, Van Buren a traitor to them,
they call him trtfly ; for in this treachery to infamy is
fidelity to virtue. When they say that Mr. Van Buren
is ungrateful because he Avill not be unscrupulous, they
only prove that he has chosen rather to preserve his re

154 SPEECH BEFORE THE
spect for what he believes to be the right than his gratitude
towards those whom he knows to be wrong. What an
awful crime — what a valid excuse for persecution — that a
man should prefer a froAvning party to a reproving con
science! We know that there are many who have a
strong prejudice against Mr. Van Buren, yet we never
found a man who coifld give a valid reason why. Has he
the mind capable of conducting the head of the state?
Yes, Did you ever know him guilty, either in or out of
office, of an unworthy act ? Oh, no. Well, then, why do
you dislike him ? Why, they call him a fox, he looks so
cunning, A man to be popular in this country must
either be a great general or a great orator. Men must
either be excited by words or by military deeds. Mr.
Van Buren is neither, but he is far safer than both. Cool,
discriminating and determined, his passions never interfere
with his perceptions. You never become enthusiastic
enough in his favor to follow him right or wrong. When
you follow him you may be sure you are nearly right —
you may be sure that you are not led away by anything
beyond the influence of the cause which he represents.
His judgment is too omnipresent ever to mislead your
own — his integrity too well tried ever to betray you into
crime. Yet he is only a man — a fallible man, after all.
Will men refuse to advocate a cause which their consciences
approve, merely because there is a man at the head of it
who, after thirty long years of honorable public service,
has, by a few mistakes, proved that he is no exception to
the best men Avho have gone before him ? Whenever you
go to prove his inconsistency, you prove his veracity. He
may have changed his mind, but did he ever break his
word ? In '36 he thought that slavery in the District of
Columbia ought not to be disturbed, and it was not ; in
'48 it is his opinion that it should not be extended, and

15th ward free soil league. 155
will he not adhere to it ? Half the enmity he noAV pro
vokes has been caused by the calumny he has refuted.
The contest of '40, which consigned him to retirement,
brought more subsequent disgrace upon this land than it
did upon its rejected chief. If there is a "Whig who feels
despondent over the mournful retrospect which the last
eight years of his country's history presents, let him go
back to the ballot-box of '40, and behold the source of his
grief. All the evils since that period are but the rebound
from the state house of his inconsiderate suffrage. Bad
laws are the errors of men coming back to them on un-
gratified wants, unprotected interests, and disregarded
opinions. What a ludicrous sight it would be, say some,
to see Mr. Van Buren at the head of the Whig party. Not
half so much so as to see General Taylor at the head of
any political party. In Mr. Van Buren's case people
would say, what a magnanimous party are the Whigs.
They refuse to vote for a man who never was heard of till
blood was to be shed. "Who advised an advance into his
neighbor's territory. Who acknowledged that he knows
nothing of civil affairs. Who, if he is elected, will be the
flrst General ever seated in the chair of state as a reward
for aggressive triumphs. That they have forgotten their
minor dift'erences, and united upon a candidate whose
ordinary policy had always separated them, but whom,
when the country is in danger, they are willing to unite
upon as the least obnoxious of the three.
When could men with more safety or propriety aban
don their party than those who adhere to Whig principles ?
They could not hazard their fidehty, for their candidate
has no right to exact what he does not observe. A par
tisan is not to be censured for abandoning a candidate who
represents nothing, when his party have set him the
example of ingratitude by rejecting their greatest states-

156 SPEECH BEFOEE THE
man, on whom all the burthen of supporting theh cause
eventually falls. The country, which is the great object
of the honest partisan's efforts, will not be injured by
secession, for it is happily accommodating itself to demo
cratic measures. The tariff sleeps in the security of a
moderate reduction. The question of the distribution of
the proceeds of the public lands is as quiet as the solitudes
which it embraces. The bank is quietly crumbling amid
the rest of the ruins of Whig policy ; and in the certainty
of a secure, prosperous financial policy, when could we
more opportunely begin the purgation of the pubhc morals ?
I am aware of the difficulty of arraying the people's
duties against the people's favorites. I know the hope
lessness of calling the elector away from the worshipper.
Strong indeed must be that logic which can wrestle with
a soldier's glory. Bold as the courage which produced
that soldier's renown, must be the spirit that dares oppose
it. General Taylor's talents may be as lofty as the station
to which he aspires, and his estimate of those talents may
be as humble as the obscurity from which he sprung, yet
let him wait till he has proved, in some less important
station, that he has them, and let him convince us of
his modesty in some more satisfactory manner than by
consenting to assume what he acknowledges he cannot
perforin. The state wants experience, not experiments.
Reward men for what they will be, when you have none
to honor for what they have been.
What right have we to look towards an inexperienced
chieftain for a sagacious exercise of the vast executive
influence of this republic ? If he is independent, that in
experience will mislead him. If he is conflding, he will
be distracted by opposing counsels. In either case the
country must be the sufferer. The world has taught us to
distrust the wisdom of the sword. The sagacity which

