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Copy 1 ^§xhtvi^ HwA ^ni0tt.
OUR COUNTRY : ITS PRIDE AND ITS PERIL ;
DISCOURSE
DELIVERED IN
HARVARD STREET BAPTIST CHURCH,
Boston, Aug. 11, 18C1,
RETURN OF THE PASTOR FROM SYRIA.
DANIEL r. EDDY, D. D
BOSTON:
JOHN M. HEWES, 81 CORN HILL
18G1.
,»y
\i
61503
'05
DISCOURSE.
Rnth 1 : 16, 17.
Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from follow-
ing AFTER THEE ; FOR WHITHER THOU GOEST, I WILL GO ; AND WHERE
THOU LODGEST, I WILL LODGE ; THY PEOPLE SHALL HE MY PEOPLE,
AND THY GOD MY GOD ; WHERE THOU DIEST, I WILL DIE, AND THERE
WILL I BE BURIED.
You will expect me, this morning, to depart some-
what from the usual routine of pulpit ministrations, to
leave the beaten path of theological discussion, and ad-
dress you a few words of Christian salutation. The sep-
aration of the past few months, renders this spot doubly
sacred, and makes every countenance here look sunny
and cheerful. I feel like one who has long been tempest-
tossed, who has been beaten about by storms, who has
watched for morning that he may see the beacon light at
the entrance of the harbor, and who at length has
reached the shore, and received the hand of welcome
and the embrace of love.
The language of the text is the language of my heart
to-day. " Thy people shall be my people, and thy God
my God." Suffer me to say that it is without affecta-
tion that I make this appropriation of scripture language ;
for, outside of the domestic circle, there is no relation-
ship so tender as that of a pastor towards a people, some
of whom, when burdened with sin, he has pointed to the
cross of Christ ; whose bodies he has buried beneath the
sacred waters of baptism ; whom he has united in wed-
lock, uttering, amid the blessings of friends, the simple
formula which of twain maketh one flesh ; to whose
homes, in hours of sorrow, he has come with the consola-
tions of religion, identifying himself alike with the mar-
riage festival and the funereal woe ; and who in return
has received from them comfort in his own sad hours,
who has been borne up on their prayers, and who has
ever received a joyful welcome to their firesides and
homes. I think that the relationship between a faithful
pastor and his flock will survive long after many of the
ties of birth and blood are sundered and forgotten ;
it will never cease, but will grow deeper, stronger,
purer, holier, when with those who have been redeemed
through his instrumentality, he shall present himself be-
fore the Eternal throne, saying unto the Great Shepherd
and Bishop of all — "Here am I, and the children which
thou hast given me."
But it is not this local application that I propose to
give to the Scripture text announced. I think I have re-
peated this language a hundred times within the past few
months. It has again and again recurred to me, Avhile
traversing the streets, or roaming over the cultivated
hills of Protestant England ; while watching the fancy
pleasures of gay, voluptuous Paris ; while wandering
over the burning sands, or sitting beneath the beautiful
palm trees of Egypt, and while slaking my thirst at
Moses' wells in ancient Midian. It floated through my
mind like the music of home, as I stood years ago in
the deserted Forum of Imperial Kome, and as I trod
amid the ftiding glories of Papal power the marble pave-
ment of St. Peter's. It was the first passage I thought
of as I rounded the Golden Horn, and looked up from the
sparkUng waters of the Bosphorus upon the crescents
and mmarets of Constantinople. It breathed uncon-
sciously from my lips as I stood upon the Mount of
Olives, and looked down across sad Grethsemane upon
Jerusalem, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole
earth ; and it came to me as the echo of an angel's lips,
as I sat down on Mount Zion, and saw the daughters of
Judah sweep by with tuneless harps. I heard it as a
melodious sigh, amid the broken pillars and trampled
pride of fallen Athens, and caught its echo from the
heights of the Acropolis.
But not to any of those climes did my heart go forth
in the expression of the text ; towards none of those
countries did I feel the tender sentiment of the Moabitess
woman. I could not say to the Frenchman, the Italian,
the Egyptian, the Turk or the Arab, " thy people shall
be my people." I could not say to the Papist, the Mos-
lem or the Jew, " thy God shall be my God." I could
not turn to the inhabitants of London, Paris, Rome,
Athens, or Jerusalem, and say to them, "where thou
diest, I will die, and there will I be buried."
My thoughts swept across the ocean, my arms stretched
out towards America, — tJiis country^ her soil stained with
blood shed in fratricidal war ; her banner torn and be-
reft of half its stars ; her Constitution trampled beneath
the feet of treacherous millions ; a plague spot, black as
midnight, resting on one half her fair domain, but with
all her faults and crimes, the noblest nation on the globe,
yet to be recognized by all men as the grandest experi-
ment of human history.
To know and appreciate his own country, the Ameri-
can must visit other lands, and mark the contrasts that
every where appear. It is not enough that he reads
what travellers have written of the wants and woes, the
oppressions and tyrannies of other nations ; it is not
enough that he sees the trampled subjects of imperial
monarchs, the overtaxed, impoverished inhabitants of
royal realms flying to our shores as an asylum from des-
potisms that neither rest nor sleep ; it is not enough that
he catches fugitive glimpses of the moral and political
degradation of communities to whom God has given the
sunniest skies, the purest fountains, the most fertile soil,
and the most productive climate, but which are death-
ridden by priestcraft and kingcraft, imbruted by centu-
ries of indulgence, and dehumanized by a barbarism
which has neither suns nor stars. lie must see with his
eyes, hear with his ears, and feel with his heart. He
must go down from the high moral elevation on which
New England has been placed by Puritan faith and Pil-
grim creed, by free institutions and an open Bible, down
the successive steps of the pyramid of human society,
and see mingled at its black base, the dregs of human
nature, — men and women so little removed from brutes,,
that the difference can hardly be detected, the human form
alone distinguishing them from creatures as soulless as
the sod.
