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STANFORD

Adie Prediou.

i . =

at A Ader

Bemesd by ale Apehs be +
=kec | hee: | Wie iy, EYES PLp2

SPEECHES,

LECTURES, AND LETTERS.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.
’

Boston :
JAMES REDPATH, PvBLISHER,

221 Wasnrxotox Srxzer.

1863.

Entered according to Act of Congress, In the your 1968, by
WENDELL PHILLIPS,
{In the Clark's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts,

THIRD EDITION.

Uxiversity Press:
Weicn, Bicrtow, axp Comraxr,
Campnivax.

PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT.

ISE Speeches and Lectures have been collected
into a volume at the earnest and repeated requests

of the personal friends and the followers of Mr. Phillips.

Tn committing them to the Publisher, he wrote : —

“Tsend you about one half of my speeches which have
been reported during the last ten years, Put them into
‘a volume, if you think it worth while. Four or five of
them (‘Idols,’ *The Election,’ ‘Mobs and Education,’
‘Disunion,’ ‘Progress,”) were delivered in such ciroum-
stances as made it proper I should set down before-
hand, substantially, what I had to say. The preserva-
tion of the rest you owe to phonography ; and most of
them to the unequalled skill and accuracy, which almost
every New England speaker living can attest, of my
friend, J. M. W. Yerrinton. The first speech, relating to
the murder of Lovejoy, was reported by B. F. Hallett,
sq, As these reports were made for some daily or
‘weekly paper, I had little time for correction. Giving
‘them such verbal revision as the interval allowed, I left
the substance and shape unchanged. They will serve,
therefore, at least, as a contribution to the history of our
Antislavery struggle, and especially as a specimen of the

iv PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT.

method and spirit of that movement which takes its name
from my illustrious friend, Wm11am Lioyp Garrison.”

The only liberty the Publisher has taken with these
materials has been to reinsert the expressions of approba-
tion and disapprobation on the part of the audience, which
Mr. Phillips had erased, and to add one or two notes from
the newspapers of the day. This was done because they
were deemed a part of the antislavery history of the times,
and interesting, therefore, to every one who shall read
this book, — not now only, but when, its temporary pur-
pose having been accomplished by the triumph of the
principles it advocates, it shall be studied as an Ameri-
can classic, and as a worthy memorial of one of the ablest
and purest patriots of New England.

CONTENTS.

‘Tue Mcaves or Lovisor . rs 5 4 . tac
Womay's Iicurs . be Fe u
Fourie Orimos - - P 35
SukEESDER op Sims ’ : 55
Sins Avwervensiny o) ae Ht
Putiosorny oy rae Avorrrion Movement < 98
Removar or Juncn Lomo... io it ESE
‘Tue Bostox Mop R i ‘ 213
LS ’ 223
Lurren to Juvos Saw axp Puxsipexr Wauxer 237
Inous .- 1384 - | ae
~Manren’s Pener * ‘ a aoe . 263
Burin oy Joux Brows . : a)
Liscoun’s Exuctiox . .) 298
‘Mons axp Epvcation . . > “ so
Ducsiox- - . . c : 343
Puocmess . - 4 ‘ 371
Uspen ms Fuoco 2. 3 396
Tue Wan vor mm Usion . |. r 415
Tue Cauixer . - is Ae) 448
Lerrex to tue Taross «le eo <P 464
Moves c’Otverrvzs «wt lk ee 468
AMermorouray Pouce . . - - ae?

Tue Stare or me Covstrr . . - F 5 524

THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY.

‘Os November 7, 1837, Rev-E. P- Lovejoy was shot by a mob at Alton,
Minois, while attempting to defend his printing-press from destruction,
When this was known in Boston, William Ellery Channing headed a
petition to the Mayor and Aldermen, asking the use of Fancuil Hall
for a public meeting. ‘The request was refused. Dr. Channing then
aildressed a very impressive letter to his fellow-citizens, which resulted
in @ wecting of influential gentleman at the Old Court Room, Reso-
lotions, drawn by Hon. B. F. Hallett, were unanimously adopted, and
measures taken fo scenre a much larger number of names to the peti-
tion, ‘This call the Mayor and Aldermen obeyed.

‘The meeting was held on the 8th of December, and onganized, with
the Hon. Jonathan Phillips for Chairman.

Dr. Channing made a brief and eloquent address. Resolutions,
drawn by him, were then read and offered by Mr, Hallett, and see~
ended in an able speech by George 8. Hillard, Esq.

‘The Hon. James T. Austin, Attorney-Genoral of the Commonwealth,
followed in a speech of the utmost bitterness, styled by the Boston
‘Atlas a few days after “most. able and triumphant.” He compared
‘the daves to a menagerie of wild beasts, and the rioters at Alton to
the “orderly mob” which threw the tea overboard in 1 talked
af the “conflict of laws” between Missouri and Ilinois, — declared
that Lovejoy was “presumptaons and imprudent,” and “died as the
Tool dieth?”; in diroct and most insulting reference to Dr. Chan-
Hing, hie asserted that o clergyman with a gun in his hand, or one
“mingling in the debates of a popular assembly, was marvelously
out af place.”

The speech of the Attorney-General produced great excitement
throughout the Hall. Wendell Phillips, Esq., who had not expected

2 THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY.

to take part in the meeting, rose to reply. ‘That portion of the assem-
bly which sympathized with Mr. Austin now became so boisterous, that
Mr. Phillips had difficulty for a while in getting the attention of the
audience.

R. CHAIRMAN: — We have met for the freest dis-

cussion of these resolutions, and the events which

gave rise to them. [Cries of ‘ Question,” “Hear him,”
“Go on,” “No gagging,” etc.] I hope I shall be per-
mitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last
speaker, — surprise not only at such sentiments from such

a man, but at the applause they have received within these
walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events
“Of the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton, We have

* heard it asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain
had a right to tax the Colonies, and we have heard the
mob at Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, com-
pared to those patriot fathers who threw the tea over-
board! [Great applause.] Fellow-citizens, is this Faneuil
Hall doctrine? [“ No, no.”] The mob at Alton were met

to wrest from a citizen his just rights, — met to resist the
laws. We have been told that our fathers did the same ;
and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary precedent has
been thrown over the mobs of our day. To make out
their title to such defence, the gentleman says that the

h Parliament had a right to tax these Colonies. It is
manifest that, without this, his parallel falls to the ground ;
for Lovejoy had stationed himself within constitutional bul-
warks. He was not only defending the freedom of the
press, but he was under his own roof, in arms with the
sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed
him went against and over the laws. The mob, as the
gentleman terms it, — mob, forsooth! certainly we sons
of the tea-spillers are a marvellously patient generation ! —

THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. 8

the “orderly mob” which assembled in the Old South to
destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal
exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea-tax
and stamp-act laws! Our futhers resisted, not the King’s
prerogative, but the King’s usurpation. To find any other
account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside
down. Our State archives are loaded with arguments of
John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parlia-
ment unconstitutional,—beyond its power. It was not
till this was made out that the men of New England rushed
toarms. The arguments of the Council Chamber and the
House of Representatives preceded and sanctioned the
contest. To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a
precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves
have enacted, is an insult to their memory. The differ-
ence between the excitements of those days and our own,
which the gentleman in kindness to the latter has over-
looked, is simply this: the men of that day went for the
right, as secured by the laws. They were the people
rising to sustain the laws and constitution of the Province.
The rioters of our day go for their own wills, right or
wrong. Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down prin-
ciples which place the murderers of Alton side by side
with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I
thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in
the Hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the
recreant American, —the slanderer of the dead. [Great
and counter applause.] The gentleman said that
he should sink into insignificance if he dared to gainsay
the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments
Te has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puri-
tans and the blood of patriots, the earth should haye
yawned and swallowed him up.
[Applause and hisses, with cries of “ Take that back.” The uproar
‘Became so great that for a long time no one could be heard. At length

4 THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY.

the Hon. William Sturgis came to Mr. Phillips's side at the front of the
platform. He was met with cries of Phillips or nobody,” “ Make him
take back ‘recreant,’” “ He sha'n’t go on till he takes it back.” When
it was understood that Mr. Sturgis meant to sustain, not to interrupt,
‘Mr. Phillips, he was listened to, and said: “I did not come here to
take any part in this discussion, nor do I intend to; but I do entreat
you, fellow-citizens, by everything you hold sacred, —I conjure you
by every aswciation connected with this Hall, consecrated by our
fathers to freedom of discussion, — that you listen to every man who
addresses you in a decorous manner.” Mr. Phillips resumed.]

Fellow-citizens, I cannot take back my words. Surely
the Attorney-General, so long and well-known here, needs
not the aid of your hisses against one so young as I am, —
my voice never before heard within these walls !

Another ground has been taken to excuse the mob, and
throw doubt and discredit on the conduct of Lovejoy and
his associates. Allusion has been made to what lawyers
understand very well, — the “conflict of laws.” We are
told that nothing but the Mississippi River rolls between
St. Louis and Alton; and the conflict of laws somehow or
other gives the citizens of the former a right to find fault
with the defender of the press for publishing his opinions
so near their limits. Will the gentleman venture that
argument before lawyers? How the laws of the two
States could be said to come into conflict in such circum-
stances I question whether any lawyer in this audience
can explain or understand. No matter whether the line
that divides one sovereign State from another be an im-
aginary one or ocean-wide, the moment you cross it the
State you leave is blotted out of existence, so far as you
are concerned. The Czar might as well claim to control
the deliberations of Faneuil Hall, as the laws of Missouri
demand reverence, or the shadow of obedience, from an
inhabitant of Ilinoi:

I must find some fault with the statement which has
been made of the events at Alton. It has been asked

THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. 5

why Lovejoy and his friends did not appeal to the exeeu~
tive, —trust their defence to the police of the city. Tt has
been hinted that, from hasty and ill-judged excitement, the
men within the building provoked a quarrel, and that he
fell in the course of it, one mob resisting another, Recol-
Jeet, Sir, that they did act with the approbation and sanction
of the Mayor. In strict truth, there was no executive to
appeal to for protection. ‘The Mayor acknowledged that
he conld not protect them. They asked him if it was
lawful for them to defend themselves. He told them it
was, and sanctioned their assembling in arms to do so.
They were not, then, a mob; they were not merely citizens
defending their own property; they were in some sense
the poste comitatus, adopted for the occasion into the police
of the city, acting under the order of a magistrate. It
was civil authority resisting Inwless violence. Where,
then, was the imprudence? Is the doctrine to be sus-
tained here, that it is imprudent for men to aid magis~
trates in executing the laws?

Men are continually asking each other, Had Lovejoy a
right to resist? Sir, I protest against the question, instead
‘of answering it. Lovejoy did not resist, in the sense they
mean. He did not throw himself back on the natural right
of self-defence. He did not cry anarchy, and let slip the
dogs of civil war, careless of the horrors which would follow.

Sir, as I understand this affair, it was not an individual
protecting his property; it was not one body of armed men
resisting another, and making the streets of a peaceful city
tun blood with their contentions. It did not bring back the
‘seenes in some old Italian cities, where family met family,
and faction met faction, and mutually trampled the laws
under foot. No; the men in that house were regularly
enrolled, under the sanction of the Mayor. There being no
juilitia in Alton, about seventy men were enrolled with the
approbation of the Mayor. ‘These relieved each other every

_ |

other night. About thirty men were in arms on the night
of the sixth, when the press was landed. The next even-

Here is no question about the right of self-defence, It
is in fact simply this: Has the civil magistrate a right to
put down a riot ?

Some persons seem to imagine that anarchy existed at
Alton from the commencement of these disputes. Not at
all, “No one of us,” says an eyewitness and a comrade
of Lovejoy, “bas taken up arms during these disturbances
but at the command of the Mayor.” Anarchy did not
settle down on that devoted city till Lovejoy breathed
his last. Till then the law, represented in his person,
sustained itself against its foes. When he fell, civil
authority was trampled under foot. He had * planted
himself on his constitutional rights,” — appealed ito the
laws,—claimed the protection of the civil authority, —
taken refuge under “ the broad shield of the Constitu-
tion, When through that he was pierced and fell, he fell
but one sufferer in a common catastrophe.” He took
refuge under the banner of liberty, —amid its folds; and
when he fell, its glorious stars and stripes, the emblem of
free institutions, around which cluster so many heart-stir
ring memories, were blotted out in the martyr’s blood.

It has been stated, perhaps inadvertently, that Lovejoy
or his comrades fired first. This is denied by those who
have the best means of knowing. Guns were first fired
by the mob. After being twice fired on, those within the
building consulted together and deliberately returned the
fire. But suppose they did fire first. They had a right
so to do} not only the right which every citizen has to

THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY, 7

defend himself, but the further right which every civil
officer has to resist violence. Even if Lovejoy fired the
first gun, it would not lessen his claim to our sympathy, or
destroy his title to be considered a martyr in defence of a
free press. The question now is, Did he act within the
Constitution and the laws? The men who fell in State
‘Street on the Sth of March, 1770, did more than Lovejoy
is charged with. They were the ret assailants. Upon
some slight quarrel they pelted the troops with every mis-
sile within reach. Did this bate one jot of the eulogy
with which Hancock and Warren hallowed their mem-
ory, hailing them as the first martyrs in the cause of
Aimerican liberty ?

If, Sir, I had adopted what are called Peace principles, I
might lament the circumstances of this case. But all you
who believe, as I do, in the right and duty of magistrates
to execute the laws, join with me and brand as base hypoc-
risy the conduct of those who assemble year after year on
the 4th of July, to fight over the battles of the Reyolution,
and yet “damn with faint praise,” or load with obloquy,
the memory of this man, who shed his blood in defence
of life, liberty, property, and the freedom of the press !

Throughout that terrible night J find nothing to regret
but this, that within the limits of our country, civil author-
ity should have been so prostrated as to oblige a citizen to
arm in his own defence, and to arm in vain. The gentle-
man says Lovejoy was presumptuous and imprudent, — he
“died as the fool dieth.” And a reverend clergyman of
the city* tells us that no citizen has a right to publish
opinions disagreeable to the community! If any mob
follows such publication, on fim rests its guilt! He must
Wait, forsooth, till the people come up to it and agree with

# Sco Rey. Hubbard Winslow's discourse on Liberty! in which he defincs
“republican liberty ” to be “liberty to say and do what the prevailing voice
‘aud will of the brotherhood will allow and protect."

eli |

him! This libel on liberty goes on to suy that the want
of right to speak as we think is an evil inseparable from
republican institutions! If this be so, what are they
worth? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan, where
one knows what he may publish and what he may not,
rather than the tyranny of this many-headed monster, the
mob, where we know not what we may do or say, till
some fellow-citizen has tried it, and paid for the lesson
with his life. ‘This clerical absurdity chooses as a check
for the abuses of the press, not the Zaw, but the dread of
a mob. By so doing, it deprives not only the individual
and the minority of their rights, bat the majority also,
since the expression of their opinion may sometimes pro-
yoke disturbance from the minority. A few men may
make a mob as well as many. The majority, then, have
‘no right, as Christian men, to utter their sentiments, if by
any possibility it may lead to a mob! Shades of Hugh
Peters and John Cotton, save us from such pulpits !

Tmprudent to defend the liberty of the press! Why?
Because the defence was unsuccessful? Does success
gild crime into patriotism, and the want of it change
heroic self-devotion to imprudence ? Was Hampden im-
prudent when he drew the sword and threw away the
scabbard ? Yet he, judged by that single hour, was un-
successful. After a short exile, the race he hated sat
again upon the throne.

Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker
Hill battle reached a New England town. The tale would
have run thus: ‘The patriots are routed, —the red-
coats victorious, — Warren lies dead upon the field.” With
what scorn-would that Zory have been received, who
should have charged Warren with imprudence! who should
have said that, bred a physician, he was “out of place” im
that battle, and “died as the fool dieth”! [Great applause,]
How would the intimation have been received, that Ware

= *

THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. 9

ren and his associates should have waited a better time?
But if success be indeed the only criterion of prudence,
Respice finem, — wait till the end.

Presmptuous to assert the freedom of the press on
American ground! Is the assertion of such freedom be-
fore the age? So much before the age as to leave one no
right to make it because it displeases the community ?
Who invents this libel on his country? It is this very
thing which entitles Lovejoy to greater praise. The dis-
puted right which provoked the Revolution — taxation
without representation —is fur beneath that for which he
died. [Here there was a strong and general expression
of disapprobation.] One word, gentlemen. As much as
thought is better than money, so much is the cause in
which Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question of taxes.
James Otis thundered in this Hall when the King did
Dut touch his pocket, Imagine, if you can, his indignant
eloquence, had England offered to put a gag upon his
Tips. [Great applause.]

‘The question that stirred the Revolution touched our
civil interests. This concerns us not only as citizens, but
a3 immortal beings. Wrapped up in its fate, saved or Jost
with it, are not only the voice of the statesman, but the
instructions of the pulpit, and the progress of our faith.

The clergy “ marvellously out of place” where free
speech is battled for, —liberty of speech on national sins?
Does the gentleman remember that freedom to preach was
first gained, dragping in its train freedom to print? I thank
the clergy here present, as I reverence their predecessors,
who did not so far forget their country in their immediate
Profession as to deem it duty to separate themselves from
the struggle of '76,—the Mayhews and Coopers, who re-
membered they were citizens hefore they were clergymen.

‘Mr. Chairman, from the bottom of my heart I thank that
brave little band at Alton for resisting. We must remem-

—

10 THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY.

ber that Lovejoy had fled from city to city, —suffered
the destruction of three presses patiently. At length he
took counsel with friends, men of character, of tried integ-
rity, of wide views, of Christian principle. ‘They thought
the crisis had come: it was full time to assert the laws.
They saw around them, not a community like our own, of
fixed habits, of character moulded and settled, but one “in
the gristle, not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.”
The people there, children of our older States, seem to have
forgotten the blood-tried principles of their fathers the
moment they lost sight of our New England hills. Some-
thing was to be done to show them the priceless value of
the freedom of the press, to bring back and set right their
wandering and confused ideas, He and his advisers looked
out on a community, staggering like a drunken man, indif-
ferent to their rights and confused in their feelings, Deaf
to argument, haply they might be stunned into sobriety.
They saw that of which we cannot judge, the necessity of
resistance. Insulted law called for it. Public opinion,
fast hastening on the downward course, must be arrested.

Does not the event show they judged rightly? Ab-
sorbed in a thousand trifles, how has the nation all at
once come toa stand? Men begin, as in 1776 and 1640,
to discuss principles, to weigh characters, to find out where
they are. Haply we may awake before we are borne
over the precipice.

I am glad, Sir, to see this crowded house. It is good
for us to be here. When Liberty is in danger, Faneuil
Hall has the right, it is her duty, to strike the key-note
for these United States, I am glad, for one reason, that
remarks such as those to which I have alluded have been
uttered here. The passage of these resolutions, in spite
of this opposition, led by the Attorney-General of the
Commonwealth, will show more clearly, more decisively,
the deep indignation with which Boston regards this
outrage.

WOMAN’S RIGHTS.

‘Tuts speech was made at a Convention held at Worcester, on the
15th and 16th of October, 1851, upon the following resolutions, which
‘were offered by Mr. Phillips :—

“1, Resolved, That, while we would not undervalue other methods,
the right of suffrage for women is, in our opinion, the corner-stona
‘of this enterprise, since we do not seck to protect woman, but rather
to place her in a position to protect herself.

42. Resolved, That it will be woman's fault if, the ballot once in her
hand, all the barbarous, demoralizing, and unequal laws relating to
‘marriage and property do not speedily vanish from the statute-book ;
‘and while we acknowledge that the hope of a share in the higher pro~
fessions and profitable employments of society is one of the strongest
Motives to intellectual culture, we know, also, that an interest in
political questions is an equally powerful stimulus; and we see, beside,
‘that we do our best to insure education to an individual, when we put
the ballot into his hands; it being so clearly the interest of the com-
munity that one upon whose decisions depend its welfare and safety
should both have free secess to the best means of education, and be
urged fo make use of them.

*$. Resolve, ‘That we do not feel called upon to assert or establish
‘the equality of the sexes, in an intellectual or any other point of view.
Te is enough for our argument that natural and political justice, and
the wxioms of English and American liberty, alike dotermino that
Fights and burdens, taxation and representation, should be co-
‘exlonsive; hence women, as individual citizens, liable to punishment
for sets which the laws call criminal, or to be taxed in their labor and
‘property for the support of government, have a self-evident and indis-
patable right, identically the same right that men have, to a direct
yolee in the enactment of those laws and the formation of that govern-

“4. Resolved, That the democrat, or reformer, who denies suffrage to

12 WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

women, is a democrat only beesuse he was not born a noble, and one
of those levellers who are willing to level only down to themselves.

“5. Resolved, That while political and natural justice accord civil
equality to woman ; while great thinkers of every age, from Plato to
Condorcet and Mill, have supported their claim; while voluntary
associations, religious and secolar, have been organized on this basis, —
there is yet a favorite argument against it, that no political
or nation ever existed in which women have not been in a state of
political inferiority. But, in reply, we remind our opponents that the
‘same fact has been alleged, with equal truth, in favor of slavery; has
been urged against freedom of industry, freedom of conscience, and
the freedom of the press; none of these liberties having been thought
compatible with a well-ordered state, until they had proved their pos
sibility by springing into existence as facts. Besides, there is ho diffi
culty in understanding why the subjection of woman has been a uniform
cuslom, when we recollect that we are just emerging from the ages in
‘which might has been always right.

“6, Resolved, That, so far from denying the overwhelming social and
civil influence of women, we are fully aware of its vast extent; aware,
with Demosthenes, that ‘measures which the statesman has meditated
a whole yoar may be overturned in a day by a woman’; and for this
very reason we proclain it the very highest expediency to endow her
‘with full civil rights, since only then will she exercise this mighty influ-
ence under m just sense of her duty and responsibility ; the history of
all ages bearing witness that the only safe course for nations is to add.
open responsibility wherever there already exists unobserved power.

“7, Resoloed, That we deny the right of any portion of the species
to decide for another portion, or of any individual to decide for another
individual, what is and what is not its ‘proper sphere’; that the
proper sphere for all human beings is the langest and highest to which
they are able to attain; what this is cannot be ascertained without
complete liberty of choice ; woman, therefore, ought to choose for her=
self what sphere she will fill, what education she will seek, and what
employment she will follow; and not be held bound to accept, in sub-
mission, the rights, the education, and the sphere which man thinks
proper to allow her.

“8, Resolved, That we hold these truths to be self-evident : * That all
men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the
‘pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed"; and we charge that man with gross dishonesty or igno-

4 =

WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 1B

rance who shall contond that ‘men,’ in the memorable document from
which we quote, does not stand for the human race; that * life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness’ are the ‘inalienable rights’ of Anif
‘only of the human species; and that, by ‘the governed,’ whose con-
sent is allirmed to be the only source of just power, is meant that half”
of mankind only who, ia relation to the other, have hitherto assumed
the character of governors.

“9. Resolved, That we soe no weight in the argument, that it is neces-
sary to exclude women from civil life because domestic cares and polit-
ical engagements are incompatible ; since we do not see the fact to be
40 in the case of man; and because, if the incompatibility be real, it
‘will take care of itself, neither men nor women needing any law to
exelnde them from an occupation when they have undertaken another
incompatible with it. Second, we see nothing in the assertion that
women themselves do not desire a change, since we assert that super-
ifions fears, and dread of losing men's regard, smother all frank
expression on this point ; and further, if it be their real wish to avoid
Givil life, Iaws to keep them out of it are absurd, no legislator having
ever yet thought it necessary to compel people by law to follow their

“10. Rewived, That. it is as absurd to deny all women their civil
Fights beeanse the cares of household and family take up all the time
of somo, as it would be to exelude the whole male sex from Congress,
Decauw soine men are sailors, or soldiers, in active service, or mer
Chants, whose business requires all their attention and energies.”

drawing up some of these resolutions, I have used,
very freely, the language of a thoughtful and profound
article in the Westminster Review. It is a review of the
proceedings-of our recent Convention in this city, and
States with singular clearness and force the leading argu-
ments for our reform, and the grounds of our claim in
behalf of woman.

T rejoice to see so large an audience gathered to con-
Sider this momentous subject. It was well described by
Mrs. Rose as the most magnificent reform that has yet
een Inunched upon the world. It is the first organized

protest against the injustice which has brooded over the
character and the destiny of one half of the human race.
Nowhere else, under any circumstances, has a demand
ever yet been made for the liberties of one whole half of
our race. It is fitting that we should pause and consider
so remarkable and significant a circumstance; that we
should discuss the question involved with the seriousness
and deliberation suitable to such an enterprise. It strikes,
indeed, a great and vital blow at the whole social fabric of
every nation; but this, to my mind, is no argument
against it. The time has been when it was the duty of
the reformer to show cause why he appeared to disturb
the quiet of the world. But during the discussion of the
many reforms that have been advocated, and which have
more or less succeeded, one after another, — freedom of
the lower classes, freedom of food, freedom of the press,
freedom of thought, reform in penal legislation, and a
thousand other matters, —it seems to me to have been
proved conclusively, that government commenced in
usnrpation and oppression ; that liberty and civilization,
at present, are nothing else than the fragments of rights
which the scaffold and the stake have wrung from the
strong hands of the usurpers. Every step of progress the
world bas made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and
from stake to stake. It would hardly be exaggeration to
say, that all the great truths relating to society and goy-
ernment have been first heard in the solemn protests of
martyred patriotism, or the loud cries of crushed and
starving labor. The law has been always wrong. Goy-
ernment began in tyranny and force, began in the feudal-
ism of the soldier and bigotry of the priest ; and the ideas
of justice and humanity have been fighting their way,
Tike a thunder-storm, against the organized selfishness
of human nature. And this is the last great protest
against the wrong of ages. It is no argument to my

WOMAN'S RIGHTS, 15

mind, therefore, that the old social fabric of the past is

against us.

Neither do I feel called upon to show wnat woman's
proper sphere is. In every great reform, the majority
have always said to the claimant, no matter what he
claimed, “You are not fit for such a privilege.” Luther
asked of the Pope liberty for the masses to read the Bible.
The reply was, that it would not be safe to trust the
common people with the word of God. “Let them try!”
said the great reformer; and the history of three centuries
‘of development and purity proclaims the result. They
Jave tried ; and look around you for the consequences,
The lower classes in France claimed their civil rights, —
the right to vote, and to direct representation in the gov-
ernment; but the rich and lettered classes, the men of
cultivated intellects, cried out, “You cannot be made
fit." The answer was, “Let us try.” That France is
not, as Spain, utterly crushed beneath the weight of a
thousand years of misgovernment, is the answer to those
who doubt the ultimate success of this experiment.

Woman stands now at the same door. She says, You
tell me I have no intellect: give me a chance, You tell
me I shall only embarrass polities: let the try.” The
only reply is the same stale argument that said to the Jews
of Europe, You are fit only to make money ; you are
‘not fit for the ranks of the army or the halls of Parlia-
ment.” How cogent the eloquent appeal of Macaulay, —
“ What right have we to take this question for granted ?
‘Throw open the doors of this House of Commons, throw
open the ranks of the imperial army, before you deny
eloquence to the countrymen of Isaiah or valor to the
descendants of the Maccabees.” It is the same now with
us Throw open the doors of Congress, throw open those
court-houses, throw wide open the doors of your colleges,
and give to the sisters of the Motts and the Somervilles

|
WOMAN'S RIGHTS.
the same opportunities for culture that men have, and let _
the result prove what their capacity and intellect really
are. When, I say, woman has enjoyed, for as many
centuries as we have, the aid of books, the discipline of
life, and the stimulus of fame, it will be time to begin the
discussion of these questions, —“ What is the intellect
of woman?” “Ts it equal to that of man?” Till then,
all such discussion is mere beating of the air.

While it is doubtless true that great minds, in many
cases, make a way for themselves, spite of all obstacles,
yet who knows how many Miltons have died “mute and
inglorious” ? However splendid the natural endowment,
the discipline of life, after all, completes the miracle. The
ability of Napoleon, — what was it? It grew out of the
hope to be Cwsar or Marlborough, — out of Austerlitz and
Jena, — out of his battle-fields, his throne, and all the
great scenes of that eventful life. Open to woman the
same scenes, immerse her in the same great interests and
pursuits, and if twenty centuries shall not produce a
woman Charlemagne or Napoleon, fair reasoning will then
allow us to conclude that there is some distinctive pecu-
liarity in the intellects of the sexes. Centuries alone can
lay any fair basis for argument. I believe that, on this
point, there is a shrinking consciousness of not being ready
for the battle, on the part of some of the stronger sex, as
they call themselves ; a tacit confession of risk to this
imagined superiority, if they consent to meet their sisters
in the lecture-hall or the laboratory of science. My proof’
of it is this: that the mightiest intellects of the race, from
Plato down to the present time, some of the rarest minds
of Germany, France, and England, have successively
yielded their assent to the fact that woman is, not per-
haps identically, but equally, endowed with man in all
intellectual capabilities. It is generally the second-rate
men who doubt,— doubt, perhaps, because they fear a
fair fields —

WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 17

He cither fears his fate too mach,
Or his deserts ure small,
‘Who fears to put it to the touch,
‘To gain or lose it all.”

But I wish especially to direct your attention to the
precise principle which this movement undertakes to urge
m the community. We do not attempt to setile
what shall be the profession, education, or employment of
woman. We have not that presumption. What we ask
is simply this, — what all other classes have asked before:
Leave it to woman to choose for herself her profession,
her education, and her sphere. We deny to any portion
of the species the right to prescribe to any other portion
its sphere, its education, or its rights. We deny the right
of any individual to prescribe to any other individual his
amount of education, or his rights. The sphere of each
man, of each woman, of each individual, is that sphere
which he can, with the highest exercise of his powers,
perfectly fill. ‘The highest act which the human being
can do, that is the act which God designed him to do.
All that woman asks through this movement is, to be
allowed to prove what she can do; to prove it by liberty
of choice, by liberty of action, the only means by which it
ever can be settled how much and what she can do. She
ean reasonably say to us: “I have never fathomed the
depths of science; you have tanght that it was un-
womanly, and have withdrawn from me the means of sci-
entific culture. I have never equalled the eloquence of
Demosthenes; but you have never quickened my ener-
gies by holding up before me the crown and robe of glory,
and the gratitude which I was to win. The tools, now,
to him or her who can use them. Welcome me, hence-
forth, brother, to your arena; and let facts —not theo-
fies —settle my capacity, and therefore my sphere."
We are not here to-night to assert that woman will
2

18 WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

enter the lists and conquer; that she will certainly
achieve all that man has achieved; but this we say,
“Clear the lists, and let her try.” Some reply, It
will be a great injury to feminine delicacy and refine
ment for woman to mingle in business and polities.” I
am not careful to answer this objection. Of all such ob-
jections, on this and kindred subjects, Mrs. President, I
Jove to dispose in some such way as this: The broadest
and most far-sighted intellect is utterly unable to foresee
the ultimate consequences of any great social change.
Ask yourself, on all such occasions, if there be any ele-
ment of right and wrong in the question, any principle of
clear natural justice that turns the scale. If so, take your
part with the perfect and abstract right, and trust God to
see that it shall prove the expedient. The questions,
then, for me, on this subject, are these: Has God made
woman capable — morally, intellectually, and physically —

of taking this part it human affairs? ‘Then, what God

made her able to do, it is a strong argument that he in-
tended she should do. Does our sense of natural justice
dictate that the being who is to suffer under laws shall
first personally assent to them? that the being whose
industry government is to burden should have a voice
in fixing the character and amount of that burden ?
Then, while woman is admitted to the gallows, the jail,
and the tax-list, we have no right to debar her from the
ballot-box. ‘ But to go there will hurt that delicacy of
character which we have always thought peculiarly her
grace.” Icannot help that, Let Him who created her
capable of politics, and made it just that she should have
a share in them, see to it that these rights which he has
conferred do not injure the being he created. Ts it for
any human being to trample on the laws of justice and
liberty, from an alleged necessity of helping God govern
what he has made ? I cannot help God govern his world

WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 1

by telling lies, or doing what my conscience deems unjust.
How absurd to deem it necessary that any one should do
so! When Infinite Wisdom established the rules of right
and honesty, he saw to it that justice should be always
the highest expediency.

The evil, therefore, that some timid souls fear to the
character of woman, from the exercise of her political
rights, does not at all trouble me. * Let education form
the rational and moral being, and nature will take care of
the woman.” Neither do I feel at all disturbed by those
arguments addressed to us as to the capacity of woman.
I know that the humblest man and the feeblest has the
same ciyil rights, according to the theory of our institu-
tions, as the most gifted. It is never claimed that the
humblest shall be denied his civil right, provided he be
aman. No. Intellect, even though it reach the Alpine
height of a Parker, —ay, setting aside the infamy of his
conduct, and looking at him only as an instance of intel-

greatness, to the height of a Webster, —gets no
tittle of additional civil right, no one single claim to any
greater civil privilege than the humblest individual, who
Knows no more than the first elements of his alphabet,
Provided that being is a man (1 ought to say, a white
man). Grant, then, that woman is intellectually inferior
to man, —it settles nothing. She is still a responsible,
tax-paying member of civil society. We rest our claim
on the great, eternal principle, that taxation and repre-
sentation must be coextensive; that rights and burdens
must correspond to each other; and he who undertakes
to answer the argument of this Convention must first
answer the whole course of English and American history
for the last hundred and fifty years. No single principle
‘of liberty has been enunciated, from the year 1688 until
‘now, that does not cover the claim of woman. The State
has never laid the basis of right upon the distinction of

——

20 WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

|
sex; and no reason has ever been given, except a religions |
one, —that there are in the records of our religion com-
mands obliging us to make woman an exception to our
civil theories, and deprive her of that which those theories
give her.

Suppose that woman is essentially inferior to man, —
she still has rights. Grant that Mrs. Norton never could
be Byron; that Elizabeth Barrett never could have
written Paradise Lost; that Mrs. Somerville never could
be La Place, nor Sirani have painted the Transfiguration. |
What then? Does that prove they should be deprived of
all civil rights? John Smith never will be, never can be, |

“Daniel Webster, Shall he, therfore, be put under guar

dianship, and forbidden to vote ?

Suppose woman, though equal, to differ essentially in —
her intellect from man, —is that any ground for disfran
chising her? Shall the Fultons say to the Raphaels,
* Because you cannot make steam-engines, therefore you,
shall not vote”? Shall the Napoleons or the Washing
tons say to the Wordsworths or the Herschels, “ Because
you cannot lead armies and govern states, therefore you
shall have no civil rights”?

Grant that woman's intellect be essentially different,
even inferior, if you choose ; still, while our civilization
allows her to hold property, and to be the guardian of her
children, she is entitled to such education and to such
civil rights — voting, among the rest —as will enable her
to protect both her children and her estate. It is easy to
indulge in dilettanti speculation as to woman's sphere and
the female intellect; but leave dainty speculation, and
come down to practical life. Here is a young widow ;
she has children, and ability, if you will let her exercise it,
to give them the best advantages of education, to secure
them every chance of success in life ; or, she has property
to keep for them, and no friend to rely on. Shall she

eet 4

WOMAN'S RIGHTS. ps

Jeave them to sink in the unequal struggles of life? Shall
she trust their all to any adviser money can buy, in order
to gratify your taste, and give countenance to your nice
theories? or shall she use all the powers God has given
her for those he has thrown upon her protection? If we
consult common sense, and leave theories alone, there is
Dut one answer. Such a one can rightfully claim of soci-
ety all the civil privileges, and of fashion all such liberty
as will best enable her to discharge fully her duties as a
mother,

But woman, it is said, may safely trust all to the watch-
fal and generous care of man. She has been obliged to
do so hitherto. With what result, let the unequal and
unjust legislation of all nations answer. In Massachusetts,
lately, a man married an heiress, worth fifty thousand
dollars. Dying, about a year afer his marriage, he made
this remarkably generous and manly will. He left these
fifty thousand dollars to her so long as she should remain
his widow! [Loud laughter.] These dollars, which he
owed entirely to her, which were fairly hers, he left to
her, after twelve months’ use, on this generous condition,
that she should never marry again! Ought a bushand
to have such unlimited control over the property of his
wife, or over the property which they have together
wequired ? Ought not woman to have a voice in deter-
mining what the law shall be in regard to the property of
married persons? Often by her efforts, always by her
economy, she contributes much to the stock of family
wealth, and is therefore justly entitled to a voice in the
control and disposal of it. Neither common sense nor past
xperience encourages her to trust the protection of that
right to the votes of men. That

“Mankind is ever weak,
And little to be trusted ;

self the wavering balance strike,
It’s rarely right adjusted,” —

ee |
22 WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

is true between the sexes, as much as between indi-
viduals.

Make the case our own, Is there any man here willing
to resign his own right to vote, and trust his welfare and
his earnings entirely to the votes of others? Suppose any
class of men should condescendingly offer to settle for us
our capacity or our calling, — to vote for us, to choose our

here for us,—how ridiculously impertinent we should
consider it! Yet few have the good sense to laugh at the
consummate impertinence with which every bar-room
brawler, every third-rate scribbler, undertakes to settle
the sphere of the Martineaus and the De Staéls! With
what gracious condescension little men continue to lec-
ture and preach on “the female sphere” and female
duties”!

This Convention does not undertake the task of pro-
tecting woman, Tt contends that, in government, every
individual should be endowed, as far as possible, with the
means of protecting himself. This is fur more the truth
when we deal with classes. Every class should be en-
dowed with the power to protect itself. Man has hitherto
undertaken to settle what is best for woman in the way
of education and in the matter of property. He has set
tled it for her, that her duties and cares are too great to
allow her any time to take care of her own earnings, or to
take her otherwise legitimate share in the civil government
of the country. He has not undertaken to say that the
sailor or the soldier, in active service, when he returns
from his voyage or his camp, is not free to deposit his
yote in the ballot-box. He has not undertaken to say
that the manufacturer, whose factories cover whole town-
ships, who is up early and lies down late, who has to
borrow the services of scores to help him in the manage-
ment of his vast estate, — he does not say that such a man
cannot get time to study politics, and ought therefore to

si 4

WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 28

be deprived of his right to vote with his fellow-citizens.
He has not undertaken to say that the lawyer may not
vote, though his whole time is spent in the courts, until he
knows nothing of what is going on in the streets. O no!
But us for woman, her time must be all so entirely filled
in taking care of her household, her cares must be so
extensive, that neither those of soldiers nor sailors nor
merchants can be equal to them; she has not a moment
to qualify herself for politics! Woman cannot be spared
long enough from the kitchen to put in a vote, though
Abbott Lawrence can be spared from the counting-housa,
thongh General Gaines or Scott can be spared from the
camp, though the Lorings and the Choates can be spared
from the courts. This is the argument: Stephen Girard
cannot go to Congress ; he is too busy ; therefore, no man
ever shall, Because General Scott has gone to Mexico,
and cannot be President, therefore no man shall be. Be-
cause A. B. is a sailor, gone on a whaling voyage, to be
absent for three years, and cannot vote, therefore no male
inhabitant ever shall. Logic how profound! how con-
elusive! Yet this is the exact reasoning in the case of
woman. Take up the newspapers. See the sneers at
this movement. ‘Take care of the children,” “ Make
the clothes,” “See that they are mended,” “See that
the parlors are properly arranged.” Suppose we grant it
all. Are there no women but honsekeepers ? no women
tut mothers? O yes, many! Suppose we grant that
the cares of a household are so heavy that they are greater
than the cares of the president of a college; that he who
has the charge of some hundreds of youths is less op-
pressed with care than the woman with three rooms and
two children ; that though President Sparks has time for
Polities, Mrs. Brown has not, Grant that, and still we
‘elaim that you should be true to your theory, and allow to
Single women those rights which she who is the mistress

—

wu WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

of a household and mother of a family has no time to
exercise.

“Let women vote!” cries one. “ Why, wives and
daughters might be Democrats, while theif fathers and
husbands were Whigs. It would never do. It would
produce endless quarrels,” And the self-satisfied objec
tor thinks he has settled the question,

But, if the principle be a sound one, why not apply it
in a still more important instance? Difference of religion
breeds more quarrels than difference in polities. Yet we
allow women to choose their own religious creeds, although
we thereby run the risk of wives being Episcopalians while
their husbands are Methodists, or daughters being Cath-
olies while their fathers are Calvinists. Yet who, this
side of Turkey, dare claim that the law shonld compel
women to have no religions creed, or adopt that of their
male relatives? Practically, this freedom in religion has
made no difficulty ; and probably equal freedom in polities
would make as little.

It is, after all, of little use to argue these social ques-
tions. These prejudices never were reasoned up, and,
my word for it, they will never be reasoned down, The
freedom of the press, the freedom of labor, the freedom of
the race in its lowest classes, was never argued to suceess.
The moment you can get woman to go out into the high-
way of life, and show by active valor what God has created
her for, that moment this question is settled forever. One
solid fact of a woman's making her fortune in trade will
teach the male sex what woman’s capacity is, I say,
therefore, to women, there are two paths before you in
this reform : one is, take all the laws have left you, with a
confident and determined hand; the other is, cheer and
encourage, by your sympathy and aid, those noble women
who are willing to be the pioneers in this enterprise. See
that you stand up the firm supporters of those bold and

WOMAN'S RIGHTS, 25

fearless ones who undertake to lead their sisters in this
movement. If Elizabeth Blackwell, who, trampling under
foot the sneers of the other sex, took her maiden reputa-
tion in her hand, and walked the hospitals of Europe,
comes back the accomplished graduate of them, to offer
her services to the women of America, and to prove that
woman, equally with man, is qualified to do the duties and
receive the honors and rewards of the healing art, see to
it, women, that you greet her efforts with your smiles,
Hasten to her side, and open your households to her

ee. Demand to have the experiment fairly tried,
before you admit that, in your sickness and in your dan
gers, woman may not stand as safely by your bedside as
man. If you will but be true to each other, on some of
these points, it is in the power of woman to settle, in a
great measure, this question. Why ask aid from the other
sex at all? Theories are but thin and unsubstantial air
against the solid fact of woman mingling with honor and
profit in the various professions and industrial pursuits of
life, Would women be true to each other, by smoothing
the pathway of each other’s endeavors, it is in their power
to settle one great aspect of this question, without any
statute in such case made and provided. I say, TaxR
your rights! There is no law to prevent it, in one half
of the instances. If the prejudices of the other sex and
the supineness of your own prevent it, there is no help for

in the statute-books. It is for you but to speak, and
the doors of all medical hospitals are open for the women
hy wham you make it known that you intend to be served.
Let us have no separate, and therefore necessarily inferior,
schools for women. Let us have no poor schools, feebly
‘endowed, where woman must go to gather what help she
may, from second-rate professors, in one branch of a pro-
fission. No! Mothers, daughters, sisters! say to hus-
Band, father, brother, “If this life is dear to you, I intend

—

|
26 WOMAN'S RIGHTS,

to trust it, in my hour of danger, to a sister's hand. See
to it, therefore, you who are the guides of society and
heads of those institutions, if you love your mother, sister,
wife, daughter, see to it that you provide these chosen
assistants of mine the means to become disciplined and
competent advisers in that momentous hour, for I will
have no other.” When you shall say that, Harvard Uni-
versity, and every other university, and every medical
institution, will hasten to open their doors. You who long
for the admission of woman to professional life and the
higher ranks of intellectual exertion, up, and throw into
her scale this omnipotent weight of your determination to
be served by her, and by no other! In this matter, what
you decide is law.

There is one other light in which this subject is to be
considered, —the freedom of ballot ; and with a few words
upon that, I will close these desultory remarks. As there
is no use in educating a human being for nothing, so the
thing is an impossibility. Horace Mann says, in the letter
which has been read here, that he intends to write a lee-
ture on Woman ; and I doubt not he will take the stand
which he has always done, that she should be book-taught
for some dozen years, and then retire to domestic life, or
the school-room. Would he give sixpence for a boy who
could only say that he had been shut up for those years in
aschool? The unfledged youth that comes from
—what is he? He is a man, and has been subjected to
seven years’ tutoring; but man though he is, until he has
walked up and down the paths of life, until he receives his
education in the discipline of the world, in the stimulus of
motive, in the hope of gain, in the desire of honor, in the
love of reputation, he has got, in nine cases out of ten, no
education at all. Profess to educate woman for her own
amusement! Profess to educate her in science, that she
may go home and take care of her cradle! Teach her the

WOMAN'S RIGHTS. aT

depths of statesmanship and political economy, that she
may smile sweetly when her husband comes home! “It
is not the education man gets from books,” it was well
said by your favorite statesman, ‘but the lessons he
learns from life and society, that profit him most highly.”
* Le monde est le livre des femmes.” Of this book you
deprive her. You give her nothing but man’s little
printed primers; you make for her a world of dolls, and
then complain that she is frivolous. You deprive her of
all the lessons of practical out-door life ; you deprive her
of all the stimulus which the good and great of all nations,
all societies, have enjoyed, the world’s honors, its gold,
and its fame, and then’ you coolly ask of her, “ Why are
‘you not us well disciplined as we are?” T know there
aire great souls who need no stimulus but love of truth
and of growth, whom mere love of labor allures to the
profoundest investigations ; but these are the exceptions,
not the rule, We legislate, we arrange society, for the
masses, not the exceptions.

Responsibility is one instrament —a great instrament —
ef education, both moral and intellectual. It sharpens the
faculties. It unfolds the moral nature. Tt makes the care-
Tess prudent, and turns recklessness into sobriety. Look
at the young wife suddenly left a widow, with the care of
Hier children's education and entrance into life thrown upon
her. How prudent and sagacious she becomes! How
fruitful in resources and comprehensive in her views!
How much intellect and character she surprises her old
friends with! Look at the statesman bold and reckless in
‘opposition ; how prudent, how thoughtful, how timid, he
becomes, the moment he is in office, and feels that a na-
tion's welfare hangs on his decisions! Woman can never
study those great questions that interest and stir most
deeply the human mind, until she studies them under the
sningled stimulus and check of this responsibility. And

28 WOMAN'S RIGHTS. a

until her intellect has been tested by such questions, stud-
ied under such influences, we shall never be able to decide
what it is,

One great reason, then, besides its justice, why we
would claim the ballot for woman, is this: because the great
school of this people is the jury-box and the ballot-box.
Tocqueville, after travelling in this country, went away
with the conviction that, valuable as the jury trial was for
the investigation of facts and defence of the citizens, its
yalue even in these respects was no greater than as it was
the school of civil education open to all the people. The
education of the American citizen is found in his interest
in the debates of Congress, — the earnest personal interest
with which he seeks to fathom political questions. Tt is
when the mind, profoundly stirred by the momentous stake
at issue, rises to its most gigantic efforts, when the great eri-
sis of some national convulsion is at hand, —it is then that
strong political excitement lifts the people up in advance
of the age, heaves a whole nation on to a higher platform
of intellect and morality. Great political questions stir
the deepest nature of one half the nation; but they pass
far above and over the heads of the other half. Yet, mean-
while, theorists wonder that the first have their whole
nature unfolded, and the others will persevere in being
dwarfed. Now, this great, world-wide, practical, ever-
present education we claim for woman. Never, until it
is granted her, can you decide what will be her ability.
Deny statesmanship to woman? What! to the sisters of
Elizabeth of England, Isabella of Spain, Maria Theresa
of Austria; ay, let me add, of Elizabeth Heyrick, who,
when the intellect of all England was at fault, and wan-
dering in the desert of a false philosophy, —when Brougham
and Romilly, Clarkson and Wilberforce, and all the other
great and philanthropic minds of England, were at fault
and at a dead-lock with the West India question and negro

WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 29

slavery, — wrote out, with the statesmanlike intellect of
a Quaker woman, the simple yet potent charm, —Isare-
pratE, UnconprrionaL Emancipation, — which solved the
problem, and gave freedom to a race! How noble the
conduct of those men! With an alacrity which does honor
to their statesmanship, and proves that they recognized the
inspired voice when they heard it, they sat down at the
feet of that woman-statesman, and seven years under her
instruction did more for the settlement of the greatest social
question that had ever convulsed England, than had been
done by a century, of more or less effort, before. Ono!
‘you cannot read history, unless you read it upside down,
without admitting that woman, cramped, fettered, exelnded,
degraded as she has been, has yet sometimes, with one ray
‘of her instinctive genius, done more to settle great ques-
tions than all the cumbrous intellect of the other sex has
achieved.

It is, therefore, on the ground of natural justice, and on
the ground again of the highest expediency, and yet again
it is beeause woman, as an immortal and intellectual being,
has a right to all the means of education, —it is on these
grounds that we claim for her the civil rights and privileges
which man enjoys.

T will not enlarge now on another most important aspect
of this question, the value of the contemplated change in a
physiological point of view. Our dainty notions have made
woman such a hot-house plant, that one half the sex are
invalids. The mothers of the next generation are invalids.
Better that our women, like the German and Italian girls,
should labor on the highway, and share in the toil of har-
yest. than pine and sicken in the in-door and sedentary
foutine to which our superstition condemns them. But I
leave this sad topic for other hands.