15th waed free soil league. 157
conducted an army to victory, has often led a state to
ruin. Look at Napoleon, with all the power of Europe at
his feet, and all the wisdom of France at his ear, Avhose
arm was constantly called upon to repair the mischiefs his
head had provoked, stepping down from the most splendid
throne iu the universe, and wading through Russian snows
to an English prison. The most ungrateful act that ever
Enghsh gratitude perpetrated towards a great name, was
in placing Welhngton at the head of the English govern
ment. Who would believe that he who utters such silly
sophisms in the House of Lords, was the conqueror of
Napoleon ? That he who contributed so much to the
nation's glory was so little able to benefit it by his coun
sels ? Yet, in battle he was equally as masterly in his
plans, clear, shrewd, determined, as General Taylor.
Military men are generally too ignorant to lead, or too
obstinate to follow, and we do not see why men who have
had no other training in any other school, should be an
exception. Washington and Jackson Avere both men who
had acquired much civil experience before coming to the
Presidency. Will General Taylor keep us out of a foreign
Avar ? His poor neglected brother-in-arms, General Scott,
has just successfully concluded one, which the advice of
this General Taylor produced. Will he be guarded and
able to command himself in power ? He could not contain
his temper towards his superior, the Secretary of War ;
how will he act then, when there are none above him ?
But in regard to the war, he only obeyed orders. Yes,
and he advised those orders, and if he did not, when was
obedience to error a qualification for office ? When was
participation in the worst of iniquities an argument for the
assumption of the highest of dignities ? As a soldier he
cannot be praised too much, though in a bad cause. We
have spent 200,000,000 of doUars to tell the world two

158 SPEECH BEFORE THE
facts : — That our soldiers are no cowards and our rulers no
statesmen. That if the one never march but to conquer,
the others have acted but to blunder. That while igno
rance at Washington was writing its way to infamy, valor
in Mexico was cutting its way to glory. General Taylor
performed a soldier's duty, and obtained a soldier's rcAvard
— promotion and the praise of the achievement. But
when he comes before the country as an aspirant for civil
and political honors, he must be adjudged by the laws of
morality and good policy which govern these dignities —
and they are against him. The Whigs tell us that he will
not veto the Wilmot proviso. Let us hear that from him.
He is either opposed to it, or ashamed to advocate it. In
either case he is not worthy of our support. Yet Avith all
these arguments in our favor, men excuse themselves for
standing aloof from us. It's all revenge, you don't mean
it. — Granted we do not, does that justify you in not em
bracing a good cause, because there are those in it who
avenge the wrongs of the politician, by performing the
duties of the Christian ? Were we ambitious of power and
reckless of the means of obtaining it, how could it be
better secured than by coalescing with them, whom per
haps it has cost us our ascendency to abjure ? Could Ave
not have swalloAved the insult which denied us a participa
tion in the selection of a candidate, in the hopes of that
patronage which would have resulted from the certainty
of his election ? Would not injuries forgotten at Baltimore
have insured favors at Washington?
Had we frowned upon the Wilmot proviso, would not
success have smiled upon us, and our integrity, though in
ruins, been gilded by the beams of perpetuated power?
Was it good policy to hazard our own safety as the price
of their retribution ? To jeopardize our character in order
to justify our position? Does it betray the ordinary

15th ward feee soil league. 159
cunning of systematic vindictiveness to incur all the odium
of opposition to former friends without the right to expect
anything from those whom we benefited by this movement
and who have always been our enemies ? Are not these
the arguments with which a calculating rancor would
have silenced the voice of a heedless, clamorous retaliation,
and thus preserve us from becoming martyrs to our own
resentment rather than what we are, the vindicators of
outraged party privileges and menaced public virtue ?
Long-drawn and d.eeply indented are the lines between
us and reconcihation with those who have provoked the
alternative of this secession ; lines as wide as the continent
we inhabit, and deep as the waters which wash its borders.
We have harbored an outlaw from the capitol, and we
will not betray it ; we have taken a great truth by the
hand and sent it forth to fight its way to empire. It is
aheady crowned in the consciences of men. The Whigs
tell us that for twenty years they have been the advocates
of the Free Soil question ; — what a lucky thing for them
that the rent in our own party should have revealed to the
world their long-curtained virtue, — if we effect nothing
else by this insular organization we shall be more than
compensated for our pains..
Suppose the fathers of the Revolution had only thought
of liberty seventy years ago, without arming themselves
in its defence, what would have been the value of our
rights ? It is not enough that we are persecuted for what
we espouse, but we must be plundered of that which is all
that consoles us under the infliction. Do the Whigs mean
that they supported the Missouri Compromise of 1820 ?
Is it possible that they should have countenanced that
measure before they were recognized as a party? But I
forgot. Mr. Webster, who explained so convincingly how
we, a party in a flourishing condition, did not exist, may