Let me point you to a few of these contrasts. Passing
England, whose blood is our blood, whose history, whose
literature, Avhose religion are all ours, our fatherland,
into a war with which, the satanic press of this country,
the mischief-breeding perverters of public sentiment, here,
and the selfish, mercenary dependents on cotton crops,
there, are endeavoring to plunge us, we come to France.
The ocean separates us from that gay, vivacious country,
where fountains sparkle in the sun and music vibrates
on the air, and odors are wafted to the senses, and the
people live in Elysian fields. But there is not more
difference in the languages spoken, than in the institu-
tions of the two countries. The faith and hope of the
Frenchman are as unlike the foith and hope of the
American, as light and darkness. That gay land is the
theatre of constant revolutions ; the people overturn the
Government, and assassinate the rulers for public amuse-
ment. Within a dozen years that beautiful land has
been ruled by a King, a President, a Mob and an Em-
peror. The most fragrant flowers that grow in Paris are
fattened by the gore of monarchs. Fountains gush out
and sparkle where royal blood flowed in torrents ; mon-
uments stand where the guillotine worked day and night,
and a thoughtless crowd fill the streets along which the
death cart rolled from the revolutionary tribunal to the
sanguinary execution. A few years ago, I saw the best
king France ever had, flying a mournful exile from the
capital, on the embellishment of which he had lavished
his fortune, amid hoarse cries of, Vive la BepubUque !
Vive la Gouvernement provisoire V^ while Republican
hands wrote on the doors of the Tuileries and the
Louvre, the significant words, — " Liberie^ Equalite, Fra-
ternite. Since then those words have been obliterated,
their sacred meaning is a myth in France, and that land
rests under a despotism as severe, if not as odious, as
relentless, if not as cruel, as any on earth.
Sail down the blue Mediterranean and land in Italy.
Follow the track of Francis II., the most despicable of
the Bourbons, to Rome, or take the path of Garibaldi to
Turin, and how little there is comparable with what we
enjoy in New England. There are halls with miles of
pictures in them ; galleries piled full of sculpture, but
Qio real liheriy ijet. Eome, where great Crosar reigned,
where Paul preached salvation, where Constantine flour-
ished — Rome, whose citizenship was a royal honor, whose
name was a terror to the world, whose flag waved in
imperial supremacy over all lands — Rome, the birth-
place of martyrs, the sepulchre of apostles, is but the
filthy centre of a religion which has blazoned on its
front, " Ignorance is the mother of devotion^ Her narrow
streets are thronged by a Avorthless priesthood and a
filthy lazzaroni ; in her dim, faded palaces sit conclaves
of tyrants debating how best to stifle the freedom of the
globe ; blasphemy is enthroned in her churches ; anti-
christ presides at her altars which glisten with precious
stones, while an oppressed and down-trodden people im-
plore the aid of the civilized world to break the chains
which have been on them for centuries. Italy presents
to the world the singular spectacle of twenty-five mil-
lions of people struggling to be free, yet with neither the
virtue nor the intelligence essential to freedom.
Embark again and sail to Egypt — land of mythology,
cradle of learning and science. Tread where the Pha-
raohs used to tread ; sit down among the antiquities of
Memphis and Thebes ; ramble by daylight or moonlight
amid the melancholy pomp of Karnac ; step softly on
the dust of the ancient city of the Sun, and every where
you behold evidences of degradation which you never
imagined. Man is an ignorant, besotted creature, living
in the most sensual abandonment, practising the grossest
vices, and satisfied with the lowest forms of humanity.
Woman, in turn, becomes the slave of her husband's indo-
lence and the victim of his passions, condemned to
drudgery and toil, her immortality denied, her com-
plaints unheeded, and her happiness disregarded. Child-
9
hood is allowed to grow up without instruction, in beast-
liness that leaves its marks on the physical constitution,
in blindness, idiocy and stupef^iction, and on the moral
nature in a conscience utterly diseased, and a heart ut-
terly depraved. Moses and Pharaoh are dead ; the Is-
raelites have gone out of the land, but the plagues are
there yet, reigning from the banks of the beautiful Nile
to the outward boundaries of the sun-scorched desert.
Visit Greece^ the land of art, which every ambitious
sophomore has invested with eternal charms, which has
been eulogized in every gifted oration, from the days of
Demosthenes until now, which has been woven into
poetry and song — Greece^ the land of Lycurgus and
Aristides, which stands forth to the scholar, what Pales-
tine is to the Christian, and how little is there worthy
of its past renown. The Acropolis full of broken
images ; the Parthenon in ruins ; Mars' Hill without an
apostle ; the Court of Areopagus broken up, the judges
dead ; the pillars of Olympus falling down ; the The-
seum battered by Turkish cannon balls — while within
sight of these, toils an over-taxed, illiterate peasantry,
and close by them rises the tasteless palace of the vile,
unscrupulous despot, King Otho.
Why, this modern Athens in which we live is a nobler
spectacle than ancient Athens ; one humble temple,
where Christ is preached and the cross is held up, is
worth more to humanity than the thousand-godded Par-
thenon ; Bunker Hill and Lexington are grander in their
moral significance than Marathon and Thermopylre ; Fan-
euil Hall is more eloquent in its historic meaning than
the Acropolis was in the days of Demosthenes. While
the children of the ancient Greeks are a poor, pitiable
race, rich only in an ancestry which they dishonor, a lit-
10
erature, the beauties of which they are ignorant, and a
historic prestige to which they are indifferent, the chil-
dren of the Pilgrims are loyal to their principles, and on
their graves, to-day, are contending for the precious
legacy they bequeathed to us.