One word more. We heard to-day a very profound
and eloquent address as to the course which it is most

30 WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

expedient for woman to pursue in regard to the inadequate
remuneration extended to her sex, The woman of do-
mestic life receives but about one third the amount paid
toa man for similar or far lighter services. The woman
of out-door labor has about the same. The best female
employments are subject to a discount of some forty or fifty
per cent on the wages paid to males. Tt is futile, if it
were just, to blame individuals for this. We have all
been burdened long by a common prejudice and a common
ignorance. The remedy is not to demand that the mann-
facturer shall pay his workmen more, that the employer
of domesties shall pay them more. It is not the capitalist’s
fault. We inveigh against the wealthy capitalist, but it is
not exclusively his fault. It is as much the fault of society |
itself. Tt is the fault of that timid conservatism, which
sets its face like flint against everything new; of n servile
press, that knows so well, by personal experience, how |
much fools and cowards are governed byasneer. Itis |
the fault of silly women, ever holding up their idea of —
what is “Jady-like” as a Gorgon head to frighten their
sisters from earning bread,—themselves, in their folly,
the best answer to a weak prejudice they mistake for
argument. It is the fault of that pulpit which declares it
indecorous in woman to labor, except in certain oeeupa-
tions, and thus crowds the whole mass of working-women
into two or three employments, making them rivet each
other's chains. Do you ask me the reason ‘of the low
wages paid for female labor? It is this. ‘There are about
as many women as men obliged to rely for bread on their
own toil. Man seeks employment anywhere, and of any
kind. No one forbids him. If he cannot make a living
by one trade, he takes another ; and the moment any trade
Decomes so crowded as to make wages fall, men leave it,
and wages will rise again. Not so with woman. The
whole mass of women must find employment in two or

sells | , When there is too much of it in
man’s labor is cheap because there is too

he artist, —let her enter there ; open
tice, at least, of the lawyers, —let
her all in-door trades of society, to

ident laborer, like their male breth-
their own terms, and will be fairly

down, by the competition of her
of starvation. Heavily taxed,

a |

ill-paid, m degradation and misery, is it to be wondered at
that she yields to the temptation of wealth? It is the
same with men ; and thus we recruit the ranks of vice by
the prejudices of custom and society. We corrupt the
whole social fabric, that woman may be confined to two
or three employments. How much do we suffer throngh
the tyranny of prejudice! When we penitently and
gladly give to the energy and the intellect and the enter-
prise of woman their proper reward, their appropriate
employment, this question of wages will settle itself; and
it will never be settled at all until then.

This question is intimately connected with the great
social problem, —the vices of cities. Yon who hang your
heads in terror and shame, in view of the advancing de~
moralization of modern civilized life, and turn away with
horror-struck faces, look back now to these social preju-
dices, which have made you close the avenues of profitable
employment in the face of woman, and reconsider the
conclusions you haye made! Look back, I say, and see
whether you are surely right here. Come up with us and
argue the question, and say whether this most artificial
delicacy, this childish prejudice, on whose Moloch altar
you sacrifice the virtue of so many, is worthy the exalted
worship you pay it, Consider a moment. From what
sources are the ranks of female profligacy recruited? A
few mere giddiness hurries to ruin. ‘Their protection
would be in that character and sound common-sense which
a wider interest in practical life would generally create,
In a few, the love of sensual gratification, grown over=
strong, because all the other powers are dormant for want
of exercise, wrecks its unhappy victim, The medicine for
these would be occupation, awaking intellect, and stirring
their highest energies, Give any one an earnest interest
in life, something to do, something that kindles emulation,
and soon the gratification of the senses sinks into proper

WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 33

subordination, It is idle heads that are tempted to mis-
chief: and she is emphatically idle half of whose nature is
unemployed. Why docs man so much oftener than
oman surmount a few years or months of sensual grati-
fication, and emerge into a worthier life? It is not solely
Deeause the world’s judgment is so much harder upon her-
Man can immerse himself in business that stirs keenly all
his faculties, and thus he smothers passion in honorable
cares. An ordinary woman, once fallen, has no busy and
stirring life in which to take refuge, where intellect will
contend for mastery with passion, and where virtue is
braced by high and active thoughts. Passion comes back
to the “empty,” though “swept and garnished” cham-
bers, bringing with him more devils than before. But,
undoubtedly, the great temptation to this vice is the love
of dress, of wealth, and the Inxuries it secures, Facts will
jostle theories aside. Whether we choose to acknowledge
it or not, there are many women, earning two or three
dollars a week, who feel that they are as capable as their
brothers of earning hundreds, if they could be permitted
to exert themselves as freely. Fretting to see the coveted
rewards of life forever forbidden them, they are tempted
to shnt their eyes on the character of the means by which
& taste, however short, may be gained of the wealth and
Juxury they sigh for. Open to man a fair field for his
industry, and secure to him its gains, and nine hundred
and ninety-nine men out of every thousand will disdain to
steal. Open to woman a fair field for her industry, let
her do anything her hands find to do, and enjoy her gains,
and nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of every
thousand will disdain to debase themselves for dress or ease.

OF this great social problem —to cure or lessen the vice
of cities—there is no other solution, except what this
Movement offers you. It is, to leave woman to choose
her own employments for herself, responsible, as we arc,

84 WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

to the common Creator, and not to her fellow-man. I
exhort you, therefore, to look at this question in the spirit
in which I have endeavored to present it to yous It is no
fanciful, no superficial movement, based on a few indi-
vidual tastes, in morbid sympathy with tales of individual
suffering. It is a great social protest against the very
fabric of society. Tt is a question which goes down —we
admit it, and are willing to meet the issue— goes down
beneath the altar at which you worship, goes down be=
neath this social system in which you live. And it is trne
—no denying it—that, if we are right, the doctrines
preached from New England pulpits are wrong ; it is true
that all this affected horror at woman's deviation from her
sphere is a mistake, —a mistake fraught with momentous
consequences. Understand us. We blink no fair issue.
We throw down the gauntlet, We have counted the
cost; we know the yoke and burden we assume. We
Inow the sneers, the lying frands of misstatement and
misrepresentation, that await us. We have counted all;
and it is but the dust in the balance and the small dust in
the measure, compared with the inestimable blessing of
doing justice to one half of the human species, of curing
this otherwise immedicable wound, stopping this over
flowing fountain of corruption, at the very source of
civilized life. Truly, it is the great question of the age.
Tt looks all others out of countenance. It needs little aid
from legislation, Specious objections, after all, are not
arguments. We know we are right. We only ask an
opportunity to argue the question, to set it full before the
people, and then leave it to the intellects and the hearts
of our country, confident that the institutions under
which we live, and the education which other reforms
haye already given to both sexes, have created men and
women capable of solving a problem even more difficult,
and meeting a change even more radical, than this.

PUBLIC OPINION.*

R. PRESIDENT:—I have been thinking, while
sitting here, of the different situations of the Anti-
slavery cause now and one year ago, when the last anni-
versary of this Society was held. To some, it may seem
that we had more sources of interest and of public excite-
ment on that occasion than we have now. We had with us,
during a portion, at least, of that session, the eloquent ad-
‘voeate of our cause on the other side of the water.f We
had the local excitement and the deep interest which the
first horror of the Fugitive Slave Bill had aronsed. We
had, I believe, some fugitives, just arrived from the house
of bondage. It may seem to many that, meeting as we do
to-day robbed of all these, we must be content with a ses-
sion more monotonous and less effectual in arousing the
community. But when we look over the whole land;
when we look back upon what has taken place in our own
Commonwealth, at Christiana, at Syracuse ; look at the
passage through the country of the great Hungarian; at
the present state of the public mind, —it seems to me that
no year, during the existence of the Society, has presented
more encouraging aspects to the Abolitionists. The views
which our friend (Parker Pillsbury) has just presented
are those upon which, in our most sober calculation, we

® Speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, at the Melodcon,
‘Wednenluy evening, January 28, 1852.
t George Thompson.

—— 7

36 PUBLIC OPINION.

ought to rely. Give us time, a68/as be ile
powerful. We are apt to feel ourselves overshadowed int
the presence of colossal institutions. We are apt, in com-
ing up to a meeting of this kind, to ask what a few hun-
dred or a few thousand persons can do against the weight
of government, the mountainous odds of majorities, the
influence of the press, the power of the pulpit, the organi-
zation of parties, the omnipotence of wealth. At times, to
carry a favorite purpose, leading statesmen have endeay-
ored to cajole the people into the idea that this age was
like the past, and that a “rub-a-dub agitation,” as ours is
contemptuously styled, was only to be despised. The time
has been when, as our friend observed, from the steps of
the Revere House —yes, and from the depots of New
York railroads— Mr. Webster has described this Anti-
slavery movement as a succession of lectures in school-
houses,—the mere efforts of a few hundred men and
women to talk together, excite each other, arouse the
public, and its only result a little noise. He knew better.
He knew better the times in which he lived. No matter
where you meet a dozen earnest men pledged to a new
idea, — wherever yon have met them, you have met the
beginning of a revolution. Revolutions are not made:
they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an
oak, It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid
fur back. The child feels; he grows into a man, and
thinks; another, perhaps, speaks, and the world acts ont
the thought. And this is the history of modern society.
Men undervalue the Antislavery movement, because
they imagine you can always put your finger on some
illustrious moment in history, and say, here commenced
the great change which has come over the nation. Not so.
‘The beginning of great changes is like the rise of the Mis-
sissippi. A child must stoop and gather away the pebbles
to find it. But soon it swells broader and broader, bears

i _

PUBLIC OPINION. 87

on its ample bosom the navies of a mighty republic, fills
the Gulf, and divides a continent.

I remember a story of Napoleon that illustrates my
meaning. We are apt to trace his control of France to
some noted victory, to the time when he camped in the
Tuileries, or when he dissolved the Assembly by the
stamp of his foot. He reigned in fact when his hand was
first felt on the helm of the vessel of state, and that was
far back of the time when he had conquered in Italy, or
his name had been echoed over two continents. It was
on the day when five hundred irresolute men were met in
that Assembly which called itself, and pretended to be, the
government of France. They heard that the mob of Paris
was coming the next morning, thirty thousand strong, to
turn them, as was usual in those days, out of doors. And
where did this seemingly great power go for its support and
refuge? They sent Tallien to seek out a boy lieutenant, —
the shadow of an officer, — so thin and pallid that, when he
was placed on the stand before them, the President of the
Assembly, fearful, if the fate of France rested on the
shrunken form, the ashy cheek before him, that all hope
was gone, asked, “ Young man, can you protect the As-
sembly?” And the ashen lips of the Corsican boy parted
only to reply, “1 always do what I undertake,” Then
and there Napoleon ascended his throne; and the next
day, from the steps of St. Roche, thundered forth the
cannon which taught the mob of Paris, for the first time,
that it had a master. That was the commencement of the

. So the Antislavery movement: commenced un-
heeded in that “obseure hole” which Mayor Otis could
‘not find, occupied by a printer and a black boy.

Th working these great changes, in such an age as ours,
‘the so-called statesman has far less influence than the many
Tittle men who, at various points, are silently maturing
@ regeneration of public opinion. This is a rea and

Ey PIELER

n when a great
= slow-moving cur
oar era. Neahing bat Free-
any yermanent advantage to

sad meament in the shock of eager intellects.
said Talevrand, -is cleverer than any-
swever Clastrioas. which links
rwkelmed by the impetu-
hanks to the press and
. to clear its own chan-
Thanks to the Prinsing-Press. the people now do
their own thinkinz. and statesmen. as they are styled, —
men in ¢ABce.— have ceased to be either the leaders or the

New York. The time has come when he is
ge his tone; when he is obliged to retrace
eps —to acknowledge the nature and the character
of the age in which he 3 Kossath comes to this coun-
ss and an exile; conquered on his own soil;
flang out asa weed upon the waters: nothing but his voice
left: —and the Seeremry, of State mast meet him. Nx
let us see what he
which consists of the

wy
uba-dub agitation.
of the tongue, which
our friend Pillsbury has described. This is that += tongue ””
which the impudent statesman declared, from the drunken
steps of the Revere Hanse, ought to be silenced, — this
tongue, which was a rubaatub a. mn” ta be despised,
when he spoke to the farmers of

He says, * We are too much inclined to underrate the
pewer of moral intluence.” Who is? Nobody but a Re-

PUBLIC OPINION. 89

vere House statesman. “ We are too much inclined to
underrate the power of moral influence, and the influence
‘of public opinion, and the influence of the principles to
which great men — the lights of the world and of the pres-
ent age—have given their sanction. Who doubts that,
in our struggle for liberty and independence, the majestic
eloguence of Chatham, the profound reasoning of Burke,
the burning satire and irony of Colonel Barre, had influ-
ences upon our fortunes here in America? They had
influences both ways. They tended, in the first place,
somewhat to diminish the confidence of the British minis-
try in their hopes of success, in attempting to subjugate an
injured people. They had influence another way, because
all along the coasts of the country —and all our people in
that day lived upon the coast— there was not a reading
man who did not feel stronger, bolder, and more deter-
mined in the assertion of his rights, when these exhilarat-
ing accents from the two Houses of Parliament reached
him from beyond the seas.”

“Tthank thee, Jew!” This “ rub-a-dub agitation,” then,
has influence both ways. It diminishes the confidence of
the Administration in its power to execute the Fugitive
Slave Law, which it has imposed so insolently on the
people. It acts on the reading men of the nation, and in
that single fact is the whole story of the change, Wher-
ever you have a reading people, there every tongue, every
press, is a power. Mr, Webster, when he ridiculed in
New York the agitation of the Antislavery body, sup-
posed he was living in the old feudal times, when a states-
man was an integral clement in the state, an essential
power in himself, He must have supposed himself speak-
ing in those ages when a great man outweighed the
masses. He finds now that he is living much later, in an
age when the accumulated common-sense of the people
outweighs the greatest statesman or the most influential

and the past in this matter, by their
respect. The time has been when men cased
head to foot, and disciplined by long years of careful in-_
struction, went to battle. Those were the days of nobles
and knights; and in such times, ten knights, clad in steel
feared not a whole field of unarmed peasantry, and a hun-
| dred men-at-arms have conquered thousands of the com-— |
| mon people, or held them at bay. Those were the times
| when Winkelried, the Swiss patriot, led his host against
| fhe Austrian phalanx, and, finding it impenetrable to the
thousands of Swiss who threw themselves on the serried
lances, gathered a dozen in his arms, and, drawing them
together, made thus an opening in the close-set ranks of |
the Austrians, and they were overborne by the actual mass”
of numbers. Gunpowder came, and then any finger that
could pull a trigger was equal to the highest born and the
Dest disciplined; knightly armor, and horses clad in steel,
went to the ground before the courage and strength that
dwelt in the arm of the peasant, as well as that of the
prince. What gunpowder did for war, the printing-press
ea has done for the mind, and the statesman is no longer elad
Ee | in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his
y | judge. Every thoughtfial man, the country through, that |
| makes up an opinion, is his jury to which he answers,and the
0) / | tena to which he must bow. Mr. Webster, therefore,
| | does not overrate the power of this “rub-a-dub agitation,”
| which Kossuth has now adopted, « stealing oar thahdetn™
(Langhter and applause.] He does not overrate the power
| of this “rub-a-dub agitation,” when he says, “ Another
| great mistake, gentlemen, is sometimes made. [Yes, in
Bowdoin Square!] We think nothing powerfal enough:
| to stand before despotic power. There is something strong:
| enough, quite strong enough; and if properly exerted, it
will prove itself so; and that is, the power of intelligent

Z = =

PUBLIC OPINION. 41

public opinion.” “TI thank thee, Jew!” That opinion
is formed, not only in Congress, or on hotel steps; it is
made also in the school-houses, in the town-houses, at the
hearth-stones, in the railroad-cars, on board the steam-
boats, in the social circle, in these Antislavery gatherings
which he despises. Mark you: There ts nothing powerful
enough to stand before it! Tt may be a self-styled divine
institution; it may be the bank-vaults of New England;
it may be the mining interests of Pennsylvania; it may
be the Harwich fishermen, whom he told to stand by the
Union, because its bunting protected their decks; it may
he the factory operative, whom he told to uphold the
Tnion, because it made his cloth sell for half a cent
more a yard; it may be a parchment Constitution, or
even a Fugitive Slave Bill, signed by Millard Fillmore!!!
—no matter, all are dust on the threshing-floor of a read-
ing public, once roused to indignation. Remember this,
awhen you would look down upon a meeting of a few hun-
dreds in the one scale, and the fanatic violence of State
Street in the other, that there is Norutve, Daniel Webster
“being witness, strong enough to stand against public opin-
ion, —and if the tongue and the press are not parents of
that, what is?

Napoleon, said, “I fear three newspapers more than a
hundred thousand bayonets.” Mr. Webster now is of the
same opinion. “There is not a monarch on earth,” he
says, “whose throne is not liable to be shaken by the
progress of opinion and the sentiment of the just and
intelligent part of the people." “I thank thee, Jew!”
We have been told often, that it was nothing but a morbid
sentiment that was opposed to the Fugitive Slave Bill, —
it was a sentiment of morbid philanthropy. Grant it all.
But take care, Mr. Statesman ; cure or change it in time,
else it will beat all your dead institutions to dust. Hearts
and sentiments are alive, and we all know that the gentlest

42 PUBLIC OPINION.

of Nature's growths or motions will, in time, burst asunder
or wear away the proudest dead-weight man can heap
upon them, If this be the power of the gentlest growth,
let the stoutest heart tremble before the tornado of a
people roused to terrible vengeance by the peel
years of cowardly and merciless oppression, and oft-
repeated instances of selfish and calculating apostasy.
You may build your Capitol of granite, and pile it high
as the Rocky Mountains; if it is founded on or mixed up
with iniquity, the pulse of a girl will in time beat it down.
* There is no monarch on earth whose throne is not liable
to be shaken by the sentiment of the just and intelligent
part of the people.” What is this but a recantation, —
doing penance for the impudence uttered in Bowdoin
Square? Surely this is the white sheet and lighted toreh
which the Scotch Church imposed as penance on its erring
members. Who would imagine, that the same man who
said of the public discussion of the Slavery question, that it
must be put down, could have dictated this sentiment—
“Tt becomes us, in the station which we hold, to let that
public opinion, so far as we form it, have free course"?
What was the haughty threat we heard from Bowdoin
Square a year ago? This agitation must be put down?
Now, ‘It becomes us, in the station which we hold, to let
that public opinion have free course.” Behold the great
doughface cringing before the calm eye of Kossuth, who
had nothing but “rub-a-dub agitation” with which to
reseue Hungary from the bloody talons of the Austrian
eagle !

‘This is statesmanship! The statesmanship that says to
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to-day, ‘Smother
those prejudices,” and to-morrow, ‘ There is no throne on
the broad earth strong enough to stand up against the
sentiment of justice.” What is that but the “ preju«
dices” of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts against

se il

PUBLIC OPINION. 43

man-hunting? And this is the man before whom the
press and the pulpit of the country would have had the
Abolitionists bow their heads, and lay their mouths in the
dust, instead of holding fast to the eternal principles of
justice and right!

Tt would be idle, to be sure, to base any argument on
an opinion of Mr. Webster's. Like the chameleon, he /
takes his hue, on these subjects, from the air he breathes.
He has his “ October sun” opinion, and his Fanenil ©
Hall opinions. But the recantation here is at least notice-
able; and his testimony to the power of the masses is
more yaluable as coming from an unwilling witness. The
best of us are conscious of being, at times, somewhat awed
by the colossal institutions about us, which.seem to be
opposing our progress, There are those who occasionally
weary of this moral suasion, and sigh for something tangi-
ble ; some power that they can feel, and see its operation.
The advancing tide you cannot mark. The gem forms
unseen. The granite increases and crumbles, and you can
hardly mark cither process, ‘The great change in a na-
tion’s opinion is the same. We stand here to-day, and if
we look back twenty years, we can see a change in public

fion ; yes, we'can see a great change. Then the great
‘statesmen had pledged themselves not-to talk on this sub-
ject. They have been made to talk. These hounds
have been whipped into the traces of the nation’s car, not
by three newspapers, which Napoleon dreaded, but by one,
[Cheers.] ‘The groat parties of the country have been
broken to pieces and crumbled. The great sects have
been broken to pieces. Suppose you cannot put your
upon an individual fact; still, in the great result,

you see what Webster tells us in his speech: “De-
pend upon it, gentlemen, that between these two rival
powers, —the autocratic power, maintained by arms and
foree, and the popular power, maintained by opinion, —

_—

a4 PUBLIC OPINION.

“ee a Sena Ace 5 Rites
latter is increasing. human liberty is
Slinky ho oodnty fun oa doclegg
the part which we have to act in all this great drama
is to show ourselves in favor of those rights; to
our ascendency, and to carry it on, until we shall see
culminate in the highest heaven over our heads.”
Now I look upon this speech as the most remarkable
Mr. Webster has ever made on the antislavery agitation
to which we are devoted, —as a most remarkable confes-
sion, under the circumstances. Tread it here and to you,
because, in the circle I see around me, the larger propor
tion are Abolitionists, —men attached to the movement
which this meeting represents, —men whose thoughts are
occasionally occupied with the causes and with the effects
of its real progress, I would force from the reluctant lips
of the Secretary of State his testimony to the real power
ofthe masses. I said that the day was, before
when the noble, clad in steel, was a match fora thousand,
Gunpowder levelled peasant and prince, ‘The printing=
press has done the same. In the midst of thinking people,
in the long ran, there are no so-called “great” men,
‘The accumulated intellect of the masses is greater than
the heaviest brain God ever gave toa single man. Web-
ster, though he may gather into his own person the
confidence of parties, and the attachment of thousands
throughout the country, is but a feather’s weight in the
balance against the average of public sentiment on the
subject of slavery. A newspaper paragraph, a county
meeting, a gathering for conversation, a change in the
character of a dozen individuals, —these are the several
fountains and sources of public opinion. And, friends,
when we gather, month after month, at such meetings as
these, we should encourage ourselves with considerations
of this kind:—that we live in an age of democratic

> 4

46 PUBLIC OPINION.

‘They have kept xt locked up in the Senate-chamber, they
have hidden it behind the communion-table, they have
appealed to the superstitious and idolatrous veneration for
the State and the Union to avoid this question, and so
have kept it from the influence of the great democratic
tendencies of the masses. But change all this, it
from its concealment, and give it to the people ; ‘it
on the age, and all is safe. Tt will find a safe harbor. A
man is always selfish enough for himself. The soldier
will be selfish enongh for himself; the merchant will be
selfish enough for himself; yes, he will be willing to go to
hell to secure his own fortune, but he will not be ready to
go there to make the fortune of his neighbor. No man
ever yet was willing to sacrifice his own character for the
benefit of his neighbor ; and whenever we shall be able to.
show this nation that the interests of a class, not of the
whole, the interests of a portion of the country, not of the
masses, are subserved by holding our fellow-men in bond-
age, then we shall spike the guns of the enemy, or get
their artillery on our side.

T want you to turn your eyes from institutions to men.
The difficulty of the present day and with us is, we are
bullied by institutions. A man gets up in the pulpit, or
sits on the bench, and we allow ourselves to be bullied by
the judge or the clergyman, when, if hevstood side by side
with us, on the brick pavement, as a simple individual, his
ideas would not have disturbed our clear thoughts an hour.
Now the duty of each antislavery man is simply this, —
Stand on the pedestal of your own individual independence,
summon these institutions about you, and judge them,
The questioa is deep enough to require this judgment of
you. This is what the cause asks of you, my friends ; and
the moment you shall be willing to do this, to rely upon
yourselves, that moment the truths I have read from the
lips of one whom the country regards as its greatest states-

(> z|

PUBLIC OPINION. 47

man will shine over your path, assuring you that out of
this agitation, as sure as the sun shines at noonday, the future
character of the American government will be formed.

If we lived in England, if we lived in France, the phi-
losophy of our movement might be different, for there
stand accumulated wealth, hungry churches, and old
nobles, —a class which popular agitation but slowly
affects. To these public opinion is obliged to bow. We
have seen, for instance, the agitation of 1848 in Europe,
deep as it was, seemingly triumphant as it was for six
months, retire, beaten, before the undisturbed foundations
of the governments of the Continent. Yon recollect, no
doubt, the tide of popular enthusiasm which rolled from
the Bay of Biseay to the very feet of the Czar, and it
seemed as if Europe was melted into one republic. Men
thought the new generation had indeed come. We
waited twelve months, and “the turrets and towers of old
institations —the church, law, nobility, government —
reappeared above the subsiding wave,” Now there are no
‘such institutions here ; —no law that can abide one moment
when popular opinion demands its abrogation. ‘The gov-
ermment is wrecked the moment the newspapers decree
it, The penny papers of this State in the Sims case did
more to dictate the decision of Chief Justice Shaw, than
the Legislature that sat in the State-House, or the statute-
book of Massachusetts. I mean what I say. The penny
papers of New York do more to govern this country than
the White House at Washington. Mr. Webster says we
live under a government of laws. He was never more
mistaken, even when he thought the antislavery agita-
tion could be stopped. We live under a government of
men —and morning newspapers. [Applause.] Bennett
and Horace Grecley are more really Presidents of the
United States than Millard Fillmore. Daniel Webster
Himself cannot even get a nomination. Why? Because,

tion is nothing in South Carolina, but the
. The law that says the colored |
in the jury-box in the city of Boston is nothing, a |
Because the Mayor and Aldermen, and the ?
Boston, for the last fifty years, have been such
colorphobia, that they did not choose to execute this law
of the Commonwealth. I might go through the statute-
book, and show you the gat ate Now if this be
true against us, it is true for us. Remember, that the
penny papers may be starved into antislavery, whenever
we shall put behind them an antislavery
ment. Wilberforce and Clarkson had to vanquish, the.
moneyed power of England, the West ind inten
overawe the peerage of Great Britain, before ;
quered. The settled purpose of the great midd
had to wait till all this was accomplished. The
we have the control of public opinion, —the wo
the children, the school-houses, the school-books, the 1
ture, and the newspapers, —that moment we haye |
the question.
_© Men blame us for the bitterness of our language
~ personality of our attacks. It results from our
‘The great mass of the people can never be made
and argue « long question. ‘They must be made to
through the hides of their idols. When you have
your spear into the rhinoceros hide of a Webster or a
ton, every Whig and Democrat feels it. It is
principle that every reform mmst take for its text
mistakes of great men, God gives us great
texts to antislavery sermons. See to it, when Nature
has provided you a monster like Webster, that you exhibit”
him—himself a whole menagerie — throughout the coun-

Sk.

PUBLIC OPINION. 49

try. [Great cheering.] It is not often, in the wide world’s
history, that you see a man so lavishly gifted by nature,
and called, in the concurrence of events, to a position like
that which he occupied on the seventh of March, surrender
his great power, and quench the high hopes of his race.
No man, since the age of Luther, has ever ‘held in his
hand, so palpably, the destinies and character of a mighty
He stood like the Hebrew prophet betwixt the
living and the dead. He had but to have upheld the cross
of common truth and honesty, and the blacks dishonor of
two hundred years would have been effaced forever. He
bowed his vassal head to the temptations of the flesh and
of lucre. He gave himself up into the lap of the Delilah
of slavery, for the mere promise of a nomination, and the
greatest hour of the age was bartered away, —not for a
mess of pottage, but for the promise of a mess of pottage,
—a promise, thank God! which is to be broken. [En-
jastic applause.] I say, it is not often that Providence
permits the eyes of twenty millions of thinking people to
behold ‘the fall of another Lucifer, from the very battle-
rf , down into that “lower deep of the
‘hell. [Great sensation.] On such a
en he the sermon!
‘it, that, in spite of the tenderness of Amer-
in spite of the morbid charity that would
se the sin, but spare the sinner, in spite of
e Christianity, that would let millions pine,

be rah as trath and uncompromising as jus-
“remembering always, that every single man set
this evil may be another Moses, every single
‘thought you launch may be the thunders of another Na-
‘poleon from the steps of another St. Roche ; remembering
‘that we live not in an age of individual despotism, when a
‘(Charles the Fifth could set up or put down the slave-trade,
‘

PUBLIC OPINION. |

‘but surrounded by twenty millions, whose opinion is om-
nipotent,—that the hundred yathered in a New
* school-house may be the hundred who shall teach the rising
men of the other half of the continent, and stereotype Free-
dom on the banks of the Pacific; remembering and wor-
shipping reverentially the great American idea of the
omnipotence of “thinking men,” of the “sentiment of
justice,” against which no throne is potent enough to
stand, no Constitution sacred enough to endure. Remem-
ber this, when you go to an antislavery gathering in a
school-honse, and know that, weighed against its solemn
purpose, its terrible resolution, its earnest thought, Web-
ster himself, and all huckstering statesmen, in the opposite
seale, shall kick the beam. Worshipping the tongue, let
ns be willing, at all times, to be known throughout the
community as the all-talk party. ‘The age of bullets is
over. The age of men armed in mail is over. ‘The
of thrones has gone by. “The age of statesmen —God be
praised such statesmen—is over. The age of thinking
men has come. With the aid of God, then, every man I
can reach I will set thinking on the subject of slavery.
[Cheers.] The age of reading men has come. I will try
to imbue every newspaper with Garrisonianism. [Loud
applause.] The age of the masses has come. Now,
Daniel Webster counts one. Give him joy of it!—but
the “rnb-a-dub agitation” counts at least twenty, —nine-
teen better. Nineteen, whom no chance of nomination
tempts to a change of opinions once a twelyemonth; who
need no Kossuth advent to recall them to their senses,
What I want to impress you with is, the great weight
that is attached to the opinion of everything that can call
itselfa man. Give me anything that walks erect, and can
read, and he shall count one in the millions of the Lord’s
sacramental host, which is yet to come up and trample all
oppression in the dust. The weeds poured forth in ma-

i al

PUBLIC OPINION. 51

ture’s lavish Inxnriance, give them but time, and their tiny
roots shall rend asunder the foundations of palaces, and
crumble the Pyramids to the earth. We may be weeds
in comparison with these marked men; but in the lavish
Tusuriance of that nature which has at least allowed us to
be “thinking, reading men,” I learn, Webster being my
witness, that there is no throne potent enough to stand
against us. It is morbid enthasiasm this that I have,
Grant it. But they tell us that this heart of mine, which
beats so unintermittedly in the bosom, if its fyrce could be
directed against a granite pillar, would wear-it-to dust in
the course of a man’s life. Your Capitol, Daniel Webster,
is marble, but the pulse of every humane man is beating
against it, God will give us time, and the pulses of men
shall beat it down, [Loud and enthusiastic cheering]
Take the mines, take the Harwich fishing-skiffs, take
the Lowell mills, take all the coin and the cotton, still
the day must be ours, thank God, for the hearts—the
hearts are on our side!

There is nothing stronger than human prejudice. A
crazy sentimentalism like that of Peter the Hermit hurled
half of Europe upon Asia, and changed the destinies of
kingdoms. We may be crazy. Would to God he would
make us all crazy enough to forget for one moment the
cold deductions of intellect, and let these hearts of onrs
eat, beat, beat, under the promptings of a common hu-
manity! They have put wickedness into the statute-book,
and its destruction is just as certain as if they had put
gunpowder under the Capitol. That is my faith. That
it is which turns my eye from the ten thousand news-

from the forty thousand pulpits, from the millions
‘of Whigs, from the millions of Democrats, from the might
‘of sect, from the marble government, from the iron army,
from the navy ridiny at anchor, from all that we are accus-
tomed to deem great and potent,—turns it back to the
simplest child or woman, to the first murmured protest

62 PUBLIC OPINION.

that is heard against bad laws. I recognize in it the great
future, the first ramblings of that volcano destined to over-
fiege inks wipy peotcesions acl a
of its fall excitement all this laughing prosperity which now
‘rests so secure on its side.

All hail, Public Opinion ! To be sure, it is a dangerous
thing under which to live. It rules to-day in the desire to
obey all kinds of laws, and takes your life. It rules again:
in the love of liberty, and rescues Shadrach from” Boston
Court-House. It rules to-morrow in the manhood of him
who loads the musket to shoot down — God be praised !—

man-hunter, Gorsuch. [Applause.] It rules in Sym-
cuse, and the slave escapes to Canada. It is our interest
to educate this people in humanity, and in deep
for the rights of the lowest and humblest individual,
makes up our numbers. SS ee
property and his life dependent on the constant preiaaca
of an agitation like this of antislavery. Eternal:
lance is the price of liberty: power is ever stealing
_ the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty mast
‘be gathered each day, or it is rotten. ‘The living sap of
' to-day outgrows the dead rind of yesterday, The
intrusted with power becomes, either from human
ity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of
Only by continual oversight can the democrat i
prevented from hardening into a despot: only
mitted agitation can a people be kept
to principle not to let liberty be smothered in m
prosperity. All clouds, it is said, have sunshine |
them, and all evils have some good result; so
‘the necessity of its abolition, has saved the freedom o

“§y white race from being melted in the luxury or buried bee
TAP” meath the gold of its own success. Never look,
& |)/4oran age when the people can be quiet and safe. AE

such times Despotism, like a shrouding mist, steals over
the mirror of Freedom. The Dutch, a thousand years

_— ~

PUBLIC OPINION. 53

ago, built against the ocean their bulwarks of willow and
mud. Do they trust tothat? No. Each year the patient,
industrious peasant gives so much time from the cultivation
of his soil and the care of his children to stop the breaks
and replace the willow which insects have eaten, that he
may keep the land his fathers rescued from the water, and
bid defiance to the waves that roar above his head, as if
demanding back the broad fields man has stolen from their
realm.

Some men suppose that, in order to the people’s govern-
ing themselves, it is only necessary, as Fisher Ames said,
that the “ Rights of Man be printed, and that every citizen
have a copy.” As the Epicureans, two thousand years
ago, imagined God a being who arranged this marvellous
machinery, set it going, and then sunk to sleep. Republics
exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated. The
antislayery agitation is an important, nay, an essential
part of the machinery of the state. It is not a disease

nora medicine. No; it is the normal state, —the normal _

state of the nation. Never, to our latest posterity, can we
afford to do without prophets, like Garrison, to stir up the
monotony of weulth, and reawake the people to the great
ideas that are constantly fading out of their minds, —to
trouble the waters, that there may be health in their flow.
Every government is always growing corrupt. Every
Secretary of State is, by the very necessity of his position,
an apostate. [Hisses and cheers.] I mean what I say.
He is an enemy to the people, of necessity, because the
moment he joins the government, he gravitates against
that popular agitation which is the life of a repabic.” AY
Fepublic is nothing but a constant overflow of lava. The
Prnciples of Jefferson are not up to the principles of to-
day. Tt was well said of Webster, that he knows well
the Hancock and Adams of 1776, but he does not know
the Huncoeks and Adamses of to-day. The republic that
‘sinks to sleep, trusting to constitutions and machinery, to

of PUBLIC OPINION.

politicians and statesmen, for the safety of its liberties, never
will have any. The people are to be waked to a new
effort, just as the Church has to be regenerated, in each
age. The antislavery agitation is a necessity of each age,
to keep ever on the arert this faithful vigilance, so con-
stantly in danger of sleep. We must live like our Pu-
ritan fathers, who always went to church, and sat down
to dinner, when the Indians were in their neighborhood,
with their musket-lock on the one side and a drawn sword
on the other.

If I had time or voice to-night. I might proceed to a
further development of this idea, and I trust I could make
it clear. which I fear I have not yet done. To my con-
viction, it is Gospel truth, that, instead of the antislavery
agitation being an evil, or even the unwelcome cure of a
disease in this government. the youngest child that lives
may lay his hand on the youngest child that his gray hairs
may see, and say: “The agitation was commenced
when the Declaration of Independence was signed ; it
took its second tide when the Antislavery Declaration
was signed in 1833,—a movement, not the cure, but the
diet of a free people, —not the homeopathic or the allo-
pathic dose to which a sick land has recourse, but the
daily cold water and the simple bread. the daily diet
and absolute necessity, the manna of a people wander:
ing in the wilderness.” There is no Canaan in politics.
As health lies in labor, and there is no reval read to it but
through teil, so there is no republican rad to safety but
in constant distrust. “In distrust” said Demosthenes,
~are the nerves of the mind.” Let us see to it that these
sentinel nerves are ever on the alert. If the Alps, piled
in cold and still sublimity, be the emblem of Despotism,
the ever-restless ocean is ours, which, girt within the
eternal laws of gravitation, is pure only because never
still. [Long-continued applause.]

SURRENDER OF SIMS.*

R. PRESIDENT: I do not feel disposed to talk
about Colonization to-night, and I am glad to think
that, after the remarks already submitted to us, it is un-
necessary anything more should be said on that topic. I
mean, the colonization of black men to Africa. I have
been colonized myself from this hall for some time ; and
in getting here again, I prefer to go back to the old note,
and try to get the “hang of this school-house.” [Laugh-
ter.] You know Baron Munchansen says, in one of his
marvellous stories, that it was so cold one day in Russia,
when he began to play a tune on his trumpet, that half of
it froze in the instrument before it could get out; and a
few months afterwards, he was startled, in Italy, to hear,
ofa sudden, the rest of the tune come pealing forth. We
were somewhat frozen up a while ago in this hall, with
Thompson on the platform; now we want the

rest of the tune. [Langhter and cheers.]

The Mail of this morning says that we have no right
to this hall, because it was refused to the greatest states-
aman in the land, —to Daniel Webster. I believe this is
= mistake. The Mayor and Aldermen went to him, meta-
Phorically, on their knees, and entreated the great man to
make use of the old walls. It was the first time Faneuil

Speoch before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, at Faneuil Hall
Wray evening, January 30, 1952,

—

56 SURRENDER OF SIMS.

Hall ever begged anybody to enter it; but Daniel was |
pettish, and would not come. Very proper in him, too;
it is not the place in which to defend the Fugitive Slave
Bill. He did right when he refused to come. Who
built these walls? Peter Fancuil’s ancestors were them-
selves fugitives from an edict almost as cruel as the
Fugitive Slave Law; and only he whose soul and body
refuse to crouch beneath inhuman legislation has a right
to be heard here, —nobody else. [Cheers] A Hugue-
not built this hall, who was not permitted to live on the
soil of his own beautiful Prance, and it may naturally be
supposed that he dedicated it to the most ultra, outside
idea of liberty. It is a place for the running slave to find
a shelter, —not for a recreant statesman, [Deafening
cheers.]

‘This hall has never been made ridiculous but once;
never was made the langhing-stock of New England but
once. That was about nine months ago, when the * Sims
brigade” were left soundly asleep here, in the gray of the
morning, while the awkward squad of Marshal
stole down State Street with Thomas Sims, not deigning
to ask their permission or their aid, and leaving them to
find out, the next morning, that the great deed had been
done, without their so much as ‘ hearing a noise.” Sol-
diers asleep in Faneuil Hall, while mischief was doing so
near as State Street? O what gallant soldiers they must
have been! [Loud laughter and cheers.]

‘Times have changed since we were here before. The
last time I stood on this platform, there sat beside me a
heroine worthy to sit in the hall of the old Huguenot, —
one Elizabeth Blakeley, a mulatto girl, of Wilmington,
N.C., who, loving freedom more than slavery, concealed
herself on board a Boston brig, in the little narrow pase

between the side of the vessel and the partition that
formed the cabin, —two feet eight inches of room. There

& al

SURRENDER OF SIMS. ST

she lay while her inhuman master, almost certain she was
on board the vessel, had it smoked with sulphur and
tobacco three times over. Still she bore it. She came
North, half frozen, in the most inclement month of the
year,—this month. She reached Boston just able to
crawl. Where did she come? © those were better
times then! She came here. Just able to stand, fresh
from that baptism of suffering for liberty, she came here.
We told her story. And with us that night— within
ten feet of where I stand—sat Fredrika Bremer, the
representative of the literature of the Old World; and her
Tmumane sympathies were moved so much, that the rose-
bud she held in her hand she sent (honoring me by
sending it by my hand) to the first representative of
American slavery she had seen. It was the tribute of
Europe's heart and intellect to a heroine of the black race,
in Faneuil Hall. Times have changed since, Not to
speak of the incense which Miss Bremer has, half igno-
rantly, I hope, laid on the demon altar of our land, it would
not be safe to put that Betsey Blakeley on this platform
tonight; it would not be safe for her to appear in a public
meeting. What has changed this public opinion? I wish
it was some single man. I wish it was some official of the
eity, that so we could make him the scapegoat of public
indignation, let him carry it forth, and thus the fair fame
‘of our city be freed, This, Mr. President, brings me to
my subject. ‘The resolutions I wish to speak to are these.
T think they onght to be read in Faneuil Hall, at this, the
first meeting the Abolitionists have held here since the
foul deed of April 12th disgraced the city. I feel that
these peddling hucksters of State and Milk Streets owe
me fall atonement for the foul dishonor they have brought
upon the city of my birth,

* Resolved, That, as citizens of Boston and the Commonwealth,
we record our deep disapprobation and indignant protest against

58 SURRENDER OF SIMS.

the surrender of Thomas Sims by the city, its sanction of the
cowardly and lying policy of the police, its servile and volunteer
zeal in behalf of the man-hunters, and its deliberate, wanton, and
avowed violation of the laws of the Commonwealth, for the
basest of all purposes, —slave-trading, selling’ a free mam into.
ondage, that State Street and Milk Street might make money.”

Next we come to that man [John P. Bigelow] who
stood at yonder door, looking on, while George Thompson
was mobbed from this platform ; who, neither an honorable
‘Mayor nor a gentleman, broke at once his oath of office and
his promise as a gentleman to give us this hall for certain
eighty dollars to be paid him, and when he had stood by
and seen us mobbed out. of it, thought he mended his
character by confessing his guilt, in not daring to send in
a bill!

“ Resolved, That the cireumstances of the case will not allow us
to believe that this infamous deed was the act of the City Gov-
ernment only ; and then, as Boston-born men, some of us, ¢om-
forting ourselves in the reflection that the fawning sycophant
who disgraced the Mayor's chair was not born on the peninsula
whose fair fame he blotted ; but all the fiets go to show, that in
‘this, as in all his life, he was only the easy and shufiling tool of
the moneyed classes, and therefore too insignificant to be remem=
bered with any higher feeling than contempt.

* Resolved, That we cherish a deep and stern indignation
towards the judges of the Commonwealth, who, in personal
cowardice, pitiful subserviency, utter lack of official dignity, and
entire disregard of their official oaths, witnessed in silence the
‘violation of laws they were bound to enforce, and disgraced the
Bench once honored by the presence of a Sedgwick and a
Sewall.”

I do not forget that the Church, all the while this
melancholy scene was passing, stood by and upheld a
merciless people in the execution of an inhuman law,
accepted the barbarity, and baptized it “ Christian duty.”

= al

SURRENDER OF SIMS, 59

© no, I do not forget this! But I remember that, in an
enterprising, trading city like ours, the merchants are full
as much, if not more, responsible for the state of public
opinion, than the second-rate men who rather occupy
than fill our pulpits, and who certainly seldom tempt the
brains of their hearers to violate the command of the
Jewish Scriptures, “Thou shalt not do any work on the
Sabbath day.”

Do you ask why the Abolitionists denounce the traders
of Boston? It is because the merchants chose to send
back Thomas Sims,—pledged their individual aid to
Marshal Tukey, in case there should be any resistance ;
it is because the merchants did it to make money. Thank
God, they have not made any! [Great cheering.] Like
the negro who went to hear Whitefield, and rolled in the
dust in the enthusiasm of his religious excitement, until
they told him it was not Whitefield, when he picked him-
self np, crying out, “Then I dirty myself for nothing,”
so they dirtied themselves for nothing! [Tremendous
cheering.) If only slave-hunting can save them, may
bankruptey sit. on the ledger of every one of those fifteen
hundred scoundrels who offered Marshal Tukey their aid!
[Tumultuous applause.]

There is one thing to be rejoiced at, — it is this: the
fact that the police of this city did not dare even to arrest
a fugitive slave, calling him such. The dogs of Marshal
Tukey that arrested Thomas Sims in Richmond Street
Tad to disguise themselves to do it, —dressed in the
costume and called themselves watchmen ; and told a lie,
—that the arrest was for theft, —in order to keep peace
in the street, while they smuggled him into a carriage,
Claim, for the honor of Boston, that, when her police
became man-hunters, they put their badges in their pockets,
and lied, lest their prey should be torn from their grasp,
in the first burst of popular indignation. It was the first

—

time in Boston —I hope it will be the last — that the laws
were obliged to be executed by lying and behind bayonets,
in the night. So much, though it be very little, may still
‘be said for Boston, —that Sims was arrested by lying and
disguised policemen; he was judged by a Commissioner
who sat behind bayonets; and was carried off in the gray
of the morning, after the moon set, and before the sum
rose, by a police body armed with swords. She was dis-
graced, but it was by force; while, the reverse of the
Roman rule, cedant arma toga, the robe gave way to the
sword. The law was executed ; but it was behind bayo-
nets. Such laws do not last long, [Loud cheers.)
Courts that sit behind chains seldom sit more than once,
[Renewed cheering.] f

[A Voice: “The Whigs defend it.”]

O, I know that Mr. Choate has been here, —TI heard
him, and before a Whig caucus, defend the policy of the
Fugitive Slave Bill. He told us, while I sat in yonder
gallery, of the “ infamous ethics,”"—the “ infamous ethies,
that from the Declaration of Independence and the Ser-
mon on the Mount deduced the duty of immediate eman=
cipation.” The sentiment was received, I am thankful to
say, with a solemn silence, though Rufus Choate uttered it
to an assembly of Webster Whigs. I heard it said to-day,
that the Abolitionists had done nothing, because a fugitive,
within the last twelve months, had been taken out of
Boston. ‘They have done a great deal since, sixteen or
seventeen years ago, Peleg Sprague, standing on this
platform, pointed to this portrait, [the portrait of Wash-
ington,] and called him ‘that slaveholder.” It is not
now considered a merit in Washington that he held
slaves; men apologize for it now. I stood in this hall,
sixteen years ago, when “ Abolitionist * was linked with
epithets of contempt, in the silver tones of Otis, and all
the charms that a divine eloquence and most felicitous

= 5 =i

SURRENDER OF SIMS. 61

diction could throw around a bad cause were given it;
the excited multitude seemed actually ready to leap up
beneath the magic of his speech. It would be something,
if one mast die, to die by such a hand, —a hand somewhat
worthy and able to stifle antislavery, if it could be stifled.
‘The orator was worthy of the gigantic task he attempted ;
and thousands crowded before him, every one of their
hearts melted by that eloquence, beneath which Massa-
chusetts had bowed, not unworthily, for more than thirty
years. Ieame here again last fall,—the first time I had
been here, ina Whig meeting, since listening to Otis. I
found Rufus Choate on the platform. Compared with the
calm grace and dignity of Otis, the thought of which came
rushing back, he struck me like a monkey in convulsions.
[Roars of laughter and cheers.] Alas! I said, if the party
whieh has owned Massachusetts so long, which spoke to
me, a a boy, through the lips of Quincy and Sullivan, of
Webster and Otis, has sunk down to the miserable sophis-
‘try of this mountebank!—and I felt proud of the city of
my birth, as I looked over the murmuring multitude be-
neath me, on whom his spasmodic chatter fell like a wet
Vlanket, [Great laughter and cheering.] He did not dare
to touch a second time on the Fugitive Slave Bill, He
‘tried it once, with his doctrine of “infamous ethies,” and
the men were as silent as the pillars around them. Ah!
‘thonght I, we have been here a little too often; and if we
‘aye not impressed the seal of our sentiments very deeply
cme. they have at least learned that immediate
possibly it be a dream, is not ‘ in-
“famous ethics ” ; and that such doctrine, the Declaration
‘of Independence and the Sermon on the Mount, need
more than the flashy rhetoric of a Webster retainer to
tear them asunder. [Great cheering.]
‘The judges of the Commonwealth, —the judges of the
Commonwealth, —I have something to say of them. T

62 SURRENDER OF SIMS.

wish sometimes we lived in England, and I will tell you
why. Because John Bull has some degree of self-respect
left. There is an innate, dogged obstinacy in him, that
would never permit the pee
‘Mansfield, or a Brougham, to stoop beneath any chain

a city constable conld put round Westminster Hall. I
‘was once a member of the profession myself, but glad Tam
so no longer, since the head of it has bowed his burly per-
son to Francis ‘Tukey's chain, [Cheers.] Did he not
now that he was making history that hour, when the
Chief Justice of the Commonwealth entered his own
court, bowing down like a criminal beneath a chain four
feet from the soil? Did he not recollect he was the
author of that decision which shall be remembered when
every other case in Pickering’s Reports is lost, declaring
the slave Med a free woman the moment she set foot on
the soil of Massachusetts, and that he owed more respect
to himself and his own fame than to disgrace the ermine
by passing beneath a chain? There is something in en
blems. There is something, on great occasions, even
the attitude ofa man. Chief Justice Shaw betrayed the
bench and the courts of the Commonwealth, and the
honor of a noble profession, when for any purpose, still
less for the purpose of enabling George T. Curtis to act
his melancholy farce in peace, he crept under a chain into
his own court-room. And, besides, what a wanton and
gratuitous insult it was! What danger was there, with
two hundred men inside the court-house, and three hun-
dred men around it on the sidewalk? Near five hundred
sworn policemen in and around that building, — what need
for any chain? It was put there in wanton insult to the

feelings of the citizens of Boston, —nothing else; in wan~

ton servility to the Slave Power, —nothing else ; in wanton
flattery to Daniel Webster. Yes, it was the gratuitousness
of the insult that makes it all the more unbearable! And

——

SURRENDER OF SIMS, 63

the ‘“‘old chief,” as we loved to call him, made himself, im
timid servility, party to the insult and the degradation.
How truly American! Ah, our slave system by no means
exists only on Southern plantations !

We are said to be unreasonable in this manner of criti-
eising the institutions, laws, and men of our country. It
is thought that, as little men, we are bound to tune our
voices and bow our heads to the great intellects, as they
are called, of the land, —Mr. Webster and others. He
tells us, that there are certain important interests con-
cerned in this question, which we are bound to regard,
and not abstract theories about the equality of men, and
the freedom of humble individuals, Well, all I say to
that is, when dollars are to be discussed, let him discuss
them with Franklin Haven, in the directors’ room of the
Merchants’ Bank. Let him discuss them over the bursting
ledgers of Milk Street, —that is the place for dollar talks,
But there is no room for dollars in Faneuil Hall. The
idea of liberty is the great fundamental principle of this
spot,—that 2 man is worth more than a bank-vault,
[Lond cheers.]