160 SPEECH BEFORE THE
perhaps be equally as lucid in settling how the Whigs could
have a creed before they were endowed Avith a being.
This compromise is the principle of the proviso admitted,
though partially applied; it is the gravity of truth
suspended in its southward course; the diameter of the
republic is made the boundary of the benefit; but the
Wilmot proviso is the compromise winged, soaring and
lighting over the neglected residue of the Avhole national
territory. Can a party long remain unacknowledged and
unsupported, who have placed themselves at issue upon
the only principle worth contending for at this election ?
We Avill not believe that the state, hke Lot's wife, will
look back, and become a pillar of salt. Yet if we should'
fail, if we do fall, we will go down with the wreck of the
laws ; we will be buried in the sarcophagus of the Consti
tution ; the robes of justice will be our winding-sheet, and
every good man our pall bearer, while, as triumphant
infamy hurries us to the grave, the world will cry out :
" there goes the funeral of America's virtue ! " Yet we will
not indulge in so mournful an anticipation ; we are too
proud of the past to despair of the future ; we have en
countered and survived too many dangers in the building
up of this splendid system of government, not to be equally
sanguine of a like happy conclusion to our difficulties. As
for the South, her threatenings have been so constant and
yet so harmless, that we would bear with her as with a
fretful, wayward child. The country has become used to
her whinings, and the voice of threats, commencing with
the Washington administration, have continued, with little
interval, down to the present time ; but the terrors of the
child are no longer the arguments of the man ; we laugh
where in earlier days Ave trembled. This measure will
yet be her master, and though, as we journey toward the
far limits of this vast empire, we encounter on our path

15th ward free soil league. 161
the tree of virtue bloAvn down and stretching its Avithered
branches over the whole Southern extbnt of this confed
eracy, yet we will pluck a bough from its prostrate trunk
and transplant it upon the soil of the national territory,
where it will strike its roots so deep and strong that all
the blasts of a future corrupt State sovereignty will sweep
harmlessly over it.
Pass this measure and an angel might envy its mission,
for it is the spirit which made us free, trying to keep us
just. It would snatch a kindly beam from the sun of
power, to play upon the pathAvay of the degenerate
African. Pass it, and no more will envy taunt you with
inconsistency, for it is the tear of the penitent blotting out
the sins ' of the delinquent. Pass it, for God's sake, pass
it, and the prosperity of this land will no longer be a re
proach upon its humanity, for it is the fortunes of one race
repahing the ruins of another. Our privileges have made
onr^)pinions valuable. Within the circuit of those opinions
the Constitution has imprisoned the powers of the State,
and it remains for you to prove whether that act was a
wise provision or a rash adventure. From the merciless
peltings of this southerly storm, its perilled prerogatives
seek a shelter under the wing of your suffrages. Deeply
indeed must the free soil voter feel the weight of that
sufl[rage, when in its folds are wrapped his country's honor
and his fellow's right.
We have proved that crowns are not essential to
laws ; let us prove also that chains are not necessary to
labor. That as our government has all the energy with
out the oppression of despotism, so industry can be equally
as useful without being miserable. Better that liberty
had always remained a beautiful theory than to have be
come a deformed and degraded reality, stalking over this
continent to degrade labor, to oppress misfortune, and to
11

162 speech before the free soil league.
prevent morality. We expect much of the coming session,
if not of consummation, at least of encouragement. We
are prepared for a winter's voyage around this Southern
cape ; it may be a long and boisterous passage, but we
shall weather the Horn. We will be the first to bear the
glad tidings of redemption to the new-born empire of the
Pacific, and it will be a more precious cargo than the
richest clime will send them in the proudest days of its
future glory, for it will proclaim the unqualified, uncom
promising recognition of the spirit of human liberty.

DELIVEEED AT
BERGEN POINT, N. J.,
JULY 4TH, 184B.