Last of all, go to 'Palestine — the Ilohj Land I Journey
on to Jerusalem, where Christ lived and died, where
apostles preached and labored ; travel through all the
country once covered with wonderful fertility, blest by
industry, sanctified by religion, now the abode of a mis-
erable, indolent, thieving, cowardly race, the hill-sides
run out by neglect, the vallies fruitless by inattention,
not a decent road from the hot, arid deserts of Philistia
to Damascus, not a single newspaper, nor rail-car, nor
telegraph in the land, whole towns, containing hundreds
of inhabitants, where not a chair, nor a table, nor a
comfortable bed, nor any evidence of civilization can be
found, and you have reached, there in tiiat IM>i Land.,
every hill-top and valley of which has been consecrated
and hallowed by the footsteps of the immaculate Son of
God, the outward boundaries of civilization. The Hot-
tentot and the Caffre can scarcely be more sunken and
degraded than the Ishmaelitish inhabitants of Central
Syria.
The New Englander finds no place where he would
like to live, no country for which he would exchange his
own. There are royal burial places and pyramidal
tombs, but in none of them would he wish to sleep the
lasting sleep. As the Jew wishes to die within sight of
Jerusalem, and the Moslem lies down within the .shadow
of Mecca, so the American, turning from the veneral)le
Abbey of Westminster, from the ambitious dome of the
luvalideSj and from the rural glories of fair Pere-la-
11
Chaise, re:iches his anus to his loved ones here, ex-
claiming, " Where thou cliest let me die, and there let
me be buried."
And why is it, that the American can find no clime
comparable with his own ? What is there that so en-
dears it to us all ?
Certainly, it is not the fertility of its soil. That is
coarse, rough, often barren and unfruitful. No man
would ever settle in New England for its fertility.
England is a garden of flowers ; France a vineyard of
grapes ; Italy a paradise of beauty, compared w^ith this
Commonwealth.
It is not for the salubrity of its climate. Our Atlantic
coast is dotted with consumptives' graves ; our Western
prairies waft the burning fever and the shivering ague
on every breeze ; our inland lakes produce a miasma
almost as fatal as the Roman Campagna ; while the
South, with every returning season, invites the soft, yel-
low footsteps of the plague.
It cannot be on account of its works of art, its antique
remains, or its lengthened history. Florence and Dres-
den have galleries of paintings and sculpture ; Rome
has its Coliseum and Athens its Parthenon ; Egypt has
its ancient history, its mythological record, and Pales-
tine its pilgrim shrines. Our country has none of these.
Our history dates with the Mayflower, and is but a little
more than two hundred years old ; our flag has not seen
a century since its stars were set, and the only pilgrim
shrine we have — Mount Vernon ^ we were told in Syria,
but I find falsely, had lately been rifled by robbers of its
sacred bones.
We love our native land for something better than a
lengthened history, or the crumbling ruins of antiquity.
12
We can boast of something better than battle fields and
castles. We present to tlie world tlie only illustration
of constitntional government, unencumbered by tradition-
ary rights, privileged classes and hereditary claims,
that it has ever seen ; the only specimen of a genuine
republic ever known. The ancient republics were such
only in name. The grand idea of constitutional liberty,
wide apart from license on the one hand, and despotism
on the other, tliey did not reach. That idea is ours —
embodied in our government, illustrated in our history,
exemplified in our experience, enunciated in our Consti-
tion and laws. That idea we have had the greatness to
attain unto ; the events of the next few months are to
show whether we have the integrity to preserve it.
This constitutional government of ours insures to us
freedom of conscience beyond the power of any church
or inquisitor ; freedom of speech beyond the interfer-
ence of any mob censorship ; freedom of the press be-
yond any ecclesiastical or political despotisms. It makes
all our citizens politically equal, and furnishes liberty,
enlarged and salutary, to all who come within its influ-
ence. However much we sometimes fall below this,
these blessings are the legitimate results of the working
of our institutions. However barbarisms that have been
entailed upon us by dead or decaying monarchies, or
barbarisms that are the fruits of human wickedness may
for a time defeat the operation of the best of laws or
the purest of principles, the form of government be-
queathed to us by our Withers cannot fail to work out
for us a noble independence and a sure prosperity.
Beneath such a government our population has in-
creased to thirty millions of souls ; sovereign States, —
some of them too sovereign to be loyal to the mother
13
th;it reared them, stretch from the surf-beaten rocks of
the Athuitic to the gold besprinkled sand of the Pacific ;
our canvas whitens every sea, and our flag waves in
every port ; our manufactories have arisen like magic
on the banks of our rivers, and populous cities thrive on
the shores of our mighty inland seas. Our national
wealth is as enormous as our pride, and our ambition is
bounded only by shoreless deeps.
Keeping pace with free institutions, our Protestant
religion has pushed its conquests in all directions. The
Bible has been made the foundation of our laws, the
code of our morals, and the ethics of our lives. In every
village and hamlet Christ has been held up as an aton-
ing Saviour ; the plan of salvation has been unfolded in
its vastness and glory, and we stand out before the world
as the Christian nation that best illustrates soul liberty,
as well as political freedom, unencumbered by any state
church, or any government recognized creed.
Hence it is that the American, wherever he goes,
turns back to his own country with feelings of patriotic
love and pride. Whatever he may see to admire else-
where, this is his home. The land of Washington is
dearer than the Via Sacra of the Cresars, and the Consti-
tution of Washington is an instrument more sublime than
the code of Lycurgus. With patriotism burning in his
bosom, he cannot look upon the flag waving among the
masts in any harbor, or floating in the sunlight over any
consulate, without a thrill of pleasure. It is the ensign
of his country ; that country is America ; and America, at
least in organic structure, is morally and religiously free.