I know Mr. Webster has, on various occasions, intimated
that this is not statesmanship in the United States; that
the eotten-mills of Lowell, the schooners of Cape Cod, the
cousters of Marblehead, the coal and iron mines of Penn-
sylvania, and the business of Wall Street are the great
interests which this government is framed to protect. He
intimated, all through the recent discussion, that property
is the great element this government is to stand by and
Protect, —the test by which its success is to be appreci-
ated. Perhaps it is so; perhaps it is so; and if the mak-
ing of money, if ten per cent a year, if the placing of one
dollar on the top of another, be the highest effort of human
‘skill; if the answer to the old Puritan catechism, ‘ What
4s the chief end of man?” is to be changed, as, according

SURRENDER OF SIMS. 65

acter, which seems to be too near that of the Scotchman,
of whom Dr. Johnson said, that, if he saw a dollar on the
other side of hell, he would make a spring for it at the
risk of falling in. [Laughter.] Under correction of these
great statesmen and divines, I cannot think this the draw
ideal of human perfection. I do not care whether the
schooners of Harwich, under slaveholding bunting, catch
fish and keep them or not; I do not care whether the
mills of Abbott Lawrence make him worth two millions or
one, whether the iron and coal mines of Pennsylvania are
profitable or not, if, in order to have them profitable, we
aust go down on our marrow-bones and thank Daniel
Webster for saving his Union, call Mayor Bigelow an
honorable man and Mayor, and acknowledge Francis
Tukey as Chief Justice of the Commonwealth. I prefer
hunger and the woods to the hopeless task of maintaining
the sincerity of Daniel Webster, or bending under the
chain of Francis Tukey. [Tremendous cheering.]

Sir, I have something to say of this old Commonwealth.
I went up one day into the Senate-chamber of Massachu-
setts, in which the Otises, the Quincys, and the Adamses,
Parsons and Sedgwick, Sewall and Strong, have sat and
‘spoke in times gone by, — in which the noblest legislation
in the world, on many great points of human concern, has
made her the noblest State in the world, —the good old
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, —and I stood there to
see this impudent City Marshal tell the Senate of Massa-
chusetts that he knew he was trampling on the laws of
the Commonwealth, and that he intended to do so, as
Mayors told him to! And there was not spirit enough
im the Free Soil party,—no, nor in the Democratic
party,—there was not self-respect enough in the very
Senators who were sworn to maintain these laws, to de-
fend them against this insolent boast of a city constable.
Now, fellow-citizens, you may, and probably do, think

———

me a fanatic; till yon judge men and things on different
principles, I do not care much what you think me; I
are usiarone:thal daleselng.anae oa Hl you
this, if I see the Commonwealth upside down, I mean
to keep my neck free enough from collars to, a
T think it is upside down when a city constable dictates
Jaw in the Senate-chamber of Massachusetts. Le
cheers.]

‘Mr. President, let me add one thing more. For Francs
Tukey I have no epithet of contempt or of indignation.
He may, and does, for aught I know, perform his

find little fault, comparatively, with the City

Boston, that he did the infamous duty which the

of Boston set him, ‘The fruit that 1 rather chaos toaiat
is, that the owner of the brig Acorn can walk up State
Street, and be as honored a man as he was before; that
John H. Pearson walks our streets as erect as ever, and
no merchant shrinks from his side, But we will put the
fact that he owned that brig, and the infamous uses he
made of it, so blackly on record, that his children —yes,
‘His cHILDREN — will gladly, twenty years hence, forego
all the wealth he will leave them to blot out that single
record. [Enthusiastic applause.] The time shall come
when it will be thought the unkindest thing in the world
for any one to remind the son of that man that his father's
peareeppete ote Pearson, and that ho Owiind aaa
[Renewed cheering.]

[At this point a voice called out, “ Three cheers for John EL. Pear
son.” After what had been said from the platform, such a call was

‘not likely to be very warmly responded to; but one or two voices
‘were raised, and Mr. Phillips continued.}

SURRENDER OF SIMS. 67

Yes, it is fitting that the cheer should be a poor one,
when, in the presence of that merchant [pointing to the
portrait of John Hancock], of that merchant who led the
noblest movement for civil liberty ever made on this side
the ocean, — when in his presence you attempt to cheer
this miserable carrier of slaves, who calls himself, and alas!
according to the present average of State Street, has a
right to call himself, a Boston merchant.

I want to remark one other change, since we were shut
out of Faneuil Hall. It is this, Within a few months, I
stood in this hall, when Charles. Francis Adams was on
the platform;—a noble representative, a worthy son, let
me say in passing, of the two Adamses that hung here
above him. While here he had occasion td mention the
name of Daniel Webster, as I have once or twice to-night,
and it was received with cheer on cheer, four, five, and
six times repeated during the course of his speech. In fact,
he could hardly go on for the noisy opposition, That was
at a time when some men were crazy enough to think that
Daniel would yet be nominated for the Presidency; but
those gaudy soap-bubbles have all burst. [“ Three cheers
for Daniel Webster.) Yes, three cheers for Sir Pertinax
M’Sycophant, who all his life long has been bowing down
to the Slave Power to secure the Presidency; willing to
sacrifice his manhood for the promise of a mess of pottage,
and destined to be outwitted at last. [Cheers.] Three
cheers for the man who, after “many great and swelling
words” against Texas, when finally the question of the
Mexican war was before the Senate, did not dare to vote,
but dodged the question, afraid to be wholly Southerner
or Northerner, and striving in vain to outdo Winthrop in
facing both ways. [Cheers.] ‘Three cheers for the man
‘who went into Virginia, and, under an * October sun” of
the Old Dominion, pledged himself—the recreant New-
Englander! —to silence on the slave question ; a pledge

—

for “the Whig, the Massachusetts Whig, the
Hall Whig,” who came home to Mascachusett

efficiently as to secure the election of Charles Si
the Senate of the United States. [Loud cheers.]
[A voice: “Three cheers for Charles Sumner.” Oy
applause, “Three cheers for Webster." Mr. Phillips
Faintly given, those last; but I do not
» Mr. Chairman, which way the balance of cheer:
respect to the gentleman whose name has
mentioned [Mr. Webster]. It is said, you
when Washington stood before the surrende

SURRENDER OF SIMS. 69

and said, * Let posterity cheer for us"; and they were
silent. Now, if Daniel Webster has done anything on
the subject of slavery which posterity will not have the
Kindness to forget, may he get cheers for it, fifty years
hence, and in this hall; using my Yankee privilege, how-
ever, “I rather guess” some future D'Israeli will be able
to put that down in continuation of his grandfather's
chapter of “events that never took place.” I much, I
very much doubt, whether, fifty years hence, Massachu-
setts will not choose men with back-bones to send to Wash-
ington; not men who go there to yield up to the great
temptations, social and political, of the capital, the interests
and the honor of Massachusetts and New England. I be-
lieve, no matter whether the Abolitionists have done much
or little, that the average of political independence has
risen within the last ten or fifteen years. I know that
strange sounds have been heard from the House of Rep-
resentatives and the Senate within the last ten or fifteen
years: that the old tone so often breathed there of North-
ern submission has very much changed since John Quincy
Adams vindicated free speech on the floor of that House,
I read just now a speech worthy, in some respects, of
Faneuil Hall, from the lips of Robert Rantoul, in rebuke
of a recreant Abolitionist from the banks of the Connecti-
cut (George T. Davis). I know not what may be the
fature course of Mr. Rantoul on this question; I know
not how erect he may stand hereafter; but I am willing
to give him good credit in the future, so well paid has
teen this his first bill of exchange. [Great cheering.]
He has done, at least, his duty to the constituency he
tepresented. Te looked North for his instructions. The
time has been when no Massachusetts representative
looked North; we saw only their backs. They have
always looked to the Southern Cross; they never turned
their eyes to the North Star. They never looked back to

70 SURRENDER OF SIMS.

the Massachusetts that sent them. Charles Allen and
Horace Mann, no matter how far they may be from the
level of what we call antislavery, show us at least this
cheering sign. While speaking, they have turned their
faces toward Massachusetts. They reflect the public opin-
ion of the State they represent. They look to Faneuil
Hall, not to “the October sun of the Old Dominion.”
Now, Mr. Chairman, if we can come to this hall, year
after year; if we can hold these meetings; if we can
sustain any amount of ridicule for the sake of antislavery ;
if we can fill yonder State-House with legislative action
that shall vindicate the old fame of the State; if we can
fill every town-house and school-house in the State with
antislavery agitation, — then the eyes of every caucus and
every political meeting, and of Congress, will all tam
North, and, God willing, they shall see a North worth
looking at. We will have better evidence than the some-
what apocryphal assurance of Mr. Webster, at Marsh-
field, in ’48, that the North Star is at last discovered.
There will not only be a shrine, but worshippers.
[Cheers.]

I have not the voice to detain this meeting any longer.
I am rejoiced to find myself again in Faneuil Hall. Iam
glad it has so happened that the very first meeting of the
Massachusetts Antislavery Society since April 12th, 1851,
has been within these walls, and that the first note of their
rebuke of the city government, and of the Milk Street
interest whose servant it stooped to be, has been from the
platform of Faneuil Hall. [Applause.]

SIMS ANNIVERSARY.*

R, CHAIRMAN; There is a resolution on your
table to this effect : —

“ Resolved, ‘Therefore, That we advise all colored persons,
liable to these arrests, to leave the United States, unless they
Are fully resolved to take the life of any officer who shall attempt,
under any pretext, to seize them ; and we urge the formation in
‘every town of vigilance committees, prepared to secure toevery
person claimed as a slave the fullest trial possible, and to avail
themselves fearlessly, necording to their best judgment, of all the
means God and Nature have put into their hands, to see that
‘substantial justice be done,”

To this Mr, Garrison moves as an amendment the
following : —

* Resolved, That if ‘resistance to tyrants, by bloody weapons,
*is obedience to God, and if our Revolutionary fathers were justi-
fied in wading through blood to freedom and independence, then
every fligitive slave is justified in arming himself for protection
and defence, —in taking the life of every mazshal, commissioner,
or other person who attempts to reduce him to bondage ; and the
millions who are clanking their chains on our scil find ample
Warrant in rising en masse, and asserting their right to liberty, at
‘whatever sacrifice of the life of their oppressors.

“ Resolved, That the State in which no fugitive slave can
remain in safety, and from which he must flee in order to secure

* Speech at the Melodeon, on the First Anniversary of the Rendition of
‘Thomas Sims, April 12, 1852.

—

72 SIMS ANNIVERSARY.

his liberty in another land, is to be held responsible for all the
crimes and horrors which cluster about the slave-system and the
slave-trade,— and that State is the Commonwealth of Massa-
chusetts.”

I incline to the first form, rather than to that suggested
by my friend, though such is my conviction of the sound-
ness of his judgment and his rare insight into all the bear-
ings of our cause, that I distrust my own deliberate judg-
ment, when it leads me to a different conclusion from his.

I am, however, strongly impressed with the conviction,
that the friends of the cause and the fugitives among us
need some advice ; and that we cannot make a better use
of this occasion than to discuss what that advice shall be.
Mr. Garrison’s amendment seems to me too ambiguous;
it contents itself with announcing an important Principle,
but suggests nothing, and advises nothing.

Why, Mr. Chairman, do we assemble here on such a
melancholy occasion as the present? This, instead of last
Thursday, should be our Fast Day, if there were any
reason for us to fast at all,—for on this day, twelve
months ago, the Abolitionists of the Commonwealth suf-
fered a great, a melancholy defeat. On that day, unex-
pectedly to many, a man was carried back to slavery from
the capital of the State. It was an event which surprised
some of our fellow-citizens, and all the rest of New Eng-
land, which relied too fondly on the reputation Massachu-
setts had won as an an ry community. Either the
flavor of our old religion, or some remnant of the spirit of
1649 and 1776, had made the city of the Puritans a house
of refuge to the fugitive. They had gathered here, and
in our neighborhood, by hundreds. There are traditions
of attempts to seize one now and then,—sometimes of
trials in open court; and it is possible that, in the general
indifference, a few may have been carried back quietly by
some underling official, though we have no certain knowl-

SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 3

edge of any case where the victim was not finally saved.
‘Thomas Sims is the first man that the city of Boston ever
openly bound and fettered, and sent back to bondage. I
have no heart to dwell on so horrible an outrage : — that
sad procession, in the dim morning, through our streets, —
the poor youth,—his noble effort to break his chains, —
mocked with one short hour of freedom, and then thrast
back to the hell he had escaped, by brother men, in the
prostituted names of justice and religion. We sit down
with the single captive, and weep with him as the iron
enters into his soul,—too sad to think, for the moment,
of the disgrace of our city, or even the wickedness of its
rulers. Pity swallows up indignation. We might be for-
given if for the moment we mistook our sadness for despair,
and even fancied the event disastrous to others than the
victim. But not so, Liberty knows nothing but victories.
Tn a cause like ours, to which every attribute of the Most
High is pledged, “everything helps us.” Selfish com-
merce, huckstering politics, and the mocking priest, might
tum from such a scene and congratulate each other, say-
ing, “ Our mountain stands strong”; but we knew that
emotions were stronger than statutes, more lasting than
Tedgers, and not to be frozen down even by creeds, and
that all New England would erelong gather itself to
answer the last sad question of this hapless victim, as he
stepped on the piratical deck of the Acorn, —* Is this
Massachusetts liberty?”

What, then, is the use of such a celebration as this? It
seems to me the only possible use that could, in any cir-
cumstances, be made of such an occasion, would be to record
our protest against the deed, with an indignant rebuke of
its perpetrators, and to direct our eyes forward to see what
‘we can now do for men in like jeopardy with Sims. Our
protest and our rebuke have been already uttered. Tt is
needless to repeat them. The individuals who so infa-

—

v4 SIMS ANNIVERSARY.

mously misused their little brief authority have, some of
them, faded from the public eye,—melted back into the
mass of their fellow-slaves. Their names are not worth
recalling, for they are not of mark enough to point a moral,
Let them pass, all of them ;—the judge who stood head
and shoulders above the rest in brutal bearing and the arts
of a demagogue ; the commissioner,whom the atmosphere
of noble enthusiasm about him never betrayed, during all
that eventful week, into even the semblance of an honora-
ble emotion ; the counsellor who pledged a word, till then
undoubted, to that lie for which no guaranty but his could
have won even a momentary credence, and the belief of
which snapped the last tiny thread of hope that bound
the hapless victim to the altar of Massachusetts criminal
law.
Yes, let them pass. The few whom charity may hope
sinned, unable to “discern between their right hand and
their left hand,” and the many who did just right enough
to prove they knew their duty, but wallowed in the wrong
80 greedily as to show how much they loved it. Let His-
tory close the record. Let her allow that “on the side of
the oppressor there was power,” —power “ to frame mis
chief by a law”; that on that side were all the forms of
law, and behind those forms, most of the elements of con-
trol: wealth, greedy of increase, and anxious for order, at
any sacrifice of principle, — priests prophesying smooth
things, and arrogating to themselves the name of Chris
tianity, — ambition, baptizing itself statesmanship, —and
that unthinking patriotism, child of habit and not of rea
son, which mistakes government for liberty and law
for justice. And, on the other hand, let her allow that,
though the Abolitionists were heedful of the hour, and
fearless against the prelates of the Church,
+ to plend her cause,
© And from our judges vindicate the laws,” —

SIMS ANNIVERSARY, 15

while they “did not spare the tyrant one hard word,” —
they were strictly law-abiding citizens, While judges
and executives deserted their posts, the Abolitionists vio-
lated no law. They begged for nothing but the law, —
they wearied themselves to obtain the simple legal rights
guaranteed to them and to all by the State. The city
government, in direct defiance of the statute of 1843,
aided, both directly and indirectly, in the arrest and deten-
tion of a person claimed asa slave. To effect this purpose,
they violated the commonest rights of the citizens, —shut
them out of their own court-house, —subjected them from
day to day to needless, illegal, and vexatious arrests.
Tadges were “Artful Dodgers,” and sheriffs refused all
processes. The Abolitionists exhausted every device, be-
sieged every tribunal, implored the interference of every
department, to obtain the bare execution of the law of the
Commonwealth. And let History say beside, that mean-
time they fearlessly declared that resistance would be
better than submission ; while not so absurd as to throw
oné man, or a score of men, against a government in arms,
they proclaimed that they would have been glad to see the
people rise against the law, — that nothing which a hand-
fal of men could do for such an end was wanting, — that
they denounced the church sanctioning the deed as “a
synagogue of Satan,” and the law, whether constitntional
or not, as mere tyranny and wickedness, its executioners
worse than murderers, —that, knowing the value of a true
law and real order, they said and believed, that rather
than one man should be sent back to slavery, better, far
better, human Jaws should be trampled under foot, and the
order of society broken every day.

When the pulpit preached slave-hunting, and the Jaw
bound the victim, and society said, ‘* Amen! this will make
money,” we were “fanatics,”’ — “ enthusiasts,”
tious, — « di izers,” —“ scorners of the pulpit

All this has been said so often, that it is
on it now. The best use that we can now m
oceasion, it seems to me, is to look about: eo
bearings, and tell the fugitives, over whom yet han
terrible statute, what course, in our opinion, tl

pursue. <
‘And, in the first place, it is neither frank nor hon

keep up the delusive idea that a fagitive slave can |

tected in Massachusetts. 1 hpe ae

was an invitation. I heard, three weeks before
case, that there were a hundred in one town in P

We saw nothing of them. TI heard, three weeks
Sims rendition, that there were two hundred more
city of Worcester ready to have come, had they been
invited. We saw nothing of them, On such an oceasion,
from the nature of the case, there cannot be much previous:

own hands. Intense earnestness of purpose,

concert; the people must take their own cause into their —

SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 7

Hampden, we are not told that the two thousand men who
rode up to London the next morning, to stand between
their representative and a king’s frown, waited for an
invitation. They assembled of their own voluntary and
individual purpose, and found themselves in London.
Whenever there is a like determination throughout Mas-
sachusetts, it will need no invitation. When, in 1775,
the British turned their eyes toward Lexington, the same
invitation went out from the Vigilance Committee of Me-
chanies in Boston, as in our case of April, 1851. Two
lanterns on the North Church steeple telegraphed the fact
to the country: Revere and Prescott, as they rode from
house to house in the gray light of that April morning,
could tell little what others would do,— they flung into
each house the startling announcement, “The red-coats
are coming!” and rode on. None that day issued orders,
none obeyed aught but his own soul. ‘Though Massachu-
setts rocked from Barnstable to Berkshire, when the wires
flashed over the land the announcement that a slave lay
chained in the Boston court-honse, there was no answer
from the antislavery feeling of the State. It is sad, there-
fore, but it seems to me honest, to say to the fugitive in
Boston, or on his way, that, if the government once seize
Tim, he cannot be protected here. I think we are bound,
in common kindness and honesty, to tell them that there
are but two ways that promise any refuge from the hor-
rors of a return to bondage: one is to fly,—to place
themselves under the protection of that government,
which, with all her faults, has won the prond distinction
that slaves cannot breathe her air, — the fast-anchored isle
of empire, where tyrants and slaves may alike find refuge
fom vengeance and oppression. AND THIS 18 THE COURSE
T Wortd ADVISE EVERY MAN TO ADorr. THIS, UNLESS
THERE ARB, IN HIS PARTICULAR CASE, IMPERATIVE REASONS
70 THE CONTRARY, 1s uIs Dury. If this course be impos-

abe pig jaa ka avecy (eter Ca
ment, we must wait patiently for it, and

policy is, beyond all question, the policy of [

that gains, in time, on public sympathy.
different case. Who can ask the trembling,
tive to stop and submit patiently to the

chances of going back, that his fate may, in
manner, and far-off hour, influence for good
of his fellow-millions ? Beek Sete ae

are living men. We have no right to use
for the manufacture of antislavery sentiment.
those who hang one man to benefit another,
a wholesome dread of crime, I shrink from
life as raw material for the production of any

SIMS “ANNIVERSARY. ce)

what they must expect here. The time was when we
honestly believed they might expect protection. That
time, in my opinion, has passed by. I do not certainly
know that there will be any taken this year or next. T
do not know when they may choose again to take another
man from Boston. But I do know, that just so soon as
any other miscreant Webster [hisses and cheers] shall
think it necessary to lay another fugitive slave on the altar
of his Presidential chances, just so soon will another be
taken from the streets of Boston. I note those hisses,
Do not understand me that Mr. Webster himself will ever
find it worth while again to ask this act of vassal service
from his retainers. O no! wait a few months, and his
fate will be that of Buckingham :—
“wicked but in will, of means bereft,
Ho loft not faction, but of that was left.”

Bat even though he die or be shelved, the race of traitors
will not be extinct ; and it is a sickening dread for these
two or three hundred men and women to live with this
Taw, worse than the sword of Damocles, hanging over
‘their heads. I believe the Abolitionists of the country
‘owe it to their brethren to tell them what policy should
mule their conduct in the present crisis, To be sure, you
may ask them to stay, and, when they are taken, to sub-
mit, and let the fact appeal to the sympathies of the coun-
try, which will result in kindling public indignation ; and
if they choose, from deep religious convictions, to make
themselves thus the food of antislavery growth, God bless
them for the heroic self-sacrifice which dictates such a
course. But I cannot ask of a poor, friendless, broken-
hearted fellow-creature such a momentous sacrifice. I do
‘say, in private, to’every one that comes to me, * But one
course is left for you. There is no safety for you here ;
there is no law for you here. The hearts of the judges
‘are stone; the hearts of the people are stone, It is in

80 SIMS ANNIVERSARY.

vain that you appeal to the Abolitionista. They may be
ready, may be able, ten years hence.” But the “ brace
of Adamses,” to which our friend [Theodore Parker]
alluded this morning, if they had mistaken 1765 for 1775,
would have ended at the scaffold instead of the Declara-
tion of Independence and the treaty of 1788. We must
bide our time, and we must read, with anointed eyes, the
signs of our time. If public opinion is wrong, we want to
know it; know it, that we may remodel it. We will our-
selves trample this accursed Fugitive Slave Law under
foot. [Great cheering.] But we are a minority at pres-
ent, and cannot do this to any great practical effect ; we
are bound to suggest to these unfortunates who look to us
for advice, some feasible plan. This, in my view, should
be our counsel: “Depart if you can,—if you have
time and means. As no one has a right to ask that you
stay, and, if arrested, submit, in order that your case may
convert men to antislavery principles; so you have no
right, capriciously, to stay and resist, merely that your
resistance may rouse attention, and awaken antislavery
sympathy. It is a grave thing to break into the bloody
house of life. The mere expectation of good conse-
quences will not justify you in taking a man’s life. You
have a perfect right to live where you choose. No one
can rightfully force you away. There may be important
and sufficient reasons, in many cases, why you should stay
and vindicate your right at all hazards. But in common
cases, where no such reasons exist, it is better that you sur-
render your extreme right to live where you choose, than
assert it in blood, and thus risk injuring the movement
which secks to aid your fellows. Put yourselves under
the protection of the British flag: appeal to the humanity
of the world. Do not linger here.” Does any friend of
the cause exclaim, “ You take away the great means of
antislavery agitation! The sight of'a slave carried back to

SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 81

bondage is the most eloquent appeal the antislavery canse
ean make to the sympathies of the public!” I know it!
but the gain is all too dear when it is bought by the sneri-
fice of one man, thrust back to the hell of American bond-
age. Still, circumstances may prevent flight, imperative
Teasons may exist why he should remain here : he may be
seized before he succeeds in escaping. I say to him, then,
There is a course left, if you have the courage to face it.
There is one appeal left, which has not yet been tried ; it
may avail you; I cannot insure you even that. It has
now reached that pass when even the chance of a Boston
gibbet may be no protection from a Georgia plantation ;
bat if I were in your place, I would try! [Tremendons
cheering-] The sympathies of the people will gather
round you, if put on trial for such an act. The mortal
hatred which would set the hounds of the law, thirsty
for our blood, on keener scent, if we stood charged with
legal offences, would not reach you. I do not know that
the state-prison would be any refuge from the jail at
Savannah or Charleston; but there may be something
in an appeal to a Massachusetts jury impanelled to try a
Man's INATMeNABLE right to liberty, the;pursuit of happi-
ness, and to protect himself; and I hope—TI dare not
hope much, but I do hope—that there is still humanity
enough to bring you in “not guilty." There is another
point. I really believe if a jury of Boston merchants
should steel themselves to a verdict of guilty, that a Gov-
ernor sitting in the seat of Samuel Adams or Henry Vane
would never dare to sign the warrant, until he had secured
& passage on board a Cunard steamer. I think, therefore,
that it is possible an appeal to the criminal jurisdiction of
the State might save aman. Perhaps it might be just
that final blow which would stun this drunken nation into
sobriety, and make it heed, at last, the claims of the slave.

Mark me! I do not advise any one to take the life of
6

82 SIMS ANNIVERSARY.

his fellow, —to brave the vengeance of the law, and ran
the somewhat, after all, unequal risk of the hard tech-
nical heart of a Massachusetts jury. Such an act must be,
after all, one’s own impulse. To burst away from all
civil relations, to throw one’s self back on this great primal
right of self-protection, at all hazards, must be the growth
of one’s own thought and purpose. I can only tell the
sufferer the possibilities that lie before him, —tell him
what I would do in his case, —tell him that what I would
do myself I would countenance another in doing, and aid
him to the extent of my power.

The antislavery cause is a wonder to many. They
wonder that it does not succeed faster. We see William
Cobbett, with his Political Register, circulating seventy
thousand copies per week, appeal to the workingmen of
Great Britain, and in a few years he carries his measures
over the head of Parliament. Cobden talks the farmers of
England, in less than ten years, out of a tyranny that had
endured for generations. The difference is, we have no such
selfish motives to appeal to. We appeal to white men,
who cannot see any present interest they have in the
slave question. It ple to stir them. They must
ascend to a ley interestedness which the masses
seldom reach, before we can create any excitement in
them on the question of slavery. I do not know when
that point will be gained. If we shall ever be able to
reach, through the press, the millions of non-slaveholding
white men in the Southern States, I think we shall have
a parallel then to the course of English agitation; for we
can then appeal to the seltish interest of white men, able
to vote, to speak, and to act on this subject. But at
prvsent we have to make men interested, indignant, en-
thusiastic for others, not for themselves, The slave ques-
tion halts and lingers, because it cannot get the selfishness
of men on its side ; and that, atter all, has been the lever

SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 83

by which the greatest political questions have been car-
ried.

There is one other motive ; that is, fear. Cobbett and
his fellows gathered the people of Great Britain in public
mectings of two hundred thousand men; and though the
Duke of Wellington ordered his Seotch Greys to rough-
grind their swords, as at Waterloo, he feared to order
them drawn in the face of two hundred thousand English-
men. ‘That gathering was for their own rights. Cross the
Channel, and you come to the Irish question. How was
that dealt with? By fear. When Ireland got no sym-
pathy from the English people, she so ordered her affairs
that the dread of anarchy, anchored so close to Liverpool
and Bristol, forced the government to treat the question,
and they treated it by submission.

Now, I read my lesson in the light of this historical
experience. I cannot yet move the selfishness of the
white man to help me, On this question I cannot get it
on my side. It is just possible that the fugitive slave,
taking his defence into his own right hand, and appealing
to the first principle of natural law, may so excite the
sympathy of some and the fears of others, as to gain the
attention of all, and force them to grapple with this problem
of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Bill. ‘The time may come
when Massachusetts may not be willing to have her cities
scenes of bloodshed, in order that one over-ambitious man
may gain his point, and smooth his path to the Presidency ;
‘or that a human being should be hurried into, bondage,
that rich men may add field to field and house to house.

T have striven to present this point as slowly, as fully,
as dleliberately as possible, beeause I know it is an impor-
tant one. Tt is, in some sense, the launching of a new
measure in the antislavery enterprise, to countenance the
fugitive, who has tried in vain every avenue of escape, in
standing even at last at bay, and protecting himself. But

84 SIMS ANNIVERSARY.

I know of no pledge of the antislavery cause aj
Our enterprise is pledged to nothing but the abolition of
slavery. When we set out, we said we would do our
work under the government and under the Church. We
tried it. We found that we could not work in either
way; we found it necessary to denounce the Church
and withdraw from the government. We did what we
could to work through both. We saw that it was expe-
dient to work through them both, if we could. Finding
it impossible, we let experience dictate our measures.
We came out. Consistency — consistency bade us come
out. ConsisTENcr,—we cannot always sail due east,
though our destination be Europe. It is no violation of
consistency, therefore, (if that were of any consequence,)
for us to adopt a measure like this, though it was not at
first contemplated.

I go further. I do not believe that, if we should live to
the longest period Providence ever allots to the life of a
human being, we shall see the total abolition of slavery,
unless it comes in some critical conjuncture of national
affairs, when the slave, taking advantage of a crisis in the
fate of his masters, shall dictate his own terms. How did
French slavery go down? How did the French slave-
trade go down? When Napoleon came back from Elba,
when his fate hung trembling in the balance, and he
wished to gather around him the sympathies of the liberals
of Europe, he no sooner set foot in the Tuileries than he
signed the edict abolishing the slave-trade, against which
the Abolitionists of England and France had protested for
twenty years in vain. And the trade went down, because
Napoleon felt that he must do something to gild the dark-
ening hour of his second attempt to clutch the sceptre of
France. How did the slave system go down? When, in
1848, the Provisional Government found itself in the Hé-
tel de Ville, obliged to do something to draw to itself

‘SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 85

the sympathy and liberal feeling of the French nation,
they signed an edict —it was the first from the nascent

Republic — abolishing the death-penalty and slavery.

The storm which rocked the vessel of state almost to

foundering, snapped forever the chain of the French slave.

Look, too, at the history of Mexican and South American

emancipation ; you will find that it was, in every instance,

T think, the child of convulsion.

The hour will come — God hasten it!—when the
American people shall so stand on the deck of their Union,
* built i” th’ eclipse, and rigged with curses dark.” If I
live to see that hour, I shall say to every slave, Strike
now for Freedom! [Long-continued and deafening
cheers.] The balance hangs trembling; it is uncertain
which scale shall kick the beam. Strain every nerve,
wrestle with every power God and nature have put into
your hands, for your place among the races of this Western
world”; and that hour will free the slave. The Aboli-
tionist who shall stand in such an hour as that, and keep
silence, will be recreant to the cause of three million
of his fellow-men in bonds. I believe that probably is
the only way in which we shall ever, any of us, sce the
downfall of American slavery. I do not shrink from the
toast with which Dr. Johnson flavored his Oxford Port, —
“Success to the first insurrection of the blacks in Ja-
maica!” T do not shrink from the sentiment of Southey,
in a letter to Duppa,—* There are scenes of tremendous
horror which I could smile at by Mercy’s side. An insur-
rection which should make the negroes masters of the
West Indies is one.” I believe both these sentiments are
dictated by the highest humanity, I know what anarchy
is. Tknow what civil war is. I can imagine the scenes
‘of blood through which a rebellious slave-population must
march to their rights. They are dreadful. And yet, I
do not know that, to an enlightened mind, a scene of civil

386 SIMS ANNIVERSARY.

war is any more sickening than the thought of a hundred
and fifty years of slavery. Take the broken hearts, the
bereaved mothers, the infant wrung from the hands of
its parents, the husband and wife torn asunder, every
right trodden under foot, the blighted hopes, the imbruted
souls, the darkened and degraded millions, sunk below
the level of intellectual life, melted in sensuality, herded
with beasts, who have walked over the burning marl of
Southern slavery to their graves, and where is the battle-
field, however ghastly, that is not white—white as an
angel's wing — compared with the blackness of that dark-
ness which has brooded over the Carolinas for two hundred
years? [Great sensation.] Do you love mercy? Weigh
out the fifty thousand hearts that have beaten their last
pulse amid agonies of thought and suffering fancy faints to
think of, and the fifty thousand mothers who, with sicken-
ing senses, watch for footsteps that are not wont to tarry
long in their coming, and soon tind themselves left to tread
the pathway of life alone, —add all the horrors of cities
sacked and lands laid waste,—that is war, — weigh it
now agninst some young, trembling girl sent to the auction-
me man like that taken from our court-house and
carried back into Georgia ; multiply this individual agony
into three millions ; multiply that into centuries ; and that
into all the relations of father and child, husband and
; heap on all the deep moral degradation both of the
oppressor and the oppressed, —and tell me if Waterloo or
Thermopyle can claim one tear trem the eye even of the
tenderest spit compared with this daily system
of hell amid the most civilized and Christian people on
the face of the earth!

No, T confess Tam not a non-resistant. The reason
why I advise the slave to be guided by a policy of peace
is because he has no chance. If he had one, —if he had
as good a chance as those who went up to Lexington

SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 87

seventy-seven years ago, —I should call him the basest
recreant that ever deserted wife and child if he did not
vindicate his liberty by his own right hand. [Cheers.]
And T am not by any means certain that Northern men
would not be startled —would not be wholesomely star-
tled—by one or two such cases as a scoundrel Busted
shot over his perjured affidavit. If a Morton or a Curtis
could be shot on the commissioner's bench by the hand
of him they sought to sacrifice, I have no doubt that it
would have a wholesome effect. [Great applause.] Is
there a man here who would, if he had arms in his
hands, either himself go to Georgia, or let any one near
and dear to him go there, without sending somebody
Before him to a lighter and cooler place than a Geor-
gian plantation ?

T am not dealing with the cause of three millions of
slaves. I am not dealing with the question of a great sin
and wrong existing among us. T believe I understand the
philosophy of reform. I understand the policy of waiting,
T know that, in reforming great national abuses, we cannot

to be in haste; that the most efficient protection
for the three million of slaves is to eradicate the prejudice
of the twenty millions of whites who stand above them.
T have learnt all that. But, Mr. Chairman, the question
to which I speak is a very different one. It is this.
William Crafts, an independent, isolated individual in my-
self, am no more called to secure the safety of three million
of slaves than you are. I, William Crafts, have succeeded
in getting to Boston. I have reached what is called free
territory. It happens that there are strong and sufficient
reasons why I cannot leaye these shores, or cannot YET
leave them. T have got possession of arms. I have in-

of the most intelligent men, and they tell me that
the laws afford me no protection, I have asked of the
highest authorities on government my duty in this emer-

—

down into his child's cradle, that he could

* + Protection, your Lordships are aware, aifording socurity of
property, isthe first law of the state, The Legislature has no
obedience to its Inws, the Crown has no right to demand allegi
subjects, if the Legislature and the Crown do not afford, in
‘protection for person and propery. ‘Without protection, the
‘would abdicate its fanctions, if it demanded obedience ; without

the Crown would bea usurper of its right to enforce
Brougham’'s Debate on the Irish Cowrcion Bill, 1833,

SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 89

see that little nestling one borne away, and submit, —let
him cast the first stone. But all you whose blood is wont
to stir over Naseby and Bunker Hill will hold your peace,
unless you are ready to cry, with me, Sie semper tyrannis!
So may it ever be with slave-hunters!

‘Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that the man who is not
conscientiously a non-resistant, is not only entitled, he is
bound, to use every means that he has or can get-to resist
arrest in the last resort. What is the slave, when he is
once surrendered? He goes back to degradation worse
than death, If he has children, they are to perpetuate
that degradation. He has no right to sacrifice himself or
them to that extent. These are considerations which it is
just as well to state, and to bring before the community.
T know my friend, Mr. Garrison, differs from me on this
question. Yon will listen to him. T shall not quarrel
if you agree with his judgment, and leave me alone. I
am talking to-night to the men who say they were ready
to take up their muskets in defence of Thomas Sims, or
Shadrach, or somebody else. It is very well for fiction
—for a Harriet Beecher Stowe —to paint a submissive
slave, and draw a picture that thrills your hearts. You
are very sensitive over “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Your
Merves are very sensitive; sce that your consciences are
8 sensitive as your nerves. If your hearts answered
instead of your nerves, you would rise up every one of
you Abolitionists, ready to sacrifice everything rather
than aman should go back to slavery. Let me see that
effect, and then I will reckon the value of the tears that
have answered to the wand of this magician; but till
then, they are but the tears of a nervous reader under
high excitement, Would those tears could crystallize into
ntiment, erystallize into principle, — into Christian prin-
ciple, out of which the weapon of antislavery patience and
perseverance and self-sacrifice is to be wrought! Guard

decessors in the great case of DeVere, the
hold of a twig or a twine thread to uphold

SIMS ANNIVERSARY. oO

there. When, therefore, the occasion shall demand, let
us try it! [Great cheering] It is a sad thought, that '
the possibility of a gibbet, the chance of imprisonment
for life, is the only chance which ean make it pradent for
‘a fugitive to remain in Massachusetts.

You will say this is bloody doctrine, — anurchical doc-
trine ; it will prejudice people against the cause. I know
it will. Heaven pardon those who make it necessary !
Hewven pardon the judges, the merchants, and the clergy,
who make it necessary for hunted men to turn, when
they are at bay, and fly at the necks of their pursuers!
Tt is not our fault! I shrink from no question, however
desperate, that has in it the kernel of possible safety
for a human being hunted by twenty millions of slave~
catchers in this Christian republic of ours. [Cheers.]
T am willing to confess my faith. It is this: that the
Christianity of this country is worth nothing, except it
is or can be made capable of dealing with the question
slavery. I am willing to confess another article of
faith: that the Constitution and government of this
country is worth nothing, except it is or can be made
capable of grappling with the great question of slavery.
T agree with Burke: “Z have no idea of a liberty un-
connected with honesty and justice. Nor do I believe that
any good constitutions of government or of freedom can
‘fivid tt necessary for their security to doom any part of the
people to a permanent slavery. Such a constitution of
Sreedom, if such can be, is in effect no more than another
name for the tyranny of te strongest faction ; and factions
in republics have been and are fall as capable as monarchs
‘of the most cruel oppression and injustice.” ‘That is the
Txnguage of Edmund Barke to the electors of Bristol;
Tagree with it! [Applause,] The greatest praise gov-
ernment can win is, that its citizens know their rights,
and dare to maintain them. The best use of good laws
is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.

—s a i

on these points. Tivecty is Loa
eases, under this last statute, have taken’
single State of Pennsylvania. I do not believe
in a hundred who hears me supposed there wer
dozen cases there. ele Sara
course, so much without any public e2

those slaves been surrendered ! Should the a
made “up for the other States, it would
proportion. Recollect, beside, the cases of
not by any means unfrequent, which are so 3
itated by the existence of laws like this. F
stay among us and be surrendered may excite
ation ; but remember, and this is a very i
sideration, familiarity with such scenes begets
‘the tone of public sentiment is lowered; soon
as matters of course, and the community, burnt
previous excitement, is doubly steeled against
sympathy with the sufferers. What was usurp
terday is precedent to-morrow. When we |
Supreme Court of Massachusetts to interfere
behalf, on the ground that the law of 1850
stitutional, they declined. because the law was n

SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 93.

same as that of 1798, ard that was constitutional, because
80 HELD and susmirrep To. Surely, tyranny should have
no such second acquiescence to plead. Yet that public
feeling, so alert, so indignant at the outset, already droops
and grows cold. Government stands ever a united, pow-
erful, and organized body, always in session, its tempta-
tions creeping over the dulled senses, the wearied zeal, or
the hour of want. The sympathies of a people for the
down-trodden and the weak are. scattered, evanescent,
now excited, now asleep. The assembly which is red-hot
to-day has yanished to-morrow. The indignation that
lowers around a court-house in chains is scattered in a
month. The guerilla troops of reform are now here, and
now crumbled away. On the other hand, permanently
planted, with a boundless patronage, which sways every=
thing, stands government, with hands ever open, and
eyes that never close, biding cunningly its time ; always
concentrated ; and, of course, too often able to work its
‘will, for time, against any amount of popular indignation
or sympathy.

Do not misunderstand me. I know the antislavery
cause will triumph. The mightiest intellects, the Web-
sters and the Calhouns of the Whig and Democratic
parties, —they have no more effect upon the great mass
of the public mind, in the long run, than the fly’s weight
had on the chariot-wheel where he lighted. But that is
along battle. Iam speaking now of death or life, to be
dealt out ina moment. I am dealing with a family about
to be separated, standing, as many of yon have been called
again and again to do, by the hearth, or at the table,
where that family circle were never to assemble again ;
broken and scattered to the four winds; the wife in
agony, her husband torn from her side, her children
gathering around, vainly asking, “ Where are we to go,
mother? Open those doors! How many of them

peerersion, not only of all justice, but of all law.
single and slight instance. The merciful and

SIMS ANNIVERSARY. 95

has always been, that an officer, arresting any one wrong-
fully, shall not be permitted to avail himself of his illegal”
act for the service of a true warrant while he has the man
in enstody. This would be not only a sanction, but an
encouragement, of illegal detention. But, in several of
these cases, the man has been seized on some false pre-
tence, known to be a sham, and then the authorities al-
Towed those having him in custody to waive the prosecu-
tion of the pretended claim, and serve upon him the real
warrant. The same disgraceful proceeding was allowed
in the Latimer case in this city, his master arresting him
as a thief, and afterwards dismissing that process, and
claiming him as a slave. This dangerous precedent has
been followed in many of these late cases. The spirit of
the rule, and in some cases its letter, would have set the
prisoner free, and held void all the proceedings.

Amid this entire overthrow of legal safeguards, this
utter recklessness of all the checks which the experience
of ages has invented for the control of the powerful and
the protection of the weak, it is idle to dream of any col-
ered person’s being safe. They stand alone, exposed to the
whole pelting of this pitiless storm, I wish there existed
here any feeling on this subject adequate to the crisis.
Is there such? Do you point me to the past triumphs
of the antislavery sentiment of Massachusetts? ‘The list
is short, we know it by heart. Yes, there has been
enough of feeling and effort to send Charles Sumner to
the Senate. Let us'still believe that the event will justify
us in trusting him, spite of his silence there for four long
months, — silence when so many ears have been waiting
for the promised words. There is an antislavery senti-
ment here of a certain kind. Test it, and let us see what
it is worth. There is antislavery sentiment enough to
crowd our Legislature with Free-Soilers. True. Let us
wait for some fruit, correspondent to their pledges, before
we rejoice too loudly. Heaven grant us the sight of

96 SIMS ANNIVERSARY.

some before we be forced to borrow from our fathers a
name for these legislative committees of Free-Soilers. In
1765 there were certain Parliamentary committees, to
whom were referred the petitions of the Colonists, and
many good plans of relief, and that was the last heard
of either petition or plan. Our fathers called them
«committees of oblivion.” I hope we may never need
that title again; and wherever we find the untarnished
name of Sewall, we need have no apprehension.

Yes, there is antislavery sentiment sufficient to pat
many persons on their good behavior, — sufficient to
bring Orville Dewey to his knees, and make him at-
tempt to lie himself out of a late delicate embarrassment.
[Great applause.] That, to be sure, is the only way for
a true-bred American to apologize! Some men blame us
for the personality of our attacks, — for the bad taste of
actually naming a sinner on such a platform as this.
Never doubt its benefits again. Did not the reverend
doctor “go to and fro in the earth, and walk up and
down in it,” offering to return his own mother into
slavery for our dear Union; and was he not rewarded
by our national government with a chaplaincy in the na-
vy.—as most men thought to secure him a trip to the
Mediterranean, and repose his wearied virtue? Where
could public rumer mere appropriately send him than to
that very spot on the Naples coast, where his great and
only exemplar, Nero, devoted his mother to a kinder fate
than this Christian imitator designed for a “ venerable
relative"! Could he have passed his lite at Bauli, the
genius of the place would have protected her well-deserving
son, and all had been well, But here a certain “+ rub-
a-dub agitation” had dene so much mischief, that even
the Unitarian denomination could net upheld its eminent
leader till he had expsainad tha: he did not mean his * ven-
erable relative.” he only meant kis son! How clear the
Jesson to that son not to treat others as they treat him, —

SIMS ANNIVERSARY, 7

since then he might be led to do what even his father
deems inhuman, namely, return his “venerable relative”
into slavery to save a Union! Does Dr. Dewey indeed
think it ‘‘extravagant and ridiculous to consent” to re-
turn one’s mother to slavery? On what principle, then,
it has heen well asked, does he demand that every colored
gon submit patiently to have it done? Does his Bible
read that God did not make of one blood all nations ?

Yes, we have antislavery feeling and character enough
to humble a Dewey; we want more, — want enough to
save a Sims,—to give safe shelter to Ellen Crafts. “Hide
the outcast, bewray not him that wandereth,” is the
simplest lesson of common humanity. The Common-
wealth, which, planted by exiles, proclaimed by statute
in 1641 her welcome to “any stranger who might fly to
her from the tyranny or oppression of their persecutors,” —
the State which now seeks “ rxack 1x uieKty,” should
not content herself with this: her rebuke of the tyrant,
her voice of welcome to the oppressed, should be uttered
0 loud as to be heard throughout the South. _ It should
not be necessary to fide the outcast. It ought not to be
econnted merit now that one does not lift hand against
him. O no! fidelity to ancient fame, to present honor,
to duty, to God, demands that the fugitive from the op-
pressions of other lands should be able to go up and down
our highway in peace,—tell his true name, meet his
‘old oppressor face to face, and feel that a whole Common-
wealth stands between him and all chance of harm.

** God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!”
How coldly, often, does the old prayer fall from careless
lips! How sure to reach the ear of Him, who heareth
the sighing of the prisoner, when it shall rise, in ecstasy
of gratitude, from the slave-hut of the Carolinas, or from
the bursting heart of the fugitive, who, after deadly peril,
rests at last beneath the shadow of her protection !

PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT."

|
5
R. CHAIRMAN: I have to present, from the busi
ness committee, the following resolution : —

“ Resolved, That the object of this society is now, as it has
always been, to convince our countrymen, by arguments ad-
dressed to their hearts and consciences, that slaveholding is a
heinous crime, and that the duty, safety, and interest of all
concerned demand its immediate abolition, without expatria-
tion.”

I wish, Mr. Chairman, to notice some objections that
have been made to our course ever since Mr, Garrison
began his career, and which have been lately urged again,
with considerable force and emphasis, in the columns of
the London Leader, the able organ of a very respectable
and influential class in England. I hope, Sir, you will
not think it waste of time to bring such a subject before
you. I know these objections have been made a thonsand
times, that they have been often answered, though we
generally submitted to them in silence, willing to let
results speak for us. But there are times when justice
to the slave will not allow us to be silent. There are
many in this country, many in England, who have had
their attontion turned, recently, to the antislavery cause.
They are asking, “ Which is the best and most efficient

® Speoch before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, at the Melodeon,
‘Boston, January 27, 1853.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 99

method of helping it?” Engaged ourselves in an effort
for the slave, which time has tested and success hitherto
approved, we are very properly desirous that they should
join us in our labors, and pour into this channel the fall
tide of their new zeal and great resources. Thoroughly
convinced ourselves that our course is wise, we can hon-
estly urge others to adopt it. Long experience gives us a
right to advise. The fact that our course, more than all
other efforts, has caused that agitation which has awakened
these new converts, gives us a right to counsel them.
They are our spiritual children: for their sakes, we would
free the cause we love and trust from every seeming de-
fect and plausible objection. For the slave's sake, we reit-
erate our explanations, that he may lose no tittle of help
by the mistakes or misconceptions of his friends.

All that I have to say on these points will be to you,
Mr, Chairman, very trite and familiar ; but the facts may
be new to some, and I prefer to state them here, in Bos-
ton, where we have lived and worked, because, if our
statements are incorrect, if we claim too much, our assere
tions can be easily answered and disproved. ae

The charges to which I refer are these: that, in deal-\,
ing with slaycholders and their apologists, we indulge in
fieree denunciations, instead of appealing to their reason |
‘and common sense by plain statements and fair argument ;
—that we might have won the sympathies and support of
the nation, if we would have submitted to argue this ques-
tion with a manly patience ; but, instead of this, we have
outraged the feelings of the community by attacks, unjust
and unnecessarily severe, on its most valued institutions,
and gratified our spleen by indiscriminate abuse of leading
men, who were often honest in their intentions, however
mistaken in their views ;—that we have utterly neglected
the ample means that Jay around us to convert the nation,
submitted to no discipline, formed no plan, been guided by

100 THE PHILOSOPHY OF

no foresight, but hurried on in childish, reckless, blind, and
hot-headed zeal, — bigots in the narrowness of our views,
and fanatics in our blind fury of invective and malignant
judgment of other men’s motives.

There are some who come upon our platform, and give
us the aid of names and reputations less burdened than
ours with popular odium, who are perpetually urging us to
exercise charity in our judgments of those about us, and to
consent to argue these questions. These men are ever
parading their wish to draw a line between themselves and
us, because they must be permitted to wait,—to trast more
to reason than feeling, — to indulge a generous charity, —
to rely on the sure influence of simple truth, uttered in
love, &c., &c. I reject with scorn all these implications
that our judgments are uncharitable, — that we are lacking
in patience, — that we have any other dependence than on
the simple truth, spoken with Christian frankness, yet with
Christian love. These lectures, to which you, Sir, and all
of us, have so often listened. would be impertinent, if they
were not rather ridiculous for the gross ignorance they
betray of the community, of the cause, and of the whole
course of its friends.

The article in the Leader to which I refer is signed
“Tox,” and may be found in the Liberator of December
17,1852. The writer is condial and generous in his recog-
nition of Mr. Garrison's claim to be the representative of
the antislavery movement, and does entire justice to his
motives and character. The criticisms of + Ion” were
reprinted in the Christian Register, of this city, the organ
of the Unitarian denomination. The editors of that paper,
with their usual Christian courtesy. love of truth, and fair-
dealing, omitted all + Ton’s ” expressions of regard for Mr.
Garrison and appreciation of his motives. and reprinted
only those parts of the article which undervalue his saga-
city and influence, and indore the common objections to

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 101

his method and views. You will see in a moment, Mr.
President, that it is with such men and presses “Ion”
thinks Mr, Garrison has not been sufficiently wise and
patient, in trying to win their help for the antislavery
cause. Perhaps, were he on the spot, it would tire even
his patience, and puzzle even his sagncity, to make any
other use of them than that of the drunken Helot,—a
warning to others how disgusting is mean vice. Perhaps,
were he here, he would see that the best and only use to
be made of them is to let them unfold their own charac-
ters, and then show the world how rotten our polities and
religion are, that they naturally bear such fruit. “Jon”
quotes Mr. Garrison's original declaration, in the Liber-
‘ator: —

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language;
Dut is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth,
and ss uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest, —I will not
equivocate, —I will not excuse,—I will not retreat a single
inch, — wp I wit pr Heap.