Fellow-Citizens :
The story of our country's wrongs, its sufferings and
its triumphs, though often and eloquently told, is stiU a
theme that cannot weary — it is a tale that must not be
forgotten. Though we shared not in the glory of the
achievement ; though we perilled neither life nor limb in
the defence of man's dearest blessing ; though we had no
hand in rearing the comphcated fabric of a mighty Re
public, stfll, to those who accomplished all this, should we
not evince our grititude by a lively remembrance of their
virtues, and by a faithful guardianship over those liberties
which they lavished their blood and treasure to secure ?
to whose resolution we are indebted for the festivities of
this day, and to whose valor and wisdom we owe the
success of this age ? Bear with me, then, wMle, upon the
Sabbath-day of our freedom, I discharge, in your name,
the annual debt of our common gratitude. Come Avith me
to the altar of patriotism, while we offer up the incense of
heartfelt praise to the authors of our country's glory. Let

164 ORATION DELIVERED AT
US assemble around the table of Memory, and while we
banquet upon the good deeds of others, may we grow good
ourselves by that on which we feed. Why are the reminis
cences of the Revolution so pleasing ? Why is it that the
jubilee of our Independence, like some antique relic, grows
dearer as it grows older ? Do we merely commemorate
the transfer of Governmental cares and burthens from a
foreign to a domestic head ? Do we merely rejoice that a
courageous ancestry dared to pluck the brightest jewel
from a vain monarch's diadem ? Are we tickled with the
childish pleasure of escaping the restraints of parental
discipline and the unnatural rigors of parental authority ?
Do we merely honor men for resisting when they could
no longer obey ? Was it a mark of magnanimity, or any
evidence of patriotism, in the leaders of that contest to
defend what it was their interest to preserve ; to exert
their intellects, to weary their spirits, and to task their
bodies, in order to consummate an event which but
furnished the readier means to gratify personal ambition,
and to increase individual power ? Who knew but what
they were asserting the rights of their countrymen only
that they might, Avith the more facility, abuse them?
Who knew but what they were expelhng the oppressor,
only that they might rule the oppressed? How many
ambitious spirits, masked in the garb jof patriotism and
clothed in the panoply of a sacred cause, have battled iu
the name of Freedom, that they might govern in the name
of Tyranny ! How many deluded nations have succeeded
in rearing the Temple of Liberty, and yet how few have
feasted their eyes upon the fair spectacle, ere vice and
corruption, undermining the beautiful edifice, have erected,
upon its crumbling ruins, the sternest despotism that human
ingenuity could devise ! No, my friends, it is neither the
spirit that provoked, nor the abihty that achieA"ed this

1845, 165
revolution, upon which we waste the eulogy of our praise ;
it is the wisdom that planned, the virtue that preserved,
and the integrity that bequeathed to us that sacred charter,
without which all rcA^olutions are vain, and submission
preferable to resistance. It Avas this disinterestedness, this
patriotic devotion to posterity and their country, that dis
tinguished our ancestors from the vulgar herd of mere
revolutionists. With them, place and power were only
instruments to effect national independence and individual
prosperity. For our rest they labored ; for our peace they
warred ; for our freedom they conquered. And when a
kind Providence, a worthy cause, and an undaunted spirit,
had enabled them to secure the adoption of those demo
cratic institutions contended for, they drop, one by one,
from the high places to which their merits had exalted
them, to mingle with a multitude they had redeemed, to
watch the operations of a Government they had constituted,
to share in its blessings, and, by exemplifying in themselves
its equahty, to enjoy that living Apotheosis, the reward
of virtue and the result of patriotism.
There is a distinctness of feature, a peculiar originality
of character, exhibited in the nature and origin of this
Revolution, to which history furnishes no parallel ; and
the oftener we reflect, and the deeper we study both its
causes and its results, the firmer will be the conviction
that a mightier hand than man's, a keener eye than ours,
had marked out, guided, and still watches the destinies of
this young Republic, A few generations since, and the
land we inhabit found not a place in the imagination of
the wildest visionary. History refused it a page upon her
tablets ; and when civilized man beheld the sun sinking in
the distant west, he fancied that it but slept upon the
bosom of the boundless waters, unconscious that the mighty
orb smiled upon and vivified a world as vast, a. land as