The question comes up, and a very significant ques-
tion it is, in these times, — Is this country worth preserv-
ing ? Is this Union, in which are bound up the hopes
14
of millions of human beings now on earth and millions
yet unborn, which is so intimately connected with the
welfare of the whole race, the spread of the gospel over
the globe, and the liberty of mankind, worth contend-
ing for ?
I return to you in the midst of civil war. I find hos-
tile armies traversing our country. I find a man's foes
to be they of his own household, and my soul shudders
at the prospect yet before us. I venture to say that
such an unreasonable, unnatural, merciless war was never
before entered upon. The rebellion of Absalom against
David, his royal sire, his mad endeavor to overturn the
Hebrew throne, does not approach the enormity of this
sanguinary conflict. The Sepoy rebellion, in India, was
not as inexcusable as this w^ar waged against the Fed-
eral Government by States whose soil we have purchased,
whose firesides we have defended, whose debts we have
paid, whose insults we have forgiven, whose injuries we
have borne, and, alas ! — God forgive us, — whose slaves
we have caught and returned. Never since God made
the world, has a brighter and more beautiful flag been
drabbled in a dirtier soil than that which fell pierced
with swords in the streets of Richmond ; never has trea-
son worked to a meaner purpose, and with more vil-
lainous instruments, than that which had South CaroUna
nullification for its hydra head, and the Montgomery abor-
tion for its cloven foot and forked tail. The name of Ar-
nold, which has been hung with a sable cloud, now
begins to glow with lurid light, in comparison with those
that in inky black, are inscribed beside it ; and the Ro-
man Catiline looks saintlike, compared with some of the
men who have plotted the niin of this great nation, and
15
who, to consummate the purpose, have been willing to
drench the land in innocent blood.
The first intelligence we received of the commence-
ment of hostilities, was in Syria. We were told that eight
thousand chivalrous men had overcome a half-starved
garrison of seventy soldiers, and divided the immortal
honor of the exploit between them ; that Massachusetts
blood was soaking into the pavements of Baltimore ;
that the American flag, which no sovereign in Europe
would dare insult, had been hooted by a mob, pierced
with swords, trampled under foot, and rent to pieces ;
that an army of rebels was marching on Washington, to
haul down the banner, every star, and stripe, and thread,
and dot of which is redolent with freedom, and put up a
bastard ensign, a piratical insignia, in every flap of
which the world should hear the crack of the whip, the
clank of chains and the groans of the negro.
And that was all we heard ! The account was meagre
and did not tell us how such treason was to be met ;
how such rebellion was to be quelled, and how such a
government was to be preserved. A week, — a long and
painful week must elapse ere we could hear again. It
was a week of harrowing suspense, and I assure you that
as excited as you were here, your suspense could not
have been as dreadful as ours. The very silence of the
Syrian desert was eloquent with forebodings and fears.
We questioned ! Have the fires of patriotism all gone out ?
Has the love of liberty fled from Plymouth Rock to And
a home in Italy, Hungary and Poland. Are the de-
scendants of the men of Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and
Valley Forge all dead ? Will the people rise in their
majesty and defend the Constitution and vindicate the
flag, or will the freemen of the North yield once more, —
16
yield forever ? and let that base Palmetto rag float over
the capitol, that counterfeit Montgomery constitution ex-
tend to the St. Lawrence, and that arrogant Georgian
fulfil the boast he made that he would call the roll of
his slaves on Bunker Hill ?
I must tell you that I was afraid of the North, of New
England, and especially of Boston. I knew that the
North had a conscience, but I also knew that warehouses
and manufactories had been built upon it ten stories
high. I knew that New England had a heart, but I
was well aware that it was all covered up with bales of
cotton, boxes of shoes and cargoes of tea, and was afraid
that its life-throes could not cast off the mighty incubus.
The week rolled away, — a week of suspense, and we
held our breath with pain. We had reason to suspect
this now vindicated metropolis. The scene that was
shimmering before my eyes, when I sailed, was that dis-
graceful mob in Tremont Temple, where, in obedience to
the behest of South Carolina, free speech was trampled
down and lay bleeding in the dust. The last sounds that
floated on the air were the echoes of those compromise
speeches made in Faneuil Hall, tempered and toned to
be read in old Virginia.
The week expired, and behind the bar of the Ottoman
Bank in Beyroot, ten of us gathered over a pile of Eng-
lish and American newspapers ; our letters lay unopened
before us. Wives and children were forgotten ; our
bleeding country was alone remembered. The intelli-
gence was all we could desire. It told us that the Pil-
grim spirit was yet alive ; that everywhere at home an
intense enthusiasm was enkindled ; that party ties were
all sundered, and party interests all forgotten ; that
our young men had risen to arms, and our old men
17
had blessed them as they went forth ; that women and
chiUU'en were making garments, banners and tents for
the sokliers ; that the churches were hung with the okl
flag — the Stripes and Stars — God bless it ! that from the
farthest river in Maine to the prairies of the West, the
people were rising to trample the traitors down ; that
Sunday, God's day, had been taken to do God's work ;
that timid, conservative preachers, who had been deaf
and dumb while all this mischief was brewing, had come
to the front of the altar, shouting, " The sword of the
Lord and of Washington ;" that a long vascillating
Cabinet had been raised, and cast on the great waves of
popular might against the brazen gates of treason ; that
the old flag, borne by ten thousand hands, was to go
straight through Baltimore, and be lifted up upon the
Federal capitol, and wave there in the sight of all na-
tions, the symbol of Constitutional Government and
human freedom, until treason was overturned and sla-
very was extinct.