“It is pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation
by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitaney of my
measures. ‘The charge is not true. On this question, my influ-
ence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable
extent, and shall be felt in coming years, —not perniciously, but
beneficially, —not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity
‘will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God that
he enables me to disregard ‘the fear of man, which bringeth a
sare, and to speak his trath in its simplicity and power.”

“Ton” then goes on to say : —

This is a defence which has been generally accepted on this
‘side of the Atlantic, and many are the Abolitionists among us
swhom it has encouraged in honesty and impotence, and whom it
‘has converted into conscientious hinderances. . » . «

* We would have Mr. Garrison to say, ‘I will be os harsh as
(progress, as uncompromising as success.’ If a man speaks for his
own gratification, he may be as ‘harsh’ as he pleases; but if he

—

102 ‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF

speaks for the down-trodden and oppressed, he must be content
to put a curb upon the tongue of holiest passion, and speak only
‘as harshly as is compatible with the amelioration of the evil he
proposes to redress, Let the question be again repeated: Do
you seek for the slave vengeance or redress? If you seck retali-
ation, go on denouncing. But distant Europe honors William
‘Lloyd Garrison becanse it credits him with seeking for the slave
simply redress. We say, therefore, that ‘ uncompromising ’ poliey
is not to be measured by absolute justice, but hy practical ameli-
oration of the slave's condition. Amelioration as fast as you can
get it, — absolute justice as soon as you can reach it.”

He quotes the sentiment of Confucius, that he would
choose for a leader ‘a man who would maintain a steady
vigilance in the direction of affairs, who was capable of
forming plans, and of executing them,” and says: —

“The philosopher was right in placing wisdom and executive
capacity above courage; for, down to this day, our popular move-
ments are led by heroes who fear nothing, and who win noth
Peg

“There is no question raised in these articles as to the work
to be done, but only as to the mode of really doing it. ‘The plate
form resounds with announcements of principle, which is but
asserting the right, while nothing but contempt is showered on
policy, which is the realization of right. The air is filled with
all high cries and gpirited denunciations ; indignation is at a pre-
mium; and this is called advocacy. . . . . But to calculate,
to make sure of your aim, is to be descried as one who is too cold
to feel, too genteel to strike.”

Further on, he observes: — -

“If an artillery officer throws shell after shell which never
reach the enemy, he is replaced by some one with a better eye
and a surer aim. But in the artillery battle of opinion, to mean
to hit is quite sufficient ; and if you have a certain grand indiffer-
ence as to whether you hit or not, you may count on public ap-

“ A man need be no less militant, as the soldier of facts, than

— aA

‘THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 103

as the agent of swords, But the arena of argument needs dis-
cipline, no less than that of arms. It is this which the avti-
slayery party seem to me not only to overlook, but to despise,
‘They do not put their valor to drill. Neither on the field nor
the platform has courage any inherent capacity of taking care
of itself”

‘The writer then proceeds to make a quotation from Mr,
Emerson, the latter part of which I will read : —

“Let us withhold every reproachfil, and, if we can, every
indignant remark, Tn this cause, we must renounce our temper,
and the risings of pride. If there be any man who thinks the
tuin of a race of mena small matter compared with the last
decorations and completions of his own comfort, —who would
‘uot so much as part with his ice-cream to save them from rapine
and manacles, —I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man
that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing
the negro nation on a fair footing, than by robbing them. If the
Virginian piques himself on the picturesque luxury of his vas-
sulage, on the heavy Ethiopian manners of his house-servants,
their silent obedience, their hue of bronze, their turbaned heads,
‘and would not exchange them for the more intelligent but pre-
earious hired services of whites, I shall not refuse to show him
that, when their free papers are made out, it will still be their
interest fo remain on his estates; and that the oldest planters
of Jamaica are convinced that it is cheaper to pay wages than
to own slaves.”

‘The eritic takes exception to Mr. Garrison's approval of
the denunciatory language in which Daniel O'Connell
rebuked the giant sin of America, and concludes his article
with this sentence :—

“When William Lloyd Garrison praises the great Celtic
monarch of invective for this dire outpouring, he acts the part
‘of the boy who fancies that the terror is in the war-whoop of the
Acree of the quieter muskets of the civilized infantry,

‘whose tmostentatious execution blows whoop and tomahawk to
‘the Devil.”

—

“ popular movements ” in England, which, he says,

led by heroes who fear nothing and who twin

If the leaders of popular movements in Great

the last fifty years have been losers, I should be

Know what party, in “Jon's” opinion, have won?

Lord Derby and his friends seem to think \
made, and is making, dangerous headway. If the men
who, by popular agitation, outside of Parliament, wrung

Yel

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 105

from a powerful oligarchy Parliamentary Reform, and the
Abolition of the Test Acts, of High Post Rates, of Catholic
Disability, of Negro Slavery and the Corn Laws, did “ not
win ing,” it would be hard to say what winning is,
Tf the men who, without the ballot, made Peel their tool
and conquered the Duke of Wellington, are considered
unsnecessful, pray what kind of a thing would success be?
Those who now, at the head of that same middle class,
demand the separation of Church and State, and the
Extension of the Ballot, may well guess, from the fluttering
of Whig and Tory dove-cotes, that soon they will “win”
that same ‘‘nothing.” Heaven grant they may enjoy the
same #2 success with their predecessors! On our side of
the ocean, too, we ought deeply to sympathize with the
leaders of the temperance movement in their entire want
of success! If ‘“Ton’s” mistakes about the antislavery
cause Iay as much on the surface as those I have just
noticed, it would be hardly worth while to reply to him 5
for as to these, he certainly exhibits only ‘the extent and
variety of his misinformation.”

His remarks upon the antislavery movement are, how-
ever, equally inaccurate. I claim, before you who know
the tme state of the case, —TI claim for the antislavery
movement with which this society is identified, that, look-
ing back over its whole course, and considering the men
connected with it in the mass, it has been marked by
sound judgment, unerring foresight, the most sagacious

ion of means to ends, the strictest self-discipline,
the most thorough research, and an amount of patient and
tmanly argument addressed to the conscience and intellect
of the nation, such as no other cause of the kind, in Eng-
land or this country, has ever offered. I claim, also, that
its course has been marked by a cheerful surrender of
all individual claims to merit or leadership, — the most
cordial welcoming of the slightest effort, of every honest

—

‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF

attempt, to lighten or to break the chain of the slave. T
need not waste time by repeating the superfluous con-
fession that we are men, and therefore do not claim to be
perfect. Neither would I be understood as denying that
we use denunciation, and ridicule, and every other weapon
that the human mind knows, We mast plead guilty,
there be guilt in not knowing how to separate the sin from
the sinner. With all the fondness for abstractions at-
tributed to us, we are not yet capable of that. We are
fighting a momentous battle at desperate odds, —one
against a thousand. Every weapon that ability or
rance, wit, wealth, prejudice, or fashion can is
pointed against us. The guns are shotted to their lips
‘The arrows are poisoned. Fighting against such an array,
we cannot afford to confine ourselves to any one weapon.
The cause is not ours, so that we might, rightfully, post-
pone or put in peril the victory by moderating our de-
mands, stifling our convictions, or filing down our rebukes,
to gratify any sickly taste of our own, or to spare the
delicate nerves of our neighbor. Our clients are three
millions of Christian slaves, standing dumb suppliants at
the threshold of the Christian world. ‘They have no
voice but ours to utter their complaints, or to demand
justice. The press, the pulpit, the wealth, the litera-
ture, the prejudices, the political arrangements, the
present self-interest of the country, are all against us.
God has given us no weapon but the truth, faithfully
uttered, and addressed, with the old prophets’ directness,
to the conscience of the individual sinner. The elements
which control public opinion and mould the masses are
against us. We can but pick off here and there a man
from the triumphant majority. We have fuets for those
who think, arguments for those who reason ; but he who
cannot be reasoned out of his prejudices must be

out of them ; he who cannot be argued out of his selfish-

be Pa!

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 107

ness must be shamed out of it by the mirror of his hateful
self held up relentlessly before his eyes. We live in
Jand where every man makes broad his phylactery, in-
scribing thereon, “All men are created equal,” —‘ God
hath made of one blood all nations of men.” It seems to
us that in such a land there must be, on this question of
slavery, slaggards to be awakened, as well as doubters to
be convinced. Many more, we verily believe, of the first
than of the last. There are far more dead hearts to be
quickened, than confused intellects to be cleared up,—
more dumb dogs to be made to speak, than doubting
consciences to’ be enlightened. [Loud cheers.] We
have use, then, sometimes, for something beside argu-
ment.

What is the denunciation with which we are charged?
Tt is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to de-
clare the enormity of the sin of making merchandise of
men,—of separating husband and wife,—taking the
infant from its mother, and selling the daughter to pros-
titution, —of a professedly Christian nation denying, by
statute, the Bible to every sixth man and woman of its
population, and making it illegal for “two or three to
meet together, excep a white man be present! What
is this harsh criticism of motives with which we are
charged? It is simply holding the intelligent and delib-
‘erate actor responsible for the character and consequences
of his acts. Is there anything inherently wrong in such
denunciation or such criticism? This we may claim, —
we have never jndged a man but out of his own mouth.
We have seldom, if ever, held him to account, except for
acts of which he and his own friends were proud. All
that we ask the world and thoughtful men to note are
the principles and deeds on which the American pulpit
and American public men plume themselves. We always
allow our opponents to paint their own pictures. Our

108 ‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF

humble duty is to stand by and assure the spectators that
what they would take for a knave or a

in American estimation, a Doctor of Divinity or
of State."

The South is one great brothel, where half a million of
women are flogged to prostitution, or, worse still, are
degraded to believe it honorable. The pete
of half our great cities echo to the wail of

asunder at the auction-block ; no one of our fair rivers
that has not closed over the negro seeking in death a
refuge from a life too wretched to bear; thousands of
fugitives skull slong our highways, afraid to tell thee
names, and trembling at the sight of 2 human being;
free men are kidnapped in our streets, to be

that hell of slavery ; and now and then one, as if’ by mit

‘© A paragraph: from the New Bngland Farmer, ofthis city, dan gona tht
rounds of the press, and is generally believed. Tt says :— :
“We learn, on reliable authority, that Mr, Webster confessed to a
political friend, a short time before his death, that the great mistake
life was the famous Seveuth of March Speech, in which, it will be reimes-
ered, he defended the Fugitive Slave Law, and fully committed himself io
the Compromise Measures, Before taking his stand on that occasion,
said to have corresponded with Professor Stuart, and other
Yo ascertain how far the religious sentiment of the North would
hhim in the position he was about to assuine.”” “
‘Some say this “warm political friend” was a clergyman! Consider »
moment the language of this statement, the form it takes on every lip nd
in every press. The great mistake of his life”! Seventy years olf,
brought up ia New England charches, with all the culture of the world at
his command, his soul inelted by the repeated loss of those dearest to
him, a great statesman, with a heart, according to his admirers, yet tender
‘and freeh,—one who beat in such agony over the death-bed of his first
Aaughter, —he looks back on this speech, which his friends say changed the
feelings of ten millions of people, and made it possible to enact and exd-
cute the Fugitive Slave Law. He sces that it flooded the hearth-stones of
thousands of colored men with wretchedness and despair, —cruzed the
mother, and broke tho heart of the wifa,— putting the virtue of woman
‘and the liberty of man in the power of tho vilest, —and all, as he at feast

itted a foul outrage on my brother maa" 1
ly with the welfare of the poor’? Was there no.

“the grandest growth of our sofl and ous insti-
‘said, “T made a mistake!” Not, «1 ws

be entirely true or mot, we all know it is
ich all about us mlk of that speech. If the stato-
entire want of right feeling and moral sensibility it
! If it be unfounded, still the welcome it hus re-

110 THE PHILOSOPHY OF

human being. Our sim is to alter public opinion. Dil
we live in a market, our talk should be of dollars and
cents, and we would seek to prove only that y ws
an unprofitable investment. Were the nation one great
pure church, we would sit down and reason of “
eousness, temperance, and judgment to come,”
slavery fortified itself in a college, we would load our
cannons with cold facts, and wing our arrows with angu-
ments. But we happen to live in the world, —the world
made up of thought and impulse, of self-conceit and self
interest, of weak men and wicked. To conquer, we must
reach all. Our object is not to make every man a Chris
tian or a philosopher, but to induce every one to aid in
the abolition of slavery, We expect to accomplish our
object long before the nation is made over into saints or
elevated into philosophers. To change public opinion, we
use the very tools by which it was formed. That is, all
such as an honest man may touch. -

All this T am not only ready to allow, but I should be
ashamed to think of the slave, or to look into the face of
my fellow-man, if it were otherwise. It is the only thing
that justifies us to our own consciences, and a
able to say we have done, or at least tried to do, our

So far, however you distrust my philosophy, you
not doubt my statements. That we have
rebuked with unsparing fidelity will not be denied. Have
we not also addressed ourselves to that other duty, of ax
guing our question thoroughly ?— of using due discretion
and fair sagacity in endeavoring to promote our cause?
Yes, we have. Every statement we have made has been
doubted. Every principle we have laid down has been
denied by overwhelming majorities against us. No one
step has ever been gained but by the most laborious
research and the most exhausting argument. And no
question has ever, since Revolutionary days, been so thar

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 11

oughly investigated or argued hore, as that of slavery.
Of that research and that argument, of the whole of it,
the old-fashioned, fanatical, crazy Garrisonian antislavery
movement has been the author, From this band of men
has proceeded every important argument or idea which
has been broached on the antislavery question from 1830
to the present time. [Cheers.] I am well aware of the
extent of the claim I make. I recognize, as fully as any
one can, the ability of the new laborers, — the eloquence
and genius with which they have recommended this cause
to the nation, and flashed conviction home on the con-
science of the community. I do not mean, either, to
assert that they have in every instance borrowed from our
treasury their facts and arguments. Left to themselves,
they would probably have looked up the one and origi-
nated the other. As a matter of fact, however, they have

made use of the materials collected to their
hands. But there are some persons about us, sympathiz~
ers to a great extent with “ Ion,” who pretend that the
antislavery movement has been hitherto mere fanaticism,
its only weapon angry abuse. ‘They are obliged to assert
this, in order to justify their past indifference or hostility.
At present, when it suits their purpose to give it some at-
tention, they endeavor to explain the change by alleging
that now it has been taken up by men of thoughtful
minds, and its claims are urged by fair discussion and able
argument. My claim, then, is this: that neither the char-
ity of the most timid of sects, the sagacity of our wisest
converts, nor the culture of the ripest scholars, though all
have been aided by our twenty years’ experience, has yet
struck out any new method of reaching the public mind,
or originated any new argument or train of thought, or
discovered any new fact bearing on the question. When
onee brought fully into the struggle, they have found it
‘Recessary to adopt the same means, to rely on the same

112 THE PHILOSOPHY OF

moderation,

Sent cal was cadooree o dtors eat ea
their camp and ours, have been thrown away. Just so
far as they have been effective laborers, bedi
as we have, their hands against every man, and ae
man’s hand against them, The most experienced of
aera ter dedp sod oe
course efficient, and that our unpopularity is mo fault of
ours, but flows necessarily and unavoidably from
tion. “I should suspect,” says old Fuller, that ‘is

had no salt in it, if no galled horse did wince.”
Our friends find, after all, that men do not so much h
us as the truth we utter and the light we bring. 17
find that the community are not the honest seekers after
trath which they fancied, but selfish politicians and secta-
rian bigots, who shiver, like Alexander's butler, whenever
the sun shines on them. Experience has driven these
new laborers back to our method. We have no
with them, — would not steal one wreath of their laurels.
All we claim is, that, if they are to be complimented as
prudent, moderate, Christian, sagacious, statesmanlike re-
formers, we deserve the same praise ; for they have done
nothing that we, in our measure, did not attempt before.
(Cheers. ]

T claim this, that the canse, in its recent aspecty has put
on nothing but timidity. It has taken to itself no new
‘weapons of recent years; it has become more compromis~
ing, —that is all! It has become neither more persna-
sive, more learned, more Christian, more charitable, nor
more effective than for the twenty years preceding, Mr.
Hale, the head of the Free Soil movement, after a career
in the Senate that would do honor to any man, —after a

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 113

six years’ course which entitles him to the respect and
confidence of the antislavery public, — can put his name,
within the Inst month, to an appeal from the city of
Washington, signed by a Houston and a Cass, for a monu-
ment to be raised to Henry Clay! If that be the test of
charity and courtesy, we cannot give it to the world.
[Loud cheers.] Some of the leaders of the Free Soil
party of Massachusetts, after exhausting the whole capa-
city of our language to paint the treachery of Daniel
Webster to the canse of liberty, and the evil they thought
he was able and seeking to do, — after that, could feel it
in their hearts to parade themselves in the funeral proces-
sion got up to do him honor! In this we allow we cannot
follow them. The deference which every gentleman owes
to the proprieties of social life, that self-respect and re=
gard to consistency which is every man’s duty, — these, if
no deeper feelings, will ever prevent us from giving such
proofs of this newly-invented Christian courtesy. [Great
cheering] We do not play politics; antislavery is no
half-jest with us; it i: a terrible earnest, with life or death,
worse than life or death, on the issue. It is no lawsuit,
where it matters not to the good feeling of opposing coun-
sel which way the verdict goes, and where advocates can
shake hands after the decision as pleasantly as before.
When we think of such a man as Henry Clay, his long
life, his mighty influence cast always into the scale against
the slave, —of that irresistible fascination with which he
moulded every one to his will; when we remember that,
his conseience acknowledging the justice of our canse,
und his heart open on every other side to the gentlest im-
pulses, he could sacrifice so remorsely his convictions and
the welfare of millions to his low ambition; when we
think how the slave trembled at the sound of his voice,
and that, from a multitude of breaking hearts there went
Up nothing but gratitude to God when it pleased him to
8

Mii

and speak the same of the dead as of #l
they have done and the example they lea
enjoy at least the luxury of forgetting

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 116

large majorities, and counting safely on the prejudices of
the community, can afford to despise us. They know
they can overawe or cajole the Present; their only fear
is the judgment of the Future. Strange fear, perhaps,
considering how short and local their fame! But however
little, it is their all. Our only hold upon them is the
thought of that bar of posterity, before which we are all
tostand, Thank God! there is the elder brother of the
Saxon race across the water, — there is the army of hon-
est men to come! Before that jury we summon you.
We are weak here, —ont-talked, out-voted. You load
our names with infamy, and shout us down. But our
words bide their time. We warn the living that we have
terrible memories, and that their sins are never to be for-

We will gibbet the name of every apostate so
black and high that his children’s children shall blush to
bear it, Yet we bear no malice, —cherish no resentment.
We thank God that the love of fame, ‘ that last infirmity
of noble mind,” is shared by the ignoble. In our neces-
sity, we seize this weapon in the slave's behalf, and teach
eantion to the living by meting out relentless justice to
the dead. How strange the change death produces in the
way a man is talked about here! While leading men
live, they ayoid as much as possible all mention of slavery,
from fear of being thought Abolitionists. The moment
they are dead, their friends rake up every word they ever
contrived to whisper in a corner for liberty, and parade it
before the world; growing angry, all the while, with us,
becanse we insist on explaining these chance expressions
by the tenor of a long and base life. While drunk with
the temptations of the present hour, men are willing to
bow to any Moloch. When their friends bury them, they
fecl what bitter mockery, fifty years hence, any epitaph
vill be, if it cannot record of one living in this era some
service rendered to the slave! These, Mr. Chairman,

116 THE PHILOSOPHY OF

are the reasons why we take care that “the memory of
the wicked shall rot.”

T have claimed that the antislavery cause has, from the
first, been ably and dispassionately argued, every objection
candidly examined, and every difficulty or doubt anywhere
honestly entertained treated with respect. Let me glance
at the literature of the cause, and try not so much, in a
brief hour, to prove this assertion, as to point out the
sources from which any one may satisfy himself of its
truth.

I will begin with certainly the ablest and perhaps the
most honest statesman who has ever touched the slave
question. Any one who will examine John Quincy
Adams's speech on Texas, in 1838, will see that he was
only seconding the full and able exposure of the Texss
plot, prepared by Benjamin Lundy, to one of whose
pamphlets Dr. Channing, in his “Letter to Henry Clay,”
has confessed his obligation. Every one acquainted with
those years will allow that the North owes its earliest
knowledge and first awakening on that subject to Mr.
Lundy, who made long journeys and devoted years to
the investigation. His labors have this attestation, that
they quickened the zeal and strengthened the hands of
such men as Adams and Channing. I have been told
that Mr. Lundy prepared a brief for Mr. Adams, and
furnished him the materials for his speech on Texas.

Look next at the right of petition. Long before any
member of Congress had opened his mouth in its defence,
the Abolition presses and lecturers had examined and
defended the limits of this right with profound historical
research and eminent constitutional ability. So thor-
oughly had the work been done, that all classes of the
people had made up their minds about it long before
any speaker of eminence had touched it in Congress.
The politicians were little aware of this When Mr.

ding the Bibls fnto theic servieey and]
there had been short and somewhat sup

‘THE ALOLITION MOVEMENT. 119

On the constitutional questions which have at various
times arisen, —the citizenship of the colored man, the
soundness of the “ Prigg” decision, the constitutionality
of the old Fugitive Slave Law, the true construction of
the slave-surrender clause, — nothing has been added,
either in the way of fact or argument, to the works of
Jay, Weld, Alvan Stewart, E, G. Loring, 8. E. Sewall,
Richard Hildreth, W. I. Bowditch, the masterly essays
of the Emancipator at New York and the Liberator at
Boston, and the various addresses of the Massachusetts
and American Societies for the last twenty years. The
idea of the antislavery character of the Constitution, —
the opiate with which Free Soil quiets its conscience for
voting under a proslavery government, —I heard first
suggested by Mr. Garrison in 1838. It was elaborately
argued that year in all our antislavery gatherings, both
here and in New York, and sustained with great ability
by Alvan Stewart, and in part by TD. Weld. The

construction of the Constitution was ably
tirgued in 1836, in the “ Antislavery Magazine,” by Rev.
Samuel J. May, one of the very first to seek the side of
Mr. Garrison, and pledge to the slave his life and efforts, —
apledge which thirty years of devoted labors haye nobly
redeemed. If it has either merit or truth, they are due
to no legal learning recently added to our ranks, but to
some of the old and well-known pioneers. ‘This claim
tas since received the fullest investigation from Mr. Ly-
sander Spooner, who has urged it with all his unrivalled
ingenuity, laborious research, and close logic. He writes
8 a lawyer, and has no wish, I believe, to be ranked with

any class of antislavery men.

‘The influence of slavery on our government has re-
esived the profoundest philosophical investigation from
the pen of Richard Hildreth, in his invaluable essay on

“Despotism in America,” —a work which deserves a

his intellect and the fulness of his
will acknowledge. He never trusted |
any subject till he had dug down to its |

and too few, are remarkable for their ¢

iron logic, bold denunciation, and the

thrown back upon our history, Yet how | onic
present which was not familiar for years in
meetings!

Look, too, at the last great effort of the |
thousands, Mr. Senator Sumner, —the di
national question, of which it has been
go back to Webster's Reply to Hayne,

‘on the Jay Treaty, to find its equal in C

THE AGOLITION MOVEMENT. 121

which we might perhaps qualify, if any adequate report »
were left us of some of the noble orations of Adams.
‘No one can be blind to the skilful use he has made of his
materials, the consummate ability with which he has mar-
shalled them, and the radiant glow which his genius has
thrown overall. Yet, with the exception of his reference
to the antislavery debate in Congress, in 1817, there is
hardly a train of thought or argument, and no single fact
in the whole speech, which has not been familiar in our
meetings and essays for the last ten years.

Before leaving the halls of Congress, I have great pleas-
ure in recognizing one exception to my remarks, Mr. Gid-
dings. Perhaps he is no real exception, since it would not
be difficult to establish his claim to be considered one of
the original Abolition party. But whether he would
choose to be so considered or not, it is certainly true that
his long presence at the seat of government, his whole-
souled devotedness, his sagucity and unwearied industry,
aye made him a large contributor to our antislavery
resources.

The relations of the American Church to slavery, and
the duties of private Christians, —the whole casuistry of
this portion of the question, so momentous among descend-
ants of the Puritans, —have been discussed with great
aenteness and rare common-sense by Messrs. Garrison,
Goodell, Gerritt Smith, Pillsbury, and Foster. They have
never attempted to judge the American Church by any
standard except that which she has herself laid down, —
never claimed that she should be perfect, byt have con-
tented themselves by demanding that she should be con-
sistent. They have never judged her except out of her
own mouth, and on facts asserted by her own presses and
leaders. The sundering of the Methodist and Baptist de-
nominations, and the universal agitation of the religious
world, are the best proof of the sagacity with which their

soon opened. Since then we have been ci
eae ee Chen

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 128

Mr. John Quincy Adams, a man far better acquainted
with his own times than Dr. Channing, recognized the
soundness of our policy. I do not know that he ever
uttered a word in public on the delinquency of the
churches ; bnt he is said to have assured his son, at the
time the Methodist Church broke asunder, that other
men might be more startled by the éclat of political suc~
cess, but nothing, in his opinion, promised more good, or
showed more clearly the real strength of the antislavery
movement, than that momentous event."

In 1838, the British Emancipation in the West Indies
opened a rich field for observation, and a full harvest of
in facts. The Abolitionists, not willing to wait
for the official reports of the government, sent special
agents through those islands, whose reports they seattered,
at great expense and by great exertion, broadcast through
the land. This was at a time when no newspaper in the
country would either lend or sell them the aid of its
columns to enlighten the nation on an experiment so
vitally important to us. And even now, hardly a press
in the country cares or dares to bestow a line or com-
municate a fact toward the history’ of that remarkable
revolution. The columns of the Antislavery Standard,
Pennsylvania Freeman, and Ohio Bugle have been for
years fall of all that a thorough and patient advocacy
of our cause demands. And the eloquent lips of many
whom I see around me, and whom I need not name
here, have done their share toward pressing all these
topies on public attention. There is hardly any record
of these Inbors of the living voice. Indeed, from the
nature of the case, there cannot be any adequate one.
Yet, unable to command a wide circulation for our

* Henry Clay attached the samo importance to the ecclesiastical influence

‘und divisions. Soe hie “Interview with Rey. Dr. Hill, of Louisville, Ky.,”
Aniislavery Standard, Suly 14, 1860.

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 125

nexation” are the ablest and most valuable contribution
that has been made towards a history of the whole plot.
Though we foresaw and proclaimed our conviction that
annexation would be, in the end, a fatal step for the
South, we did not feel at liberty to relax our opposition,
well knowing the vast increase of strength it would give,
at first, to the Slave Power. I remember being one of
4 committee which waited on Abbott Lawrence, a year
or so only before annexation, to ask his countenance to
some general movement, without distinction of party,
against the Texas scheme. He smiled at our fears,
begged us to have no apprehensions; stating that: his cor-
respondence with leading men at Washington enabled him
to assure us annexation was impossible, and that the
South itself was determined to defeat the project, A
short time after, Senators and Representatives from Texas
took their seats in Congress!

Many of these services to the slave were done before T

joined his cause. In thus referring to them, do not sup-
pose me merely seeking occasion of eulogy on my prede-
‘cessors and present co-laborers. I recall these things only
to rebut the contemptuous criticism which some about us
make the excuse for their past neglect of the movement,
‘and in answer to “Ton’s” representation of our course as
reckless fanaticism, childish impatience, utter lack of good
sense, and of our meetings as scenes only of excitement,
of reckless and indiscriminate denunciation. I assert that
every social, moral, economical, religious, political, and
Iistorieal aspect of the question has been ably and pa-
i examined. And all this has been done with an
industry and ability which have left little for the profes-
sional skill, scholarly culture, and historical learning of the
new laborers to accomplish. If the people are still in
doubt, it is from the inherent difficulty of the subject, or a
hatred of light, not from want of it.

126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF

So far from the antislavery cause having lacked a manly
and able discussion, I think it will be acknowledged here-
after that this discussion has been one of the noblest con-
tributions to a literature really American. Heretofore,
not only has our tone been but an echo of foreign culture,
but the very topics discussed and the views maintained
have been too often pale reflections of European polities
and Enropean philosophy. No matter what dress we
assumed, the voice was ever ‘the voice of Jacob.” At
last we have stirred a question thoroughly American; the
subject has been looked at from a point of view entirely
American; and it is of such deep interest, that it has
called out all the intellectual strength of the nation. For
once, the nation speaks its own thoughts, in its own
language, and the tone also is all its own. It will hardly
do for the defeated party to claim that, in this discussion,
all the ability is on their side.

‘We are charged with lacking foresight, and said to
exaggerate. This charge of exaggeration brings to my
mind a fact I mentioned, last month, at Horticultural
Hall. The theatres in many of our large cities bring out,
night after night, all the radical doctrines and all the
startling scenes of “Uncle Tom.” They preach imme-
diate emancipation, and slaves shoot their hunters to loud
applause. Two years ago, sitting in this hall, I was”
myself somewhat startled by the assertion of my friend,
Mr, Pillsbury, that the theatres would receive the
of antislavery truth earlier than the churches. A hiss
went up, from the galleries, and many in the audience
were shocked by the remark. I asked myself whether I
could indorse such a statement, and felt that I could not.
T could not believe it to be true. Only two years have
passed, and what was then deemed rant and fanaticism,
by seven out of ten who heard it, has proved true. The
theatre, bowing to its audience, has preached immediate

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 197

emancipation, and given us the whole of “ Uncle Tom”
while the pulpit is either silent or hostile, and in the
columns of the theological papers the work is subjected to
criticism, to reproach, and its author to severe rebuke.
Do not; therefore, friends, set down as extravagant every
statement which your experience does not warrant, It
may be that you and I have not studied the signs of the
times quite as accurately as the speaker. Going up and
down the land, coming into close contact with the feelings
and prejudices of the community, he is sometimes a better
judge than you are of its present state. An Abolitionist
has more motives for watching and more means of finding
out the true state of public opinion, than most of those
careless critics who jeer at his assertions to-day, and are
the first to cry, “ Just what I said,” when his prophecy
becomes fact to-morrow.

‘Mr. “Ion” thinks, also, that we have thrown away
‘opportunities, and needlessly outraged the men and par-
ties about us. Far from it. The antislavery movement
‘was a patient and humble suppliant at every door whence
any help could possibly be hoped. If we now repudiate
and denounce some of our institutions, it is because we
have faithfully tried them, and found them deaf to the
Glaims of justice and humanity. Our great Leader, when
he first meditated this crusade, did not

“At once, like a sunburst, his banner unfurl”
Ono! he sounded his way warily forward. Brought up
in the strictest reverence for church organizations, his first
effort was to enlist the clergymen of Boston in the support
of his views. On their aid he counted confidently in his
effort, to preach immediate repentance of all sin. He did
‘not go, with malice prepense, as some seem to imagine, up
to that “attic” where Mayor Otis with difficulty found
lim. He did not court hostility or seck exile, He
did not sedulously endeavor to cut himself off from

i
i

feet. He recognized

idempehies folate
them,

sig]
niet
Fi

thought they were slow and. faltering.tn)
to conscience, and that they ought to

* Tho writer accompanied Mr. Garrison, in 18%

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 129

much sooner than they did. But a patience, which old
sympathies would not allow to be exhausted, and associa-
tions, planted deeply in youth, and spreading over a large
part of manhood, were too strong for any mere argument
to dislodge them. So they still persisted in remaining in
the Church. Their zeal was so fervent, and their labors
so abundant, that in some towns large societies were
formed, led by most of the clergymen, and having almost
all the church-members on their lists. In those same
towns now you will not find one single Abolitionist, of
any stamp whatever. They excuse their falling back by
alleging that we have injured the cause by our extrava-
gance and denunciation, and by the various other ques-
tions with which onr names are associated. This might
be a good reason why they should not work with us, but
does it excuse their not working at all? These people
have been once awakened, thoroughly instructed in the
momentous character of the movement, and have acknowl-
edged the rightful claim of the slave on their sympathy
and exertions. It is not possible that a few thousand per-
sons, however extravagant, could prevent devoted men
from finding some way to help such « cause, or at least
manifesting their interest in it. But they have not only
left ms, they have utterly deserted the slave, in the hour
when the interests of their sects came across his cause.
Is it uncharitable to conjecture the reason? At the early
period, however, to which I have referred, the Church
was much exercised by the persistency of the Abolitionists
in not going out from her. When T joined the antislavery
moks, sixteen years ago, the voice of the clergy was:
“Will these pests never leave us? Will they still remain
fo trouble us? If you do not like us, there is the door !””
When our friends had exhausted all entreaty, and tested
the Christianity of that body, they shook off the dust of
their feet, and came out of her.

tried, and found wanting, in fidelity to the
has done no worse, indeed he has done muc
‘most of his class, His opposition has
and manly.

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 131

But, Mr. Chairman, there is something in the blood
which, men tell us, brings out virtues and defects, even
when they have lain dormant for a generation. Good and
evil qualities are hereditary, the physicians say. The
‘blood whose warm currents of eloquent aid my friend so-
licited in vain in that generation has sprung voluntarily
to his assistance in the next, — both from the pulpit
and the press, —to rouse the world by the vigor and
pathos of its appeals. [Enthusiastic cheers.] Even on
that great triumph I would say a word, Marked and un-
equalled as has been that success, remember, in explana-
tion of the phenomenon, —for ** Uncle Tom's Cabin ” is
rather an event than a book, — remember this: if the old
antislavery movement had not roused the sympathies of
Mrs. Stowe, the book had never been written; if that
movement had not raised up hundreds of thousands of
hearts to sympathize with the slave, the book had never
been read, [Cheers.] Not that the genius of the author
has not made the triumph all her own ; not that the unri-
valled felicity of its execntion has not trebled, quadrupled,
increased tenfold, if you please, the number of readers;
but there must be a spot even for Archimedes to rest his
lever upon, before he can move the world, [cheers] and
this effort of genins, consecrated to the noblest purpose,
might have fallen dead and unnoticed in 1835. It isthe
antislavery movement which has changed 1835 to 1852.
Those of us familiar with antislavery literature know
well that Richard Hildreth’s * Archy Moore,” now “The
White Slave,” was a book of eminent ability; that it
‘owed its want of success to no lack of genius, but only to
the fet that it was a work born out of due time ; that the
antislavery cause had not then aroused sufficient num-
bers, on the wings of whose enthusinsm even the most
delightful fiction could have risen into world-wide infiu-
ence and repute. To the cause which had changed 18°

aid, Our labors with the great religious soci
ie prem withthe furintione oe

untiring, and almost as unsuccessful.
do our duty to every public question 1

nha natie ofall the lovers of Peas

speech, for having vindicated that right,
seemed ready to surrender it, — vindicated

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 133

of reputation, ease, property, even life itself. The only *
blood that has ever been shed, on this side the ocean, in
defence of the freedom of the press, was the blood of
Lovejoy, one of their number. In December, 1836, Dr.
Channing spoke of their position in these terms : —

* Whilsi, in obedience to conscience, they have refrained from
opposing force to force, they have still persevered, amidst menace
and insult, in bearing their testimony against wrong, in giving
utterance to their deep convictions. Of such men, I do not hes-
‘tate to say, that they have rendered to fyecdom a more essential
service than any body of men among us. The defenders of
freedom are not those who claim and exercise rights which no
‘ono rissails, or who win shouts of applause by well-turned com-
pliments to Liberty in the days of her triumph. ‘They are those
who stand up for rights which mobs, conspiracies, or single
tyrants put in jeopardy ; who contend for liberty in that particu=
lar form which is threatened at the moment by the many or the
few. To the Abolitionists this honor belongs. ‘The first sys-
tematic effort to strip the citizen of freedom of speech they have
amet with invincible resolution, From my heart I thank them.
Tam myself their debtor. I am not sure that I should this mo-
‘tment write in safety, bad they shrunk from the conflict, bad they
shut their lips, imposed silence on their presses, and hid them-
‘sélves before their ferocious assailants. I know not where these
would have stopped, had they not met resistance from
their first destined victims. The newspaper press, with a few
‘uttered no genuine indignant rebuke of the wrong-
doers, but rather countenanced by its gentle censures the reign
of foree. ‘The mass of the people looked supinely on this new
under which » portion of their fellow-citizens seemed to
A tone of denunciation was beginning to proseribe
‘all discussion of slavery; and had the spirit of violence, which
‘associations as its first objects, succeeded in this prepar-
it might have been easily turned against any
individual, who might presume to agitate the unwel-
Tt is hard to say to what outrage the fettered
‘country might not have been reconciled. I thank

is impossible but that sag who offer
tion should be hated and maligned, no
cautious, and well planned their course mi
peculiar sufferers in this way. The

to hate its reproving Nathan so
whom the relenting part of it is b
standard-bearers of the antislavery
to avow any connection or sympathy
to some of the leaders of the
slavery. They feel it to be their mission
‘use as effectively as possible the present co
people. ‘They cannot afford to encumber
the odium which twenty years of angry
engendered in great sects sore from wnsy

‘THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 135

fess, privately, that our movement produced theirs, and
that its continued existence is the very breath of their
life. But, at the same time, they would fain walk on the
road without being soiled by too close contact with the
rough pioneers who threw it up. ‘They are wise and hon
orable, and their silence is very expressive.

When I speak of their eminent position and acknowl-
edged ability, another thought strikes me. Who con-
verted these men and their distinguished associates? It
is said we have shown neither sagacity in plans, nor
candor in discussion, nor ability. Who, then, or what,
converted Burlingame and Wilson, Sumner and Adams,
Palfrey and Mann, Chase and Hale, and Phillips and
Giddings? Who taught the Christian Register, the Daily
Advertiser, and that class of prints, that there were such
things as a slave and a slayeholder in the land, and so
gave them some more intelligent basis than their mere
instincts to hate William Lloyd Garrison? [Shouts and
langhter.] What magic wand was it whose touch made
the toadying servility of the land start up the real demon
that it was, and at the same time gathered into the slave’s
service the professional ability, ripe culture, and personal
integrity which grace the Free Soil ranks? We never
argue! These men, then, were converted by simple
denunciation! They were all converted by the * hot,”
“reckless,” “ranting,” “ bigoted,” “fanatic ” Garrison,
who never troubled himself about facts, nor stopped to

argue with an opponent, but straightway knocked him
ia [Roars of laughter and cheers.) My old and
valued friend, Mr. Sumner, often boasts that he was a
reader of the Liberator before I was. Do not criticise
too much the agency by which such men were converted,
That blade has a double edge. Our reckless course, our

rant, our fanaticism, has made Abolitionists of some
of the best and ablest men in the land. We are inclined

But it never came, —never! [Sensation.]

them. Perhaps they thought
better by drawing « sate
and him. Perhaps they thought

138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF

the Devil could be cheated;—TI do not think he can.
(Laughter and cheers.] ch
We are perfectly willing —I am, for one—to be the
dead lumber that shall make a path for these men into the
light and love of the people, We hope for nothing better.
Use us freely, in any way, for the slave. When the tem-
ple is finished, the tools will not complain that they are
thrown aside, let who will lead up the nation to *:
the topstone with shoutings.” But while so much re-
mains to be done, while our little camp is beleaguered all
about, do nothing to weaken his influence, whose sagacity,
more than any other single man’s, has Jed us up hither,
and whose name is identified with that movement which
the North still heeds, and the South still fears the most.
After all, Mr. Chairman, this is no hard task. We know
very well, that, notwithstanding this loud clamor about
our harsh judgment of men and things, our opinions differ
very little from those of our Free Soil friends, or of intel
ligent men generally, when you really get at them. It
has even been said, that one of that family which has
made itself so infamously conspicuous here in uw
the Fugitive Slave Law, a judge, whose earnest defence
of that law we all heard in Faneuil Hall, did himself, but
a little while before, arrange for a fugitive to be hid till
pursuit was over. I hope it is trae,—it would be an
honorable inconsistency. And if it be not trae of him,
we know it is of others. Yet it is base to incite others to
deeds, at which, whenever we are hidden from public
notice, our own hearts recoil! But thus we see that
when men lay aside the judicial ermine, the senator's
robe, or the party collar, and sit down in private life, you
can hardly distinguish their tones from ours. ‘Their eyes
seem as anointed as our own. As in Pope’s day, —

At all we langh they laugh, no doubt;
‘The only diffrence is, we dare hank ent."

———

; if it must come in blood, yet I say
associates on the platform are

140 THE PHILOSOPHY OF

says to the slave claimant: “You must get through all
these, before you reach him; but if you can get through
all these, you may have him!” It was no tone like this
which made the old Hall rock! Not if he got through
twelve jury trials, and forty habeas conpus acts, and con-
stitutions built high as yonder monument, would he per-
mit so much as the shadow of a little finger of the slave
claimant to touch the slave! [Loud applause.] At least,
so he was understood. In an elaborate discussion, by the
leader of the political antislavery party, of the whole
topic of fugitive slaves, you do not find one protest against
the surrender itself, one frank expression on the con-
stitutional Clause, or any indication of the speaker's final
purpose, should any one be properly claimed under that
provision. It was under no such uncertain trumpet that
the antislavery host was originally marshalled. The tone
is that of the German soldiers whom Napoleon routed.
They did not care, they said, for the defeat, but only that
they were not beaten according to rule, [Langhter and
cheers.] Mr. Mann, in his speech of February 15, 1850,
says: “ The States being separated, I would as soon re-
turn my own brother or sister into bondage, as I would
return a fugitive slave. Before God, and Christ, and all
Christian men, they are my brothers and sisters.” ‘What
a condition! from the lips, too, of a champion of the
Higher Law! Whether the States be separate or united,
neither my brother nor any other man’s brother shall, with
my consent, go back to bondage. [Enthusiastic cheers]
So speaks the heart, — Mr. Mann's version is that of the
politician.

Mr. Mann's recent speech in August, 1852, has the
same non-committal tone to which I have alluded in Mr.
Sumner’s. While professing, in the most eloquent terms,
his loyalty to the Higher Law, Mr. Sutherland asked:
“Ts there, in Mr. Mann’s opinion, any conflict between

Ee :

all the South care for is the action,
deed is done,

a |

142 THE PHILOSOPHY OF

‘the Federal power wash its bands from that institution ; Tet ns
purify ourselves from its contagion; leave it with the States,
who alone have the power to sustain it, —then, Sir, will agita
tion cease in regard to it here; then we shall have nothing more
to do with it; our time will be no more occupied with it: and,
like a band of freemen, a band of brothers, we could meet here,
and legislate for the prosperity, the improvement of mankind,
for the elevation of our race.”

Mr. Sumner speaks in the same strain. He says: —

“The time will come when courts or Congress will declare,
that nowhere under the Constitution can man hold property in
man, For the republic, such a decree will be the way of peace
and safety. As slavery is banished from the national jurisdic
tion, it will cease to vex our national polities, It may linger in
the States as a local institution, but it will no longer endanger
national animosities when it no longer demands national sup-
port, ..... For himself, he knows no better aim under the
Constitution than to bring the government back to the precise:
position which it occupied” when it was launched. :

This seems to me a very mistaken strain. Whenever
slavery is banished from our national jurisdiction, it will
be a momentous gain, a vast stride. But let us not mis-
take the half-way house for the end of the journey. I
need not say that it matters not to Abolitionists under
what special Jaw slavery exists, Their battle lasts while
it exists anywhere, and I doubt not Mr, Sumner and Mr.
Giddings feel themselves enlisted for the whole war. T
will even suppose, what neither of these gentlemen states,
that their plan includes, not only that slavery shall be
abolished in the District and Territories, but that the slave
basis of representation shall be struck from the Constitu-
tion, and the slave-surrender clause construed away, But
even then, does Mr, Giddings or Mr. Sumner really be-
lieve that slavery, existing in its fall foree in the States,
“will cease to vex our national politics”? Can they

a. al

i and less comparative wealth,
itish aristocracy to rule England for
the root of their strength was cut
ages for institutions to
ry into the States will hardly be our
ore, lays the flattering unction

ile slavery exists anywhere in the

You remember, Sir, the host of
it, and how thick the airy crowd

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. Ww

[Cheers.] They were not, in the current phrase, “a
Jealthy party”! The healthy party—the men who
made no compromise in order to come under that arch —
Milton describes further on, where he says :
“Bur far within,
And in their own dimensions, like themselves,
‘The great seraphie lords and chernbim,
Tn close recess and secret conclave, sat;
A thonsand demlgods on golden sents
Frequent and full.”
These were the healthy party! [Loud applause.] These
re the Casses and the Houstons, the Footes and the
Soulés, the Clays, the Websters, and the Douglases, that
bow no lofty forehead in the dust, but can find ample
room and yerge enough onder the Constitution, Our
friends go down there, and must be dwarfed into pygmies
before they can find space within the lists! [Cheers.]
Tt would be superfluous to say that we grant the entire
‘ity and true-heartedness of these men. But in
qtitieal times, when a wrong step entails most disastrous
consequences, to “mean well” is not enough. Sincerity
is no shield for any man from the criticism of his fellow-
laborers. I do not fear that such men as these will take
offence at our discussion of their views and conduct.
Long years of hard labor, in which we have borne at least
our share, have resulted in a golden opportunity. How
to use it, friends differ. Shall we stand courteously silent,
and let these men play out the play, when, to our think-
ing, their plan will slacken the zeal, balk the hopes, and
waste the efforts of the slave's friends? No! I know
Charles Sumner’s love for the cause so well, that I am
sure he will welcome my criticism whenever I deem his
counsel wrong; that he will hail every effort to serve our
common client more efficiently. [Great cheering.] It is
not his honor nor mine that is at issue; not his feeling nor
imine that is to be consulted. The only question for either

on the slave question. If men knew
slavery, it was only as a part of pic!
No one preached, no one talked, no on:
No whisper of it stirred the surface of
‘The Church heard of it occasionally,
tion agent asked funds to send the
school-books tainted with some anti
passed out of use, and new ones were c
oe Soon as any dissent from the pri
peared, every one set himself to crush i
preached at it; the press denounced it ;
houses, threw presses into the fire and the

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT, 149

thot the editors; religions conventions tried to smother it;
parties arrayed themselves against it. Daniel Webster
boasted im the Senate, that he had never introduced the
subject of slavery to that body, and never would. Mr.
Clay, in 1889, makes a speech for the Presidency, in
which he says, that to discuss the subject of slavery is
moral treason, and that no man has a right to introduce
the subject into Congress, Mr. Benton, in 1844, laid
down his platform, and he not only denies the right, but
asserts that he never has and never will discuss the sub-
ject. Yet Mr. Clay, from 1839 down to his death, hardly
made a remarkable speech of any kind, except on slavery.
Mr. Webster, having indulged now and then in a little

rhetoric, as at Niblo’s and elsewhere, opens his mouth
in 1840, generously contributing his aid to both sides, and
stops talking about it only when death closes his lips. Mr.
Benton’s six or eight speeches in the United States Senate
have all been on the subject of slavery in the Southwestern
section of the country, and form the basis of whatever
claim he has to the character of a statesman, and he owes
his seat in the next Congress somewhat, perhaps, to anti-
slavery pretensions! ©The Whig and Democratic parties
pledged themselves just as emphatically against the anti-
slavery discussion, — against agitation and free speech,
“ Tt sha’n’t be talked about, it won't be
talked about!’ These are your statesmen /—men who
understand the present, that is, and mould the future !
The man who understands his own time, and whose genius
moulds the future to his views, he is a statesman, is he
not? These men devoted themselves to banks, to the
tariff, to internal improvements, to constitutional and
financial questions. They said to slavery: “ Back! no
tntranee here! We pledge ourselves against you.” And
then there came up a humble printer-boy, who whipped
them into the traces, and made them talk, like Hotspur's

‘the future was to be, — he was not:

had no “ prndence,” —he had no *
Webster says, ‘I have never intr

never will,” —and died broken-l

not been able to talk enough about it. i
will never speak of slavery,” and lives |
his party on this issue | Mr. Clay, seye

tional stock of eloquence is all ir
profound and far-reaching was the

am in earnest, —T will not
excuse, —TI will not retreat a single inch, -
heard!” [Repeated cheers.] That spe
twenty-two years, and the complaint of
millions of people is, ‘* Shall we never he
Dut slavery?” [Cheers,] I heard Dr. Kirl
say in his own pulpit, when he returned fron
where he had been as a representative to the
pe eabstos i=l ventiup a leniaraeey

me what I thought of the question of immediate e
tion. They examined us all. Is an

162 THE PHILOSOPHY OF

treatment, If you consider the work we have to do, you
will not think “us needlessly aggressive, or that we dig
down unnecessarily deep in laying the foundations of our
enterprise. » A money power of two thousand millions of
dollars, as the prices of slaves now range, held by a small
body of able and desperate men; that body raised into a
political aristocracy by special constitutional provisions ;
cotton, the product of slave labor, forming the basis of our
whole foreign commerce, and the commercial class thus
subsidized; the press bought up, the pulpit reduced to
vassalage, the heart of the common people chilled by a
bitter prejudice against the black race; our leading men
bribed, by ambition, either to silence or open hostility ;—
in such a land, on what shall an Abolitionist rely? On
afew cold prayers, mere lip-service, and never from the
heart? On a church resolution, hidden often in its ree~
ords, and meant only as a decent cover for servility in
daily practice? On political parties, with their superficial
influence at best, and secking ordinarily only to use ex-
isting prejudices to the best advantage? Slavery has
deeper root here than any aristocratic institution has in
Europe; and politics is but the common pulse-beat, of
which revolution is the fever-spasm. Yet we have seen
European aristocracy survive storms which seemed to
reach down to the primal strata of European life. Shall
we, then, trust to mere politics, where even revolution
has failed? How shall the stream rise above its foun-
tain? Where shall our church organizations or parties
yet strength to attack their great parent and moulder, the
Slave Power? Shall the thing formed say to him that
formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? ‘The old jest
of one who tried to lift himself in his own basket, is but «
tame picture of the man who imagines that, by working
solely through existing sects and parties, he can destroy
slavery. Mechanics say nothing but an earthquake,

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 153
strong enough to move all Egypt, can bring down the
Pyramids,

Experience has confirmed these views. The Aboli-
tionists who have acted on them have a ‘short method”
with all unbelievers. They have but to point to their
own success, in contrast with every other man’s failure.
To waken the nation to its real state, and chain it to the
consideration of this one duty, is half the work. So much
we have done. Slavery has been made the question of
this generation. To startle the South to madness, so that
every step she takes, in her blindness, is one step more
toward ruin, is much. This we have done. Witness
Texas and the Fugitive Slave Law. To have elaborated
for the nation the only plan of redemption, pointed out the
only exodus from this ‘sea of troubles,” is much. This
we claim to have done in our motto of Inmeptare, Ux-
conpitionaL Emanciration on tax Som. The closer
any statesmanlike mind looks into the question, the more
fayor our plan finds with it. The Christian asks fairly
of the infidel, “If this religion be not from God, how do
yon explain its triumph, and the history of the first three
centuries?” Our question is similar. If our agitation has
not been wisely planned and conducted, explain for us the
listory of the last twenty years! Experience is a safe
light to walk by, and he is not a rash man who expects
success in future from the same means which have secured
itin times past.

h petition asks you to do an act fa-
, independence of the judiciary. The
whether they do not know the value
independent Mr. Chair
of its importance. We know as
ns the unspeakable value of a high-
umane, independent, and just judges
-, favor, affection, nor hope of re-
his course. It is because we are
with this, that we appear before you.