166 ORATION DELIVEEED AT
beautiful, and a people as mortal as his own. Crowded
within the nai-row compass of a limited territory — pros
trated by the weight of monarchical exactions, and the
mental despotism of a crafty priesthood — almost exhausted
in physical resources by the constant drain of an excessive
populace, Europe knew not that a mighty hemisphere was
waiting to pour its treasures in her lap — to afford an asylum
for her oppressed and a home for her surplus multitude ;
thus restoring the fulcnim to the centre of an overbalanced
globe, and applying to us the Bible promise, " 1 will give
thee the heathen for an inheritance," But who is the
leader to this promised land ? Who the Moses to this
second Canaan? A friendless mariner, whose character
is as doubtful as the countries he would discover, but
whose project seemed little less than a divine inspiration.
With a boldness equal to the magnitude "of the under
taking, he looks the haughtiest of sovereigns in the face,
and for the trifie of an outfit, offei-s to lay the wealth of
another Indus at his feet. Doubting, and yet hoping,
they equip him a fieet, iu which your watermen would
hardly trade to Virginia, And yet there is a sublimity
in that departure which one loves to contemplate. Pitied
for his madness, ridiculed for his rashness, despised for his
obstinacy, with no encouragement, save the instinctive
promptings of an ardent imagination, this adventurous
nobody launches upon the Atlantic's wide waste, to im
mortalize an obscure name, to enrich an ungTateful coun
try, and to prepare a road that ransomed millions might
follow. Historians tell us that a redeemed people date
their existence from the year 1776 ; but the world will
acknowledge, that the first link in the great chain of
events, which ended with the consummation of American
Independence, Avas commenced in the year 1492,
Had a Columbus never lived, tjTanny would have

BEEGEN POINT, N, J., 1845. 167
never died. Europe, the alpha and omega of Christian
civilization, would have been the centre of a universal
despotism, and man still crouched beneath the rod of
power, sometimes kissing, but never escaping the hand
that held him. The splendor of a throne, the pomp and
state of royalty, the gorgeous trappings, and lavish dis
play of aristocratic wealth, dazzle the senses of the multi
tude, and are peculiar objects of admiration and worship.
Accustomed from infancy to regard these privileged orders
as superior beings, they may envy, but are always ready
to fawn at the feet of power. It is only in a land far re
moved from such influences, whose crown is wisdom,
whose mitre is purity, whose heraldry is talent, where an
equality of rank produces an equality of rights, that man
can fully assert the dignity of his nature, and enjoy free
dom in its true purity. Thus, while other nations have
been for ages endeavoring to wring a few immunities from
their masters, we, in less than a century, have sprung to
the manly stature of freemen — the land of yesterday, and
the people of to-day — the youngest in years, and yet the
oldest in the enjoyment of all the true essentials of good
government. What a pattern do we present for our elders !
What an example does the child hold up to the parent !
Liberty, with our ancestors, was a runaway match. The
gentle goddess came to their mother's house, and pleased
them with her mildness and the unrestrained ease of her
manners. The parents perceived the attachment spring
ing up, and, Avith cruel severity, forbade the banns. Not
to be deterred even by this obstacle, they clandestinely
leave the paternal roof, and consummate, in the wilds of
America, that union denied them at home — sealing the
matrimonial bond with their blood, and testing, by their
sufferings, the strength of their attachment— preferring a
stormy sea, a forest-wild, a savage foe, to all the allure-

168 ORATION DELIVERED AT
ments of a home, whose Church was Bigotry and whose
State was Tyranny. Is it to be wondered, then, that after
encountering every peril and surmounting every obstacle,
after raising theh altars to that piety for which they had
sacrificed .so much, and after transplanting their vine and
fig-tree far from the scenes of their childhood and those
beloved ties which consecrate the domestic hearth, — is it
to be wondered, I say, that Avhen the destroyer comes,
backed by the scalping Indian, to invade the sanctity of a
retreat he had rendered necessary, that they should exhibit
the same courage in defending a land which insured them
the enjoyment of so many blessings, as they had in leaving
one which denied them! all — thus rising from the equi
vocal character of rebellious subjects to the conscious
dignity of victorious freemen — and, in place of obscure
colonists, unnoticed by the world, suddenly take their
stand among the nations of the earth, to rival, and perhaps
eclipse, the glory of their once lordly masters ? Thus, with
nations as with individuals, does heaven make one the
unwilling instrument of another's rise.
The principle of democratic liberty, though intimately
connected with the well-being of mankind, seems, previous
to our Revolution, to have been a mere speculative theory.
Philosophy, with a knowing shake, denied that its adop
tion was possible, and Experience, with a quiet smfle,
pointed to the decayed models of Greece and Rome as
samples of instability. That a whole nation should be the
property of one family, bequeathed from father to son, as
so many personal chattels, had long become a fixed fact;
and it was only when rash rulers innovated upon long-
established customs, that imprisoned man forgot his chains,
and dared to strike ; or, if the progress of knoAvledge and
the dawn of an enlightened age, awakened him to a sense
of his degradation, the instruments, and not the authors,