This was enough ! Never since the day when God
forgave my sins, and made me a new creature, have I
felt so willing to die, as then, — so able, to say sincerely,
" Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for
mine eyes have seen thy salvation." We read those
columns down with choked utterance and sobbins: voices.
o
The tears streamed down our cheeks, while clerks and
bankers looked on amazed ; we grasped the hands of
each other ; we laughed and wept by turns, and rushed
out to make the French camp, close by, and through
which we rode on our way to Damascus, ring with our
national anthem : —
" IMy country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty.
Of thee I sine;
18
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the rilgriiu's pride,
From every mountain side.
Let freedom ring."
Yon know what has transpired since. You haA^e lived
an age within these hist four months ; events have burnt
themselves into the staple of time ; have been written
in letters of blood on the pages of history. AVhen pos-
terity reads, what a chapter it will be ! Treason for
thirty years working in the Cabinet, in the Army and in
Congress ; fraud plundering the national treasury and
the public arsenals ; coivardice assailing with eight thou-
sand men, and eighty thousand still behind, a half-
starved garrison of seventy men ; a ferocious mob mur-
dering unoffending Massachusetts soldiers, while on their
way to defend the Federal capital ; a letter of marque
issued by an ambitious pretender, for the encouragement
of piracy ; tlie sacred tomb of the Father of his country
threatened with robbery, and, as if it were not enough to
tear Washington's constitution to pieces, destroy his
country and trail his banner in the dust, his ashes must
be cast upon the altars of the oppression which he hated,
to satisfy the Moloch of slavery. And then scene fol-
lowed scene,
" Blood trod upon the heels of blood ;
Revenge in desperate mood at midnight met
Eevenge. War brayed to war,"
until now, in the harvest moon. Death centres as if it
were a pivot upon the ridge of the AUeghanies, and
flaps his raven wings over all the land. The nation
seems to have been passing over a gulf of horrors, upon
a bridge of sighs, all the way from John Brown's gibbet
to Manassas Gap. Who can count the widows' tears as
19
tlicy fall ? Who can describe the desolated homes ?
Who can number the silent graves ? Who can tell the
ruin of character, the blasting of hope, and the fearful
crimes that will follow, like a retinue of devils, in the
track of this fratricidal war ? And what name will his-
tory give to him who stands forth as the acknowledged
leader of this rebellion, on whose hands the blood is clot-
ting now, as she enrolls him on her catalogue with Nina
Sahib and the murderers of the Maronites ?
And now what of the future ? Watchman, what of the
night ? Can any one of you see any stars amid the por-
tentous blackness of this hour ? You, who stand in the
midst of prostrate business prospects, who walk in the
gloom which hangs over the exchange and the market-
place, who are menaced by failure and bankruptcy ; you,
whose honest dues have been repudiated by your South-
ern creditors ; you, who clung to guilty South Carolina,
praying her to be reasonable, shielding her from reproach,
until she turned and stabbed you, and sent you home
bleeding and wounded ; you, who apologized for the
South until she had well nigh brought down the temple
of our liberties, a heap of ruins ; tell me, do you see
any rays of light ?
It seems to me that a division of our country is an
impossibility. We cannot have two or more republics on
this soil. God and nature have forbidden it. Neither
of them, could they be established, would attain to any
considerable respectability in the great family of nations,
and between them would be perpetual war. A peaceful
separation seems to be rendered impossible by all the
exigencies of the case, and hence there can be but two
ways of settling this question, — it is a dreadful alternative.
The Jird way, is to compromise, yields surrender. A
20
government extending over a wide range of country,
must, to some extent, be one vast system of compromises.
When the interests of one part conflict with the inter-
rests of another part ; when opinions differ, and men
cannot see alike, compromise and concession are the le-
gitimate modes of adjustment. But no government can
with any safety compromise the principles on which it is
founded ; to do that is self-destruction ; and there are
some questions which can never be made matters of com-
promise. The troubles in which we now are, are the
results of concessions in matters of principle, which
should have been settled by the infinite standard of
right, and by the great law of God. We had a monster
in our midst, and we thought the best way to manage
him was to feed him, pat him, and let him have his own
way. So every time he roared we threw him a bone to
still him, and all the time he was grovving strong.
When we saw his glaring eyes we threw him the Mis-
souri Compromise, and still he grew. When he growled
we threw down before him the Fugitive Slave Law,
and yet he grew. When he became more terrible we
fixed the Kansas-Nebraska bill to please him, and when
we had nothing more to cast to him, this monster, whom
we fondled and fed, came upon us and tore our flag to
pieces, trampled our Constitution in the dust, repudiated
honest contracts, and seizing with his infernal claws the
pillars of the fabric of our freedom, endeavored to pull
the whole structure down into one common ruin. That
monster is Slavcri/ — a system which has been the cause
of our alienations, the source of our misunderstandings,
and the plague of our nation from the time its corner
stone was laid. Some men seem to have an evil
genius — a bad angel, that moves them to evil, that
21
sweeps away their good intentions, that spoils every
honest endeavor, and destroys them in spite of themselves.
Slavery has been the evil genius of our nation ; the blot
on our liberty ; the stain on our banner ; the millstone
in our ascent to a glorious destiny. And yet the legis-
lation of our country, for a half century, has been little
more than a series of compromises with this evil spirit,
and the result we have in the ruin and disgrace Avhicli
stare us in the face to-day.
And yet we shall hear of compromise again ere long ;
the old cheat is not yet dead, and the moment the en-
thusiasm of victory is over, men will begin to yield.