156 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING.

“Taking our history as a whole, we are proud of the Bench
of Massachusetts. You have given no higher title than
that of a Massachusetts Judge to Sewall, to Sedgwick, to
Parsons, Take it away, then, from one who volunteers,
hastens, to execute a statute which the law as well as
the humanity of the nineteenth century regards as infa-
mous and an outrage, We come before you, not to attack
the Bench, but to strengthen it, by securing it the only
support it can have under a government like ours, —the
confidence of the people. You cannot legislate judges
into the confidence of the people. You cannot preach
them into it; confidence must be earned. To make the
name of judge respected, it must be worthy of respect, —
must never be borne by unworthy men. It never will be
either respected or respectable while this man bears it.
I might surely ask his removal in the names of the Judges
of Massachusetts, who must feel that this man is no fit
fellow for them. The special reasons why we deem him
an unfit judge, I shall take occasion to state by and by:
At present, I will only add, that it is not, as report says,
merely because he differs from us on the question of slay-
ery, that we ask his removal. It is not for an honest or
for any other difference of opinion that we ask it; but,
as we shall presently take occasion to state, for far other
and very grave reasons.

Ido not know, Gentlemen, what course of remark the
remonstrant, or his counsel, may adopt; but I have
thought it necessary to say so much, in order that they
may understand our position, and thus avoid any needless
enlargement upon our want of respect for the function, or
appreciation of the value, of an independent, high-minded
judiciary. You will see, in the course of my remarks,
that it is because this incumbent has sinned in that very
respect that we appear here.

Gentlemen, these petitions, though variously worded,

<—-. ai

express law. This is not so. It has
SE Seema ani ae

who had not violated.
Tia ogh Ar eis cts HOARSE
common law. All authorities agree in
would seem to lay down the rule still
Story on the Const., Bk. TI. ch. 10, §§ 79
‘Shaw’s argument when counsel against P
Srokied As the Constitution ¢

REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 159

missioned, and sworn, shall hold their offices during good
behavior, excepting such concerning whom there is a dif-
ferent provision made in this Constitution: Provided,
nevertheless, the Governor, with consent of the Council,
may remove them upon address of both Houses of the
Legislature.” (Const. of Mass., Chap. III. Art. 1.)
“ Provided, nevertheless, the Governor, with consent of the
Council, may remove them upon the address of both Houses
of the Legislature.” Now, Gentlemen, looking on the face
of this, it would be naturally inferred that, notwithstanding
his * good behavior,” and without alleging any violation of
it, a judge could, nevertheless, be removed by address ;
that an “address” need not be based on a charge of official
misconduct, —that an “address” need not be based on a
charge of illegal conduct, in any capacity, This seems so
clear, that T should have left this point without further
remark, if Mr, Loring had not placed’ upon your files
remonstrance against the prayer of these petitioners, which
remonstrance (I shall not oceupy your time by reading it)
is based upon the principle, that it would be a hard and
unjust procedure if either house should address the Gov-
mor against him, seeing that he has not violated any
State law, or done anything that was illegal, or that was
prohibited by the laws of Massachusetts, and alleging that
Te has only acted in conformity with the official oath of all
officers of the State to support the Constitution of the
Thited States. The defence of the remonstrant, as far as
‘we are informed of it, is, that he ought not to be removed,
eeause he has violated no Jaw of Massachusetts. To that
plea, Gentlemen, I shall simply reply: the method of re-
moving a judge by “address” does not require that the
House or Senate should be convinced that he has violated
any law whatever. Grant all Mr. Loring states in his
temonstrance,—that he has broken no law, that he
stands legally impeccable before you; which, in other

judges whenever it sees fit, ake n
lature thinks sufficient; that the
source of all power, have not parted witl
in this respect, —did not intend to

In the first place, I read the clanse of
* The Governor, with consent of the Co
them [judicial officers] upon the add
of the Legislature.” The Constitu
which met in 1820, appointed a con

164 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. ,

the address of a majority, shall be upon the address of two thirds
of the members present of each House of the Legislature.”

The committee, you see, Gentlemen, acknowledge that
there is unlimited power ; they think that power danger-
ous ; they advise that it should be limited —how? Ob-
serve, even this committee, althongh they say they think
it dangerous, do not advise it should be stricken out ; but
they advise it should be limited by requiring a two-thirds
yote, and this is all.

Remember, Gentlemen, that I read the following ex-
tracts, not to show the opinion of this Convention as to the
value or the danger of this power ; I merely wish to show
you that, in the opinion of the ablest lawyers of the State,
the Constitution, as it then stood, (and it stands now pro-
cisely as it stood then,) gave to this Legislature unlimited
authority to remove judges, for any cause they saw fit;
and that, while all the speakers were fully aware of its
liability to abuse, no speaker denied its unlimited extent,
or proposed to strike the power from the Constitution.
After that report had been put in, the Convention pro-
ceeded to take it up for discussion.

The first gentleman who joins, to any purpose, in the
debate, is Samuel Hubbard, Esq., perhaps, beyond all
comparison, the fairest-minded as well as one of the ablest
lawyers of the Suffolk bar; and let me add, that, after a
life passed in the most responsible practice of his profes-
sion, he finished it on the bench of the Supreme Court.
His testimony is the more valuable, because Mr. Hubbard
thought this provision eminently dangerous. But he
says; —

“The Constitution was defective in not sufficiently securing
the independence of judges. He asked if a judge was free when
the Legislature might have him removed when it pleased... . «
‘The tenure of office of judges was said to be during good be~
havior. Was this the case, when the Legisluture might deprive

REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 167

which admitted of amendment, he would propose to alter it in
such manner that the officer to be removed should have a right
to be heard. No reason need now be given for the removal of a
judge, but that the Logislatare do not like him.”

He did not deny the power, did not question its utility ;
all he wanted was, that the officer should be heard. “No
reason need be given, but that the Legislature do not like
him.” Is not this unlimited power? The claim of Mr.
Loring is, substantially, that you abuse your power, unless
you charge, and prove, that he has offended against a
statute “in such case made and provided.” Mr. Daniel
Dayis says: “No reason need be given for the removal
of a judge, but that the Legislature do mbt like him.”
That is his idea of the power of this Legislature.

Then comes Mr. Henry H. Childs of Pittsfield. I do
not know his history, He did not want the Constitution
changed at all; he did not ask even the two-thirds vote.
Mr, Childs says —

* It was in violation of an important principle of the govern-
ment, that the majority of the Legislature, together with the
Governor, should not have the power of removal from office.
This power was in accordance with the principle of the Bill of
Rights. It was imperative in the advocates of this resolution to
show that it was necessary to intrench this department of the
goverument for its security. They had not shown it; on the
contrary, we were in the full tide of successful experiment. The
founders of the Constitution intended to put the judiciary on the
toting of the fullest independence consistent with their respon-
sibility.”

“This power was in accordance with the provisions of
the Bill of Rights.” What are these? Section V. of
the Bill of Rights reads thus : —

“All power residing originally in the people, and being de~
tived from them, the several magistrates and officers of govern-
ment, vested with authority, whether legislative, executive, or

This is the principle of our Declarat
Mr. Childs says; “The founders of
intended to put the judiciary on the fa

_ consistent with their
Chairman, I beseech you, in the prog
sion, if the remonstrant shall ring ¢
sity of maintaining the i

REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 169

Legislature, but with the consent of the Council. Was not this
sufficient guard? Another part of the Constitution protects
them when sensed of crimes. This provision is not intended to
embrace cases of crime, — it is only for cases when they become
incompetent to discharge their duties. May not the people, by a
‘majority, determine whether judges are incompetent ? ”

Mr. Loring says, “Show me my crime!” Mr, Cum-
mings says, “ This provision is not intended to embrac
cases of crime.”

Levi Lincoln of Worcestor comes next. He was then
a Democrat, — since Governor, and Judge:

“Te was entirely satisfied with the Constitution as it was,
He had never heard till now, and was now surprised to hear,
that there was any want of independence in the judiciary. He
had heard it spoken of in charges, sermons, and discourses in the
Sireets, as one of the most valuable features of the Constitution,
that it established an independent judiciary. He inquired, Was
it dependent on the Legislature? It was not on the Legislature
nor on the Exeentive. No judge could be removed but by the
‘concurrent act of four co-ordinate branches of the government, —
‘the House of Representatives, the Senate, with a different or-
fanization from the House, the Governor, and the Council.
Was it to be supposed that all these should conspire together to
Temove a useful judge? But it was argued that future Legisla-
tures might be corrupt. This was a monstrous supposition, He
would rather suppose that a judge might be corrupt. It was
more natural that a single person should be corrupt than a nu-
merous body. The proposed amendment was said to be similar
to provisions of other governments. There was no analogy,
Wennse other governments are not constituted like ours, It was
‘iid that judges have estates in their offices, —he did not agree
to this doctrine. ‘The office was not made for the judge, nor the
judge for the office; but both for the people. There was
inother tenure,— the confidence of the people. It was that
Which had hitherto occurred here. Have we, then, less reason
6 confide in posterity than our ancestors had to confide in
mi”

170 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING, —

Then féllows Mr, Daniel Webster. He had recently
come to the State. Joining in the debate, he says: —

Council, on the address of the two Houses of the I
‘Tt is not made necessary that the two Houses:
reasons for their address, or that the judge should have an
tunity to be heard. I look upon this as against.

evel se copdgnen to the eral eee

ment. wees ]

“Tf the Legislature may remove judges at
‘no canse for such removal, of course it is not to be e:
they would ofteu find decisions against the

their own acts.”

‘These are Webster's words; and you will reme
Mr. Chairman, that the Constitution stands, in 1855,
‘as it stood when Webster was speaking, I cite the’
guage to show what Mr. Webster understood to 2 th
Constitution of Massachusetts, — that you ‘could remove
a judge without giving any reason, “at your pleasure,”
without hearing him. Now, what does he propose to do?
Does he propose to strike out that provision ? No, Sir!
He does not even propose a two-thirds vote. 4

“Tn Pennsylvania, the judges may be removed, ‘for
sonable cause,’ on the address of two tide os ro Boas
Tn some of the States, three fourths of each House is
The new Constitution of Maine bas a provision, with which I
should be content; which is, that no judge shall be liable to be
vemoved by the Legislature till the matter of his accusation has
been made known to him, and he has had an opportunity of
being heard in his defence.”

He says that the Constitution gives you the power to
remove, and all he asks is, that, before doing it, you should
allow the judge an opportunity to be heard.

The fuct is, Gentlemen, you have, according to Mr.
Webster, the power to shut that door, and, without assigne

io ie

TEMOYAL OF JUDGE LORING. 11

ing any reason whatever, vote a judge out of office, and
send him word that he is out, — the Constitution does not
guarantee him anything else than that. Webster wanted
it amended ; the Convention submitted a proposition for
amendment ; but the people declined to accept it. This
absolute sovereignty of Massachusetts, which, ever since
the Colonies, had been held on to by the people, — of that
they were unwilling to yield a whit.

‘The debate continues, and Mr, Childs again joins in it.

“The object in giving the power to the Legislature was, that
judges might be removed when it was the universal sentiment
of Ue community that they were disqualified for the office al-
though they could not be convicted on impeachment.”

Can you ask anything more definite than that? No-
body denied it, “The object in giving this power to the
Legislature was, that judges might be removed, when it
Was the universal sentiment of the community that they
were disqualified for the office, although they could not be
convicted on impeachment.”

Gentlemen, I would not weary your patience with long
extracts ; I am giving you only the general current of the
discussion. The next speaker is James ‘Trecothick Aus-
tin, — the name of one who will not be suspected of being
too favorable to the rights of the people; it is not often
that I have an opportunity to quote him on my side.
“Nobody objects to this provision,” said Mr. Austin.
There sat Prescott, Shaw, Webster, Story, Lincoln, —
the men whom you look up to as the lights of this Com-
monywealth ; but — “nobody objects to this provision” |
* “Nobody objects to this provision. The House of Represent
‘tives is the grand inquest, —they are tried by the Senate, and
have the right of being heard. But the Constitution admits that
there may be eases in which judges may be removed without
Supposing a crime. But how is it to be done by this resolution ?
‘There are to be two trials, when for the greater charge of a

‘The remonstrant here says, I have
statute. Mr. Austin says, No matter
have or not; “a man may do a vast deal of
yet evade the penalty of the law.” Then h
heard a great deal of the weakness of the j
says the judiciary is not weak. Should yo
the remonstrant appear here, attended by em

Tbs Gourt ware besides aizended by a mplendlll
retinue,—the bar. They have great influence from th
learning, and esprit de corps, and as an appendage t
they give them a great and able support. He dic
that the judiciary was a weak branch of the goven
the contrary, it was a strong branch.”

Then comes Judge Story. If anybody

REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING, 173

may say, alittle crazy on the subject of the independence of
the judges, it was the late able and learned Judge Story, —
at least daring the last half of his life. What does he say?
He says :—

%The Governor and Council might remove them [judges] oa
the address of a majority of the Legislature, not for crimes and
misdemeanors, for that was provided for in another manner, but
for no eause whatever, — no reason was to be given. A power-
ful individual, who has a cause in court which he is unwilling to
trust to an upright judge, may, if he has influence enough to ex-
tite a momentary prejudice, and command a majority of the
Legislature, obtain his removal. He does not hold the office by
the tenure of good behavior, but at the will of a majority of the
Legislatare, and they are not bound to assign any reason for the
exercise of their power. Sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione
woluntas. (Thus I wish it; thus I order: let my will stand for
4 renson.) This is the provision of the Constitution, and it is
only guarded by the good sense of the people. He had no fear
of the voice of the people, when he could get their deliberate
‘Voice, — but he did fear from the Legislature, if the judge has no
right to be heard.”

That is the opinion of the learned Judge Story as to
the power of the Legislature. “I have no fear of the
‘yoice of the people,” says Judge Story. All he pro-
posed was, that the judge should have an opportunity to
be heard.

What was the result of this discussion? The Conven-
tion proposed to the people—what? ‘That no judge
should ever be removed without notice. The people voted
on that amendment, voted nay, and declined to insert it in
the Constitution.

Now, Gentlemen, what is my argument? Here is a
‘debate on this clanse, not by men heated with passion, not
by men with party purposes to serve, but by men acting
‘5 statesmen, in the coolest, most deliberate, and temperate
“mood, — men of various parties, Whig and Democratic, —

14 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING.

and every one of them asserts, without a dissenting voiety
that this provision is inserted for the purpose of ;
Legislature the power to remove a judge, when he has not
violated any law of the Commonwealth. In addition to
this, Gentlemen, I will read the remark of Chief Jus
Shaw, when he was counsel for the House against
Prescott, of Groton, who was removed on impeachment,
you will recollect, in 1821. On that occasion, Judge
Shaw was counsel for the House of Representatives, and
made some comments on this provision, which, as his opin-
ion has a deserved weight in matters of constitutional law,
it is well to read here, He says: —

“Tt is true, that, by another course of proceeding, warranted
by a different provision of the Constitution, any officer may be
removed by the Executive, at the will and pleasure of a bare
majority of the Legislature ; a will which the Exeentive in

. most cases would have little power and inclination to resist
‘The Legislature, without either allegation or proof, has but to
Pronounce the sie volo, sic jubeo, and the officer is at once de-
prived of his place, and of all the rank, the powers and emolu-
ments, belonging to it, And yet, perhaps, this provision (whether
wise or not I will not now stop to consider) is hardly sufficient
to justify the extraordinary alarm which has been so eloquently
expressed for the liberty and security of the people, or to
upon the Constitution the charge of containing features mo
odious and oppressive than those of Turkish despotism. The ~
truth is, that the security of our rights depends rather upon the |
general tenor and charaeter, than upon particular provisions of
our Constitution. The love of freedom and of justice, —s0
deeply engraven upon the hearts of the people, and interwoven
in the whole texture of our social institutions, —a thorough and
intelligent acquaintance with their rights, and a firm determi-
nation to maintain them,—#in short, those moral and intellectual
qualities without which social liberty cannot exist, and over
which despotism can obtain no control, —these stamp the char
acier and give security to the rights of the free people of this

Se ie

REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORIXG. 175

Commonwealth. So long as such a character is maintained, no
danger perhaps need be apprehended from the arbitrary course
of proceeding, under the provision of the Constitution, to which I
have niloded. But, Sir, we have never for a moment imagined
that the proceedings on this impenchment could be influenced or
iffected by that provision. The two modes of proceeding are
altogether distinct, and, in my humble apprehension, were de-
signed to effect totally distinct objects. No, Sir; had the Honse
of Representatives expected to attain their object by any means
short of the allegation, proof, and conviction of criminal. miscon-
duet, an address, and not an impeachment, would have been the
sourse of proceeding adopted by them.”

These well-considered and weighty sentences of Chief
Justice Shaw show his idea of the extent of your power,
and will relieve your minds of any undue apprehension as
to the danger of its exercise.

‘The people of Massachusetts have always chosen to
Keep their judges, in some measure, dependent on the
Popular will. It is a Colonial trait, and the sovereign
State has preserved it. Under the King, though he
Appointed the judges, the people jealously preserved
their hold on the bench, by keeping the salaries year
by year dependent on the vote of the popular branch
of the Legislature, This control was often exercised.
When Judge Oliver took pay of the King, they im-
penched him. (See Washburn's Judicial History of
Massachusetts, 139, 160.) When the Constitution was
framed, the people chose to keep the same sovereignty
Gm their own hands. Independence of judges, there-
fore, in Massachusetts, Gentlemen, means, in the words
of Mr. Childs, “the fullest independence consistent with
‘their responeibility.”

The opinions I have read you derive additional weight
from the fact, that all the speakers were aware of the

grave nature of this power, and some painted in glowing

ya ec aie sae!
point, it for granted that the people.
under guardianship, —that government is
Court to prevent the people — the in
under-age people —from wasting their
their own throat. Not such is
publican institations. The true theory is, tha
came of age on the fourth day of July, 177

REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. ua

trusted to manage their own affairs. The people, with
their practical common-sense, instinctive feeling of right
and wrong, and manly love of fair play, are the true con-
servative element in a just government. Tt is true, the
people are not always right; but it is true, also, that the
people are not often wrong, —less oftan, surely, than their
leaders. The theory of our government is, that the purity
of the bench is a matter which concerns every individual.
Whenever, therefore, guilt, recklessness, or incapacity
shield themselves on the bench, by technical shifts and
evasions, against direct collision with the law, it is meant
that the reserved power of the people shall intervene, and
saye the State from harm.
Tt is easy to conceive many occasions for the exercise of
such a power. How many men among us, by gross mis-
conduct in railroad or banking companies, have incurred
the gravest disapprobation, and yet avoided legal convie-
tion? Suppose such men had been at the same time
judges, will any one say they should have been continued
on the bench? Yet, on the remonstrant’s theory, it would
bean “abuse of power” to impeach or “address” them
of the bench! Suppose a judge by great private immo-
tility ineurs utter contempt, —is drunk every day in the
Week except Probate Court day, — shall he, because he is
eumning enongh to evade statutes, still hide himself under
the ermine? Suppose a Judge of Probate should open
his court on the days prescribed by the statute, and close
it in half an hour, as your Judge Loring did when he shut
up the Probate Court of Suffolk on Monday, the 20th of
May, to hurry forward the kidnapping of Anthony Burns.
oad some judge should thus keep his court open only
five minutes each probate day the whole year through.
He violates no statute, though he puts a stop to all busi~
Ress; yet, according to the arguments of the press and the

Temonstrant, it would be a gross abuse of power to impeach
2

said to haye been used by Mr. Rufus C
ease, “A judicial officer may be ret d
tellectually incapable, or if he has been
some great enormity, so as to show him

‘This unlimited power, then, Gentlemen,
undoubtedly possess, It is one that the p
| ately planned and intended that you sho
‘one which the nature of the government |
sary you should possess, and that, on fitting o

| REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 179

should have the courage to use. True, it 1s a grave
power. But what is all government but the exercise of
grave powers? “ When the sea is calm, all boats alike
show mastership in floating.” The merit of a government
is, that it helps us in tritical times. All the checks and
of our institutions are arranged to secure for us
‘in these halls men wise and able enough to be trusted
with powers, and bold enough to use them when
the require. Let not, then, this bugbear of the
liability of this power to abuse, deter you from using it at
all. _Lancets and knives are dangerous instruments. The
usefulness of surgeons is, that, when lancets are needed,
somebody may know how to use them and save life.
‘Has, then, a proper case occurred for the exercise of
this power? In other words, ought you now to exercise
it ‘The petitioners think you ought, and for the follow-

7 When Judge Loring issued his warrant in the
Burns ease, he acted in defiance of the solemn convictions
ind settled purpose of Massachusetts, — convictions and
‘officially made known to him, with all the solem-
X statute.
In order to do him the fullest justice on this point, allow
me to read a sentence from his remonstrance : —
© And I respectfully submit, that when (while acting as a Com-
‘nissioner) I received my commission as Judge of Probate, no ob-
ection was made by the Executive of the Commonwealth, or by any
Other branch of the government, to my further discharge of the
‘Auties of a Commissioner; nor at the passage of the act of 1850,
when the jurisdiction aforesaid was given to the Commissioners
| of the Cirenit Courts of the United States, nor at any time since,
yeas T notified ‘that the government of Massachusetts, or either
| Weataeetriivel or legislative’ branch thereof, regarded the two
“oflices as incompatible, or were of opinion that the same qualities
‘tnd experience which were employed for the rights and interests
‘of our own citizens should not be employed for the protection of

Pe eieal tate cee rom of
Aischarge of other official duties, not hy Ta ae

zance or grant a certificate in cases that may
hind section of an act of Congress, passed

{jail or other building belonging to this Commo
county, city, or town thereof, of any person, for
he is claimed as a fugitive slave.

“Srcr. 3. Any justice of the peace,
coroner, constable, or jailer, who shall offe
ons of this

broad Gob tio bain’ ich and anh
ies penrmeaishats fos This is

that it went far beyond anything j
the act of 1798, then Judges Shaw

‘Fate, how do the statutes of 1793 and 1850 diffir ?
that certain State officers shoul be ex officio slave-
1849, forbade her magistrates to accept the au-
makes it necessary that a man should have »

‘the meaning of the act of 1843 ¢

sat, handeuffed, with a policeman on each side. The
Commissioner proceeded to try him. By accident, Mr.
Richard H. Dana, Jr. had heard that such a trial was to
be held, and had reached the court-room. By aceident,
another learned counsel, who sits by my side (Charles M.
Ellis, Esq.), heard that such a scene was enacting, and
hurried to the court-house. I heard of it in the street.
Mr. Theodore Parker was notified, and we went to the
court-room. We found Robert Morris, Esq., already

there. Mr, Morris, a member of the bar, had ee
to speak to Burns,—the policemen forbade him. The
melancholy farce had proceeded for about half an hour.
In two hours more, so far as any one could then see, the
judgment would have been given, the certificate signed,
the victim beyond our reach. There sat the Judge of
Probate, clothed with the ermine of Massachusetts ; be-
fore him cowered the helpless object of cruel legislation,
—the crushed victim of an inhuman system. “Mr. Dana
had moved the court before to defer the trial; but the
Commissioner proceeded to examine the witness. After a
short time, Mr. Dana rose, (he had no right to rise)
technically speaking, —he rose as a citizen merely, not as
counsel,) and I read you what he said: —

“May it please your Honor: I rise to address the court as
amicus curia, for L cannot say that I am regularly of counsel for
the person at the bar, Indeed, from the few words I have been
enabled to hold with him, and from what T ean Jearn from others
who have talked with him, I am satisfied that he is not in a
condition to determine whether he will have counsel or not, or
whether or not and how he shall appear for his defence. He
declines to say whether any one shall appear for him, or whether
he will defend or not.

=) * ail

REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 187

©Tnder these circumstances, T submit to your Honor's judg-
ment, that time should be allowed to the prisoner to recover him-
self from the stupefaction of his sudden arrest, and his novel and
distressing situation, and have opportunity to consult with friends
and members of the bar, and determine what course he will pur-
Mv s eee

* He does not know what he is saying. I say to your Honor,
asa member of the bar, on my personal responsibility, that from
what I have seen of the man, and what I have learnt from others
who have seen him, that he is not in a fit state to decide for him-
self what he will do. He has just been arrested and brought into
this scene, with this immense stake of freedom or slavery for life
at issue, surrounded by strangers, —and even if he should plead
guilty to the claim, the court ought not to receive the plea under

‘such circumstances.

Tt is but yesterday that the court at the other end of the
Yuilding refused to receive a plea of guilty from a prisoner. The
court never will receive this plea in a capital case, without the
fullest proof that the prisoner makes it deliberately, and under-
‘stinds its meaning and his own situation, and bas consulted with
This friends. In a case involving freedom or slavery for life, this
court will not do less... .. .

“T know enough of this tribunal to know that it will not lend
itself to the hurrying off a man into slavery to accommodate any
Man's personal convenience, before he has even time to recover
his stupefied faculties, and say whether he has a defence or not.
Even without a suggestion from an amicus curie, the court would,
of its own motion, see to it that no such advantage was taken.

*The counsel for the claimant says, that, if the man were out
‘of his mind, he would not object. Out of his mind! Please your
Honor, if you had ever reason to fear that a prisoner was not in
full possession of his mind, you would fear it in such a case as
this. But Ihave said enough. I am confident your Honor will
not decide so momentous an issue against a man without counsel

and without opportunity.”

Again, in his argument, alluding to the same scene, Mr.

says: —

188 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING.

“ Burns was arrested suddenly, on a false pretence, coming
home at nightfall from his day's work, and hurried into custody,
among strange men, in a strange place, and suddenly, whether
claimed rightfully or claimed wrongfully, he saw he was claimed
as a slave, and his condition burst upon him in # flood of terror
This was at night. You saw him, Sir, the next day, and you
remember the state he was then in. You remember his stupefied
and terrified condition, You remember: his hesitation, his timid:
glance about the room, even when Jooking in the mild face of
justice, How little your kind words reassured him. Sir, the
day after the arrest, you felt obliged to put off his trial two days,
because he was not in a condition to know or decide what he
would do.”

Mr. Ellis rose also, and protested against the trial,
Gentlemen, what a scene! A map clothed in the ermine
of Massachusetts has before him a helpless man,—in the
words of Mr, Dana, “terrified, stupefied, intimidated,” —
and begins to try him. If the Chief Justice of the Com-
monwealth should find the veriest vagrant from the
streets indicted for murder by twenty-three jurors, and
solemnly and legally set before him, he would not take
upon himself to proceed to trial without the man had
counsel, —eyery lawyer knows this. And yet this man,
who ought to have shown the discretion and humanity of
a judge, was proceeding in a trial so enormous and fear-
ful, that counsel coming in by accident felt urged to rise
in their places and interfupt him, protesting, as citizens of
Massachusetts, that this mockery of justice should not go
on. You have a Judge of Probate who needs to have
accident fill his court-room with honest men, to call him
back to his duty. The petitioners say that such a man is
not fit to sit upon the Bench of Massachusetts. Do we
exaggerate the importance of the occasion? Let me read
a single sentence from Dr. Channing: —

“This Constitution was not established to send back slaves to

aslave case is to be determined.
arrests a man at night; no one
earliest hour in the morning that a
‘opens his court; this poor, trembling,
hardly dared to look up and meet
before him, and he proceeds to try
in and say, he is too stupefied to be
goes on, and they sit awhile, their
them, till they feel compelled to rise,
‘against this insult to all the forms of

190 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING,

justice; and the court, after the repeated protests of two
members of the bar, at length consents to put off:

allow the unhappy man to recover himself, consult
friends, and decide what course to pursue.

Why, Gentlemen, if a man has committed murder, and
has been indicted by a jury, the statute provides that he
shall have time allowed him to prepare for his defence,
have a copy of his indictment, and a list of the witnesses
against him; and when it is all done, the Supreme Court
would not touch the case until they had assigned him
counsel. They would fear to draggle their ermine in
Blood. But here is a Massachusetts Judge of Probate with
whom it is but the accident of an accident, but the impu-
dence of counsel, so to speak, that prevents such an
outrage as Mr. Dana's protest describes, Now, your peti-
tioners ask, in the name of Massachusetts, for a judge
who can be safely trusted in a private chamber with an
innocent man.

T recall the scene in that court-room, while our hope
that the judge would postpone that case hung trembling
in the balance. We were none of us sure that even the
indignant, unintermitted protests of these members of the
bar would secure the postponement of that trial. Think
of the difference in this case! You are trying Mr. Loring
for continuance in his office. He comes here with all the
advantages of education, wealth, social position, profes-
sional discipline, everything on his side, and ean choose
when he will be tried. Around him are troops of friends,
Influential journals defend his rights. But that poor vie~
tim — what a contrast! According to Dr. Channing, it
‘was as much as life that hung in the balance. The old
English law says that the judge is counsel for the prison-
ers. There were no snch promptings here as led the
judge to say, “TI shall not try that man unless he has
counsel, and all the safeguards and checks of a judicial

Fray of & joxt: judge was to tell the
plainly, what he was arrested for, —see
access to him, and fix some future

his trial, leaving time sufficient to con-
defence. This is what the statutes of
ordain, in cases where even ten dol-
The first word that William Brent,
ed to speak on the stand in such cir-
death-knell to any claim Mr, Loring
thought a humane man, a good lawyer,
A statute which the whole civilized
‘the most infamous on record is executed
iim to be lawyers, judges, and Christians,
haste which doubles its mischief.

n while constantly prating of
Btheteaflaptande to law endaily on them,

clear, Berta wat ak gona
any obstacles in the way of this man’s g
propaniy wi"!! What right had he

going back, As HE PROBABLY WiLL"!!!

Suppose, Mr. Chairman, that, in the case

‘expressing such an opinion
‘before hes ‘Yet such was the
eke pee

etn but when we
n the power of this Legislature —

104 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING.

respectfully be it said—it is not in the power of this
Legislature to command the respect of this Common-
wealth for a Bench on which sits Edward Greely Loring.
‘You may refuse to remove him; but you cannot make the
people respect a Bench upon which he sits, If any man
here loves the judiciary, and wishes to secure its indepen-
dence and its influence with the people, let him aid us to
cut off the offending member,

Thirdly. Gentlemen, where is your Judgé next heard
of? He is next heard of at midnight, on Saturday, the
2th of May, drawing up a bill of sale of Anthony
Burns, which now exists in his own handwriting! Be-
fore the trial was begun, he sits down and writes a bill
of sale: —

“Know all men by these presents, — That I, Charles F. Sutile,
of Alexandria, in Virginia, in consideration of twelve hundred
dollars, to me paid, do hereby release and discharge, quitelaim
‘and convey to Antony Bymes, his liberty; and I hereby manu-
mit and release him from all claims and services to me forever,
hereby giving him his liberty to all intents and effects forever.

“In testimony whereof, I have hereto set my hand and seal,
‘this twenty-seventh day of May, in the year of our Lord eighteen
hundred and fifty-four.”

Gentlemen, suppose, while Dr. Webster sat in the dock,
before the trial commenced, Chief Justice Shaw had sum-
moned Mrs. Webster to his side, and said, “*T advise you
to get a petition to the Governor to have your husband
pardoned; I think he will be found guilty!” Why, he
would have been scouted from one end of the Common-
wealth to the other. Suppose a deed of land was in
dispute, and before the case began, the judge should call
oue of the claimants before him and say, “T advise you to
compromise this matter, for I think your deed is not worth
a straw!” Who would trust his case to such a judge?
But here isa man put before a judge to be tried on an

made, He knew the anxiety of the
AS ieee legally se-

d and conspired with Colonel Suttle

Marshal to have all the papers exe-
, and so exactly at the same moment,
ums of all chance from this measure.

thy such plotting as this of a Massa-—

196 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING.

chusetts judge!—of one who assures you that he ha*
scrupulously obeyed the laws of Massachusetta!

Well, Gentlemen, it is said, —I cannot : 0 J
thing but rumor, — that, as the crowning act of his uj
dicial conduct, he communicated his decision to one
twenty hours before he communicated it to the other, se
that Messrs. Smith, Hallett, Thomas, Suttle, & Co. hase
time to send down into Dock Square and have bullets a="
for the soldiers who were to be employed to assist the
slave-hunter; had time to inform the newspapers in thas="®
city what they intended to do;— while Messrs, J
Ellis, counsel for the prisoner, were allowed to go to thoim= =
homes in utter ignorance whether that decision would b="
one way or another. Where can you find, in the whole="*
catalogue of judicial enormities, an instance when
revealed his decision to one party and concealed | —
the other? If he thought it necessary, on any '
public seeurity or from private reasons of Propriety, ta"?
inform them what his decision was to be, he should haye==*
said: ‘Gentleman, I ean meet you only in open court —_— >
in the presence of counsel on both sides. I cannot speak——*
to you, Mr. Thomas, unless Mr. Dana or Mr. Ellis is=—=
here. Call them, and then T will tell you what my decis-
ion is to be.” At four o'clock on Thursday, the Com-
missioner made known his decision to the slaye-claimant’s
counsel; on Friday, at nine o'clock, to Messrs. Dana and
Ellis, and the world!!

What a picture! Put aside that it was a slave eases
forget, if you will, for a moment, that he was committing
an act which the Commonwealth says is tpso facto infae
mous, and declares that no man shall do it and hold offices
‘The old law of Scotland declared that a butcher should
not sit upon a jury; he was incapacitated by his profession.
‘The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, by the statute of
1843, says that any Slave Commissioner is unfit to sit

—_ 2

198 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING.

the support of injustice, tortured evidence to help the
strong against the weak, and administered a merciless
statute in a merciless manner.” You have in your hands
the able arguments of Messrs. Ellis and Dana, as well as
that remarkable “Decision which Judge Loring might
have given,” originally published in the Boston Atlas.
These make it needless for me to enlarge on the law
points. Allow me, however, a few brief remarks,

1st. To use my own statement prepared for another
oceasion, “the Fugitive Slave Act leaves the party claim-
ant his choice between two processes; one under its sixth
section ; the other under the tenth,

“The sixth section obliges the claimant to prove three
points: (L.) that the person claimed owes service (2.)
that he has escaped ; and, (3.) that the party before the
court is the identical one alleged to be a slave.

“ The tenth section makes the claimants certificate con-
elusive as to the first two points, and only leaves the iden
tity to be proved.

“Tn this case, the claimant, by offering proof of service
and escape, made his election of the sixth section.

“Here he failed,—failed to prove service, failed to
prove escape. Then the Commissioner allowed him to
swing round and take refuge in the tenth, leaving iden-
tity only to be proved; and this he proved by the pris-
oner’s confession, made in terror, if at all; wholly denied
by him, and proved only by the testimony of a witness
of whom we know nothing, but’ that he was contradicted
by several witnesses as to the only point to which he
affirmed, capable of being tested.”

2d. As to the point of identity. Colonel Suttle proved
that the person at the bar was his Anthony Burns by the
testimony of one witness. Of this witness, it may be em-
phatically said, we knew nothing. He was never in the
State before, and we hope he never will be again. He

> — :

REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING. 199

swore that Burns escaped from Richmond, March 24,
1854. To contradict him, six witnesses volunteered their
testimony, They were not songht out; they came acci-
dentally or otherwise into court, and offered, unsolicited,
their testimony, that they had seen the man at the bar in
Boston for three or four weeks before the day of alleged
escape. These were witnesses of whose daily life and nn-
impeached character ample evidence existed. Everybody
knew them. Six to one! They were Boston mechan-
ies and bookkeepers ; one a city policeman, one an officer
in the regiment, and member of the Common Council.
Surely, it was evident, either that the record was wrong,
that the Virginia witness was wrong, or that this prisoner
was not the man Colonel Suttle claimed as his slave.* Out
of either door, there was chance for the judge to find his
way to release Burns. At any rate, there was reasonable
doubt, and the person claimed was therefore entitled to his
release. But no; Mr. Loring lets one unknown slave-
hanter outweigh six well-known and honest men, tramples
on the rule that in such cases all doubts are to be held
in favor of the prisoner, and surrenders his victim to

‘Observe, Gentlemen, in this connection, the exceeding
importance of granting time to prepare for trial, the omis-
sion of which, on the part of Mr. Loring, I have com-
mented on. If this case had been finished on Thursday,
as it would have been but for the interference of others,
these witnesses would not have been heard of till after
Burns was out of the State. But after the two efforts of
his counsel had succeeded in getting delay till Monday,
the facts of the ease became known through the city, and,

* After the surrender of Burns, it was discovered that the statements of
‘hese ix wituesses were exactly correct. Burns came to Boston carly in
Fermury, and Sutclo's witness made o mistake of u month in the dave of

200 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING.

haying heard them, these witnesses volunteered their tes-
timony, Now, if the ascertaining of pertinent facts be the
purpose of a trial, which it surely is in all courts, except
those of slave commissioners, the consideration I have
stated isa very important one. ‘Though Mr. Loring chose
to disregard this evidence, it was due to the law and to
the satisfaction of the community, that, even in his court,
it should be heard.

Sd. But as to the sole point to be proved, under the
tenth section, identity, the evidence Mr. Loring relies on
is the confession of the poor victim when first arrested.
No confession is admissible when made in terror.

‘This confession was made at night; and even twelve
hours after, Mr. Loring was forced himself to admit that
the prisoner was so stupetied and terrified, he was in no fit
state to be tried, Yet he admitted his confessions made in
a still more terrified hour! The only witness, also, to this
alleged confession, was this same unknown slave-hunter,
unless we count one of the ruffians who guarded Burns.

But if the confession be taken at all, the whole must be
taken. Now, in this confession, sworn to by Colonel Sut-
tle’s own witness, Burns said he did not ran away, but fell
asleep on board a ship, where he was at work with his
master’s permission, and was brought away. This state-
ment being brought in by Colonel Suttle’s own witness,
must be taken by this claimant as true. He cannot be
allowed to doubt or contradict it. If it be true, then
Burns was not a fugitive slave, and so not within the
Fugitive Slave Law provisions, Our own Supreme Court
has decided (see 7 Cushing, 298) that a slave on board a
national vessel with his master, by express permission of
the Navy Secretary, who had been landed in Boston in
consequence of Navy orders, against the wish of the mas-
ter, and of course by no action of the slave, could not be
reclaimed. To be brought from a Slave State is no

n will show the absurdity of this

‘official oath” to the Constitution of the

t ows, then, that if Marshal Freeman
‘Loring to aid in catching a slave, and

B. F. Hallett was reported to have done
William and Ellen Crafts? ~e
But whether he could or not matters not |
tlemen. Massachusetts has a right to say
men she will have on her bench, She does
if vile men will catch slaves. She only:
shall not, at the same time, be officers of hers.
ring had his choice, to resign his judgeship or hi
sionership. He chose to act as © is
course, took the risk of losing the other offic
the State should rise to assert her laws.
complain that he is not allowed to hold a P
one hour and a Slave Court the next. Cer
too much to elaim for Massachusetts the poor
that when the legalized robber,” « the
trader,” (these are Channing’s words,) comes hi
shall not be able to select agents for his merciless wi
those sitting on our bench and clothed in our erm
One single line of this remonstrance goes

lll

‘the Act of Congress of 1850 was declared,
n ofthe Justies ofthe Supreme Judicial

, and in this spirit it behooves all persons
laws of the United States to consider nnd re

204 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING.

Observe the language: “It was declared,” by the
court, of course, and it is an “authoritative direction as to
the duties of magistrates.” You conclude, Gentlemen,
as every reader would, and would have a right to con-
clude, that this sentence, quoted from the 319th page of
Cushing's Reports, is part of a decision of our Supreme
Court. Not at all, Gentlemen ; it is only a note toa de-
cision, written, to be sure, by Judge Shaw, but on his
private responsibility, and no more an “authoritative di-
rection” to magistrates and people than any casual remark
of Judge Shaw to his next-door neighbor as they stand
together on the sidewalk. In his decision in the Burns
ease, Mr. Loring refers to the Sims case, above cited, (7
Cushing, 285,) “as the unanimous opinion of the judges
of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts,” and then quotes
this same sentence as part of the opinion, terming it “ the
wise words of our revered Chief Justice nv THAT casE.”
Could this important mistake, twice made, on solemn occa-
sions, be mere inadvertence? If he knew no better, he
seems hardly fit for a judge. If any of his friends should
claim he did know better, then, surely, he must have in-
tended to deceive, and that does not much increase his
fitness for the bench,

Mr. Chairman, there is one view of the Burns case
which has not, I believe, been suggested. It is this,
Massachusetts declares that the fugitive slave is constitu-
tionally entitled toa jury trial. Tt is the general conviction
of the North. Mr. Webster had once prepared an amend-
ment to the Fugitive Slave Act securing jury trial. A
Commissioner of humane and just instincts would be
careful, therefore, to remember that the present act,
on the contrary, made him both judge and jury. Now
does any man in the Commonwealth believe that a
jury would have ever sent Burns into slavery with six
witnesses against one as to his identity, and his confession

i ei nslavocatchor allow iimscll’ to

sal others for such business! Besides,

warning such would be the case. To
confess, that the State has submitted
the Slave Act within her limits. But,
justified in claiming that she submitted
silence; that while she offered no
as such, she proclaimed, in the face
and detestation of a slave-hunter.

206 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING.

“The great difficulty in the way of the arrangement now prow
posed is the article of the Constitution requiring the surrender
and return of fugitive slaves. A State, obeying this, seems to
me to contract as great guilt as if it were to bring slaves from

Africa, No man, who regards slavery as among the greatest

wrongs, can in any way reduce his fellow-creatures to it. ‘The
flying slave asserts the first right of a man, and should meet aid
rather than obstruction. . . . . No man among ws, who values his
character, would aid the slave-hunter. The slave-hunter here
would be looked on with as little favor as the felonious slave=
trader. Those. among us who dread to touch slavery in its own
region, lest insurrection and tumults should follow change, still
feel that the fugitive who has sought shelter so fur can breed no
tamult in the land which he has left, and that, of consequence,
no niotive but the unhallowed love of gain can prompt to his pur
suit; and when they think of slavery as perpetuated, not for
public order, but for gnin, they abhor it, and would not lift a
finger to replace the flying bondsman beneath the yoke.”

The Legislature, the press, the pulpit, the voice of
private life, every breeze that swept from Berkshire to
Barnstable, spoke contempt for the hound who joined that
mereiless pack. Every man who touched the Fugitive
Slave Act was shrunk from asa leper. Every one who de-
nounced it was pressed to our hearts. Political sins were
almost forgotten, if a man would but echo the deep relig-
ious conviction of the State on this point. When Charles
Sumner, himself a Commissioner, proclaimed beforehand
his determination not to execute the Fugitive Slave Act,
exclaiming, in Faneuil Hall, “I was a man before I was a
Commissioner!" all Massachusetts rose up to bless him,
and say, Amen! The other Slave Commissioner who
burdens the city with his presence cannot be said to have
lost the respect and confidence of the community, seeing
he never had either. But slave-hunting was able to sink
even him into a lower depth than he had before reached.

The hunting of slaves is, then, a sufficient cause for

“her detestation on the Slave Act
d, without danger to her civil polity.

“Better be trampled in the dust than trample
me. Much as I shrink from the evils inflicted
llions who bear it, I would sooner endure
non a brother. Freemen of the moun-
| have power, remove from yourselves, from

208 REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING.

our dear and venerable mother, the Commonwealth of Massachu-
setts, and from all the Free States, the baseness and guilt of
ministering to slavery, of acting as the slaveholder’s police, of
lending him arms and strength to secure his victim...
Should a slaye-hunter ever profane these mountainous retreats by
seeking here a flying bondman, regard him as a legalized robber.
Oppose no force to him; you need not do it. Your contempt
and indignation will be enough to disarm the ‘man-stealer’ of
the unholy power conferred on him by unrighteous laws.”

This is the picture of a slave-hunter, which a dispas-
sionate man leaves as his legacy to his fellow-citizens.
Gentlemen, we assert that such a man is not fit to sit upon.
the bench, We have a right to claim that you shall give
us honorable, just, high-minded, conscientious judges, —
men worthy the respect. and confidence of the community.
You cannot have such, if you have men who consent to
act as United States Slave Commissioners. You never
can enact a United States Commissioner into respect.
You may pile your statutes as high as Wachusett, they
will suffice to disgrace the State, they cannot make a
Slave Commissioner a respectable man.

We have, it seems to us, a right to ask of Massachusetts
this act, — it being clearly within her just authority, — as
a necessary and righteous expression of the feeling of the
State. The times are critical. South Carolina records
her opinion of slavery in a thousand ways, She violates
the United States Constitution to do it, expelling Mr.
Hoar from her borders, and barring him out with fine and
imprisonment. Young Wisconsin makes the first page of”
her State history glorious by throwing down her gauntlet
against this slave-hunting Union, in defence of justice and
humanity. Some of us had hoped that our beloved Com-
monwealth would have placed that crown of oak on her
own brow. Her youngest daughter has earned it first.
God speed her on her bright pathway to success and im=

only obeyed the United States
"Let Massachusetts say to
ly! do it as often as you please!
every day! But, when you do,

on of mine. Rosistiabat eek
since it is honest, is too

hy you. We do not deny your right.
right, as a citizen of the United
Beas Mavi bt bce che Conan
‘thank God, still the right to say that
Prtcsene men, at Jeast. Make your
be United: States Commissioner ? —
be officer of mine!" What! shall
names it makes one involuntarily
‘our public journals ?— whose hand
m would blush to be seen to touch in

im, I do not exaggerate, Grant that

himself more worthy to stand at 1
on, and the heart which stood still
lifting of the door-latch begins to gr
has finished his day’s work ; and,
wearied, but full of joyful hope that
express, he seeks his home, — happy, how
‘it is his, and it is free. In a moment,
from his lips. He is in fetters, and as!
hope of knowledge, manhood, and worthy |
seems gone. To read is a crime now, n
ery, and yirtuea miracle, Who shall d
despair of that moment? How the
seemed to shut down over him as a livin
hand dealt that terrible blow? This
mountain obstacles, is struggling to climb
worthy of his immortality. What hand isi
Christian land, starts from the cloud and th
Tt is the hand of one whom your schools |
with their best culture, sitting at ease,
wealth; one whom your commission
the fatherless, and mete out justice between man_
Men! Christians! is there one of you who
worlds, take upon his conscience the guilt of
a hapless, struggling soul? Is the man w
obedience to any human law, be guilty of
to be judge over Christian people?

Ms caigte, Ge power to remove a

Find your agents where you will; you
on the Supreme or any inferior Bench
‘You shall never gather round that in-
‘any respectability derived from the mag-
imonwealth. If it is to be done, let it
whom it does not harm the honor or the
husetts to have dishonored and made

REMOVAL OF JUDGE LORING.

airman, give free channel to the natural instincts
alth, and let us—let us be at liberty to
he slave-hunter, without feeling that our chil-
pes and lives are prejudiced thereby! When

done it,—when you have pronounced on this
kless, inhuman court its proper judgment, the

P official reprobation, —you will secure another

jhe next

lave Commissioner who opens his court
mber that he opens it in Massachusetts, where a
pt to be robbed of his rights as a hum
cause he is black.

n being
You will throw around the
te victim of a cruel law, which you say you
null, all the protection that Massachusetts inci-
han. And, doing this, you will do something
t seeing another such sad week as that of last
lune, in the capital of the Commonwealth. Al-
lou cannot blot out this wicked clause in the
lon, you will render it impossible tha

any but
mnprincipled, and shameless men shall aid in its

‘Why does he stand there arguing? Why
Predllifor tho gums?” Zidid ot: then, know
should have borne them were the

Antislavery Meeting held in Stacy Hall, Bostoa, on
sary of the Mob of October 31, 1835,

214 THE BOSTON MOB.

mob ; that all there was of government in Boston was in
the street; that the people, our final reliance for the exe-
eution of the laws, were there, in * broadcloth and broad
daylight,” in the street. Mayor Lyman knew it; and
the only honorable and honest course open to him was, to
have said, “If T cannot be a magistrate, I will not pretend
to be one.”