BERGEN POINT, N. J,, 1845, 169
of his infamy, were the objects of attack — deposing rulers
and slaughtering kings, but leaving the law that made
them unharmed. And yet, civil liberty was as dear to
the masses as power was to the high-born : no matter how
sunk in ignorance, or how debased by vice ; no matter
how indistinct or hoAV ill-digested the ideas, man still re
tains some notion of his rights and obligations as a social
being. Compelled by his weakness, and attracted by his
affections, to associate with his fellow, he feels the necessity
for a restraining principle to curb the passions and protect
the interests of society. Although wealth and intellect be
unequally distributed ; although tastes, habits, and associa
tions exclude social companionship, stiU a community of
interests, an aggregate mutual dependence upon each
other, or reliance upon, and an accountability to the same
kind Protector, should at least invite a political equality.
With his obligations to society, comes another and a higher
duty. What he is denied and what he enjoys from asso
ciation with man, concerns but his temporal and bodily
relation. Whether he is to be happy or miserable here
after, according as he has made his peace with God, con
cerns his spiritual and eternal welfare. There is some
palliative for Government interfering in the temporal
affahs of men, for they have a bearing more or less affect
ing each other ; but to tear the veil of sanctity from the
spirit's devotion — to invade the temple of his faith, and
prescribe particular forms for his observance — to disturb
the sacred communion of an immortal soul with its master
spirit, in order to enjoin any rules other than those con
tained in the inspired volume, is not only an outrage upon
his feelings, but a sacrilege against his Maker. In society,
man is but the integral part of a congregated mass, depen
dent upon, and affected by, whatever concerns it as a
whole. In religion, he is the one independent being, in

170 ORATION DELIVERED AT
no way connected with his neighbor, and, although having
a common origin, and liable to a common fate, yet inde
pendent in existence, independent in action, and indepen
dent in accountability.
To appreciate properly the blessings we enjoy, to
comprehend fully the causes which, in so brief a period,
have effected so much for us politically, let us review the
condition of some of the older nations of Europe, who have
but survived the ferocity of barbaric times to become the
victims to enlightened prejudices. Is there any real free
dom to be found among those petty republics scattered at
intervals over Europe, like stagnant pools in a desert,
which, instead of allaying, rather excite the thirst for a
purer element — holding their charter at the will of some
foreign potentate, or, at best, shaping their conduct as
conduces most towards retaining the good-will of their
most powerful neighbors ? England, a modern Colossus,
ruling the waves with her trident, her freeholds Avith gold,
her colonies with bayonets — whose power no arm can
weaken, whose influence every nation will acknoAvledge,
whose good-will all gladly court. Though the scene of an
hundred rebellions, and the theatre of many revolutions ;
though her hills have echoed with the thrilling cries of
would-be freemen, and her green vales have drank the
blood of her best and wisest heroes ; though every age
weakens her power at home and adds her might abroad,
in what consists the boasted liberties of Englishmen?
Since the Invasion to the deposition of the Elder Stuarts,
what advances have they made towards pohtical regenera
tion ? The boundaries of the kingly office are more clearly
defined. The crown prerogatives are reduced to a mere
routine of state ceremonies. The checks and balances of
three independent orders in the State, each a guard upon
the other, present a seeming equality of representation

BERGEN POINT, N. J., 1845. 171
that does' not exist. What the king has lost in honor, the
nobility have acquired in influence, and what the people
have gained by a voice in the democratic branch, is hushed
by the corruptions of the remaining two ; and so long as
they love their rulers, and only hate their rule — so long as
that passion for display and attachment to royalty still re
mains — so long as they writhe under the lash that stings,
and yet admire the jeweled hand that wields the rod, so
long- will the day of fheh redemption be prolonged.
The French, awakened to a spirit of independence by
the radical tendency of their new philosophy — inflamed
almost to madness by the oppressive exactions of their
privileged orders, and stimulated to a like effort by our
example, fondly imagined they would be equally success
ful. But unfortunately departing from that courtesy for
which they are noted, like an old man who, in retaining
the affections, loses the polish of his youth, they woo the
timid goddess with so rough and brutal a courtship, that
she shrinks from theh embraces, and, with a shriek of
horror, flies frantic from the land. Then follows the strife
of contending passions, the downfall of the holy altar, the
debauch of public morals, and a general prostration of the
social fabric — bartering a mild tyranny for a terrible
anarchy, and the sway of a gentle monarch for the bloody
rule of a Jacobinical mob. Brood after brood of gloomy
tyrants are fostered upon the land, until one giant-monster,
mightier than all, rises at the moment of his country's
deepest misery, to exalt her to the highest pitch of national
glory. Here let us pause to contemplate the character of
two men, perhaps the greatest that ever impressed their
genius upon any age. Washington and Napoleon ! The
sun of America's savior, rising in black clouds of political
despotism, culminates to its zenith during the mists of a
nation's uncertain struggles, but, slowly declining amid a