" Feed the monster," they will say. " Throw him a
few more bones ; let him grow a little ; give him more
life." Politicians, who want something upon which to
climb into office ; business men, who feel the pressure of
these evil times ; quiet citizens, who are tired of war,
and mistaken theorizers, who really think slavery a
source of national strength, will begin to cry — " Feed
the monster ; let him live, though he has taught our
senators treason, and shed the blood of our soldiers — let
him live."
. But unless we find some means to ensure the peaceful,
constitutional, honest extinction of slavery, we keep the
cause of all our woes. Settle this civil war by compro-
mise, and it will not be ten years before this scene will be
repeated, even if the breach be now healed. It will not
be ten years before slavery will let loose upon us u new
tide of blood.
The victory we need to gain, is not simply to crush
out the spirit of rebellion, to set up the flag over the
bastions of dismantled Sumter, and drive traitors out of
Kichmond and Charleston ! Do all that, mend the
22
breach, heal the divisions, bind up the wounds, present
to the worUl an unstained flag and an undivided nation-
ality, and if slavery has not received its death-blow, you
are a vanquished people ; the precious blood you have
shed has been spilt in vain ; the brave men, who have
lost their lives, have been thrown away ; the millions of
money you have expended will be worse than squan-
dered, and you will come out of the battle with the heel
of the monster on your neck.
And what is there about slavery that any man in the
North should want to keep it ? lias it not corrupted
your public men, perjured your judges and senators, plun-
dered your treasury, murdered your citizens, soiled your
flag, trampled on your Constitution, perverted your his-
tory, and sown your fields with blood ? Has it not done
all this, and more than this ? And can you afford to
give it new lease of life, even though you pacify it now ?
Do you dare to lengthen its cords, and allow it to gather
strength, that it may rise again in four, eight, or twelve
years, anew to plunder your national treasury, destroy
your national honor and credit, blast your business and
prosperity, butcher your wives and children, and again
overflow the land with blood ? Why, how many civil
wars can America stand ? How often can it go through
periods like this, without having its light quenched in
blackness and blood ? Let your government enter into
any compromise that will strengthen the hands of sla-
very, and you rush upon your doom. You take up a
controversy with the religion of the Bible, and the con-
science of the whole civilized world. You go, with your
eyes open, into a hopeless war with omnipotent God.
Why, what is God teaching us now ? Don't you hear
his voice ? From Sumter's dismantled bastions don't
23
you hear it ?— " Let the oppressed go free." From the
blood-wet pavements of Baltimore don't you hear it 1—
" Let the oppressed go free." From the fearful slaugh-
ter of Bull Run, from that brave day that mysteriously
lapsed into panic and flight, don't you hear it ?— " Let
the oppressed go free." From victory and defeat, from
the beleagured camp and the murderous charge, don't
you hear it ?— " Let the oppressed go free." Every
slave that comes to us, saying, " knock off these chains,"
is a plea from God. Every drop of blood shed, and every
unburied body left on Southern fields, is a heaven high
demand for the extinction of slavery.
I say, then, that compromise with slavery is a mad,
ruinous, hopeless method of settlement. You who urge
it, are the scribes who would write in gore the doom of
American liberty, and quench every star that now shines
in the horizon of our country's future.
The second method of settlement, is to conquer a
peace. This is the dreadful alternative— »/f^ it out.
This can be done. With twenty millions of Northern
freemen against eight millions of Southrons, embarrassed
by four millions of slaves, eftectually blockaded, desti-
tute of credit, and opposed to God, the ultimate result,
notwithstanding the late defeat, cannot be doubtful.
God may punish us awhile for our comphcity with sla-
very, for that great sin has been defended by the press
and the pulpit, and strengthened by political and com-
mercial alliances. He may allow us to suffer until
our national pride is humbled and our national vanity is
mortified, and we recognize his hand in our history.
But when a united North goes marching down from the
graves of the Pilgrims, with libert// written on the
banners, to contend for loyalty against treason ; law
24
against anarchy ; government against barbarism ; free-
dom against slavery, the result is sure. And such
a war, not for ambition and lust, is a holy war — a
grand necessity forced on us by Providence. God has
driven us from paper compromises to the tented field.
Words and pens are powerless to settle the contest now.
The unsheathed sword and the soldier's charge are the
only compromises.
" If infamy were but a word, not thing,
With words we'd meet it and with bandied blame
Advance great Freedom's language, 'till the shame
Cowered before Persuasion's iron ring.
For eloquence can only strike and sting
Where mind is baffled, and like hunted game
Tired by pursuit and growing weakly tame,
Yields to the fatal shot its wearied wing.
But with Rebellion, reeling to and fro,
Drunk with a mad despair, it is not so.
And words would vitalize as quick the dead
As compromise a peace Avith such a foe.
Then is a nation's duty plainly read —
Then is a nation's eloquence — a blow !"
But from such an alternative, I know there is a shrink-
ing in every soul. I am not a man of blood, and I shud-
der as I contemplate the cost of the struggle now in
progress — the cost, not in gold and silver, but in human
lives, in widows' tears, in wrecked characters, in all that
darkens the pages of history, and sickens the soul as it
reads the record.
There can be no glory in this war, however it may re-
sult, and whatever brilliant deeds may be done. There
was glory at Thermopylie and Marathon ; there was glory
at Austerlitz and Lodi ; there was glory at Lexington
and Bunker Hill ; there was glory at Montebello and
Solferino, but there can be none in this cruel, civil war.
25
Our great nation at its close will weep as David did over
Absalom. There will be no monuments erected to its
heroes ; there will be no preans sung to its conquerors.
No American will ever wish to read its record, and we
shall pray to have it forgotten. It is a fratricidal war ;
brother is butchering brother ; it is our own blood that
is flowing.