I do not know whether to attribute the Mayor's dis-
graceful conduct to his confused notion of his official du-
ties, or to a cowardly unwillingness to perform what he
knew well enough to be his duty. A superficial observer
of the press and pulpit of that day would be inelined to
consider it the result of ignorance, and lay the blame at
the door of our republican form of government, which
thrusts up into important stations dainty gentlemen like
Lyman, physicians never allowed to doctor any body but
the body politic, or cunning tradesmen who have wriggled
their slimy way to wealth, —men who in a trial hour not
only know nothing of their own duties, but do not even
know where to go for advice. And for the preachers, T
am inclined to think this stolid ignorance of civil rights
and duties may be pleaded as a disgraceful excuse, leaving
them guilty only of meddling in matters far above their
comprehension. But one who looks deeper into the tem-
per of that day will see plainly enough that the Mayor
and the editors, with their companions “in broadeloth,”*
were only blind to what ‘they did not wish to see, and
knew the right and wrong of the case well enough, only,
like all half-educated people, they were but poorly able to
comprehend the vast importance of the wrong they were
doing. The mobs which followed, directed against others
than Abolitionists, the ripe fruit of the seed here planted,
opened their eyes somewhat.

Mr, Garrison has given us specimens enough of the
press of that day, There was the Daily Advertiser, of

p ‘meeting
pele below a int 1); but the wiser
it ** not 20 much as @ riot ae the

ich, outliving publi becoming
ed thus the'right to he melted fato the Daily

in sad alliance marched the Courier, —
frank, whichever side it took, and even.
merit and bravery between that time and
mt praise to say, that it was enough to
wrong in 1835, and its vile servility

z, the Christian Register, the organ of
‘ ed the palm of infamy. In a mo-

frankness, remembering, probably, the
its own sect, it counselled hypocrisy ;
‘matter, it ints to the Abolitionists, that

216 THE BOSTON MOB.

they should imitate the example, as, with laughable igno-
rance, it avers, of the early Christians of Trajan’s day,
and meet in secret, if the “ vanity’ of the ladies would
allow! The coward priest forgot, if he ever knew,.that
the early Christians met in secret, beneath the pavements
of Rome, only to pray for the martyrs whose crosses lined
the highways, whose daring defied Paganism at its own
altars, and whose humanity stopped the bloody games of
Rome in the upper air; that they met beneath the ground,
not so much to hide themselves, as to get strength for
attacks on wicked laws and false altars.

Infamy, however, at that day, was not a monopoly of
one sect. Hubbard Winslow, a Pharisee of the Pharisees,
strictly Orthodox, a bigot in good and regular standing,
shortly after this preached a sermon to illustrate and de=
fend the doctrine, that no man, under a republican gov-
ernment, has a right to promulgate any opinion but such
as a majority of the brotherhood would allow and pro-
tect”; and he is said to have boasted that Judge Story
thanked him for such a discourse !

‘The Mayor played a most shuffling and dishonorable
part. For some time previous, he had held private cone
ferences with leading Abolitionists, urging them to dis-
continue their meetings, professing, all the while, entire
friendship, and the most earnest determination to protect
them in their rights at any cost. The Abolitionists treated
him, in return, with the utmost confidence. They yielded
to his wishes, so far as to consent to do nothing that would
increase the public excitement, with this exception, that
they insisted on holding mectings often enough to assert
their right to meet. Yet, while they were thus honorably
avoiding everything which would needlessly excite the
public mind, going to the utmost verge of submission and
silence that duty permitted, — while the Abolitionists, with
rare moderation, were showing this magnanimous forbear-

eS
‘THE BOSTON MOB. 217

ance and regard to the weakness of public authority and
the reckless excitement of the public, — the Mayor himself,
of official decorum and personal honor,
accepted the chair of the public meeting assembled in
Fanenil Hall, and presided over that assembly, —an as-
ich many intended should rouse a mob against
wee and which none but the weak or wilfully
‘avoid seeing must lead to that result. In his
nes eeebeeep heey pieced
hat moment to protect every citizen in his rights,
bly bound just then by private assurances to these
forgot all his duty, all his pledges, so
iy bart ting de deior ¢ er sonip,
or threat, the memory of which might well
e him tremblingly anxious to save Garrison’s life, since
blood shed that day, every law, divine and human,
ve held the Mayor guilty.
the temper of those times, The ignorant were
‘ot aware, and the wise were too corrupt to confess, that
gag ‘ious of human rights, free thought, was at

women knew it, felt the momentous char-

| issne, and consented to stand in the gap.
| he trial hours. I never think of them without
| am my native city being swallowed up in grati-
| Sta thodeiwho stood'so bravely for the right. Let us
| r to be ashamed of the Boston of 1835, Those

i wolves in the streets were not Boston, These
Mi pn and women were Boston. We will remember

open the statute-book of Massachusetts with-
ng Ellis Gray Loring and Samuel J. May,
Follen and Samnel E, Sewall, and those around

ood with them, for preventing Edward Everett
it with a law making free speech an in-
nce. And we owe it to fifty or sixty women,

218 THE BOSTON MOB.

and a dozen or two of men, that free speech was saved, in
1835, in the city of Boston. Indeed, we owe it mainly to
one man. If there is one here who loves Boston, who
loves her honor, who rejoices to know that, however fine
the thread, there és a thread which bridges over that dark
and troubled wave, and connects us bya living nerve with
the freemen of the Revolution, —that Boston, though be-
trayed by her magistrates, her wealth, her press, and her
pulpits, never utterly bowed her neck, let him remember
that we owe it to you, Sir, [Mr. Francis Jackson,] who of
fered to the women not allowed to meet here, even though
the Mayor was in this hall, the use of your honse; and
one sentence of your letter deserves to be read whenever
Boston men are met together to celebrate the preservation
of the right of free speech in the city of Adams and Otis.
History, which always loves courage, will write it on a page
whiter than marble and more incorruptible than gold.
You said, Sir, in answer to a letter of thanks for the use
of your house : —

“Tf a large majority of this community choose to turn a deaf
ear to tho wrongs which are inflicted upon their countrymen in
other portions of the land,—if they are content to turn away
from the sight of oppression, and ‘pass by on the other side,’ —
80 it must be,

“ But when they undertake in any way to impair or annul my
right to speak, write, and publish upon any subject, and more
especially upon enormities which are the common concern of
every lover of his country and his kind,— so it must not be, —
so it shall not be, if I for one can prevent it, Upon this great
right let us hold on at all hazards. And should we, in its exer-
cise, be driven from public halls to private dwellings, one house
‘at least shall be consecrated to its preservation. And if, in de-
fence of this sacred privilege, which man did not give me, and
shall not (if 1 can help it) take from me, this roof and these walls
shall be levelled to the earth,—let them full, if they must.
‘They cannot crumble in a better cause, They will appear of

220 ‘THE BOSTON MOB.

are the instigators of this mob; have you ever used your per
sonal influence with them ?

‘Mr. Lymax.—I know no personal friends; I am merely
‘an official. Indeed, ladies, you must retire. It is dangerous to
remain,

Lapy.—IF this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as
well die here as anywhere.

‘There is nothing braver than that in the history of the
Long Parliament, or of the Roman Senate.

At that Faneuil Hall meeting, one of * the family” was
present, — one of that family which was never absent when
a deed of infamy was to be committed against the slave, —a
family made up mostly of upstart attorneys, who fancy them-
selves statesmen, because able to draw a writ or pick holes
in an indictment, Mr. Thomas B. Curtis read the resolu-
tions ; and then followed three speeches, by Harrison Gray
Otis, Richard Fletcher, and Peleg Sprague, unmatched for
adroit, ingenious, suggestive argument and exhortation to
put down, legally or violently, —each hearer could choose
for himself, —all public meetings on the subject of slavery
in the city of Boston, Everything influential in the city
was arrayed against this society of a few women. . I could
not but reflect, as I sat here, how immortal principle is,
Rey. Henry Ware, Jr. read the notice of this society's
meeting from Dr. Channing's pulpit, and almost every
press in the city woke barking at him next morning for
what was called his “impudence.” He is gone to his
honored grave ; many of those who met in this hall in
pursuance of that notice are gone likewise. They died,
as Whittier so well says,

« their brave henrts breaking slow,
Bat, seliorgetful to the last,

In words of cheer and bugle glow,
‘Their breath upon the darkness passed.”

In those days, as we gathered round their graves, and

‘THE BOSTON MOB, 221

resolved that, the “narrower the circle became, we would
draw the closer together,” we envied the dead their rest.
‘Men ceased to slander them in that sanctuary ; and as we
Tooked forward to the desolate vista of calamity and toil
before us, and thought of the temptations which beset us
‘on either side from worldly prosperity which a slight sacri-
fice of principle might secure, or social ease so close at
land by only a little turning aside, we almost envied the
dead the quiet sleep to which we left them, the harvest
reaped, and the seal set beyond the power of change,
And of those who assaulted them, many are gone. The
ge ie eae
' is gone; the Judge before whom Mr. Gar-
riso arraigned, at the jail, the next day after the
the Sheriff who rode with him to the jail is

gone 5 he city journals have changed hands, being more
than once openly bought and sold, The editor of the
sé zeal in the cause of mob violence earned it
‘of giving its name to the day,—* the Adas
‘many called it,—is gone; many of the prominent
that scene, twenty years ago, have passed away ;

nt of those whose voices cried “ Havoc!” at
ll has gone, —Mr. Otis has his wish, that the
hit close over him before it closed over the
h God speed in his good time ;— but the

ple fills these same halls, as fresh and vital to-
Ifixed and resolute to struggle against pulpit
it against wealth and majorities, against denuncia-
tion and unpopularity, and certain in the end to set its
triumphant foot alike on man and everything that man has
“made,

to-day the man whom Boston wealth and
went home, twenty years ago this
gloried in having crushed. The loudest boast-
| gone. He stands to-day among us, these very

222 THE BOSTON MOB.

walls, these ideas which breathe and burn around us, say-
ing for him, “T still live.” If, twenty or twice twenty
years hence, he too shall have passed away, may it not be
till his glad ear has caught the jubilee of the emancipated
millions whom his life has been given to save!

This very Female Antislavery Society which was met
here twenty years ago did other good service but a few
months after, in getting the Court of Massachusetts to
recognize that great principle of freedom, that a slave,
brought into a Northern State, is free. It was in the well-
known Med case. We owe that to the Boston Female
Antislayery Society, To-day, Judge Kane, and the
Supreme Court, which alone can control him, are endeay-
oring to annihilate that principle which twenty years ago
was established. How far and how soon they may be
successful, God only knows.

Truly, as Mr. Garrison has said, the intellectual and
moral growth of antislavery has been great within twenty
years; but who shall deny that, in the same twenty years,
the political, the organic, the civil growth of slavery has
been more than equal? We stand here to-day with a
city redeemed—how far? Just so far as this meeting
commemorates,—the right of free speech is secured.
Thank God! in twenty years, we have proved that an
antishavery meeting is not only possible, but respectable,
in Massachusetts, —that is all we have proved, Lord
Erskine said a newspaper was stronger than government,
‘We have got many newspapers on our side. Ideas will,
in the end, beat down anything;—we have got free
course for ideas.

But let us not cheer ourselves too hastily, for the gov-
ernment, the wealth, the public opinion, of this very eity in
which we meet, remain to-day almost as firmly anchored
as ever on the side of slavery. Vanes turn only when the
wind shifts, so the Daily Advertiser has not changed a whit,

lish proverb.
to-day to thank God that Boston never

the possibility of the emaneipation of
slaves. But that possibility is to he made
as earnest and unceasing, by a self-devo-
as that which has marked the twenty years

these people, who have made this day
accused in their own time of harsh language
and great disparagement of dignities.
three charges brought against the Female
Society in 1835. The women forgot their

said, in endeavoring to make the men do

224 THE BOSTON 3408.

their duty. It was a noble lesson which the sisters and
mothers of that time set the women of the present day, —
T hope they will follow it.

There was another charge brought against them,—it
was, that they had no reverence for dignitaries. The
friend who sits here on my right (Mrs. Southwick) dared
to rebuke a slaveholder with a lond voice, in a room just
before, if’ not then, consecrated by the presence of Chief
Justice Shaw, and the press was astonished at her bold-
ness, I hope, though she has left the city, she has left
representatives behind her who will dare rebuke any
slaye-hunter, or any servant of the slave-power, with the
same boldness, frankness, and defiance of authorities, and
contempt of parchment,

Then there was another charge brought against their
meetings, that they indulged in exceedingly bold language
about pulpits and laws and wicked magistrates, ‘That is
a sin which I hope will not die out. God grant we may
inherit that also.

I should like to know very mach how many there are
in this hall to-day who were out in the street, as actual
mobocrats, twenty years ago. I know there are some
here who signed the various petitions to the City Govern-
ment to prevent the meeting from being held; but it would
be af interesting fact to know how many are here to-day,
actually enlisted under the antislavery banner, who tore
that sign to pieces. I wish we had those relies; the piece
of that door which was long preserved, the door so coolly
locked by Charles Burleigh,—it was a touching relic.
We onght to have a portion of that sign which the Mayor
threw down as a tub to the whale, hoping to save some
semblance of his authority, —hoping the multitude would
be satisfied with the sign, and spare the women.in this
hall, —forgetting that a mob is controlled only by its fears,

not by pity or good manners.

226 ‘THE BOSTON MOB,

tion of slavery. No matter whose the lips that would
speak, they must be free and ungagged. Let us always
remember that he does not really believe his own opinions,
who dares not give free scope to his opponent. Persecution
is really want of faith in our creed. Let us see to it, my
friends, Abolitionists, that we learn the lesson the whole
cirele round. Let us believe that the whole of trath can
rever do harm to the whole of virtue, Trust it. And
remember, that, in order to get the whole of truth, you
must allow every man, right or wrong, freely to utter his
conscience, and protect him in so doing.

The same question was wrought out here twenty years
‘ago, as was wrought in the protest of fifty or a hundred
Abblitionists, when an infidel (Abner Kneeland) was sent
to Boston jail for preaching his sentiments, I hope that
we shall all go out of this hall, remembering the highest
lesson of this day and place, that every man’s conscience
is sacred. No matter how good our motives are in try-
ing to gag him! Mayor Lyman had some good motives
that day, had he only known what his office meant, and
stayed at home, if he felt himself not able to fill it. It is
not motives, Entire, unshackled freedom for every man’s
lips, no matter what his doctrine ;—the safety of free
discussion, no matter how wide its range ;—no check on
the peaceful assemblage of thoughtful men! Let us con-
secrate our labors for twenty years to come in doing better
than those who went before us, and widening the circle of
their principle into the full growth of its actual and proper
significance.

Let me thank the women who came here twenty years
ago, some of whom are met here to-day, for the good they
have done me, I thank them for all they have taught me.
Thad read Greek and Roman and English history; T had
hy heart the classic eulogies of brave old men and martyrs;
T dreamed, in my folly, that I heard'the same tone in my

THE BOSTON MOB. 227

youth from the cuckoo lips of Edward Everett ;— these
women taught me my mistake. They taught me that down
in those hearts which loved a principle for itself, asked no
man’s leave to think or speak, true to their convictions, no
matter at what hazard, flowed the real blood of ’76, of 1640,
of the hemlock-drinker of Athens, and of the martyr-saints
of Jerusalem. I thank them for it! My eyes were sealed,
so that, although I knew the Adamses and Otises of 1776,
and the Mary Dyers and Ann Hutchinsons of older times,
I could not recognize the Adamses and Otises, the Dyers
and Hutchinsons, whom I met in the streets of 85. These
women opened my eyes, and I thank them and you [turn-
ing to Mrs. Southwick and Miss Henrietta Sargent, who
sat upon the platform] for that anointing. May our next
twenty years prove us all apt scholars of such brave in-
struction |

Eine erate .
went out, and each one assigned
One thought it was business, another
fancied it was some offensive it
speaker. But Holmes, being a pl
autopsy, and found the man’s brain wa
laughter and applause.] Now, Sir, I
may claim that reason for sitting down.
mt and profound oration, and all we hat
Rec des bikes cae te RD
Why, who can do anything but i
heard? Do you not remember, Sir, wher
‘boys, and followed the martial music, our 8

‘THE PILGRIMS. 229

time, street after street, till we came to some broad way
that our fears or our mothers forbade us to enter; and
when the music turned away, our tiny feet kept time long
afterwards? Can we get away from the spell which took
possession of us in yonder church? I can only think in
that channel. Who can get his mind away from the deep
resounding march with which the speaker carried us from
century to century, and held up the torch, and pointed
out the significance of each age? All we can do is to
utter some little reflection, — something suggested by that
train of thought.

How true it is that the Puritans originated no new
truth! How true it is, also, Mr. President, that it is not
frath which agitates the world! ~ Plato in the groves of
the Academy sounded on and on to the utmost depth of
philosophy, but Athens was quiet. Calling around him
the choicest minds of Greece, he pointed out the worth-

of their altars and the sham of public life, but

was quiet, —it was all speculation. When Socra-

the streets of Athens, and, questioning every-

‘thy life, struck the altar till the faith of the passer-by
Horst 3 it came close to action, and immediately they
faye him hemlock, for the city was turned upside down.
T might find a better illustration in the streets of Jerusa-
le What the Puritans gave the world was not thought,
but Acrios. Europe bad ideas, but she was letting ‘I

’ dare ‘not wait upon I would,’ like the cat in the adage.

Puritans, with native pluck, launched out into the
deep sea. Men, who called themselves thinkers, bad been
along the Mediterranean, from headland to head-
in their timidity; the Pilgrims launched boldly out
‘nto the Atlantic, and trusted God. [Lond applause.]
‘That is the claim they have upon posterity. It was
_ Actiow that made them what they were.
"No, they did not originate anything, but they planted ;

acini es

free altar, free lips, ay, and a fr
“These are mine!” No matter
which rests upon his memory, since

I think, Mr. President, that the ern
Puritans has been that which the

right. We are to regard them dm ;

the possibilities which were wrapped

not in what poor human bodies

time. Men look back upon the Carvers
of 1620, and seem to think, if they existed i
would be clad in the same garments, and
same identical manner and round that

Ib isa mistake. The Pilgrims of 1620 woul
not in Plymouth, but in Kansas. [Lond ch
mon’s Temple, they tell us, had the best
ning-rods ever invented, —he anticipated F
you suppose, if Solomon lived now, he wou
ning-conduetors? No, he would have

‘THE PILGRIMS. 281

wires, able to send messages both ways at the same time,
and where only he who sent and he who received should
know what the messages were.

Do you suppose that, if Elder Brewster could come up
from his grave to-day, he would be contented with the
Congregational Church and the five points of Calvin?
No, Sirs he would add to his creed the Maine Liquor
Law, the Underground Railroad, and the thousand Sharpe’s
Rifles, addressed “ Kansas,” and labelled ** Books,"’ [En-
thusiastie and Jong-continued applause.] My idea is, if he
took his staff in his hand and went off to exchange pulpits,
you might hear of him at the Music Hall of Boston [where
Rev. Taxovons Panxen preaches] and the Plymouth
Church at Brooklyn [Rev. Hesny Wanv Buecren’s].
[Renewed applanse.]

We should bear in mind development when we criticise
the Pilgrims, —where they would be to-day. Indeed, to
be as good as our fathers, we must be better. Imitation is
not discipleship. When some one sent a cracked plate to
China to have a set made, every piece in the new set had
acmck in it. The copies of 1620 and 1787 you com-
monly see have the erach, and very large, too. Thee and
thou, a stationary hat, bad grammar and worse manners,
with an ugly coat, are not George Fox in 1855. You will
Fecognize him in any one who rises from the lap of artificial

Tife, flings away its softness, and startles you with the sight
‘@f a wn. Neither do [ acknowledge, Sir, the right of
Pgmouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all
Avineriea; it only crops out here. [Cheers.] Ithas cropped
‘eal a great many times in our history. You may recognize
© alyays. Old Putnam stood vpon it at Bunker Hill, when
The wid to the Yankee boys, “Don’t fire till you sce the
‘We hhites of their eyes.” Ingraham had it for ballast when
The put his little sloop between two Austrian frigates, and
threatened to blow them out of the water, if they did not

,
232 THE PILGRIMS

réspeet the broad eagle of the United States, in the case
of Koszta, Jefferson had it for a writing-desk when he
drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Statute
of Religious Liberty” for Virginia. Lovejoy rested his
anusket upon it when they would not let him print at Al-
ton, and he said, “ Death or free speech!” I recognized
the clink of it to-day, when the apostle of the “ Higher
Law” came to lay his garland of everlasting—none a
better right than he—upon the monument of the Pil-
grims. [Enthusiastic cheering.] He says he is not a
descendant of the Pilgrims. That is a mistake. There is
a pedigree of the body and a pedigree of the mind. [Ap-
plause.] He knows so much about the Mayflower, that,
as they say in the West, I know he was “thar,” [Laugh-
ter and applause.] Ay, Sir, the rock cropped out again.
Garrison had it for an imposing-stone when he looked in
the faces of seventeen millions of angry men and printed
his sublime pledge, I will not retreat ‘a single inch, and
Iwill be heard.” [Great cheering.]

Sir, you say you are going to raise a monument to the
Pilgrims. I know where I would place it, if I had a
yote, I should place one corner-stone on the rock, and
the other on that level spot where fifty of the one hun-
dred were buried before the winter was over. In that
touching, eloquent, terrific picture of what the Pilgrims
passed through, rather than submit to compromise, which
the orator sketched for us to-day, he omitted to mention
that one half of their number went down into the grave ;
but the remainder closed up shoulder to shoulder, as firm,
unflinching, hopeful as ever. Yes, death rather than the
compromise of Elizabeth. [Loud applause.] I would
write on their monument two mottoes: one, “ The Right
is more than our country !” and over the graves of the
fifty, “Death, rather than Compromise!” Mr. Presi-
dent, I detest that word. It is so dangerous, I would not

made for the clothes. The Puritans sai
~ out and make clothes for the man ;. mal
for men!" That is the radical principle,

which rans through all their history.
eguile them with the voice of the cha

nailing, ne
Ritter tiassple: cf dhewocrscinemictnaal
to it; it is to be our salvation,

Mr, President, the toast to which you c
to respond says our fathers have seeured p v
| peace, Yes, “secured” it, It is not here; w

‘yet got it, but we shall have it, It is all “secured,” for
they planted so wisely, it will come. They planted their
‘oak or pine tree in the broad lines of New England, and
gave it room to grow. Their great care was, that it should
grow, no matter at what cost. Goethe says, that, if you
plant an oak in a flower-vase, either the oak must wither
or the vase crack; some men go for saving the vase. Too
ys have that anxiety: the Puritans would
have let it crack, So say I. If there is anything that
‘cannot bear free thought, let it crack, ‘There is a class
‘among us £0 conservative, that they are afraid the roof
will come down if you sweep off the cobwebs. As Doug-
Jass Jerrold says, They can never fully relish the new
‘moon, out of respect for that venerable institution, the old
one.” [Great merriment and applause.)
_ Why, Sir, the first constitution ever made was framed
Mayflower. It was a very good constitution,
parent of all that have been made since,—a goodly
family, some bad and some good. The parent was laid
zxside on the shelf the moment the progress of things re-
‘quired it. I hope none of the children have grown so
‘Strong that they can prevent the same event befalling
1 when necessity requires. Hold on to that idea
true New England persistency, — the sacredness of
; man, — and everything else will evolve from it.
He Phillipses, Mr. President, did not come from Ply-
Sramuth; they made their longest stay at Andover. Let me
Sell you an Andover story. One day, a man went into a
‘Fone there, and began telling about a fire. “There had
xever been such a fire,” he said, “in the county of Essex.
AS man going by Deacon Pettingill's barn saw an owl
‘© the ridge-pole. He fired at the owl, and the wadding
‘Sine how or other, getting into the shingles, set the hay
‘©n fire, and it was all destroyed, —ten tons of hay, six
‘Vaeid of cattle, the finest horse in the country,” &e. The

236 THE PILGRIMS.

Deacon was nearly crazed by it. The men in the store
began exclaiming and commenting upon it. “ What ®
loss!” says one. “ Why, the Deacon will wellnigh break
down under. it,” says another. And so they went oD,
speculating one after another, and the conversation drifted
on in all sorts of conjectures. At last, a quiet man, who
sat spitting in the fire, looked up, and asked, “Did he
hit the owl?” [Tumultuous applause.] That man wos
made for the sturdy reformer, of one idea, whom M-
Seward described.

No matter what the name of the thing be; no matt©@T
what the sounding phrase is, what tub be thrown to the
whale, always ask the politician and the divine, “Did he
hit that owl?” Is liberty safe? Is man sacred? The¥
say, Sir, I am a fanatic, and so I am. But, Sir, none Of
us have yet risen high enough. Afar off, I see Carw ©
and Bradford, and I mean to get up to them. [Loud
cheers.]

LETTER

TO JUDGE SHAW AND PRESIDENT WALKER*

To LEMUEL SHAW, Chigf Justice of Massockusets, and
JAMES WALKER, President of Harvard University.

{AENTLEMEN: Now that the press has ceased its
ridicule of your homage to Morphy at the Revere
—a criticism of little importance, —I wish to pre~

‘sent the scene to you in a different light.
' You, Mr. Chief Justice, represent the law of the Com-
amonwealth; to you, Mr. President, is committed the
amoral guardianship of the young men of her University.
“Yet I find you both at a table of revellers, under a roof
‘whose chief support and profit come from the illegal sale
‘of intoxicating drink, and which boasts itself the champion
and head of an organized, flagrant, and avowed contempt
‘of the laws of the Commonwealth. No one was surprised
“to see at your side a Mayor who owes his office to the
‘yotes of that disorderly band whose chief is the Revere
House. Few wondered at the presence of a Professor
placed by private munificence to watch over the piety and
‘morals of your College, Mr. President; though a manly
protest against fashionable vice might do something to re-

* The hotels of Boston, with the connivance of the City Government,
‘reise to obey the Maine Liquor Law of Massachnsetis, The Revere House,
‘the most fhsliionable of our hotels, was chosen to offer a public dinner to
“Morphy, at which were present Judge Shaw, President Walker, the Mayor,
‘Professor Huntington, and other dignitaries.

Moe

asterisk of death, owe their untimely end |
of you know that the presence of men holdi
a8 yours goes as far as recreant office and 1
to make a bad roof A

‘Yet I find-you both ot a midnight ravall
utmost to give character toa haunt whieh be
and constant defiance of the moral sense of th
emnly expressed in its statutes.
So toi

AND PRESIDENT WALKER. 289

ssocial habits you please in the privacy of your own dwell-
ngs} or, in travelling, to use the customary accommoda-
‘tions of an inn, even though intoxicating drink is sold on
Zits premises. Few will care to criticise, if, choosing some
decent roof, you join your fellows and mock the moral
‘sentiment of the community by a public carousal. But
‘while you hold these high offices, we, the citizens of a
Commonwealth whose character you represent, emphati-
‘cally deny your right to appear at illegal revels in a gilded
grog-shop, which, but for the sanction of such as you, had
Tong ago met the indictment it deserves. How can we
‘expect the police to exeeute a law upon which the Chief
Justice pours contempt by his example? How shall the
grand jury indict the nuisance of which the Supreme
Bench has, for an hour, made a part? We, the citizens,
Taye a tight to claim that, should public opinion, by our
Tabors, reach the point of presenting these gorgeous grog-
‘shops at the criminal bar, we shall not find their frequent-
ets on the bench.

Again and again, Mr. Chief Justice, have I heard you;
at critical moments, in a voice whose earnest emotion half
checked its utterance, remind your audience of the sacred
duty resting on each man to respect and obey the law;

ing us that the welfare of society was bound up in
this individual submission to existing law. How shall the
Prisoner at the bar reconcile the grave sincerity of the
‘magistrate with this heedless disregard by the man of most
Jmportant laws? If, again, the times should call you to
Wid us smother justice and humanity at tht’ command of
Statutes, we may remind you with what heartless indiffer-
‘ence you treated the law you were sworn and paid to
‘uphold, and one on which the hearts of the best men in
the State were most strongly set. Was it not enough that
You let History paint you bowing beneath a slave-hunter’s
chain to enter your own court-room? but must you also

240 LETTER TO JUDGE SHAW

present yourself in public, lifting to your lips the wine
up, which, by the laws of the State over whose cour€=
you preside, it is an indictable offence and a nuisance te
sell you?

And let me remind you, Mr. President that even your
young'men sometimes pause amid scenes of temptation, ot —
in our streets, where every tenth door opens to vice,—
pause at some chance thought of home or rising regard for
the sentiment of the community. And, Sir, should such
frail purpose of even one youth filter before
his President in a circle of wine-bibbers, and that |
to an unhonored grave, you will be bound to remember
that, in the check and example you promised and were
expected and set to hold upon him, you wholly failed;
that in the most impressible moments of his life he saw the
virtue of the State struggling with its sensual
its lust of dishonorable gain, its base pandering to appetite,
already too strong; and in that struggle he
weight ostentatiously thrown into the scale of open and
contemptuous disregard of the moral sense of the State.
I remember well when, from a pulpit constantly boasting
that its new creed had thrown away a formal and hollow
faith and bronght in the wholesome doctrine of works,
you painted, so vividly, how hard it is for young men to
say “No.” Is this, Sir, the method you choose to illus-
trate the practical value of the new faith, and this the help
you extend to the faltering virtue of your pupils, giving
the sanction of your character and office to the prince of
rumsellers and law-breakers, and flinging insult on one
of the noblest reforms of the age?

T admit the right and duty of minorities to disregard im-
moral or unconstitutional laws. But no one ever thought
the prohibitory law immoral, and you, Mr. Chief Justice,
have affirmed its constitutionality. Neither do I now ar~
raign you, Gentlemen, for your private habit of wine-drink-

IDOLS-*

R. PRESIDENT AND LADIES AND GENTLE-

MEN: I feel half inclined to borrow a little wit
from an article in a late number of the Atlantic Monthly,
—*My Double, and how he undid me,”—and say, *I
agree entirely with the gentleman who has just taken his
seat.” [Laughter.] “So much has been said, and so
well said, that I feel there is no need of my occupying
your attention.” [Renewed laughter.] But then I should
lose the hearty satisfaction it gives me to say with what
delight I stand upon this platform, and how sincerely T
appreciate the honor you do me, Mr. Chairman, by allow=
ing me to aid in opening this course of lectures. I know,
Sir, that you hoped, as I did, that this post would be filled
by our great Senator, who seeks health on a foreign soil.
No one laments more sincerely than I do that he felt it
impossible and inconsistent with his other duties to be
here. It is not too much to say that the occasion was
worthy of a word even from Charles Sutaner. [Hearty
applause. ]

Appreciating the lyceum system as I do, looking upon
it as one of the departments of the national school, truly
American in its origin, and eminently republican in its
character arid end, I feel how eloquently his voiee would
have done it justice. For this is no common evening, Mr.
President, The great boast of New England is liberal

* Fraternity Lecture delivered in Boston, October 4, 1859,

IDOLS. 243

eultare and toleration. Hasier to preach than to practise!
‘Many lycenms have opened their doors to men of different
shades of opinion, and some few have even granted a fair
amount of liberty in the choice of subject, and the expres-
sion of individual opinion. None of us can forget, on such
‘an occasion as this, the eminently catholic spirit and brilliant
sucess of that course of Antislavery Lectures in the winter
of 1854 and 1855, which we owed chiefly to the energy
and to the brave and liberal spirit of Dr. James W, Stone.
Bat you go, Gentlemen, an arrow’s flight beyond all ly-
ceums; for, recognizing the essential character of civiliza~
tion, you place upon your platform the representatives of
each sex and of both races. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen,
You will listen to consummate eloquence, never heard in
Boston before from the lyceum platform, because * guilty
of a skin not colored like our own.” [Applause.] And
"you will listan, besides, to woman, gracefully standing on
_ a platform which boasts itself the source of national educa-
tion. Por decent justice has not been done to woman, in
regard to her influence, either upon literature or society ;
and I welcome with inexpressible delight the inauguration
‘of a course of lectures national and American in the
proper sense of the words.
_ There are men who prate about * nationality,” and “ the
and “manifest destiny,” —using brave words,
‘when their minds rise no higher than some petty mass of
white States making money out of cotton and corn. My
idea of American nationality makes it the last best growth
‘of the thoughtful mind of the century, treading under foot
sex and race, caste and condition, and collecting on the
“broad bosom of what deserves the name of an empire,
under the shelter of noble, just, and equal laws, all races,
“all customs, all religions, all languages, all literature, and
“allideas. I remember, a year or two ago, they told us of
a mob at Milwaukie that forced a man to bring out the

Mie

24d ‘IDOLS.

body of his wife, born in Asia, — which, according to th=
custom of her firtters, he was sont to bum, — ani
compelled him to submit to American funeral rites, which 4

his soul abhorred, ‘The sheriff led the mob, and the press =
of the State vindicated the act. ‘Chis is not my idea of
American civilization. They will show you at Rome the
stately column of the Emperor Trajan. Carved on its
outer surface is the triumphal march of the
when he came back to Rome, leading all ‘nations, all
tongues, all customs, all races, in the retinue of his con
oh and they traced it on the eternal marble, circling
the pillar from base to capital, Just such is my idea
of the empire, broad enough and brave enough to admit
both sexes, all creeds, and all tongues in the
procession of this great daughter of the west of the At
Jantic. [Lond applanse.] ‘That is the reason why I hail
this step im Boston,—the brain of the 1
to the negro and to woman, “Take your place.
teachers of American Democracy.” [Applause.]

I said justice had never been done to woman for her
influence upon literature and society. Society is the nat-
ural outgrowth of the New Testament, and yet nothing
deserving of the name ever existed in Europe until, two
centuries ago, in France, woman called it into being. So-
ciety, — the only field where the sexes have ever met on
terms of equality, the arena where character is formed
and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion,
the crucible of ideas, the world’s university, at once a
school and a theatre, the spur and the crown of am-
bition, the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps
real merit, the power that gives government leave to
be, and outruns the lazy Church in fixing the moral
sense of the age,—who shall fitly describe the lofty
place of this element in the history of the last two centu~
ties? Who shall deny that, more than anything else, it

IDOLS, 245

deserves the name of the most controlling element in the
history of the two centuries just finished? And yet this
is the realm of woman, the throne which, like a first con-
queror, she founded and then filled.
So with literature. The literature of three centuries
ago is not decent to be read: we expurgate it, Within
a hundred years, woman has become a reader, and for that
reason, as much or more than anything else, literature has
sprung to a higher level. No need now to expurgate all
you read. Woman, too, is now an author ; and I under-
take to say that the literature of the next century will be
‘icher than the classic epochs, for that cause, ‘Truth is
| one forever, absolute ; but opinion is truth filtered through
‘the moods, the blood, the disposition, of the spectator.
“Man has looked at creation, and given us his i Sapeeeione
in Greek literature and English, one-sided, half-way, all
“awry. Woman now takes the stand to give us her views
| of God's works and her own creation ; and exactly in pro-
| portion as woman, though equal, is sting BBcoert fo
“man, just in that proportion will the literature of the next
“century be doubly rich, because we shall have both sides.
“You might as well plant yourself in the desert, under the
eet gray and blue, and assert that you have seen
all the wonders of God's pencil, as maintain that a male
| literature, Latin, Greek, or Asiatic, can be anything but a
| half part, poor and one-sided; as well develop only mus-
cle, shutting out sunshine and color, and starving the flesh
from your angular limbs, and then advise men to scorn
| Titian’s flesh and the Apollo, since you have exhausted
| amanly beanty, as think to stir all the depths of music with
only half the chords. [Applause.] The diapason of hu-
“man thought was never struck till Christian culture sum-
~ ‘moned woman into the republic of letters ; and experience
| a5 well as nature tells us, “what God hath joined, let not
"man put asunder.” [Applause.]

‘Goesriee: Boscher\stiada-tn\yeuk pease
debate the people will pick a lesson of

grain on his back and he draws easily on.
weight, not by muscle. Give eee

useless and colleges an impertinence. It is th

IDOLS. 247

vof literature, too, for it is the only part that is vital. I -
~value letters. I thank God that I was taught for many
‘years ; enough to see inside the sham.

‘The upper tier of letters is mere amateur; docs not
cunderstand its own business. William H. Prescott would
Thave washed his hand twice, had Walker the filibuster
grasped it unwittingly ; but he sits down in his study and
writes the history of filibusters, respectable only because
they died three hundred years ago! He did not know
‘that he was the mere annalist of the Walkers and Jeffer-
son Davises of that age. [Applause.]

[In this connection, Mr. Phillips referred to Bunyan and
to Shakespeare, by way of illustrating his point that the
literature which is of use is the literature that is not hon-
ored as such when it is written.]

So it is with government. Government arrogates to it-
self that it alone forms men, As well might the man down
here in the court-house, who registers the birth of children,
imagine that he was the father of all the children he regis-
ters. [Lond laughter.] Everybody knows that govern
ment never began anything. It is the whole world that
thinks and governs. Books, churches, governments, are
what we make them. France is Catholic, and has a pope ;
but she is the most tolerant country in the world in mat-
ters of religion. New England is Protestant, and has
‘toleration written all over her statute-book ; but she has a
pope in every village, and the first thing that tests a boy’s
‘cournge is to dare to differ from his father. [Applanse.]
Popes! why, we have got two as signal popes as they had
jn Enrope three centuries ago,—there is Bellows at
Avignon and Adama at Rome, [Great merriment, fol-
Towed by loud applause.] So with government. Some
‘think government forms men, Let us take an example.

“Take Sir Robert Peel and Webster as measures and
‘examples; two great men, remarkably alike. Neither of

248 TDOLS.

them ever had an original idea. [Laughter.] Neither
kept long any idea he borrowed. Both borrowed from
any quarter, high or low, north or south, friend or enemy.
Both were weathercocks, not winds ; creatures, not crea-
tors. Yet Peel died England's idol,—the unquestioned
head of the statesmen of the age ; Webster the disgraced
and bankrupt chief of a broken and ruined party. Why?
Examine the difference. Webster borrowed free trade of
Calhoun, and tariff of Clay; took his constitutional prin-
ciples from Marshall, his constitutional learning from
Story, and his doctrine of treason from Mr. George ‘Tick-
nor Curtis [laughter]; and he followed Channing and
Garrison a little way, then turned doughface in the wake
of Douglas and Davis [applause and a few hisses] ; at
first, with Algernon Sidney (my blood boils yet as T think
how I used to declaim it), he declared the best legacy he
could leave his children was free speech and the example
of using it; then of Preston S. Brooks and Legree he
took lessons in smothering discussion and hunting slaves,
Tn 1820, when the world was asleep, he rebuked the slave-
trade; in 1850, when the hattle was hottest, he let
Everett omit from his works all the best antislavery ut-
terances !

Sir Robert Peel was just like him. He “changed
every opinion, violated” (so says one of the Reviews)
“every pledge, broke up every party, and deserted every
colleagne he ever had,” yet his sun went down in glory.
Why? Because his step was ever onward; he lived to
learn, Every change was a sacrifice, and he could truly
use, in 1829, the glorious Latin Webster borrowed of him,
“Vera pro gratis,” —*T tell you unwelcome truth.” But
Webster's steps, crab-like, were backwards, [Applause
and hisses.] Hisses! well, “ Because thou art virtuous,
shall there be no more eakes and ale?" Because you
have your prejudices, shall there be no history written ?

IDOLS. 249

Onr task is unlike that of some recent meetings, — His-
tory, not flattery. [Applause.] Webster moved by com-
pulsion or calculation, not by conviction. He ,sunk from
free trade to a tariff; from Chief Justice Marshall to
Mr. George Ticknor Curtis; from Garrison to Douglas ;
from Algernon Sidney to the slave overseers. I read in
this one of the dangers of our form of government. As
“Tooqueville says so wisely, * The weakness of a Demoe-
miey is that, unless guarded, it merges in despotism.”

_ Such a life is the first step, and half a dozen are the
Niagara carrying us over.

Bat both “builded better than they knew.” Both
foreed the outward world to think for itself, and become
‘statesmen. No man, says D'Israeli, ever weakened gov-
“ernment so much as Peel. Thank Heaven for that !—so
much gained. Changing every day, their admirers were
-foreed to learn to think for themselves. In the country
once I lived with a Democrat who never had an opinion
on the day’s news till he had read the Boston Post.
[Langhter.] Such close imitation is a little too hard.

_ Webster's retainers fell off into the easier track of doing
their own thinking. A German, once sketching a Mid-
dlesex County landseape, took a cow for his fixed point of
‘perspective ; she moved, and his whole picture was a mud-
dle, Following Peel and Webster was a muddle ; hence
‘came the era of ontside agitation, —and those too lazy to
think for themselves at least took a fixed point for their
‘political perspective, — Garrison or Charles Sumner, for
instance.

[Mr. Phillips continued by remarking that all the peo
‘ple had ever asked of government was, not to take a step
ahead, not to originate anything, but only to uno its mis
takes, to take its foot from off its victim, take away its

_ eustom-honses, abolish its absurd and wicked legislation
‘and free the slave, He then proceeded to urge upon his

—_

250 OLS.

hearers the importance of free individual thought, —the
questioning of whatever came before us, with an honest
desire and effort to reach truth.] He said : —

We shall have enongh to do if we do our duty. The
world is awake,—some wholly, and some only half.
Men who gather their garments scornfully and close about
them when their fellows offer to express sympathy for the
bravest scholar and most Christian minister the liberal
New England sects know, — these timid little souls make
daily uproar in the market-place, crying for a Broad
Chureh, a Broap Church, —and one who lives by ven-
turing a bold theory to-day, and spending to-morrow in
taking it back, finding that he has been

“Dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing out,”

assures you that it is not cowardice, but lack of candles
and of a liturgy, that makes him useless ; and, kind-souled
aman, he apologizes, and begs us not to be startled with his
strange new views, having lived so long in the thin air of
his own vanity that he does not know we have had a broad
Church for fifteen years, — broad enough for all races and
colors, all sects, creeds, and parties, for heads and hearts
too; broad enough to help the poor, teach the ignorant,
shield the weak, raise the fallen, and lift the high higher,
to honor God and earn the hate of bad men, — ministered
to by one whose broad diocese is bounded on the north by
the limits of habitable land, rans west with civilization,
and east with the English language, and on the south
stretches to the line where men stop thinking and live
only to breathe and to steal. [Loud applause. ]

This Broad-Chureh reformer knows his place so little,
that he sneers at spiritualism and socialism, as ‘vices
entitled to no terms.” One, an honest effort, however
mistaken, to make all men wholly and really brothers in
life, property, and thought ; and the other, that reaching

IDOLS. 251

nto the land of spirit which has stirred the heart and
xoused the brain of the best men of all ages, and given to
Literature its soul. Does he give no heed to that profound
a aged age no wise
‘man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability
that they may be the refraction of some great truth still
below the horizon”?

Yes, this “Brond Church ”!— humanity would weep
‘if it ever came, for one of its doctrines is, that the statute-
Book is more binding than the Sermon on the Mount, and
‘that the rights of private judgment are a curse. Save us
from a Church not broad enough to cover woman and the
slave, all the room being kept for the grog-shop and the
‘lieatre,— provided the one will keep sober enough to
amake the responses, and the other will lend its embroid-
sered rags for this new baby-house. [Langhter and ap-

The honors we grant mark how high we stand, and

edueate the future. The men we honor, and the
“maxims we lay down in measuring our favorites, show the
‘evel and morals of the time. Two names have been in
‘every one’s mouth of late, and men have exhausted Jan-
“guage in trying to express their admiration and their
‘respect. The courts have covered the grave of Mr.
‘Choate with eulogy. Let us see what is their idea of a
‘great lawyer. We are told that “he worked hard,”
“he never neglected his client,” “he flung over the
discussions of the forum the grace of a rare scholarship,”
**mo pressure or emergency ever stirred him to an
‘unkind word.” A ripe scholar, a profound lawyer, a
faithful servant of his client, a gentleman. This is a good
‘record surely. May he sleep in peace! What he earned,
‘God grant he may have! But the bar that seeks to claim
for snch a one a place among great jurists must itself be
weak indeed ; for this is only to make him out the one-eyed

262 IDOLS,

monarch of the blind. Not one high moral trait specified ;
not one patriotic act mentioned; not one patriotic service
even claimed. Look at Mr. Webster's idea of what a
lawyer should be in order to be called great, in the sketch
he drew of Jeremiah Mason, and notice what stress he
lays on the religious and moral elevation, and the glorious
and high purposes which crowned his life! Nothing of
this now! I forget. Mr. Hallett did testify for Mr.
Choate’s religion [laughter and applause]; but the law
maxim is, that a witness should be trusted only in matters
he understands, and that evidence, therefore, amounts to
nothing. [Merriment.] Incessant eulogy; but not a
word of one effort to lift the yoke of cruel or unequal
legislation from the neck of its victim ; not one attempt to
make the code of his country wiser, purer, better; not one
effort to bless his times or breathe a higher moral purpose
into the community; not one blow strack for right ar
for liberty, while the battle of the giants was going on
about him ; not one patriotic act to stir the hearts of his
idolaters ; not one public act of any kind whatever about
whose merit friend or foe could even quarrel, unless when
he scouted our great charter as a “ glittering generality,”
or jeered at the philanthropy which tried to practise the
Sermon on the Mount! When Cordus, the Roman Sen-
ator, whom Tiberius murdered, was addressing his fellows,
he began: “Fathers, they accuse me of illegal words ;
plain proof that there are no illegal deeds with which to
charge me.” So with these eulogies, —words, nothing
but. words; plain proof that there were no deeds to
praise.

The divine can tell us nothing but that he handed a
chair or a dish as nobody else could [laughter]; in poli-
tics, we are assured he did not wish to sail outside of
Daniel Webster ; and the Cambridge Professor tells his
pupils, for their special instruction, that he did not dare to

IDOLS. 258

think in religion, for fear he should differ from South-side
Adams! [Loud laughter and applause.) The Professor
strains his ethics to prove that a good man may defend a
bad man, Useless waste of labor! In Egypt, travellers
tell us that the women, wholly naked, are very careful to
veil their faces. So the Professor strains his ethics to ——
cover this one fault, Useless, Sir, while the whole head .
is sick and the whole heart faint.

‘Yet this is the model which Massachusetts offers to the
Pantheon of the great jurists of the world |

Suppose we stood in that lofty temple of jurisprudence,
—on either side of us the statues of the great lawyers of
every age and clime,—and let us see what part New
England — Puritan, educated, free New England — would
bear in the pageant. Rome points to a colossal figure and
says, “That is Papinian, who, when the Emperor Cara-
calla murdered his own brother, and ordered the lawyer
to defend the deed, went cheerfully to death, rather than
sally his lips with the atrocious plea; and that is Ulpian,
who, aiding his prince to put the army below the law, was
massacred at the foot of a weak, but virtuous throne,”

And France stretches forth her grateful hands, crying,
“That is D'Aguessean, worthy, when he went to face an
enraged king, of the farewell his wife addressed him, —
*Go! forget that you have a wife and children to ruin,
and remember only that you have France to save.’ ”

England says, * That is Coke, who flung the laurels of
eighty years in the face of the first Stuart, in defence of
the people, This is Selden, on every book of whose library
you saw written the motto of which he lived worthy,
*Before everything, Liberty!’ That is Mansfield, silver-
tongued, who proclaimed,

‘This is Romilly, who spent life trying to make law synony-

i \

254 IDOLS.

mous with justice, and succeeded in making life and prop-
erty safer in every city of the empire. And that is Erskine,
whose eloquence, spite of Lord Eldon and George TII.,
made it safe to speak and to print.”

Then New England shouts, “ This is Choate, who made
it safe to murder; and of whose health thieves asked before
they began to steal.”

Boston had a lawyer once, worthy to stand in that Pan-
theon ; one whose untiring energy held up the right arm
of Horace Mann, and made this age and all coming ones
his debtors; one whose clarion voice and life of consistent
example waked the faltering pulpit to its duty in the cause
of temperance, laying on that altar the hopes of his young
ambition ; one whose humane and incessant efforts to make
the penal code worthy of our faith and our age ranked his
name with MeIntosh and Romilly, with Bentham, Beccaria,
and Livingston. Best of all, one who had some claim to
say, with Selden, “Above all things, Liberty,” for in the
slave's battle his voice was of the bravest, — Robert Ran-
toul. [Prolonged and hearty plaudits.) He died crowned
with the laurels both of the Forum and Senate-house, The
Suffolk Bar took no note of his death. No tongue stirred
the air of the courts to do him honor. “ When vice is
useful, it is a crime to be virtuous,” says the Roman prov-
erb, Of that crime, Beacon Street, State Street, and
Andover had judged Rantoul guilty.

The State, for the second time in her history, offers a
pedestal for the statue of a citizen. Such a step deserves
thought On this let us dare to think, Always think
twice when saints and sinners, honest men and editors,
agree in a eulogy. [Langhter.] All wonders deserve
investigation, specially when men dread it.

No man criticises when private friendship moulds the

loved form in
«Stone that breathes and atragzles,
Or brass that ecms to speak.”

IDOLS. 255

Let Mr. Webster's friends crowd their own halls and
grounds with his bust and statue. That is no concern of
ours. But when they ask the State to join in doing him
honor, we are natives of Massachusetts, and claim the
right to express an opinion.