&

172 ORATION DELIVERED AT
golden blaze of victorious conflict, tinges the western
horizon with the mild splendor of its virtues long after the
orb itself had ceased to shine. While an admiring world
is lost in contemplating the beauty of this scene, a new
sun is visible to the eastward ; its brilliant dawn, the
wonder and delight of an age — ^its meridian beams, too
dazzhng for the eagle's gaze — its declining pathway, too
tempestuous for the stormy-petrel's revel. Nature denied
their births a kingly heritage, and yet both attained heights
to which kings in vain aspire. Each originated in revolu
tionary convulsions, which neither created, but which both
concluded. The one annihilating foreign domination, the
other quelling domestic faction. Both arranged and
harmonized discordant masses — infusing into separate
systems of governments a wisdom that equahzed, and an
energy that ensured the enjoyment of every political
advantage. Thus far they are hand-in-hand — and posterity
will blend their names in the common benefactions of two
great nations. But here, too, they part : Washington to
lay his power at the feet of its legitimate source, the
People ; Napoleon to wrest from his countrymen all they
had not previously conceded. Washington's ambition is
satiated with the happiness he had secured ; Napoleon's
thirst for power — the blood of three milhons could not
quench. Virtue, thriving in a land of liberty, brought to
the dying bed of Washington the consciousness of a well-
spent life, while the murmuring pteans of a grateful nation
sang the hero to a sweet repose. Ambition, swayed by
matchless talents, dazzling the world while it exasperated
its victims, confused the brain of Napoleon, expiring upon
a captive's couch. In the heroes' deaths we read their
lives. But if both have produced great physical results,
the effect of their example will not be the least among the
benefits conferred upon society. The one, a warning to

BERGEN POINT, N. J., 1845, 173
posterity never to permit services, however valuable, or
endowments, however rare, to seduce them into the relin
quishment of powers for the benefit of an individual,
which should alone emanate from the bosom of society ;
and to tyrants, the fact that however successful for a time
may be the efforts of caballing ambition, yet the betrayal
of a nation's trusts must result eventually in the with
drawal of that nation's support. America, happy in the
possession of her liberties, but thrice blessed in the rich
legacy other Washington's virtues, will ever cherish them
as a model for generous emulation, and as a standing
monument to the triumph of all that is disinterested in
patriotism, over the retention of that power which the
confiding love of an adoring people would have warranted.
While we pay our tribute to the good and brave of
other days ; whfle we hnger around the green graves of
those who achieved our hberties, let us not forget others
who successfully maintained them when again invaded.
While we raise the shout of gladness for the results we
have gained, let us drop the tear of sorrow for the man
we have lost — mingling the joyful emotions, which this
day awakens, with the solemnities becoming the mournful
event Avhich the nation has so recently experienced. After
filling the latest page of his country's history with deeds
of renoAvn ; after taming the wild spirit of savage insubor
dination, and driving the trained bands of Europe from
the plains of Louisiana ; after attacking, with the same
energy, the monster monopolies that had taken root within
the body politic, and defending, with the same spirit, the
violated honor of a land of which he was the conservator ;
after encountering, with a like fortitude, the insidious
attacks of malignant disease, and wrestling with unsubdued
obstinacy against its slow, but certain, advances — the
warrior statesman — the patriot Jackson — the man of iron

174 ORATION DELIVERED AT
will, falls before the fell destroyer. God's the only throne
at which he would bend ; Death the only conqueror to
whom he would yield — its sting soothed by the balm of
Christian hope — its terrors hidden in the mantle of his
virtues. While a bereaved kindred bear to the tomb all
that remains of his mortality ; while a grief-bowed people
weave funeral garlands to his memory, and, with solemn
pageantry, pay funeral rites to his decease, the incense of
his virtues will rise higher and higher, until diffused far
and wide over the land he lived so long to love and honor.
Well may America mourn, for she has lost her best and
ablest champion ; Liberty, its most ardent advocate ;
Democracy,. an oracle "whose prophecy was inspiration,"
and to whose grave her votaries will repair as the Mecca
of their political faith ; Party, a name whose magic wand
healed all differences, allayed all prejudices — whose voice
was oil to the troubled waters, and whose frown was a
terror to faction. Though the breath of calumny sought
to poison the atmosphere in which he lived, it will scarce
breathe its venom upon the grave in which he is buried —
that grave, the last monument to departed glory, covering
all of him who was the latest and best of America's second
era. But four years since, and we were called to mourn
the fate of the lamented Harrison, who, Avinning the
laurel croAvn of victory upon the bloody field of Indian
warfare, a grateful nation sought to deck with the insignia
of its highest civic office. Scarce do a victorious party
taste from his hands the bread of patronage, than, reeling
beneath the weight of accumulated honors, he falls, bury
ing them with him in the tomb, leaving to his country
but the good he had effected, and bearing to his Maker
the offerings of a believing and devoted heart.
Is it not pleasing to see a people, noted for their party
spirit,' almost defacing their political landmarks, yielding