And yet, dreadful as war is, it is better than dishonor ;
better than disunion ; better than the lot to which the
mad South was determined to push us. The existence
of this Union to mankind, is worth all the blood we have
to shed, all the treasures we have to spend. The main-
tenance of the Constitution is worthy of any sacrifice,
except the sacrifice of honor. Not half a decade of
years has passed away since Gov. Wise, now a trai-
tor, pronounced that document " A work of glory,
and a work of inspiration," and added, what we are
willing to endorse, that " no man from Hamilton, and
Jay, and Madison — from Edmund Randolph, who had
the chief hand in making it — and he was a Virginian —
the writers of it, the authors of it, and you who have
lived under it from 1789 to this year of our Lord 1858,
none of your fathers' sons has ever measured the height,
or the depth, or the length, or the breadth of the wisdom
of that Constitution." That Constitution which the ex-
ecutioner of John Brown declared *' a glory and an in-
spiration," " an unmeasured height, depth, length,
breadth of wisdom," we are endeavoring to preserve for
our children and a coming age. And preserve it we
will. In the name of God, and in behalf of liberty, we
will preserve it. To quote the enthusiastic declaration of
an ecclesiastic of the Methodist church, — " We will take
our glorious flag — the flag of our country — and nail it
4
26
just beloiv the cross ! That is high enough ! There let it
wave as it waved of old. Around it we will gather :
' First Christ's, then our country's.' "
If the present generation is beggared, posterity will
rise up and bless us as the benefactors of mankind. Why,
destroy this government, and you destroy the grandest
hope of liberty ; you extinguish the light which is beck-
oning on the enslaved millions of Italy, Hungary, Turkey
and Poland to constitutional freedom. If there is no
other way to save this government than fighting, dread-
ful as that is, then love of country and patriotism, aye,
and religion too, would bid us fight. And to just this
issue have we come — to compromise with the monster
which has so long ruled us, and thus insure the destruc-
tion of this Union in less than a quarter of a century, or
to settle now and forever that not another inch of ground
can be given to slavery, that the North is no longer to
be made a negro hunting ground, that this nation, in its
broad extent and its grand proportions, is the heritage of
freedom, and not the Bastile of oppression.
And now let me indicate three things which should be
accomplished by the dreadful discipline through which
we are passing.
Fo'st. As I have just said, we should become, in
fact, as we are in name, a free people. Some plan should
be devised for the peaceful, honorable emancipation of
the slaves. For the good of the laboring people of the
North ; for the good of the masters, and the welfare of
their families in the South ; for the good of the op-
pressed ; for the good of mankind, chattel bondage should
be extinguished. I say this without any reference to
the negroes themselves. They in the South enslaved
are a national crime and curse ; free in the North, they
27
are at present a public misfortune. In consequence of
the wrongs done them, they are, to a great extent, an
indolent, dependent race, and were they all in Africa,
from whence they have been stolen, and for leaving
which they are not responsible, it would be better for
them and for us. I argue this now, not as a moral
question, but in the lower light of political economy.
We must get rid of slavery to save the Union, the Con-
stitution and the flag.
When the Bourbon throne was overturned in France,
the people saw the black, frowning walls of the Bastile
looking down upon them. They said, " The Republic
is not safe w^hile that stands." With the gathered might
of a tempest, they poured themselves upon it and demol-
ished it, and sent a fragment to every town in France.
The Bastile of human bondage, in which treason has
been hatched, rebellion suckled, honor sacrificed, and
from the battlements of which have burst upon you the
terrors of this unreasonable war, yet stands. And while
it stands the Republic will not be safe. It is a Bastile
menacing the liberties of the nation, and the choice
offered this great people is the destruction of the one or
the other.
Second. We should emerge from this discipline with
higher ideas of national honor and integrity. It should
be established once and forever, that the government is
not to be tampered with, nor the Constitution violated
with impunity. Our own people and all our adopted
citizens should learn, in lessons of fire and blood, if need
be, that he who lifts his hand against the government is
a traitor, and meets a traitor's doom. The ship of state
should be committed to the best hands we have. We
have given her up to pirates, and they have tried to
28
scuttle her in mid ocean ; we have called on board in-
competent pilots, and they have stranded her on the
rocks of anarchy and ruin. Our rulers, for years past,
have been selected too much from a class of paltry poli-
ticians. HoAV mean some of them look beside the great
statesmen of Europe. How few Russells, Peels, Pal-
merstons. Broughams, Disraelis and Gladstones we
have ! How few Lamartines, Cavours and Ricasolis ap-
pear in our troubles. I do not say we have no great
statesmen. That would not be true. We have as noble
a line of public men as ever appeared in any land. But
we have too far overlooked the merits of our great men,
left them in political obscurity, while we have elevated
men to place and power, who have great capacity only
to dishonor the trust reposed in them, who are gifted
only in the lowest arts of party huckstering, and who
never arrived to the higher plane of the patriot and
the statesman. This has been our ruin and our shame.
If we are capable of learning any thing from bitter ex-
perience, this knowledge should bring us out of the fire
with loftier integrity, and sublimer ideas of government,
law, and national honor. We should feel that the pub-
lic weal is a thing too sacred to be intrusted to charla-
tans and demagogues, who have ascended, through im-
pudence, from the mud, where they were born, to sta-
tions of trust which they dishonor.
Third. Another result of our discipline should be to
make our whole people more thoughtful, sober, and de-
pendent on God. We are a jaunty, showy race. Our men
are more impulsive and fickle than the English ; our wo-
men more thoughtless and extravagant than the French.