Tt isa grave thing when a State puts a man among her
jewels, —especially one whose friends frown on discus-
sion, —the glitter of whose fame makes doubtful acts look
heroic. One paperya tea-table critic, warns a speaker not
born in the State to cease his criticism of the Webster
statue. I do not know why Massachusetts may not im-

port critics as well as heroes; for, let us be thankful,
| Webster was no Boston boy. But be sure you exercise

_ your right to think wow.
| His eulogy has tasked the ripest genius and the heartiest
meal Some men say his eulogist has no heart. ‘That is a
| mistake and cruel injustice! As the French wit said of
| Fontenelle, he “has as good a heart as can be made out of
| brains.” [Laughter.] No matter what act Webster did,
) Ro matter how foul the path he trod, he never lacked some
_ one to gild it with a Greek anecdote, or hide it in a blaze
of declamation! I do not say the deed was always whit-
ened, but surely it was something that the eulogist shared
the stain. They sayin England that when Charles X., an
Ves in England, hunted there, others floundered through
mud and water as they could, but the exiled king was fol-
lowed by a valet who flung himself down in his path and
Charles walked over him as indifferently as if he had really
i a plank. How clean the king kept, I do not know.
valet got very muddy, A striking picturé of Web-

| ster and his eulogists!

His bronze figure stands on the State-House Green.
Standing there, it reminds me of some lines, written in an
album by Webster, when asked to: place his name under
that of John Adams :—

256 IDOLS.

*cIf by his name T write my own,
“Twill take me where I am not Known ;
‘The cold salute will meet my ear, —
«Pray, stranger, how did you come here 4?”

In the printed speech of Mr. Everett, you will find three
feet, —exactly one yard,—by newspaper measurement,
about the Northeastern Boundary map with a red line ont?
but not a line, or hardly one, relating to the great treason
of the 7th of March, 1850. The wordhe dared to speak,
his friends dare not repeat; the life he dared to live, his
friends dare not describe, at the foot of his statue! To
mention now what he thought his great achievement will
‘be deemed unkind !

Mr. Everett’s silence was wise. He could not blame ;
nature denied him the courage. He was too wary to
praise, for he recollected the French proverb, “Some
compliments are curses.” So he obeyed the English
statesman’s rule, “ When you have nothing to say, be
sure and say nothing.”

But that is the printed speech. It seems some meddle~
some fellow stood within reach of the speaker, and actu-
ally circulated, it is said, petitions for the removal of the
statue from the public grounds, Then the orator forgot
his caution, and interpolated a few unpremeditated sen-
tences, ‘very forcible and eloquent,” says the press, spe-
cially intended for this critic; terming this impudent med-
dler * Mr, Immaculate,” and quoting for his special benefit
the parable of the Pharisee and Publican, —“ God be
merciful to me a sinner!” Singular eulogy, to make ont
his idol a miserable “sinner”! [Langhter.] Is this the
usual method, Mr. Chairman, of proving one’s right to a
statue? The Publican repented, and was forgiven ; but:
isa statue, ten feet high, cast in bronze, a usual element
of forgiveness? And, mark, the Publican repented. When
did Mr. Webster repent, either in person or by the proxy

TDOLS, 4 257
of Mr. Edward Everett? We have no such record, The
sin is confessed, acknowledged, as a mistake at least; but
there 's no repentance !

Let us look a little into this doctrine of statues for sin-
ners. Take Aaron Burr. Tell of his daring in Canada,
his watch on the Hudson, of submissive juries, of his
touching farewell to the Senate, ‘But then there was
that indiscretion as to Hamilton.” Well, Mr. Immacu-
late, remember “ the Publiean.” Or suppose we take
Benedict Arnold, — brave in Connecticut, gallant at Que-
hee, recklessly daring before Burgoyne! “But that little
peccadillo at West Point!” Think of “the Publican,”
Mr. Immaculate. Why, on this principle, one might claim
a-statue for Milton’s Satan. He was brave, faithful to his
party, eloquent, shrewd about many a map “with a red
line on it! ‘There's only that trifle of the apple to for-
give and forget in these generons and charitable days!
No, if he wants an illustration, with due humility, T ean
give the orator a great deal better one. Sidney Smith
had a brother as witty as himself, and a great hater of
O'Connell. “ Bobus Smith” (for so they called him)
had one day marshalled O’Connell’s faults at a dinner-
talk, when his opponent flung back a glowing record of
the great Trishman’s virtues, Sinith looked down a mo-
ment. ‘ Well, such g man,—such a mixture ; the only
way would be to hang him first, and then erect a statue to
him under the gallows.” A disputed statue rising out of

‘a.sea of angry contempt, half-hearted admiration, and apol-

ogetic eulogy, reminds me of the Frenchman tottering np,
at eighty years old, to vote for Louis Bonaparte. “ Why,
he is a scoundrel,” said Victor Hugo.“ True, — yery
true, — but he is a necessary scoundrel.”

Ah, as the Greek said, ‘many men know how to flat-
ter, few men know how to praise.” These Cambridge

Professors and fair-weather eulogists have no ability to
a7

rman hie most appreciating judge.
award him blame as well as praise.

Blame me not that I again open the
man. His injudicious friends will not
deed, the heavy yoke he laid on innocent
victims frets and curses them yet too keen!
to be forgotten. He reaps only what he so
‘Talmud, the Jews have a story that Og,
lifted once a great rock, to hur! it on the
God hollowed it in the middle, letting it
giant’s neck, there to rest while he lived.
the Fugitive-Slave Bill to hurl it, as at Syra
trembling and hunted slave, and God has
a millstone about his neck forevermore.
‘While the echoes of Everett's periods still li

OLS. é 259

streets, as I stood with the fresh-printed sheet of his eulogy
in my hand, there came to me a man, successful after
eight attempts, in flying from bondage. Week after week
he had been in the woods, half starved, seeking in vain a
shelter. For months he had pined in dungeons, waiting,
the sullen step of his master. At last God blessed his
eighth effort, and he stood in Boston, on his glad way from
the vulture of the States to the safe refuge of English law,
‘He showed me his broad bosom scarred all over with the
, his back one mass of record how often the

Tash had tortured him for his noble efforts to get free. As
T looked at him, the empty and lying eulogy dropped from
my nerveless hand, and I thanked God that statue and
‘eulogy both were only a horrid nightmare, and that there
were still roofs in Boston, safe shelter for these heroic
‘children of God's right hand. [Prolonged cheering.]
| But you and I, Mr. Chairman, were born in Massachu-
setts, and we eannot but remember that the character of
‘the State is shown by the character of those it crowns.
‘A brave old Englishman tells us the Greeks “ had officers
owho did pluck down statues if they exceeded due symme~
‘try and proportion. We need such now,” he adds, * to
order monuments according to men’s merits.” Indeed we
‘dof! Daniel Webster said, on Bunker Hill, in one of his
‘most glorious bursts of eloquence: “ That motionless shaft
‘will be the most powerful of speakers. Its speech will be
‘of civil and religious liberty. It will speak of patriotism
‘and of courage. It will speak of the moral improvement
and elevation of mankind. Decrepit: age will lean against
‘ts base, and ingenuous youth gather round it, speak to
‘each ether of the glorious events with which it is con-
| and exclaim, ‘Thank God I also am an Ameri-
jean!" Tt is a glorions lesson, and the noble old shaft
tells it daily.

~ But when ingenuous youth stand at his pedestal, what
‘shall they say? “Consummate jurist! Alas that your
ih

Fayettes! ‘Thank God, then, we axe not. M
men!" Pe

When I think of the long term and

think of his bartering the hopes of four
for the chances of his private ambition, I

OLS. 261

ism on Lord Eldon, —“No man ever did his race so
much good as Eldon prevented.” Again, when I remem-
Der the close of his life spent in ridiculing the antislavery
movement as useless abstraction, moonshine, “ mere rub-
a-dub agitation,” because it did not minister to trade and
gain, methinks I seem to see written all over his statue
Tocqueville's conclusion from his survey of French and
American Democracy, —“ The man who secka freedom for
anything but freedom’ s self, is made to be a slave!”
Monuments, anniversaries, statues, are schools, Mr.
Webster tells us, whose lessons sink deep. Ts this man’s
life a lesson which the State can commend to her sons?
Professor Felton, as usual, embalmed his idol in a Greek
anecdote. It is a good storehouse. Let us open it. In
that great argument which gave us the two most consum-
mate ovations of antiquity, the question was whether
Athens should grant Demosthenes a crown. He had fled
from battle, and his counsels, though heroic, brought the
city to rnin. His speech is the masterpiece of all elo~
ce. Of the accusation by Aischines, it is praise
to say that it stands second only to that. In it
hines warns the Athenians that in granting crowns
themselves, and were forming the characters
of their children. His noble burst — *
DB piporor, fav éxrporéow ipie of vebrepos wpe maior xp} sa0d-
Beeypa, Be. —
is worth translating : —
_ “Most of all, fellow-citizens, if your sons ask whose example
they shall imitate, what will you say? For you know well it is
‘not musie, nor the gymnasium, nor the schools that mould young
men; itis much more the public proclamations, the public exam=
‘Ple. Tf you take one whose life has no high purpose, one who
‘mocks at morals, and crown him in the theatre, every boy who
“sees it is corrupted. When a bad man suffers his deserts, the
“people lea, —on the contrary, when a man votes aguinst what
tr noble and just, [how exactly he describes this ease |] and then

262 IDOLS.

comes home to teach his son, the boy will very properly say,
‘Your lesson is impertinent and a bore.’ Beware, therefore,
Athenians, remembering posterity will rejudge your judgment,
and that the character of a city is determined by the character of
the men it crowns,”

I recommend this page of HXschines to Mr. Felton.

Has the State, then, no worthier sons, that she needs
import such poor material? Within her bosom rests the
dust of Horace Mann, whose name hundreds of thousands
of children on Western prairies, looking up to Massachu-
setts teachers, learn to bless. He bears the sceptre of
Massachusetts influence to the shores of the Pacific.
When at the head of our Normal School, a colored girl
was admitted, and the narrow prejudice of Newton elosed
every door against her, “Come to my table; let my
roof, then, be your home,” said: Mr. Mann. [Hearty ap-
planse.] Antioch College staggered under $60,000 debt.
One, bearing the form of a man, came to its President, and
said, “I will pay one sixth, if you will promise me no negro
shall enter its halls.” “Let it perish first,” was Horace
Mann's reply. [Renewed and enthusiastic appliuse.] The
Legislature are asked to put his statue opposite Webster's.
O no. When the Emperor makes his horse a consul,
honest men decline a share in the consulship. While that
ill-used iron stands there, our State is in bad odor to offer
statues to anybody.

At Reyal, one of the Hanse towns, they will show you,
in their treasury, the sword which, two hundred years
ago, beheaded a lawless Baron for daring to carry off his
fugitive slave from the shelter of the city walls. Our
great slave-hunter is beyond the reach of than’s sword ;
but if any noble soul in the State will stir our mother
Massachusetts to behead his image, we will cherish the
name of that true Massachusetts boy as sacredly as they
keep the brave old sword at Reval. [Loud and prolonged
applause]

entering on a new phase of this great

It seems to me that we have never

red at Brooklyn, N. ¥., Tuesday Evening, November
was advertised to speak on “The Lesson of the
1 Bescher’s Church. Hon, Thomas Corwin, with

sabe, against the thought of the streat!

milestones, telling how far yesterday’s

elled ; and the talk of the sidewalk

land, You may regret this; but the fac

if our fathers foresaw the full effect of |

plete planned and expected it.
is nothing unless close behind it stands

See tees SS ocr only ileal aay
The Temperance cause, the antislavery mov

- eee

‘HARPER'S FERRY. 265

your Barnburner party prove this. You may sigh for a
strong government, anchored in the convictions of past
centuries, and able to protect the minority against the
majority, —able to defy the ignorance, the mistake, or the
passion, as well as the high purpose, of the present hour;
you may prefer the unchanging terra firma of despotism 5
but still the fact remains, that we are launched on the
ocean of an unchained democracy, with no safety but in
those Inws of gravity which bind the ocean in its bed, —the
instinctive love of right in the popular heart, — the divine
sheet-anchor, that the race gravitates towards right, and
that the right is always safe and best.

Somewhat briefly stated, such is the idea of American ,
civilization; uncompromising faith —in the average self
ishness, if you choose — of all classes, neutralizing each
other, and ‘tending towards that fair play which Saxons
love. But it seems to me that, on all questions, we dread.
thought; we shrink behind something; we acknowledge
ourselves unequal to the sublime faith of our fathers; and
the exhibition of the last twenty years and of the present
state of public affairs is, that Americans dread to look their
real position in the face.

They say in Ireland that every Irishman thinks he was
born sixty days too late, [laughter,] and that the world
owes him sixty days, The consequence is, when a trader
says such a thing is so much for cash, the Irishman thinks
cash means to him a bill for sixty days. [Langhter-] So
it is with Americans. They have no idea of absolute
right. They were born since 1787, and absolute right
means the truth diluted by a strong decoction of the
Constitution of °89. ‘They breathe that atmosphere ; they
do not want to sail outside of it; they do not attempt to
reason outside of it. Poisoned with printer’s-ink, or
choked with cotton-dust, they stare at absolute right as
the dream of madmen, For the last twenty years there

that town?”? “T don’t know;
themselves.” [Cheers.] And int

HARPER'S FERRY. * 267

= of slavery, or of a church, “ This is justice, and
iniquity ; the track of God's thunderbolt is a straight
Tine from one to the other, and the church or state that
‘cannot stand it must get out of the way.” [Cheers.]
‘Now our object for twenty years has been to educate the
‘mass of the American people up to that level of moral
life which shall recognize that free speech carried to this
‘extent is God’s normal school, educating the American
mind, throwing upon it the grave responsibility of deciding
‘4 great question, and by means of that responsibility lift-
ing it to a higher level of intellectual and moral life.
Responsibility educates, and politics is but another name
for God’s way of teaching the masses ethics, under the
responsibility of great present interest. To educate man
is God’s ultimate end and purpose in all creation. Trust
the people with the gravest questions, and in the long run
You educate the race; while, in the process, you Secure,
not perfect, but the best possible institutions. Now

ip stands on one side, and, like your Brooklyn
Eagle, says, “This is madness!” Well, poor man, he
thinks so! [Laughter.] The very difficulty of the whole
matter is, that he does think so, and this normal school
that we open is for him. His seat is on the lowest end of
‘the lowest bench. [Laughter and applause.] But he
only represents that very chronic distrust which pervades
all that class, specially the timid educated mind of these
Northern States. Anacharsis went into the forum at
Athens, and heard a case argued by the great minds of
the day, and saw the vote. He walked out into the
Streets, and somebody said to him, * What think you of
Athenian liberty?” “TI think,” said he, “ wise men ar-
gue canses, and fools decide them.” Just what the timid
scholar two thousand years ago said in the streets of
Athens, that which calls itself the scholarship of the Unit-
ed States says to-day of popular agitation, that it lets wise

he has the grace to pretend to be something.
evidence the American people gave of tl
grace of hypocrisy was this: in 1881,
menced the antislavery agitation, the
tive, bag, Ancan srr, al
bluntly. In a few years it sounded hard
effect; the toughest throat of the hardest D

HARPER'S FERRY. 269

as it came out. So they spoke of the “patriarchal insti-
tution,” [laughter,] then of the “domestic institution,”
[continued laughter] and then of the * peculiar instita-
tion,” [laughter,] and in a year or two it got beyond that.
Mississippi published a report from her Senate, in which
she went a stride further, and described it as ‘ economic
subordination,”’ and baptized it by statute * warranteeism.””
[Renewed laughter.] A Southern Methodist bishop was
taken to task for holding slaves in reality, but his Metho-
dist brethren were not courageous enough to say “slaves”
right out in meeting, and so they advised the bishop to get
rid of his “impedimeht” [loud laughter] ; and the late
Mr. Rufus Choate, in the last Democratic canvass of my
own State, undertaking and obliged to refer to the institu
tions of the South, and unwilling that his old New Eng-
land lips, which had spoken so many glorious free truths,
should foul their last days with the hated word, phrased it
“a different type of industry.” Now, hypocrisy — why,
‘it is the homage that Vice renders to Virtue.” When
men begin to weary of capital punishment, they banish
the gallows inside the jail-yard, and let nobody see it
withont a special card of invitation from the sheriff. And
so they have banished slavery into pet phrases and fancy
flash-words. Tf, one hundred years hence, you should dig
our Egyptian Hunkerism up from the grave into which it
is rapidly sinking, we should need a commentator of the
true German blood to find out what all these queer, odd,
peculiar imaginative paraphrases meant in this middle
of the nineteenth century. This is one evidence of
88.

I believe in moral suasion. The age of bullets is over. \
The age of ideas is come. I think that is the rule of our |
age. The old Hindoo dreamed, you know, that he saw
the human race led ont to its varied fortune. First, he
saw men bitted and curbed, and the reins went back to an

clumsy statue of a mock great man, for |
down and worship in a State-House y
renewed cheers, and great hissing.] I
Becoe i reir Se ere eae

es cee T only kx
OSU en in, pub opin
elements.

governing

‘Some men seem to think that our
sarily safe, because we have free sch
and a public opinion that controls.
dence of safety. India and China
hundred years. And books, it is said, we
in Central and Northern Asia as they
But they have not secured liberty, nor

Jie opinion to cither nation, Spain for

self-supporting, and as representative u
England or New York has. But that did not
‘Tocqueville says that, fifty years before tl
olution, public opinion was as omnipot
is to-day, but it did not make France fi
‘save men by machinery. What India
Spain wanted was live men, and that

WARPER'S FERRY, 271

to-day; men who are willing to look their own destiny,
and their own responsibilities, in the face. ‘Grant me to
see, and Ajax asks no more,’’ was the prayer the great
‘poet put into the lips of his hero in the darkness which
overspread the Grecian camp. All we want of American
citizens is the opening of their own eyes, and seeing things
as they are. The intelligent, thoughtful, and determined
gaze of twenty millions of Christian people there is noth-
‘Ing, —no institution wicked and powerful enough to be
capable of standing against it. In Keats's beautiful poem
of “Lamia,” 2 young man had been led captive by a
phantom girl, and was the slave of her beauty, until the
old teacher came in and fixed his thoughtful eye upon the
figure, and it vanished.
You see the great Commonwealth of Virginia fitly
pr shnend by « pyramid standing upon its apex. A
Conneeticut-born man entered at one corner of her do-
minions, and fixed his cold gray eye upon the government
‘of Virginia, and it almost vanished in his very gaze. For
‘it seems that Virginia, for a week, asked leave “to be”
of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. [Cheers and ap
.] Connecticut has sent out many a schoolmaster
to the other thirty States; but never before so grand a
teacher as that Litchfield-born schoolmaster at Harper's
Ferry, writing as it were upon the Natural Bridge, in the
face of nations, his simple copy, —“ Resistance to tyrants
is obedience to God.” [Loud cheers.]
that the lesson of the hour was insurrection. I
& omght not to apply that word to John Brown of Osawa-
tomie, for there was no insurrection in his case. It is a
great mistake to call him an insurgent. This principle
that I have endeavored so briefly to open to you, of ab-
‘solute right and wrong, states what? Just this: * Com-
monwealth of Virginia!” There is no such thing. Law~

less, brutal force is no basis of of a government, in the true

‘The only prayer of a true man for
Heaven! unless they repent, send soon
and Decatur.” John Brown has twice a:
hang Governor Wise, as Governor Wise |
[Cheers and hisses.] You see I am talki
Jute essence of things which lives in the
nal and the Infinite; not as men judge
morals of the nineteenth century, am

= ==

HARPER'S FERRY. 273

that calls itself an empire, because it raises cotton and sells
slaves. What I say is this: Harper’s Ferry was the only
government in that vicinity, Look at the trial. Virginia,
true to herself, has shown exactly the same haste that the
pirate does when he tries a man on deck, and runs him up
to the yard-arm. Unconsciously she is consistent. Now
you do not think this to-day, some of you, perhaps.
But I tell you what absolute History shall judge of these,
forms and phantoms of ours. John Brown began his life,

his public life, in Kansas. The South planted that seed ;
it reaps the first fruit now. Twelve years ago, the great
men in Washington, the Websters and the Clays, planted
the Mexican war; and they reaped their appropriate frnit
in General Taylor and General Pierce pushing them from
their statesmen’s stools. The South planted the seeds of
violence in Kansas, and taught peaceful Northern men
familiarity, with the bowie-knife and revolver. They
planted nine hundred and ninety-nine seeds, and this is the
first one that has flowered; this is the first drop of the

coming shower. People do me the honor to say, in some

of the Western papers, that this is traceable to some

teachings of mine. It is too much honor to such as me,

Gladly, if it were not fulsome vanity, would I clutch this
Inarel of having any share in the great resolute daring of

that man who flung himself against an empire in behalf of

justice and liberty. They were not the bravest men who
fought at Saratoga and Yorktown, in the war of 1776. O
no! it was rather those who flung themselves at Lexing-
ton, few and feeble, against the embattled ranks of an
empire, till then thought irresistible. Elderly men, in
powdered wigs and red velvet, smoothed their raffles, and
cried, ‘Madmen!’ Full-fed custom-house clerks said,
“A pistol-shot against Gibraltar!” But Captain Ingra-
ham, under the stars and stripes, dictating terms to the

fleet of the Caesars, was only the echo of that Lexington
w

he failed. Every man has his Moscow.
fail, every man meets his Waterloo at
two kinds of defeat. Whether in cha
Lierty knows nothing but victories. |
ker Hill a defeat; but Liberty dates fro
ren lay dead on the field. Men say the a
succeed. No man can command
‘was well planned, and deserved to suc
able to decide when Brown is free to tell
‘Suppose he did fail, in one sense, he has

‘HARPER'S FERRY. 215

'God be thanked for John Brown, that he has discovered
or created them! [Cheers.] I should feel some pride,
if I was in Europe now, in confessing that I was an
‘American. [Applause.] We have redeemed the long
infamy of sixty years of subservience. But look back a
Bit. Ts there anything new about this? Nothing at all.
It is the natural result: of antislavery teaching. For one,
T accept it; I hoped for it. I cannot say that I prayed
for it; I cannot say that I expected it, But at the same
‘time, no sane man has looked upon this matter for twenty
‘years, and supposed that we could go through this great
moral convulsion, the great classes of society crashing and
against each other like frigates in a storm, and

that there would not come such scenes as these.
| Tn 1836 it was the other way. Then it was my bull
‘that gored your ox Then ideas came in conflict, and
men of violence, men who trusted in their own right
hands, men who believed in bowie-knives,—such sacked
the city of Philadelphia; such made New York to be gov-
by a mob; Boston saw its mayor suppliant and
kneeling to the chief of a broadcloth mob in broad day-
= Tt was all on that side. The natural result, the
‘result of this starting of ideas, is like people who get
awaked, and use the first weapons that lie at hand.
‘The first show and unfolding of national life were the mobs
of 1835. People said it served us right ; we had no right
to the luxury of speaking our own minds; it was too ex-
pensive ; these lavish, prodigal, luxurious persons walking
about here, and actually saying what they think. Why
it was like speaking loud in the midst of the avalanches.
‘To say “Liberty” in a loud tone, the Constitution of
(2789 might come down,—it would not do. But now
‘things have changed. We have been talking thirty years.
‘Twenty years we have talked everywhere, under all cir-
‘cumstances; we have been mobbed ont of great cities,

Mi.

276 HARPER'S FERRY.

and pelted out of little ones; we have been abused by
great men and by little papers. [Laughter and applause. ]
What is the result? The tables have been turned; it is
your bull that has gored my ox now. And men who still
believe in violence, the five points of whose faith are the
fist, the bowie-knife, fire, poison, and the pistol, are ranged
on the side of Liberty, and, unwilling to -wait for the slow
hut sure steps of thought, lay on God’s altar the best they
have. You cannot expect to put a real Puritan Presby-
tetian, as John Brown is,—a regular Cromwellian dug
up from two centuries, —in the midst of our New England
civilization, that dares not say its soul is its own, nor pro-
claim that it is wrong to sella man at auction, and not
have him show himself as he is. Put a hound in the
presence of a deer, and he springs at his throat if he is a
true bloodhound. Put a Christian fh the presence of a
sin, and he will spring at its throat if he is a trae Chris-
tian. Into an acid we may throw white matter, but unless
it is chalk, it will not produce agitation, So if in a world
of sinners you were to put American Christianity, it would
be calm as oil. But put one Christian, like John Brown
of Osawatomie, and he makes the whole crystallize into
right and wrong, and marshal themselves on one side or
the other, God makes him the text, and all he asks of
our comparatively cowardly lips is to preach the sermon,
and say to the American people that, whether that old
man succeeded ina worldly sense or not, he stood a rep-
resentative of law, of government, of right, of justice, of
religion, and they were a mob of murderers who gathered
about him, and sought to wreak vengeance by taking his
life. The banks of the Potomac, doubly dear now to
history and to man! The dust of Washington rests
there; and history will see forever on that river-side the
brave old man on his pallet, whose dust, when God calls
him hence, the Father of his Country would be proud to

TARPER'S FERRY. 277

xnake room for beside his own. But if Virginia tyrants
dare hang him, after this mockery of a trial, it will take two
amore Washingtons at least to make the name of the State
anything but abominable in time to come, [Applause and
Hhisses.]_ Well, I say what I really think. [Cheers, and
cries of “Good! good!”] George Washington was a great
nan, Yet I say what I really think. And I know, Ladies
and Gentlemen, that, educated as you have been by the
experience of the last ten years here, you would have
thought me the silliest as well as the most cowardly man
in the world, if I should have come, with my twenty
years behind me, and talked about anything else to-night
except that great example which one man has set us on
the banks of the Potomac. You expected, of course, that
T should tell you my real opinion of it,

I value this element that Brown has introduced into
American politics, The South is a great power, —no
cowards in Virginia. [Laughter.] It was not cowardice,
(Laughter.] Now, I try to speak very plain, but you
will misunderstand me. There is no cowardice in Vir-
ginia. The South are not cowards. The lunatics in the
Gospel were not cowards when they said, “Art thou
ome to torment us before the time?” [Langhter.]
They were brave enough, but they saw afar off. They
saw the tremendous power which was entering into that
charmed circle; they knew its inevitable victory. Virginia
did not tremble at an old gray-headed man at Harper's
Ferry; they trembled at a John Brown in every man's
own conscience. He had been there many years, and,
like that terrific scene which Beckford has drawn for us in
is Hall of Ettis, where the crowd runs around, each man
with an incurable wound in his bosom, and agrees not to
speak of it; so the South has been running up and down
its political and social life, and every man keeps his right
fund pressed on the secret and incurable sore, with an

i — |

HARPER'S FERRY. 279

dict on these great questions, when it is not a small band
of Abolitionists, but the civilization of the twentieth cen-
tury, in all its varied forms, interests, and elements, which
undertakes to enter the arena, and discuss this last great
reform. When that day comes, what will be thought of
these first martyrs, who teach us how to live and how
to die?

Has the slave a right to resist his master? I will not
argue that question to a people hoarse with shouting ever
sinee July 4, 1776, that all men are created equal, that
the right to liberty is inalienable, and that “resistance to
tyrants is obedience to God.” But may he resist to blood
—with rifles? What need of proving that to a people
who load down Bunker Hill with granite, and crowd their
public squares with images of Washington; ay, worship
the sword so blindly that, leaving their oldest statesmen
idle, they go down to the bloodiest battle-field in Mexico
to drag out a President? But may one help the slave
resist, as Brown did? Ask Byron on his death-bed in the
marshes of Missolonghi. Ask the Hudson as its waters
kiss your shore, what answer they bring from the grave
of Kosciusko. I hide the Connecticut Puritan behind
Lafayette, bleeding at Brandywine, in behalf of a nation
his rightful king forbade him to visit,

But John Brown violated the law, Yes. On yonder /
desk lie the inspired words of men who died violent deaths
for breaking the laws of Rome. Why do you listen to |
them so reverently? Huss and Wickliffe violated laws ;
why honor them? George Washington, had he been
eanght before 1783, would have died on the gibbet, for
breaking the laws of his sovereign. Yet I have heard
that man praised within six months. Yes, you say, but
these men broke bad laws. Just so. It is honorable, then,
“to break bad laws, and such law-breaking history loves
and God blesses! Who says, then, that slave laws are

—_

Nat Turner's success, in 1831, shor
possible, Free thought, mother
baffled Brown. But free thought, in the
gles tyrants. Virginia has not

cad late Sadimalind opr fotterts Wen

yt,

‘HARPER'S FERRY. 281

into a villanage which crushed out our manhood so thor-
oughly that we had not vigor enough left to redeem
ourselves. Neither Fance nor Spain, neither the North-
ern nor the Southern races of Europe have that bright spot
on their esentcheon, that they put an end to their own
slavery. Blue-eyed, hanghty, contemptuous Anglo-Sax-
‘ons, it was the black, —the only race in the record of his-
tory that ever, after a century of oppression, retained the
Yigor to write the charter of its emancipation with its own
hand in the blood of the dominant race, Despised, calum-
niated, slandered San Domingo is the only instance in
history where a race, with indestructible love of liberty,
after bearing a hundred years of oppression, rose up under
‘their own leader, and with their own hands wrested chains
from their own limbs. Wait, garrulous, ignorant, boast-
Saxon, till you have done half as much, before you
of the cowardice of the black race !

The slaves of our country have not risen, but, as in
most other cases, redemption will come from the inter-
ference of a wiser, higher, more advanced civilization on
its exterior. Tt is the almost universal record of history,
and ours is a repetition of the same drama. We have
awakened at last the enthusiasm of both classes, —those
that act from impulse and those that act from calculation.
Tt is a libel on the Yankee to think that it includes the
‘whole race, when you say that if you put a dollar on the
other side of hell, the Yankee will spring for it at any risk
[laughter] ; for there is an element even in the Yankee
blood which obeys ideas ; there is an impulsive, enthusiastic
aspiration, something left to us from the old Puritan stock ;
that which made England what she was two centuries ago ;
that which is fated to give the closest grapple with the
a Power to-day. This is an invasion by outside
Civilization in 1600 crept along our shores, now
Suan foot, and then retreating ; now gaininga foot-

HARPER'S FERRY. 283

says Governor Wise, “the most daring, the coolest, I
‘would trust his trath about any question, The sincerest !””
Sincerity, courage, resolute daring, beating in a heart that
feared God, and dared all to help his brother to liberty, —
Virginia has nothing, nothing for those qualities but a
scaffold! [Applause.] In her broad dominion she can
only afford him six feet for a grave! God help the Com-
monwealth which bids such welcome to the noblest qualities
that can grace poor human nature! Yet that is the acknowl-
edgment of Governor Wise himself! I will not dignify
such a horde with the name of a despotism; since despot-
ism is sometimes magnanimous. Witness Russia, covering
Schamyl with generous protection. Compare that with
mad Virginia, hurrying forward this ghastly trial.

‘They say it cost the officers and persons in responsible
positions more effort to keep hundreds of startled soldiers
from shooting the five prisoners sixteen marines had made,
than it cost those marines to take the armory itself. Sol-
diers and civilians, —both alike,—only a mob fancying
itself a government! And mark you, I have said they
were nota government. They not only are not a govern-
ment, but they have not even the remotest idea of what a
government is [Laughter.] They do not begin to have
the faintest conception of what a civilized government is.
Here is a man arraigned before a jury, or about to be.
The State of Virginia, as she calls herself, is about to try
him. The first step in that trial is a jury; the second is a
judge; and at the head stands the Chie Executive of the
State, who holds the power to pardon murder; and yet
that very Executive, who, according to the principles of
the sublimest chapter in Algernon Sidney's immortal book,
is bound by the very responsibility which rests on him
to keep his mind impartial as to the guilt of any person
arraigned, hastens down to Richmond, hurries to the plat-
form, and proclaims to the assembled Commonwealth of

Sanya Pel ws whence
‘There is no such record in the blacke:
Tf Jeffries could speak, he would
his name might be taken down fr
since the Virginia bench has made
set against the blackness of this moc
plause.] And yet the New York
accounts of the trial. Trial! In the’
Somers, of Hale and Erskine, of
Jay, I protest against the name.
Saxon dialect, has a proud, historic m
indictment by impartial peers; a copy
and a list of witnesses furnished the

time to serutinize both; liberty to cho
get counsel; a sound body and a sound
one’s defence ; I need not add, a judge a
as the lot of humanity will admit:

safeguards, each one the trophy and
struggle, Wounded, fevered, lying h
his pallet, unable to stand on his feet, t]

HARPER'S FERRY. 285

no list of witnesses of knowledge of them till the crier,
calling the name of some assassin of his comrades, wakes
him to consciousness; the judge a tool, and the prosecutor
seeking popularity by pandering to the mob; no decent
form observed, and the essence of a fair trial wholly want-
ing, our history and law alike protest against degrading
the honored name of Jury Trial by lending it to such an
outrage as this, The Inquisition used to break every
other bone in a man’s body, and then lay him on a pallet,
giving him neither counsel nor opportunity to consult one,
and wring from his tortured mouth something like a con~
fession, and call it a trial. But it was heaven-robed inno-
cence compared with the trial, or what the New York press
call so, that has been going on in crazed and maddened
Charlestown.

I wish I could say anything worthy of the great deed
which has taken place in our day, — the opening of the
sixth seal, the pouring ont of the last vial but one on a
corrupt and giant institution. I know that many men will
deem me a fanatic for uttering this wholesale vituperation,
‘as it will be called, upon a State, and this indorsement of
a madman. I can only say that I have spoken on this
‘antislavery question before the American people thirty
years; that I have seen the day when this same phase of

feeling — rifles and foree — was on the other side.
remember the first time I was ever privileged to
stand on this platform by the magnanimous generosity of
your clergyman, when New York was about to bully and
crush out the freedom of speech at the dictation of Cap-
tain Rynders. From that day to this, the same braving
of public thought has been going on from here to Kansas,
until it bloomed in the events of the last three years. It
has changed the whole face of the sentiment in these
Northern States. You meet with the evidence of it
everywhere, When the first news from Harper's Ferry

Mie

this blow skiBarpava Facry eval

about you, and you will see more of the 4
conscious purpose and real moral
would imagine. This is the way
Be not in a hurry; action will

wee.

HARPER'S FERRY, 287

‘this sentiment, Wee stereotype feeling into intellect, and
then into statutes, and finally into national character. We
have now the first stage of growth. Nature s live growths
crowd out and rive dead matter. Ideas strangle statutes.
Pulse-beats wear down granite, whether piled in jails or
capitols. The people’s hearts are the only title-deeds, after
all. Your Barnburners said, “Patroon titles are un-
righteous.” Judges replied, “ Such is the law.” Wealth
shrieked, * Vested rights!” Parties talked of Constitu-
‘tions ; still, the people said, “Sin.” They shot a sheriff.
A parrot press cried, “Anarchy!” Lawyers growled,
‘“ Murder!" —still, nobody was hung, if I recollect
aright. To-day, the heart of the Barnburner beats in the
‘statute-book of your State. John Brown’s movement
‘against slavery is exactly the same. Wait awhile, and
you'll all agree with me. What is fanaticism to-day is
‘the fashionable creed to-morrow, and trite as the multipli-
cation-table a week after.

John Brown has stirred those omnipotent pulses, —
Lydia Maria Child’s is one, She says, “That dungeon
lis the place for me,” and writes a letter in magnanimous
appeal to the better nature of Governor Wise, She says
‘in it: “ John Brown is a hero; he has done a noble deed.
T think he was all right ; but he is sick; he is wounded ;
jhe wants a woman's nursing. I am an Abolitionist; I
‘have been so thirty years. I think slavery is a sin, and
‘John Brown a saint ; but I want to come and nurse him ;
and I pledge my word that if you will open his prison
‘door, I will use the privilege, under sacred honor, only to
‘nurse him. I enclose you a message to Brown; be sure
‘and deliver it.” And the message was, “ Old man, God
‘bless you! You have struck a noble blow; you have
done a mighty work ; God was with you; your heart was
in the right place. I send you across five hundred miles
the pulse of a woman’s gratitude.” And Governor Wise

HARPER'S FERRY.

@ door, and announced to the world that she
ohn Brown has conquered the pirate. [Ap-
pe! there is hope everywhere. It is only
history : —

on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne ;
{Told sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
d within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”

URIAL OF JOHN BROWN.*

‘OW feeble words seem here! How can I hope to
utter what your hearts are full of? I fear to dis-

turb the harmony which his life breathes round this home.
One and another of you, his neighbors, say, “I have
known him five years,” “I have known him ten years."
Tt seems to me as if we had none of us known him. How
our admiring, loving wonder has grown, day by day, as he
has unfolded trait after trait of earnest, brave, tender,
Christian life! We see him walking with radiant, serene
face to the scaffold, and think what an iron heart, what
, devoted faith! We take up his letters, beginning “* My
dear wife and children, every one,”"—see him stoop on
his way to the scaffold and kiss that negro child, —and
this iron heart seems all tenderness, Marvellous old man!
We have hardly said it when the loved forms of his sons,
in the bloom of young devotion, encircle him, and we
remember he is not alone, only the majestic centre of a
group. Your neighbor farmer went, surrounded by his
household, to tell the slaves there were still hearts and
right arms ready and nerved for their service. From this
roof four, from a neighboring roof two, to make up that
score of heroes. How resolute each looked into the face
of Virginia, how loyally each stood at his forlorn post,
meeting death cheerfully, till that master-voice said, * It is
* Delivered at the grave of John Brown, at North Elba, December 8,

1950.
19

seems the least of his merits. How
When the frightened town wished
the Mayor, a man said, “I will go,
their rifles, if you will stand between
‘knew he could trust their gentle resp
was right. He went in the thick of the
the body in safety. That same girl fung hi
Virginia rifles and your brave young |
had no pity. The pitiless bullet reach
woman’s prayers, though the fight had |

BURIAL OF JOHN BROWN. 291

How God has blessed him! How truly he may say, “I
have fought a good fight, I have finished my course.”
‘Truly he has finished,—done his work. God granted
him ‘the privilege to look on his work accomplished. He
said, “TI will show the South that twenty men can take
possession of a town, hold it twenty-four hours, and carry
away all the slaves who wish to escape.” Did he not do
it? On Monday night he stood master of Harper's Ferry,
—eould have left unchecked with a score or a hundred
slaves. The wide sympathy and secret approval are
shown by the eager, quivering lips of lovers of slavery,

» “0, why did he not take his victory and go
away?" Who checked him at last? Not startled Vir-
ginia. Her he had conquered. The Union crushed, —
seemed to crash him, In reality God said, “ That work
isdone; you have proved that a Slave State is only fear in
the mask of despotism; come up higher, and baptize by
your martyrdom a million hearts into holier life.” Surely
such « life is no failure. How vast the change in men’s
hearts! Insurrection was a harsh, horrid word to millions
amonth ago. John Brown went a whole generation be-
yond it, claiming the right for white men to help the slave
to freedom by arms, And now men ran up and down,
not disputing his principle, but trying to frame excuses
for Virginia’s hanging so pure, honest, high-hearted, and
heroiea man. Virginia stands at the bar of the civilized
world on trial. Round her victim crowd the apostles and
‘martyrs, all the brave, high souls who have said, “ God is
God,” and trodden wicked laws under their feet. As I
stood looking at his grandfather's gravestone, brought here
from Connecticut, telling, as it does, of his death in the
Revolution, I thought I could hear our hero-saint saying,
“My fathers gave their swords to the oppressor, —the
ilave still sinks before the pledged force of this nation, I
give my sword to the slave my fathers forgot.” If any

how shall we dare even to offer
fresh from such a vow have the
words with your tears. We envy you
to these martyred children of God. —
ery will go down in blood. Ours.
Hearts are stronger than swords, 1
‘How sublime its lesson! the Christian

BURIAL OF JOHN BROWN. 293

—of truth. Virginia is weak, because each man’s heart
said amen to John Brown. His words, —they are stronger
even than his rifles. These crushed a State. Those have
changed the thoughts of millions, and will yet crush slav-
ery. Men said, “ Would he had died in arms!” God
ordered better, and granted to him and the slave those
noble prison hours, — that single hour of death ; granted
him a higher than the soldier's place, that of teacher; the
echoes of his rifles have died away in the hills, —a million
hearts guard his words. God bless this roof,—make it
bless us. We dare not say bless you, children of this
home! you stand nearer to one whose lips God touched,
and we rather bend for your blessing. God make us all
worthier of him whose dust we lay among these hills he
loved. Here he girded himself and went forth to battle.
Faller success than his heart ever dreamed God granted
him. He sleeps in the blessings of the crushed and the
poor, and men believe more firmly in virtue, now that
such a man has lived. Standing here, let us thank God
for a firmer faith and fuller hope.

=—

LINCOLN’S ELECTION.*

ADIES AND GENTLEMEN: If the telegraph

speaks truth, for the first time in our history the
slave has chosen a President of the United States.
[Cheers.] We have passed the Rubicon, for Mr. Lin-
coln rules to-day as much as he will after the 4th of
March. It is the moral effect of this victory, not any-
thing which his administration can or will probably do,
that gives value to this success. Not an Abolitionist,
hardly an antislavery man, Mr. Lincoln consents to rep-
resent an antislavery idea. A pawn on the political
chessboard, his value is in his position ; with fair effort,
we may soon change him for knight, bishop, or queen,

| and sweep the board. [Applause.] This position he

owes to no merit of his own, but to lives that have roused
the nation’s conscience, and deeds that have ploughed
deep into its heart. Our childish eyes gazed with wonder
at Maelzel's chess-player, and the pulse almost stopped
when, with the pulling of wires and creaking of wheels,
he moved a pawn, and said, “Check!”” Our wiser fathers
saw a man in the box. There was great noise at Chicago,
much pulling of wires and creaking of wheels, then forth
steps Abraham Lincoln. But John Brown was behind
the curtain, and the cannon of March 4th will only echo
the rifles at Harper’s Ferry. Last year, we stood looking

* Fraternity Lecture, delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, November
7, 1860.

LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 295

sadly at that gibbet against the Virginia sky. One turn
of the kaleidoscope, —it is Lincoln in the balcony of the
Capitol, and a million of hearts beating welcome below.
[Cheers.]

‘Mr. Seward said, in 1850; “ You may slay the Wilmot
Proviso in the Senate-Chamber, and bury it beneath the
Capitol, to-day; the dead corse, in complete steel, will
haunt your legislative halls to-morrow.” ‘They slew the
martyr-chief on the banks of the Potomac; we buried his
dust beneath the snows of North Elba; and the statesman
Senator of New York wrote for his epitaph, “* Justly hung,”
while party chiefs cried, ‘ Amen!” but one of those dead
hands smote to ruin the Babylon which that Senator’s am-
bition had builded, and the other lifts into the Capitol the
President of 1861, [Applause.]

The battle has been a curious one, mixed and tossed in
endless confusion. The combatants, in the chaos, caught
up often the weapons of their opponents, and dealt the
deadliest blows at their own ranks.

‘The Democratic party, agitating fiercely to put down

tion, break at. last into a general quarrel in their effort

to keep the peace! [Laughter.] They remind one of
that sleepy crier of a New Hampshire court, who was ever
dreaming, in his dog-naps, that the voice of judge or law-
was a noisy interruption, and always woke shouting,
“Silence!” Judge Livermore said once, “Mr. Crier, you
are the noisiest man in court, with your everlasting shont
of *Silenca’!” [Laughter.] The Abolitionists ought to
he very sorry to lose Mr. Douglas from the national arena.

[Applause.]

But the Bell-Everett party have been the comfort of
the canvass, the sweet-oil, the safety-valve, the locomotive
bnffer, which, when collision threatened, broke the blow,
‘and the storm exploded in a langh. [Great merriment.]
They played Sancho Panza to Donglas’s Don Quixote.

took fire. actin Don't you |
dress : “In this stall my father stood in_
Thear his farewell neigh. How

outside there! I'll ee
had in 789,” —and so he di

only his own harm, peter
Four millions of human bh

pedler in Spain, who exhibited his stock to
all the evening, descanting on their life
when at night, in the utter dark, one ti
thing cold crawling on his face, cried out:
vipers, they are all loose; but if you "ll
still and quiet, they won't hurt you the
planse.]

LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 297

But Republicanism has triumphed. [Loud applause.]
The Democrat may forget his quarrels, and prepare to die
with decency. For the Bell-Everett party, one egg has
given a chicken. Mr. Appleton is elected. Beacon Street
and Ann Strect have fused. [Merriment.] As his con-
stituents could not be admitted to Mr. Appleton’s house, —
—there not being police enough to watch them, [great
merriment,]—the speeches were made outside, and we
gotall the secrets. Mr. Stevenson thinks the election of
Mr. ton “the most important that has taken place
since the adoption of the Constitution.” I observed, last
‘summer, in the country, that the geese always bowed
when they entered a barn, for fear of hitting their heads.
{Laughter.] Mr. Burlingame needs no praise of mine.
He stood, like Hancock and Adams, the representative of
an idea, and the city that rejected him disgraced only her-
self, [Applause.] As an old English judge said of a
sentence he blushed to declare, “In this I seem to pro-
nounce sentence not on the prisoner, but on the law itself.”
It is Boston, not Burlingame, that has cause to blush to-
ty. [Cheers.] I do not envy Mr. Appleton his seat.
You remember Webster painted Washington leaning one

arm on Massachusetts, and the other on South

. Methinks I see our merchant prince entering

One hand rests familiarly on the shoulder of

Beacon Street, the other on a cambric handkerchief, twice
doubled, to save the possibility of his touching the shoulder
of Ann Street. [Laughter and applause.) What is his
first act when seated, —he, the representative of the fag-
ends of half a dozen parties,—the broken meat of the
charity-basket ? He speak the voice of Boston,

the home of Sam Adams, in this glorious hour! What
will it be? When Sherman is named for Speaker, he
says “No,” while the heart of Boston says ‘‘ Yes.” And
‘what is hhis second and last act? ‘To gather round his

due, whether in great or little
qualities, they tell us, are inberited,
Blood. To be sure, now and then 1

test. [Applause.]
Well, the battle is ended. What J
Let us, Ladies and Gentlemen, who care 3

LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 299

or for offices, whose only interest is justice and the great
fature of the Republic, look round and weigh the spoils,
Everybody speculates, the pulpit affirms, the merchant
and the oracular press lays down the law. Why
shonld not the lyccum be in the fashion? To begin, then,
at home. For the first time within my memory we have ~
got a man for Governor of Massachusetts, a frank, true,
whole-souled, honest maw. [Cheering.] That gain alone
is worth all the labor. But the office is not the most im-
portant in the Commonwealth; only now and then it
becomes commanding ; in a sad Burns week, for instance,
when Mr, Washburn was masquerading as Governor,
and when, as Emerson said, “if we had a man, and
not a cockade, in the chair, something might be done”; or,
later, when the present Chief Magistrate pushed Judge
Loring, on false pretences, from his stool. Such oceasions
yemind us we have a Governor. But in common times,
the Chief Justiceship is far more commanding,—is the
real Gibraltar of our State contests. John A, Andrew
should have been Chief Justice. [Applause.] You re-
member they made the first William Pitt Earl of Chatham,
and he went into eclipse in the House of Lords. Some
one asked Chesterfield what had become of Pitt. ‘He
has had a fall up-stairs,” was the answer. Governor
Andrew or Judge Andrew sounds equally well. But
T like the right man in the right place. The chief jus-
ticeship belongs to the party of progress. Their Sparta
can point to many sons worthy of the place, —Sewall,
Hoar, Dana, or we might have offered another laurel for
the brow of our great Senator, were it only to show him
that the profession he once honored still remembers her
truant son. [Great applause.) The outgoing administra-
tion, which entailed that office on talents, however respect-
able, that belong to the party of resistance, placed itself
hy the side of Arnold selling West Point to the British.

—

LINCOLN’S ELECTION, 801

The whole argument of the canvass has been, that the
experiment of self-government under this Constitution,
Began by the best of men, has been a failure. “ The
country is wrecked ; take us for pilots, or you are lost,” —
thas been the cry of the Republicans. Mr. Sumner has
drawn the sad picture so well and so often that I need not
attempt it, Our Presidents tools of the Slave Power,
our army used to force slavery on our own Territories
and neighbor-nations, free speech punished with death in
ene half the Union, and met with insult and starvation in
the other, the slave-trade reopened, and our most dis-
tinguished scholar telegraphing apologies when his son sits
at school beside a colored boy, and explaining his own
indiscreet freedom of speech as the sad result of anodynes.
‘TApplanse.] Surely Mr. Seward, seeing all this, was
right in confessing, at Rochester, in 1858, * Thus far our
course has not been according to the humane hopes and

of our fathers,” And, in 1860, “Not over
the face of the whole world is there to be found one repre-
sentative of our country who is not an apologist’ of the
extension of slavery.” | And again, in Kansas, a month
“Oar fathers thought slavery would cease before
now; but the people became demoralized ; the war went
back, back, Back, until 1854, until all guaranties of free-
dom in every part of the United States were abandoned,
..... and the flag of the United States was made the
harbinger, not of freedom, but of human bondage.”

At Rochester, he went on to paint the picture of our
national wreck so darkly, that his own feelings led him, in
conclusion, to declare, that, if the final battle goes against
him, he will leave America, shake the dust off his feet, and
find “a more congenial home ; for where Liberty dwells,
there is my country.”

But Mr. Seward closes that speech in hope,—hope
grounded on this, that the Republican party has arisen,

+ first, because, if we are d

goes

the last ditch [applause]; and, see

the emptiness of Mr. Lincoln’s mind, ]
succeed in making this a decent land
May I tell you why? Place yo

earns, read what he can, and associate w!
of the same shade of black he is.

can grant. Well, on the other side is

believes the free negro should sit on juri

LINCOLN'S ELECTION. =| 803

le to office, —that’s all. So much he thinks he can
grant without hurting the Union.

‘Now raise your eyes up! In the blue sky above, you
will see Mr. Garrison and John Brown! [Prolonged
cheering] They believe the negro, bond or free, has the
same right to fight that a white man has, — the same claim
on us to fight for him; and as for the consequences to the
Union, who cares? Liberty first, and the Union after-
wards, is their motto. [Cheers.] Liberty first, and, as
the Scotch say, “ Let them care who come ahind.”