BERGEN POINT, N, J., 1845. 175
to the impulses of gratitude, and elevating, as it were, by
acclamation, to the highest trusts in the hour of their pros
perity, men who Avere the first in their defence when
doubt and danger hovered over the land ? While we em
balm them in our memories, and duly appreciate their
services, let us not forget to keep a vigilant eye upon the
institutions which were the object of them. Though to
our ancestors belongs the praise of. founding a Republic,
let us deserve, at least, the credit of preserving one. The
erection of Republics is no new fact — their perpetuation,
both an ancient and a modern rarity. To belie the experi
ence of the past, we must profit by its lessons, and, in order
to continue what its teachings have procured us, we must
be mindful of its warnings, and faithfully pursue the line of
conduct marked out by the framers of the Constitution —
that Constitution under which, for more than sixty years,
we have run the glorious race of empire ; dispelling the
misty doubts of scepticism ; quieting the anxious fears of
Freedom's friends throughout the universe; terrifying
the trembling despot on his throne, and awakening the long-
buried hopes of entliralled millions. And though, through
the length and breadth of the Christian Avorld, we stand
towering like some vast column amid the crash and ruin
of man's prostrate rights, yet soon shall spring from these
scattered fragments a majestic temple, so wide, so expan
sive, that emancipated Christendom, in one congregated
mass, may repose beneath its, roof, never again to bow in
homage to tyranny until they forget to bend in reverence
to virtue. As Heaven, step by step, unvefls the mysteries
of finite power to the intellect of man, his own right arm
wfll loose the shackles that encumber his body. Pointing
to our example, the struggling nations repeat, m their own
tongues, the cheering language of. a freeman's sympathy.
Where Nature, lonely and lovely, revelled in wild luxuri-

176 OEATION DELIVERED AT
ance, they see villages, cities and States, smiling into
being. Where barbarous tribes roamed with ferocious
boldness, and tomahawks gleamed over helpless innocence,
they see a people, by labor and art adorned, by science
exalted, by religion sanctified, and by liberty redeemed.
Rejecting the errors, and yet adopting the advantages of
other republican systems, they see a Government, more
perfect in its structure, more effective in its operation,
more comphcated, and yet more simple — more divided,
and yet more united, than any that, has preceded it.
Obeying a local, and yet acknowledging a national sover
eignty ; jealous of State rights, and yet when the national
weal requires, permitting the encroachments of the Federal
arm, they see a people whose wrongs are redressed, not
by marching with death-dealing instruments to slaughter
the persons of their rulers, but, one by one, peaceably
depositing at the polls a simple ballot, more effective in
revolutionizing the policy of their Government, and more
efficacious in healing their ills, than ten thousand muskets
directed by the most skilful generals. To the poor, it is a
weapon of defence against the encroachments of power and
influence ; and to the rich, a shield from the ultra tendency
of radical democracy. In a Despotism, man has only to
obey; in a Republic, he both commands and obeys.
However ignorant, talent and education receive their
political reward from his hands ; however humble, power
lives but on his smile ; high and low, rich and poor, all are
alike recipients of, and dependent upon, his bounty.
Wielding with his omnipotent ballot the full portion of his
sovereignty, he plucks from the crowd whom he wiU to
rule over him, and, in turn, commands him who went forth
to rule to lay down his dignities at the feet of the monarch
multitude. Since, then, popular sentiment constitutes the
life-blood of the body politic, how important it is to guard

BERGEN POINT, N. J. • 177
from corrupting influences the veins and arteries of our
political system. How necessary it is to diffuse through
all its fibres the principles of a pure morality, spiritualizing
and exalting, rather than debasing and enervating the
minds of the masses — banishing luxury, encouraging in
dustry, exciting patriotic ardor, and, by our example,
tending to the cultivation of those higher and better
sympathies of humanity, which can alone give permanency
to the institutions of a self-ruled people. If, on the other
hand, longing after the flesh-pots of Egypt, we adopt the
manners and ape the vices of transatlantic degeneracy,
woful experience Avill teach us that our system of govern
ment, the best ever devised for the intelligent and good, is
the very worst to be entrusted to the degraded and
vicious. That mighty weapon, the power of suffrage,
now the grand catholicon for all political diseases, will but
hasten the speedy dissolution of the once healthy fabric.
Demagogues will find it easy to delude those who have
deluded themselves. The liberties of the people will
finally be buried in the grave of their virtues, and with
the last dying shriek of departed freedom, shall mingle
the exulting cries of a despot's minions.

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