From this struggle every man, woman and child should
come out more thoughtful, serious, economical and trust-
29
worthy, with more rational ideas of the majesty and im-
portance of our being. When we have been reproved
for our fast habits, we have said, " 0, we are a young
nation ; we have the vivacity of youth ; we shall settle
down and be steady by and by." I have seen a young
mother, with her babe in her arms, all life, animation
and happiness, gay as a lark, and thoughtless as the but-
terfly. But death came and took the child, led that
young mother through life's most bitter experience ;
took off her flowers and clothed her in sable. From that
hour that mother was an altered being. She matured
while passing through the flood ; she emerged from that
sorrow a woman I — she was a c/iiM before. Her disci-
pline had lifted her up to a great world of reality, and
henceforth she was more fit to perform life's solemn
duties here, or walk with the angels above.
So our nation, the young bride of Liberty, the gay,
dancing creature, brilliant as the stars of her own flag,
has received a bloody baptism. Years of experience have
passed over her in one long, dreadful night, and she
should come out of it matured, chastened and sanctified.
Every man should be more a man, and every woman
should be more a woman from this hour. It is a disci-
pline that should elevate, ennoble and dignify our people,
and make the nation greater than it ever was before.
Of course, in a Christian assembly like this, I need
not argue that this discipline should lead us to more de-
pendence on God, to a clearer recognition of his hand in
this bitter contest. In all the movements of the past he
appears, and in the carnage and strife by which we are
surrounded, he is forcing us to acknowledge him, as, the
God of nations and of armies. We must be right with
him, and he must be on our side, or we cannot succeed.
30
The trust reposed in some of our Generals is sublime ;
but our trust must be higher than men — in Gocl.
And, now, one word more, for I shall not often trouble
you with war sermons. The time for pulpit preaching
on this subject has gone by. If the American pulpit
had been true to itself, for the last twenty-five years,
this thing would not have happened. The preachers now
are at Manassas Gap and Harper's Ferry.
The impression exists Avidely in Europe that this na-
tion is stranded ; that the Republic has gone to ruin ;
that the bubble of democracy has burst. This opinion
has been expressed in Parliament, echoed by the press,
bandied in the streets. Doubtless, some in England
would like to have it so. To the titled aristocracy of
Great Britain, our government is a standing reproach ;
to the army and navy it is a constant remembrancer of the
most severe defeat those proud powers have ever ex-
perienced ; to the people, it is, to some extent, an object
of popular dislike and spleen. But, while this is so,
there are millions in England who wish us well, and who
pray for our prosperity. But they can see no principle in
this conflict. We have studiously concealed the fact, that
liberty is the end at which we aim. We stand in a false
position before the philanthropists of Europe. We have
told them that it Avas not to enlarge the area of freedom
that we are contending, but for nationality, to subju-
gate rebels, to quell mutinies. Can we then be surprised
that the manufacturing and commercial classes of Eng-
land, who have so much at stake, should desire peace,
even, at the cost to us, of a division of this country ?
They think the experiment of self-government a failure.
But it remains to be seen whether we have virtue, intel-
ligence and piety enough to save the country from ruin.
31
Nothing could be more disastrous to the world than the
permanent dismemberment of this confederacy. It is a
picture too awful to contemplate. We feel as Daniel Web-
ster felt as he exclaimed : — "When my eyes shall be turn-
ed to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not
see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments
of a once glorious Union ; on States dissevered, discordant,
belligerent ; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched,
it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their last feeble and
lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous Ensign of
the Republic, now known and honored throughout the
earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies
streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or
polluted, nor a single star obscured."
This Union is worth too much to be destroyed without
a struggle. It cost too much to be surrendered without
an effort. True, the America of the future cannot be like
the America of the past. We are to face realities that
we have dreamed of, but never feared. We must have
a stronger government, a standing army, and a national
debt. But these, with freedom, can be endured. Pre-
pared for all these things, we should do our work now.
If we have national crimes, remove them ; if we have
rebels, subdue them ; if we have traitors, hang them.
The government must be supported ; treason must be
rooted out and extinguished ; secession presses and
pulpits closed up — not by mob violence, indeed, that is
always cowardly and dangerous, but by the strong arm
of civil or martial law. The length and breadth of this
contest must be measured, and we must be prepared
for the sacrifice of our commerce and our manufactures,
and for the contribution of all we have. If our land be-
comes a desert, only that the flag be left flying over it,
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
g2 012 026 254 6'
we must be prepared for that ; we must adopt the motto,
" The union must and shall be preserved." Richard
Fuller said in a speech made a few months ago, " If
this Union is broken to pieces, I will put up the stars
and stripes over my house and say, ' I am an American
still.' " So should we feel ; so should we act.
This country belongs not to us alone ; it belongs to
the Past ; it belongs to the Future ; it belongs to Hu-
manity, to Liberty, to God. Look at that flag — those
stars and stripes ! it is not yours nor mine ! That flag
belongs to the world ; it is the ensign of the oppressed
of all lands. This soil we tread ! it is not yours nor
mine. It does not belong to the cotton lords of the
South, nor to the merchant princes of the North. It be-
longs to constitutional government and human happiness.
And it should be settled now and forever, that this gov-
ernment cannot be broken up ; it should be understood
by every man in Virginia and South Carolina, and in
Massachusetts, too, that the Constitution is too sacred a
contract to be trampled under foot. It is too late now
for the boys' play with which our politicians have amused
us. From this time, whether it shall be peace or war,
there will be work for the sturdiest, truest manhood.
The hopes of constitutional liberty are suspended on this
Union, and as we look at her in her perilled greatness,
we can but catch the prophetic words of one of our poets :
" Sail on, O Union, strong and great !
Humanity, with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate !"
Abrary of congress
012 026 264 6 .^