That Convention selected Lincoln for their standard-
Dearer. Enough gain for once. “First. the blade, then
the ear, then the full corn in the ear.” [Loud cheers.]
Dr. Windship began with a dumb-bell of ten pounds; after
four years, he raises two hundred and fifty pounds in each
hand. The elephants, when crossing a river, send the
smallest first. Don’t mount those Arab steeds yet, Mr,
Seward! “Wait a little longer.” Who knows whether
that Liberator, whose printing-office Mayor Otis could not
find in 1835, may not be issued from the eastern room
of the White House in 1873, and Mr. Seward himself,
instead of saying that John Brown was “justly hung,”
may dare then to declaim, as Charles O'Connor does now,
in the Supreme Court at Albany :—

“ A man who knows that the law under which he lives violates
the first principles of natural justice ., . .. is bound to strive, by
all honorable means, to break down and defeat that law. Among
these honorable means is the right of armed resistance, — the

sacred right of revolution... This is the higher law which
sanctified the revolt of George Washington against the consti-
‘tuted authorities then existing in this country. ..... The laurel-

‘wreath of victory surrounds the name of Washington, Tll-suc-
tess, defeat, overthrow, and death, in an ignominious form, might
Taye been his fate. Such was the fate of many who, in this re-
‘spect, perhaps, were as pure and virtuous as he, We revere the

Wd Ge Naa real: weights °
“We have not been in the ha

and the counsel for Virginia in the
T expect to live to hear that se1

LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 805

New York the dust of John Brown for some mausoleum
at Richmond, as repentant Florence, robed in sackeloth,
begged of Ravenna the dust of that outlawed Dante, whom
acentury before she ordered to be burned alive. [Great
cheering.) You think me a fanatic, perhaps? Well, I
have been thought so once or twice before, [Laughter.]
May T tell you the reason of the faith that isin me? It
does not hang on President Lincoln or any other Presi-
dent. Certainly not while he is checkmated by both
House and Senate. I think little of the direct influence
of governments. I think, with Guizot, that “it is a gross
delusion to believe in the sovereign power of political ma-
chinery.” ‘To hear some men talk of the government,
you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravita-
tion, and kept the planets in their places. Mr. Webster
seered at the antislavery and kindred movements as
“rub-a-dub agitations.” Judge Story plumes himself on
our government abolishing the slave-trade in 1808, as if
in that it was not the servant of Clarkson and Wilberforce,
Benezet and Wooliman !

T never take up a paper full of Congress squabbles,
reported as if sunrise depended upon them, without think-
ing of that idle English nobleman at Florence, whose
brother, just arrived from London, happening to mention
the House of Commons, he languidly asked, “ Ah! is that
thing going still?” [Great merriment.] Did you ever see
on Broadway —yon may in Naples —a black figure grind-
ing chocolate in the windows? He seems to turn the
wheel, but in truth the wheel turns him, [Laughter.]
Now such is the President of the United States. He seems
to govern; he only reigns. As Lord Brougham said in a
similar case,—Lincoln is in place, Garrison in povwer.
[Applanse.] “ Rub-a-dub agitation,” forsooth! as if Mr.
Webster could have a Whig party, or anything else, in
these reading days, without that agitation which calls into

scholars, and consoles us under the inflic
College. [Langhter and applause. ]

LINCOLN’'S ELECTION. 807

is only a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches.
‘Onr need of it shows exactly how far we are still children.
All governing over-much kills the self-help and energy of
the governed. Compare the last century with this, or the
European with the Yankee. Every narrowing of the
sphere of government proves growth in the people, and is
the seed of further growth.

Civilization dwarfs political machinery. Without doubt,
the age of Fox and Pitt was one in which the prejudices
‘of courts and the machinery of cabinets had large sway.
But how absurd to say even of Pitt and Fox that they
shaped the fate of England. The inventions of Watt and
Arkwright set free millions of men for the ranks of Wel-
Tington; the wealth they created clothed and fed those
hosts ; the trade they established necessitated the war, if
‘it was at all or ever necessary. Berlin and Milan decrees
would have smothered every man in England. The very
goods they manufactured, shut out from the continent,
would have crowded the inhabitants off their little island.
Tt was land monopoly that declared war with France, and
trade fought the battle. Napoleon was struck down by
no eloquence of the House of Commons, by no sword of
Wellington. He was crushed and ground to powder in
the steam-engines of James Watt.

Cobden and O'Connell, out of the House of Commons,
‘were giants; in it, dwarfs. Sir Robert Peel, the cotton-
spinner, was as much a power as Sir Robert Peel, the
Prime Minister. We went to stare at the Lord Chancel-
lor, not for his seals and velvet hag, but because he was
Harry Brougham of the Edinburgh Review. Rowland
and Adam Smith, Granville Sharpe and Pilgrim's
Progress, the London Times and the Stock Exchange,
outweigh acentury of Cannings and Palmerstons, Glad-
stones, Liverpools, and Earls Grey.

Weighed against the New England Primer, Lyman

LINCOLN'S ELECTION, 309

Scientifie men think that electricity did much to hasten
the coming of limestone and coal, and the disappearance
of poison gas. In our case, too, electricity, —by which I
mean the Garrison party [loud laughter and applause], —
flashing through and through and all over the lazy heav-
ens, quickened our change also, But the growth will be
a great deal quicker in time to come. [Loud applause.]
One great evil of polities — one that almost outweighs
the help it indirectly gives to education —is the chains it
puts on able men, Those chains are much loosened now.
Listen to Mr. Seward on the prairies! Notice how free
and eloquent he has been since the Chicago Convention !
And this change is not due to age. You know, I am apt
to say, among other impertinent things, that you can
always get the truth from an American statesman after he
Tas turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presi-
deney. [Applause.] T should like a Jaw that one third
of our able men should be ineligible to that office ; then
every third man would tell us the trath, The last ten
years of John Quincy Adams were the frankest of his life.
In them, he poured out before the people the treason and

which formerly he had only written in his
diary. And Josinh Quincy, the venerable, God bless
him! has told us more truth since he was eighty, than he
ever did before. [Applause.] They tell us that until
this year they have not been able to survey Mount Wash-
ington ; its iron centre warped the compass. Just so with
our statesmen before they reach seventy, their survey of
the state is ever false. That great central magnet at
Washington deranges all their instruments.

Let me take the speeches of Mr. Seward as an illustra~
tion of American statesmen, I take him, because he is a
live man, and a worthy sample, [Applause.] I agree
with the doctors’ rule, — Medicamenta non agunt in cadaver,
—* Dead bodies are no test of drugs.” But he is a fair

moned such a bloody fanatic
Committee |,
Well, in the Senate, in 1850,

LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 311

the contrary notwithstanding! You need not summon
him, Mr. Mason! He won’t do any harm! In 1860,
just after Harper's Ferry, he tells the South, that, if their
sovereignty is assailed, within or without, no matter on
what pretext, or who the foe, he will defend it as he would
his own! You see, peaceful measures against slavery ;
guns and bayonets for it!

_ Do these words mean that? O no! Go with me to
Madison, in September, and stand before that beautiful
‘Capitol between the three lakes, and you will hear these
same lips saying: —

“Tt has been by a simple rule of interpretation I have studied
the Constitution of my country. ‘That rule has been simply this +
‘that by no word, no act, no combination into which I might
enter, should any one human being of all the generations to
which T belong, much less any class of human beings of any
‘nation, race, or kindred, be oppressed and kept down in the least
degree in their efforts to rise to a higher state of liberty and hap-
piness. Amid all the glosses of the times, amid all the essays
and discussions to which the Constitution of the United States
has been subjected, this has been the simple, plain, brond light in
whieh T have rend every article and every section of that great
instrument, Whenever it requires of me that this hand shall
Keep down the hamblest of the human race, then I will lay down
power, place, position, fimne, everything, rather than adopt such
construction or such a rule. Tf, therefore, in this land there are
‘ny who would rise, I say to them, in God’s name, good speed!
Tf there are in foreign lands people who would improve their
condition by emigration, or if there be any fere who would go
abroad in gearch of happiness, in the improvement of their con-
dition, or in their elevation toward a higher state of dignity and
Tappiness, they have always had, and they always shall have, 2
cheering word, and such efforts as I can consistently make in
their behalf.” [Cheers.]

That is good! It sounds like Kossuth! Now, then,
we understand him fully. He will never help a slave-

Me ——

LINCOLN'S ELECTION. 318

They exhibited at the Crystal Palace, in 1851, a Da-
‘maseus blade, so flexible that it could be placed in a sheath,
coiled like a snake. Something like it seems Mr. Seward’s
conscience, only the blade boasted it could bend. Seward,
after coiling in and out, insists on our believing that he
never bent a whit!

But hear him now, since the nomination at Chicago! \

See the lion toss his free limbs on the prairie! Standing
in Kansas, with the spirit of John Brown hovering over
him, his name written on every hill-top, hear the old Gov-
ernor proclaim, * All men shall have the ballot or none ;
all men shall have the bullet or none.” Crossing into
Missouri, he says, the principle that every man should
own the soil he tills, and the head and hands he works
with, “is going through; it is bound to go through” ;
when a by-stander said, “Not here,” he retorted, “ Yes,
here. As it is has gone through eighteen States of the
Union, it is bound to go through the other fifteen. It is
bound to go through all of the thirty-three States of the
Union, for the simple reason that it is going through the
world.” [Prolonged applause]

‘That smacks of good old-fashioned John Brown and
Garrison Abolition,—not non-extension! I know Mr.
Everett will deem such words very indiscreet. [Laugh-
ter.] I knew an old lady to whom a friend had given a
nice silk umbrella. She had kept it standing in a corner
twenty years, when one day her grandson seized it to go
oot. “You're not going to take that out in the wet!”
she exclaimed. “Never, while I live!" This is just
like Mr. Everett's free speech, always laid up in cotion !
[Laughter and applause. }

‘They say, if you stand on the prairie of an August night
at full moon, you can hear the corn grow, so quick are
nature’s processes out there. Had you been by Governor
Seward that day, you might have heard him grow. [Loud

applause. ]

Mie

‘LINCOLN'S ELECTION. B15

vestries? See how we ‘Il put ont this fire of slavery.”
But it burned on fiercer, fiercer. “ What shall we do
now ?” asked startled Whiggery. “‘ Keep the new States
free, abolish slavery in the District, shut the door against
Texas.” “Too much,” said Whiggery; “we are busy
now making Webster President, and proving that Mr.
Everett never had an antislavery idea.” But the flames
roll on. Republicanism proposes to blow up a street or
two. No, no; nothing but to blow up the Senate-House
will do; and soon frightened Hamburg will ery, “ Myn-
herr Garrison, Mynherr Garrison, save us on your own
terms!” [Loud applause.]

‘You perceive my hope of freedom rests on these rocks:
Ast, mechanical progress. First man walked, dug the earth
with his hands, ate what he could pick up; then he sub-
dues the horse, invents the plough, and makes the water
float him down stream ; next come sails, wind-mills, and
‘water-power; then sewing-machines lift woman out of
torture, steam marries the continents, and the telegraph
flashes news like sunlight over the globe. Every step
made hands worth less, and brains worth more ; and that
is the death of slavery, You can make apples grow one
half pippin and the other half russet. They say that the
“Romans could roast one half of a boar, and boil the other
side. [Langhter.] But I am sure you cannot make a
nation with one half steamboats, sewing-machines, and
Bibles, and the other half slaves. Then another rock of
imy hope is these Presidential canvasses,—the saturnalia
of American life, —when slaves like Seward are unchained
from the Senate-House, as of old in Rome, and let loose
on the prairies, to fling all manner of insult on their mas-
ters. He may veil it all hereafter in dignified explana-
tions, but the prairies give back an hundred-fold for all
seed dropped there. [Applause.] Then the ghost of
John Brown makes Virginia quick to calculate the profit

bie

the “navy”!
‘And this is Kerally all

. Bem...

LINCOLN'S ELECTION. S17

Union which he catalogues! No; I do him injustice,
‘He does ask, trembling, in case of disunion, “ Where, O
where, will be the flag of the United States?” Well, I
think the Historical Society had better take it for their
Museom. [Langhter and applanse.]

Mr. O'Connor, too, who gave the key-note to the New
York meeting. The only argument he has for the Union
is his assurance that, if we dissolve, there ‘ll be no more
“marble store fronts” on Broadway, and no brown-stone
palaces in the Fifth Avenue! Believe me, this is literally
all he named, except one which Mr, Everett must have
been under the influence of an anodyne to have forgotten,
but which, perhaps, it is better, on the whole, for Mr.
O'Connor, being an Irishman, to recollect. It is this: in
case of dissolving, we shall no longer own the grave of
Washington, which, Mr. Everett having paid for, the
New York peddling orator finds it hard to lose! And so
it strikes me |

But I must confess, those pictures of the mere industrial
value of the Union made me profoundly sad. I look, as,
beneath the skilful pencil, trait after trait leaps to glowing
Tife, and ask at last, Is this all? Where are the nobler
elements of national purpose and life? Is this the whole
fruit of ages of toil, sacrifice, and thought, — those cunning
fingers, the overflowing lap, labor vocal on every hillside,
and commerce whitening every sea,—all the dower of
‘one hanghty, overbearing race? The zeal of the Puritan,
the faith of the Quaker, a century of Colonial health, and
then this large civilization, does it result only in a work-
shop,—fops melted in baths and perfumes, and men grim
with toil? Raze out, then, the Eagle from our banner,
and paint instead Niagara used as a cotton-mill !

© no! not such the picture my glad heart sees when I
Took forward. Once plant deep in the nation’s heart the
love of right, let there grow out of it the firm purpose of

818 LINCOLN’S ELECTION.

duty, and then from the higher plane of Christian man——
hood we can put aside on the right hand and the left these===

narrow, childish, and mercenary considerations.
«Leave to the soft Campanian .
‘His baths and his perfumes ;
Leave to the sordid race of Tyre
‘Their dyeing-vats and looms ;
Leave to the sons of Carthage
‘The rudder and the oar ;
Leave to the Greek his marble nymphs,
‘And scrolls of wordy lore”; —
but for us, the children of a purer civilization, the pioneers
of a Christian future, it is for us to found a Capitol whose
corner-stone is Justice, and whose top-stone is Liberty;
within the sacred precincts of whose Holy of Holies dwell-
eth One who is no respecter of persons, but hath made of
one blood all nations of the earth to serve him. Crowding
to the shelter of its stately arches, I see old and young,
learned and ignorant, rich and poor, native and foreign,
Pagan, Christian, and Jew, black and white, in one glad,
harmonious, triumphant procession !
“Blest and thrice blest the Roman
‘Who sees Rome’s brightest day ;
‘Who sees that long victorious pomp
Wind down the sacred way,
And through the bellowing Forum,
And round the suppliant’s Grove,
Up to the everlasting gates
Of Capitolian Jove!”

Walt yh

MOBS AND EDUCATION.

% Ox Sunday forenoon,” says the Liberator of December 21, 1860,
“the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society (Theodore Parker's Fra-
temnity) held their usual Sunday meeting in Music Hall. It having
been rumored for several days previous, that Mr. Phillips was likely
to be mobbed and assaulted, a large detachment of police was in
ee cee cary toe Before the services com-

menced, large numbers of the police were stationed in two small
rooms adjoining the platform. Others were stationed in various parts
of the hall, aud building. Members of the detective police force were
ako present... ..

“The regular religious exercises of the day were conducted in the

| manner.”

WAS present here last Sunday, and noticed that some

of the friends of the speaker expressed their sympathy
with his sentiments by applause. You will allow me to
request that to-day, at least, we preserve the usual deco-
zum of this place and this hour, and listen —even if you
should like anything particularly — in silence.

About a fortnight ago,—on the 8d of this month, —
certain men, supported by the Mayor, broke up an anti-
dayery meeting. I propose to consider that morning, as

ing American education, Some of you may think
that everybody talks, now, of slavery, free speech, and the
negro, That is true; and I am not certain that the long-
est liver of you all will ever see the day when it will not

MOBS AND EDUCATION. 821

thonghtful men. ‘The wildest theories of the human
‘reason were reduced to practice by a community so hum-
‘ble that no statesman condescended to notice it, and a legis~
lation without precedent was produced off-hand by the
instincts of the people.” The profoundest scholar of that
day said, “ No man is wiser for his learning,” —a sentiment
which Edmund Burke almost echoed ; and-it seems as if
our comparatively unlettered fathers proved it. They
framed a government which, after two hundred years, is
still the wonder and the study of statesmen. Tt was only
another proof that governments are not made, they grow,
that the heart is the best logician, that character, which is
‘but cousin to instinct, isa better guide than philosophy.
Wordsworth said, of a similar awakening:
A few strong instincts, and a few plain rules,

Among tho herdsmen of the Alps, havo wrought

‘More for mankind, at this anhappy day,

‘Than all the pride of intellect and thought.”

‘That sunrise has colored the whole morning of our his-
tory, Itis the cardinal principle of our national life, that
God has given every man sense enough to manage his
own affairs. Out of that, by a short process, come uni-
versal suffrage and the eligibility of every man to office.
The majority rales, and Jaw rests on numbers, not on
intellect or virtue. A sound rule, and, if not the only ona
consistent with freedom and progress, at least the one that
best serves these. But the harm is, that, while theoreti-
cally holding that no vote of the majority can authorize
‘injustice, we practically consider public opinion the real
test of what is trne and what is false; and hence, as a
result, the fact which Tocqueville has noticed, that prac-
tically our institutions protect, not the interests of the
whole community, but the interests of the majority.
Every man knows best how to manage his own affairs.
Simple statement, perfectly sound; but we mix it up

922 MOBS AND EDUCATION.

somehow with that other rule, that every man is eligible
to office, and then we hurry on to the habit of considering
every man competent for everything. Does a man achieve==
snecess in some particular point, we hail him a universal
Crichton, and endow him with a genius for all work. A_
mechanic invents a new stitch in a carpet-web; straight—
way he is named for Congress. Does a man edit a re—
spectable daily to bankruptcy, we put him on a commission
to choose for us water not fit to drink, or let him carry a
railroad half-way to ruin, by paying dividends that were
never earned. That militia colonel survived a Western
brawl,—call it a battle and a victory, and choose him
President at once. This man is a brilliant historian, —
send him Ambassador to England. Another has argued
ably an india-rubber case,—send him to fade out in the
Senate. Does a man fail utterly,—a bankrupt poet or
office-seeker, —he edits a newspaper. We lack, entirely,
discrimination, Becanse a man is entitled to draw upon
us for fifty dollars, we put a thousand to his eredit. That

a man edits the Tribune so as to pay,—no very high
order of talent, —is no proof that he knows better than
other men who shonld be President of the United States,
Bayard Taylor be a genius and a trayeller, without
the least trace of patriotism or the least spark of a gentle-
man. A hundred years ago, you must have served an
apprenticeship of seven years to make a shoe; now talk
seven months on the right side, you may be Governor of a
State.

I said that, in spite of the heedlessness and good nature
of this mistake, the rule that every man should be eligible
to office is the best rule yon can have, Our large measure
of national suecess, in spite of this heedlessness, shows how
truly the Swede spoke when he said, Quantula ie
regitur mundue,—* How little wit it takes to hold offies ["
But, though life be long and sunny, one fit of severe il

MOBS AND EDUCATION. 823

ness is a great evil. Tt is quite true, that routine incapa-
city stumbles along very well at common times; but there
come hours when we need a pilot, and then we suffer.
Such an hour we have just passed through.

Certain men, who seem utterly ignorant of the principle,
that only by letting each man speak exactly what he sees
fit, at the time he chooses, ean the progress of truth be
secured, attempted to put down certain other men, assem-
Tied to disenss the abolition of slavery. I want to look at
that attempt as illustrating the ignorance of the actors, the
ignorance of the press, and the incapacity of the city gov-
ernment. And I take this subject specially because it
enables me to lay before you a correct account of the
course of events that morning, which no journal of the
city has bestirred itself to procure. And I seize this, the
first opportunity given me, to do justice to both parties,
—the assailants and the assailed.

Look first at the press. With the exception of The
Atlas and Bee, no one of the daily papers has uttered one
word of hearty, fitting rebuke of the mob. They have all
serious Objections to mobs in the abstract, but none at all
to mobs in the street, none to this particular mob. This
‘was not a case of virtuous men refusing to obey a bad law,
of whom it has been well said, “They do not dispute the
right of the majority to command, they only appeal from
the sovereignty of the nation to the sovereignty of man-
kind.’ But this was a blow at the right of free speech, a
right which no sane man in our age and Jand denies. Yet
you have still to read the first word of fitting, fearless,
hearty rebuke, from the Boston daily press, of a mob,
well dressed. met to crush free speech. I have known
Boston for thirty years, Ihave seen many mobs, With
fone exception, I have yet to sce the first word of honest
rebuke, from the daily press, of a well-dressed mob met to
crush honest men ; and that exception was the Boston

‘MOBS AND EDUCATION. 825

Star-Chamber, which undertakes to tell us, as Archbishop
Laud and Charles Stuart told our fathers, what creed we
shall hold, and what public meetings we shall attend.
Who were they?

‘Weak sons of moderate fathers, dandled into effeminacy,
of course wholly unfit for business. But overflowing trade
sometimes laps up such, as it does all obtainable instra-
ments. Instead of fire-engines, we take pails and dippers,
in times of sore need. But such the first frost nips into
idleness. Narrow men, ambitious of office, fancying that
the inheritance of million entitles them to political ad-
vancement. Bloated distillers, some rich, some without
wit enough to keep the money they stole. Old families
tun to seed in respectable dulness, —fruyes consumere
‘nati, —born only to eat. Trading families, in the third
generation, playing at stock-jobbing to lose in State Street
what their fathers made by smuggling in India. Sweep .
in a hundred young rogues, the grief of mothers and the

ace of their names, good as naughts to fill up a place

in is called “society,” and entitled as such to shrink

from notice, —but the motes we do not usually see get

looked at when they trouble our eyes. Snobbish sons of

futhers lately rich, anxious to show themselves rotten be-
fore they are ripe. [Hitherto there had been no demon-
Strations from the hearers, except occasional suppressed
laughter at the speaker's sarcasms. The laughter here
was received with hisses by a portion of the audience.)
‘These, taking courage from the presence of bolder rogues,
some from jail and others whom technical skill saved
therefrom, —the whole led by a third-rate lawyer broken
down to a cotton-clerk [hisses], borrowing consequence
‘from married wealth, — not one who ever added a dollar,
uch less an idea, to the wealth of the city, not one able
‘to give a reason or an excuse for the prejudice that is in
‘him, —these are the men, this is the house of nobles,

826 MOBS AND EDUCATION.

whose leave we are to ask before we speak and hold meet-
ings. These are the men who tell us, the children of the
Pilgrims, the representatives of Endicott and Winthrop,
of Sewall and Quincy, of Hancock and Adams and Otis,
what opinions we shall express, and what meetings we
shall hold! These are the men who, the press tells us,
being a majority, took rightful possession of the meeting
of the 3d of December, [applause and cries of ** Good,""]
and, “ without violating the right of free speech,” organized
it, and spoke the sober sense of Boston ! “
I propose to examine the events of that morning, in
order to see what idea our enlightened press entertain of
the way in which “gentlemen” take possession of a
meeting, and the fitness of those “gentlemen” to take
possession of a meeting.
On the 3d of December, certain gentlemen —Rey, J.
+ Sella Martin, James Redpath, Mr. Eldridge, Mr. O’Con-
nor, Mr. Le Barnes—hired the Temple for a Convention
to assemble at their request. The circular which they
issued a month before, in November, invited the “ leaders
and representatives of all the antislavery bodies, and those
who have done honor to their own souls by the advocacy
of human freedom,” to meet them in convention. Cer-
tainly the fops and the clerks of Boston could not come
under that deseription. The notice published the day
before proclaimed that the convention “ was not met for
debate, that each speaker should confine himself to giving,
briefly, his views on the question, * How shall American
slavery be abolished ?7"” Does Mr. Fay, or any one of his
associates, dare to say, in the presence of the citizens of
Boston, that he entered that hall to join in good faith in
any such investigation? The temper and quality of the
meeting was shown by the statement of that notice, that
it chose the anniversary of the “martyrdom” of John
Brown as the day for its meeting, and mentioning his

MOBS AND EDUCATION. 327

death’as “too glorious to need defence or culogy.” If
any one of Mr. Fay’s associates entered that hall with
written resolutions in their pockets, denouncing John
Brown and expressing “ horror for his piraticil, bloody,
and nefarions attempt,” by what claim, as gentlemen, do
they justify their presence there?

Bat waive that, and grant that they were rightfully

present, When a convention assembles at the call of a
committee of gentlemen, it is a well-recognized and settled
right and custom of the callers to organize that conyen-
tion through a committee, or otherwise to appoint officers
for the body. If the committee report's list, it is some-
times put to vote, and sometimes not. When a vote is
taken, it is mere form ; for all well-disposed men, if they
contest a convention, uniformly leave it the right to or-
ganize itself, and meet it, if anywhere, on the passage of
‘its resolutions. In conformity with this custom, the Rev.
\J. Sella Martin took the floor as temporary Chairman.
‘He appointed a committee to appoint officers. ‘That com-
‘mittee reported a list, with Mr. Sanborn of Concord as
Chairman. Mr. Martin announced him, as he bad an en-
‘tire, well-recognized right to do, as the Chairman of that
‘meeting.

But suppose the Convention chose to insist on its strict
‘ight, and to organize itself without regard to its callers,
“Then it was perfectly in order for any member to address
‘the temporary chair, and make a motion to that effect. Did
‘any one do it? No. On the contrary, one person, who
seems to shrink from having his name known, nominated
Mrs Richard 8. Fay as chairman. [Good !” cheers and
hisses], and put the motion. This anonymous skulker
‘loes not seem to know parliamentary law enough to re-
‘amember that he should address the chair, or that he
‘should wait to have his motion seconded; but without
|-that, and without any call for the nays, Mr. Fay assumes

———S

‘MOBS AND EDUCATION. 829

Following, then, the example of Mr. Anonymous, who
nominated him, he does not wait to have the resolutions
seconded, he does not call for the nays, but he declares
them carried. This could not have been fright, for al~
though he was observed to tremble and grow pale when
hundreds cried out “Shame!” at the reading of his
third and fourth resolves, yet some one saying, “ Don’t
be frightened, we won't burt you,” had considerably re-
assured him. [Laughter.] Then somebody makes a mo=
tion to adjourn. Mr. Fay puts it. While he is doing so,
Mr. Frederick Douglass addresses him. He turns, intro-
duces Mr. Douglass to the audience, and gives him the
floor, ignorant again — ignorant again—that a motion to
adjourn is not debatable. Some one in the audience,
while Mr. Douglass is speaking, reminds him there is a
motion before the house. ‘This vigilant Chairman waves
the speaker aside, pats the motion to adjourn, declares it
carried, and then introduces Mr. Douglass again to this
adjourned Convention, and bids him remember the rule of
the call, to speak briefly, and to the point! [Great laugh-
ter.] And then this adjourned Chairman of a dead Con-
vention sits and listens half an hour to a speech from Mr.
Douglass. Whereafter, another man makes a motion to
adjourn; he puts it, declares it carried, and then,—on
the poet’s principle, “twice he slew the slain,'’— recog-
nizing, I suppose, that even his mob, twice adjourned, is
done with, takes his hat and vanishes, — this orderly Chair-
man!

Common chairmen, before quitting their conventions,
appoint a committee of finance, to see that the expenses
are paid ; but this opulent and magnanimous, Union-loving
Chairman, [cheers and some hisses] having announced
that he came to the hall to save his property, does it by
leaving his victims to pay the expenses. [Langhter.]
And when Mr. Hayes reminded him, during the pendency

‘MOBS AND EDUCATION. 331

them that all their Iabor had been in vain. Then Mr. J.
Murray Howe, without any flimsy veil of parliamentary
Pretext, a bully girdled by bullies, failing to excite any
violent resistance, urged or incited the police to arrest all
whom his followers struck, on the ground of removing the
cause of the disturbance. And the shameless Mayor closed
the scene [hisses], — the plot unmasked by the quiet dis-
cipline of the friends of order was disclosed; and the City
Government succored its defeated accomplices by clearing
the hall in the prostituted names of law and order. [Loud
‘cheers and some hisses. ]

T have named only the leaders of this mob, and described
"the pitiful quality of their followers. You will ask me, How
‘edid such a mass influence the Mayor? I am sorry to say,
‘that among that crowd were men influential by wealth and
| position, men seldom scen in an antislavery meeting, whose
| presence there at that unusual hour, —ten o'clock in the

‘morning, — sitting in silence, was an encouragement to
‘their personal friends, the mob. You may see, still look-
ing down on Washington Street, the gilded names of Law-
‘rence and Dickinson, and, side by side, the proud motto,
“The Union, the Constitution, the Enforcement of the
Laws.” [Cheers.] One of those names, which the city
has hitherto loved to honor, was present in that crowd, in
4 class of meetings where he is seldom seen, —never at

o'clock in the morning,—while his personal friends
resisted, with the encouragement of his unusual presence,
the enforcement of the most sacred of all laws, that of free
speech. Need I explain any otherwise the servility of the
Mayor?

Some men say that free speech was really crushed out
‘on that oceasion. Ono! that same day, that same meet-
ing held a session, addressed by the most hated of its
speakers, expressing their opinions on slavery and the
scene of the morning. The exact, literal truth is, that

| a

Saab is owes tn’ous'elty which ha base is
lic acknowledgment of his crime. The
owes to those men pillaged and beaten

MOBS AND EDUCATION. 333

their education never fitted them, —a common mistake of
‘American life. There are thousands among us engaged
in mechanical routine whose souls have large grasp, and
tuke in the universe. Critical hours unveil the lustre of
such spirits. Our self-made men are the glory of our in-
stitutions. But this is a case of men undertaking to join
in public debate and preside over public meetings, whose
souls are actually absorbed in pricing calico and adding up
columns of figures. It is a singular sight. White men,
having enjoyed the best book education, to see them strag-
Ting with two colored men, whose only education was op-
pression and the antislavery enterprise! But in that eon-
test of parliamentary skill, the two colored men never made
‘a mistake, while every step of their opponents was folly
“upon folly, Of course, upon the great question of moral
ight, there is no comparison. History gives us no closer
‘parallel than the French Convention of Lafayette and
‘Mirabeau assailed by the fish-women of the streets.
Let us turn now to the part of the City Government,
‘Every man eligible to office, —but with a race like ours,
fired with the love of material wealth, with a continent
given us by God to subdue and crowd it with cities, to
vunite the oceans with rails,—in such-an age and with
such a race, trade must absorb all the keenest energies of
each generation. The consequence is, that politics takes
up with small men, men without grasp enough for large
business; with leisure, therefore, on their hands; men
popular because they have no positive opinions, — these
are the men of politics. The result is, as Tocqueville
has hinted, that our magistrates never have more edu-
cation than we give to the mass, that they have no
personal experience of their own. Such men do very
well for ordinary occasions, when there is nothing to
do. Common times only try common men. In a calm
sea all boats alike show mastership in floating. On the

ie.

834 ‘MOBS AND EDUCATION.

8d day of the month, we might have supposed every man
to know that a meeting was to be protected against a
mob, that the duty of the police was not to settle disputed
questions and motions, but only to see that they were
argued out without violence,—that they were there to
arrest any man who committed an assault. The absurdity
of turning the Convention out of doors to quiet its tumult,
is the method of a quack who stabs his patient in order
to cure the disease,

But our Mayor, poor as he is, did know all this, He
was awed out of his duty by the social position of the
moboerats. The individual policemen were respectable
and orderly, evidently disposed to enforce order, had they
been allowed. No complaint can be made of them. But
we know neither them nor their chief. For us, the Mayor
represents the City Government, I hold him, single and
alone, responsible for the success of the mob. [Slight
hissing.] Abolitionists are the best judges; they have
been through many such a scene, They assert that, if
they could have been left alone, they could have quelled
that mob, unaided. [Derisive langhter.] Mr. Hayes, of
the Temple, the most competent witness in the city,
offered the Mayor, on the spot, to keep order within the
building if he could be allowed six men; and he has
publicly avowed his belief, that, had the chief simply an-
nounced, from the platform, his purpose to keep order im-
partially, order would have reigned ; but the mob knew that
the police, in spite of their individual feelings, must obey
orders, and were therefore, of course, on the mob side.
‘The rioters were constantly boasting, “The police are all
right,” “They are with us,” “Three cheers for the po-
lice!” [Cheers and hisses.]

To the courtesy and forbearance of the Abolitionists the
Chief of Police has borne public witness, They were the
only persons assaulted, yet they were the only persons

——=—S

MOBS AND EDUCATION, 835

arrested. They were the only persons knocked down,
and they were the only persons carried from the hall by
the police. The chief says that individual Abolitionists
were removed by mistake. Singular that this mistake
should never have happened to those who were using their
canes and their fists, and should have taken place only in
regard to persons. conspicuous for their courtesy and for-
bearance !

‘The friends of the Mayor urge that the mob was too
strong for the whole force of the government, Let him
show that he spoke one word, that he lifted one finger,
that he remonstrated with one rioter, and we will grant
him that excuse. But the pilot who says the storm is too
strong for him must show that he put his hand once, at
Teast, upon the helm, to see whether it would obey the
hold.

Our present Mayor is not singular; he does not stand
alone. We have not had a decent Mayor for ten years.
(Sensation, and vehement hisses.] Vassals of the grog-
shop, and mortgaged to State Street, what could you
expect from them? Of course Smith and Bigelow are
beneath notice, —mere hounds of the slave-hunt, a hand’s-
breadth ahead of the pack. But these other degenerate
magistrates find here and there a predecessor to keep
them in countenance; indeed, all the Mayors on the
Atlantic coast are their models, with one or two noble
exceptions, That mob which Messrs. Fay and Howe
inaugurated spent the night among our colored citizens’
dwellings, beating, kicking, and stabbing all whom they
met. The police were on special duty in those streets in
the night. The morning opened, the courts assembled,
the magistrate took his seat. ‘The only person arrested
for that night’s disorder is one black boy, fourteen years
old, who had defended himself against bullies!

I do not remember precisely the mob against the Irish

the good name of the city, to realize the
aaa emgei 2

MOBS AND EDUCATION, 387

his magistracy. But he lived, —he lived to repent; and
later services did endear his name to the Commonwealth.
There is no evidence that our more recent Mayors know
even enough to be ashamed.
The men of that day lived to beg pardon of the very
they had mobbed. All Boston glorified them,
that month; they walked State Street in pride. But
you would think me cruel, to-day, if I gibbeted their
names. ‘The hour is near, it knocks at yonder door, when
whoever reminds an audience that Richard S, Fay and
Mayor Lincoln broke up an antislavery meeting will be
considered, even by State Street and the Courier, bitter
aud uncharitable, [hisses] as eminently unchristian, in
reminding the disgraced and the forgotten of their sins.
What was the meeting thus assailed? It was a meeting
met to discuss slavery, —a topic which makes the repub-
lie tremble, the settlement of which is identical with the
surviving of our government, —a topic upon which every
press, every legislature, every magistrate, south of Mason
and Dixon’s line, flings defiance at the Union, amid the
plandits of Mr. Fay and his friends. What day was it?
‘The anniversary of the martyrdom of the only man whose
name stirs the pulses of Europe in this generation. [De-
risive laughter-] English statesmen confess never to have
read a line of Webster. You may name Seward in
Munich and Vienna, in Pesth or in Naples, and vacant
eyes will ask you, ** Who is he?” But all Europe, the
lenders and the masses, spoke by the lips of Victor Hugo,
when he said, “The death of Brown is more than
Cain killing Abel; it is Washington slaying Spartacus.”
[Laughter from some parts of the ball, and from others

What was the time of this meeting? An hour when

our Senators and Representatives were vindicating the

free speech of Massachusetts in Washington, in the face
23

te
pull

aitas
Aree

i feseze
feist dia

‘MOBS AND EDUCATION. 889

tchool-house this letter of our loved Governor elect, —
the best word a Massachusetts Governor has said since
the first Winthrop gave his fine definition of civil lih-
erty. Mr. Andrew says :—

“6The right to think, to know, and to utter’ as John Milton
‘said, is the dearest of all liberties. Without this right, there can
‘be no liberty to any people ; with it, there can be no slavery.”

And Mr. Andrew goes on: —

TI care not for the truth or error of the opinions held or
‘uttered, nor for the wisdom of the words or time of their at-
tempted expression, when I consider this great question of fun-
damental significance, this great right which must first be secure
‘Before free society ean be said to stand on any foundation, but
‘only on temporary or capricious props.

4 Rich or poor, white or black, great or small, wise or foolish,
Jn season or out of season, in the right or in the wrong, whosoever
owill speak, let him speak, and whosoever will hear, let him hear.
And let no one pretend to the prerogative of judging another
‘man’s liberty. In this respect there is, and there can be, no
‘superiority of persons or privileges, nor the slightest pretext for
any.”

Thank God for such a Governor to come! [Applause.]
‘Make that Massachusetts, and then we may stop a boy in
the streets and make him Mayor, sure that, without need
‘of thought or consultation, he will gird himself to protect

lar free speech, and put down fashionable riot, in-
stead of lazily protecting fashionable riot, and putting down
‘unpopular free speech.

T have used strong words. But I was born in Boston,
and the good name of the old town is bound up with every
fibre of my heart, I dare not trust myself to describe the
‘ingolence of men who undertake to dictate to you and me
what we shall say in these grand old streets, But who
can adequately tell the sacredness and the value of free
speech? Who can fitly describe the enormity of the

MOBS AND EDUCATION. 841

ancient privileges, not in inroads on the right of public discussion,
nor in violations of the principles of a free government.”

Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities.
‘The loved and the rich need no protection, — they have
many friends and few enemies. We have praised our
Union for seventy years. This is the first time it is
tested. Has it educated men who know their rights, and
clare to maintain them? Can it bear the discussion of a
great national sin, anchored deep in the prejudices and
interests of millions? If so, it deserves to live. If not,
‘the sooner it vanishes out of the way the better.

‘The time to assert rights is when they are denied; the
‘men to assert them are those to whom they are denied.
‘The community which dares not protect its humblest and
most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions,
‘no matter how filse or hateful, is only a gang of slaves.

“ At the conclusion of the exercises, Mr. Phillips's friends flocked
upon the platform to congratulate him. After awhile, Mr. Phillips left
the platform, accompanied by several friends, who were joined, in the
lower entry, by some twenty in number, As the party emerged from
the building to the avenue leading from the ball to Winter Street, a
lange crowd was found collected there, who set up various eries, such
as ‘There he is!* ‘Crush him out!” ‘Down with the Abolition-
ists!’ “Bite his head off!” All up!* &, and surged toward
‘Mr. Phillips, with the manifest purpose of preventing his egress. In
this, however, they were balked by the resolute front of his friends
and the energy of the police, who forced the crowd to give way.

“On entering Winter Street, the mob, which almost blockaded the
street, yelled and hissed, and gave vent to their impotent rage by
‘such cries as those given above ; but the party proceeded down the
street, and up Washington Street, surrounded by a strong detachment
of police, and followed by an immense throng of people, many of
‘them, however, friends of Mr. Phillips, and determined to protect
‘him from injury. No demonstrations of violence, happily, were made.
‘The singular procession excited the attention of people living on the

MOBS AND EDUCATION.

and the windows looking on the street were crowded
pressing wonder and curiosity. Arrived at his house in

Mr. Phillips entered, with a few of his fri

nds, when

were given by some of those present, which were an-
ces from the other side, Deputy-Chief Ham then re-

did, though somewhat
ith manifest reluctance. So ended the disgraceful scene.”

crowd to disperse, which the

DISUNION.*

Abo office of the pulpit is to teach men their duty.
Wherever men's thoughts influence their laws, it is
‘the duty of the pulpit to preach polities. If it were pos-
sible to conceive of a community whose opinions had no
Znfluence on their government, there the pulpit would
Thave no occasion to talk of government. I never heard
‘or knew of such a community. Though sheltered by
Roman despotism, Herod and the chief priests abstained
from this and that because they “feared the people.”
‘The Sultan dared to murder his Janizaries only when
the streets came to hate them as much as he did. The
Czar, at the head of a government whose constitution
knows no check but poison and the dagger, yet feels the
pressure of public opinion. Certainly, where pews are
full of voters, no question but the sermon should be full
of polities.

“The Lord reigneth ; let the earth rejoice.” “The
covenant with death” is annulled; “ the agreement
with hell” is broken to pieces. The chain which has
eld the slave system since 1787 is parted. Thirty years
go, Southern leaders, sixteen years ago, Northern Aboli-
tionists, announced their purpose to seek the dissolution of
the American Union. Who dreamed that success would
Come so soon? South Carolina, bankrupt, alone, with a

© Lecture delivered in the Music Hall, January 20, 1861, —a large part of
the Hail and the avenues to it occupied by the mob.

DISUNION. B45

traitors too. Like all outgoing administrations, they have
no wish to lessen the troubles of their successors by cur-
ing the nation’s hurt, —rather aggravate it, They have
done all the mischief in their power, and long now only to
hear the clock strike twelve on the fourth day of March.

‘Then look at the North, divided into three sections:
Ast. The defeated minority, glad of anything that troubles
their conquerors. 2d. The class of Republicans led by
Seward, offering to surrender anything to save the Union.
[Applause.] Their gospel is the Constitution [applause],
and the slave clause is their Sermon on the Mount.
[Laughter and applause.] They think that, at the judg-
ment-lay, the blacker the sins they have committed to
save the Union, the clearer will be their title to heaven.
3d. The rest of the Republicans, led by the Tribune —
all honor to the Tribune, faithful and trae!—who con-
sider their honor pledged to fulfil in office the promises
made in the canvass. Their motto is: “The Chicago
platform, every inch of it; not a hair’s-breadth of the
Territories shall be surrendered to slavery.” [Applause.]
But they, too, claim the cannon's mouth to protect forts,
defend the flag, and save the Union. At the head of this
section, we have every reason to believe, stands Mr.
Abraham Lincoln.

All these are the actors on the stage. But the founda-
tion on which all stand divides only into two parts: those
who like slavery, 2nd mean it shall last; those who hate
it, und mean it shall die. In the boiling gulf goes on the
perpetual conflict of acid and alkali; all these classes are
but bubbles on the surface. The upper millstone is right,
and the lower wrong. Between them, governments and
parchments, parties and compromises, are being slowly
ground to powder.

Broadly stated, the South plans a Southern Confederacy
to uphold slavery,—the North clings to the Union to

—_

The servile silence of the Tth of March, 1850, is out-
done, and to New York Massachusetts yields the post of
infamy which her great Senator has hitherto filled. Yes,
of all the doctors bending over the patient, not one dares
to name his disease, except the Tribune, which advises
him to forget it! Throughout half of the great cities of
the North, every one who touches on it is mobbed into
silence! ‘This is, indeed, the saddest feature of our times,

Let us, then, who, unlike Mr. Seward, are not afraid to
tell, even now, all and just what we wish, —let us look at
the real nature of the crisis in which we stand. The
‘Tribune says we should * forget the negro.” Tt seems to
me that all our past, all our present, and all our future
command us at this moment to think of nothing but the
negro, [Slight laughter derisively.]

Let me tell you why. Mr, Seward says, “The first
object of every human society is safety” ; I think the first
duty of society is susrice. Alexander Hamilton said,
“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil
society.” If any other basis of safety or gain were honest,
it would be impossible. ‘A prosperons iniquity,” says
Jeremy Taylor, “is the most unprofitablé condition in the
world,” The nation which, in moments when great moral: ~
questions distarb its peace, consults first for its own safety,
is atheist and coward, and there are three chances out of
four that it will end by being knave. We were not sent
into the world to plant cities, to make Unions or save
them. Seeing that all men are born equal, our first civil
duty is to see that our Iaws treat them so, The convul-
sion of this hour is the effort of the nation to do this, its
duty, while politicians and parties strive to balk it of its
purpose, The nation agonizes this hour to recognize man
as man, forgetting color, condition, sex, and creed.

Our Revolution earned us only independence. What- |
ever our fathers meant, the chief lesson of that hour was

DISUNION, 349

toil of a century cries out, Zureka!—“ I have found it!"
—the diamond of an immortal soul and an equal manhood
under a black skin as truly as under a white one, For
this, Leggett labored and Lovejoy died. For this, the
bravest soul of the century went up to God from a Vir-
Binia scaffold. [Hisses and applause.] For this, young
men gaye up their May of youth, and old men the honors
and ease of age. It went through the land wiiting his-
tory afresh, setting up and pulling down parties, riving
Sects, mowing down colossal reputations, making us veil
ur faces in shame at the baseness of our youth’s idols,
sending bankrupt statesmen to dishonored graves.

We stand to-day just as Hancock and Adams and Jef-
ferson stood when stamp-act and tea-tax, Patrick Henry’s
‘eloquence and the massacre of March 5th, Otis’s blood
and Bunker Hill, had borne them to July, 1776. Suppose
‘at that moment John Adams had cried out, “ Now let the
people everywhere forget Independence, and remember
only *God save the King’!” [Laughter.] The toil of
2 whole generation —thirty years — has been spent in ex-
‘amining this question of the rights and place of the negro ;
the whole earnest thought of the nation given to it; old
parties have been wrecked against it, new ones grown out
of it; it stifles all other questions ; the great interests of
the nation necessarily suffer, men refusing to think of any-
thing else but this; it struggles up through all compro-
mises, asserting its right to be heard ; no green withes of
eloquence or cunning, trade, pulpit, Congress, or college,
succeed in binding this Samson; the business of the sea-
board begs it may be settled, no matter how; the whole
South is determined to have it met, proclaiming that she
‘does not secede because of personal liberty laws or a Re-
publican President, but because of the state of Northern
feeling of which these are signs. It is not Northern laws
or officers they fear, but Northern conscience. Why, then,

DISUNION. 361

side, Titer arma, silent leges,—armics care nothing for
constables. This is not a case at law, but revolution.

Let us not, however, too anxiously grieve over the
Union of 1787. Real Unions are not made, they grow.
This was made, like an artificial waterfall or a Connecticut
nutmeg. Tt was not an oak which to-day a tempest shat-
ters. It was a wall hastily built, in hard times, of round
boulders ; the cement has crumbled, and the smooth
stones, obeying the law of gravity, tumble here and there.
Why should we seek to stop them, merely to show that
we have a right and can? That were only a waste of
means and temper. Let us build, like the Pyramids, a
fabric which every natural law guarantees ; or, better still,
plant « Union whose life survives the ages, and quietly
gives birth to its successor.

Mr. Seward’s last speech, which he confesses does not
express his real convictions, denies every principle but one
that he proclaimed in his campaign addresses ; that one—
which, at Lansing, he expressly said “he was ashamed to
confess" —that one is this: Everything is to be sacrificed
to save the Union. I am not aware that, on any public
occasion, varied and wide as have been his discussions and
topies, he has ever named the truth or the virtue which he
would not sacrifice to save the Union, For thirty years,
there has been stormy and searching discussion of profound
moral questions ; one, whom his friends call our only states-
man, has spoken often on all; yet he has never named the
sin which he does not think would be a virtue, if it con-
tributed to save the Union.

Remembering this element of his statesmanship, let us
listen to the key-note of his late speech: “ The first ob-
ject of every human society is safety or security, for
which, if need be, they will and they must sacrifice every
other.”

T will not stop to say that, even with his explanation,

DISUNION. 358.

position decides that of millions. The instinct that leads
him to take it shows his guess (and he rarely errs) what
the majority intend. I reconcile thus the utter difference
and opposition of his campaign speeches, and his last one.
I think he went West, sore at the loss of the nomination,
bat with too much good sense, perhaps magnanimity, to
aet over again Webster's sullen part when Taylor stole
his rights.

Still, Mr. Seward, though philosophic, thongh keen to
analyze and unfold the theory of our politics, is not cun-
ning in plans. He is only the hand and tongue ; his brain
lives in private life on the Hudson River side. Acting
under that guidance, he thought Mr, Lincoln not likely to
go beyond, even if he were able to keep, the whole Chi-
eago platform. Accordingly, he said: “1 will give free
rein to my natural feelings and real convictions, till these
Abolitionists of the Republican ranks shall ery, ‘O what a
mistake! We ought to have nominated Seward; another
time we will not be balked.’"” Hence the hot eloquence
and fearless tone of those prairie speeches, He returns to
Washington, finds Mr. Lineoln sturdily insisting that his
honor is pledged to keep in offiee every promise made in
the platform. ‘Then Mr. Seward shifts his course, saying :
“Since my abolitionism cannot take the wind from’ my
rival’s sails, I'll get credit as. a Conservative. Accepting
the premiership, I will forestall public opinion, and do all
possible to bind the coming administration to a policy
which I originate.” He offers to postpone the whole Chi-
eago platform, in order to save the Union, — though last
October, at Chicago, he told us postponement never settles
anything, whether it is a lawsuit or a national question ;
better be beat and try again than postpone,

This speech of Mr, Seward I regard as a declaration of
war against the avowed policy of the incoming President.
If Lincoln were an Andrew Jackson, as his friends aver,

DISUNION, 355

sub-treasuries, and we will lend them, beside, jewels of
gold and jewels of silver, and Egypt be glad when they
are departed, [Laughter and applause.]

But let the world distinctly understand why they go, —
to save slavery; and why we rejoice in their departure, —
because we know their declaration of independence is the
jubilee of the slave. The eyes of the world are fixed on
us as the great example of self-government. When this
Tnion goes to pieces, it is a shock to the hopes of the
struggling millions of Europe. All lies bear bitter fruit.
To-day is the ineyitable fruit of our fathers’ faithless com-
promise in 1787. For the sake of the future, in freedom’s
name, let thinking Europe understand clearly why we
sever. They saw Mr. Seward paint, at Chicago, our
utter demoralization, Church and State, government and

sople, all classes, educated and uneducated, —all brought

the Slave Power, he said, to think slavery a blessing,
and do anything to save it. So utter did he consider this
demoralization, that he despaired of native Americans, and
trusted to the hunted patriots and the refuse of Europe,
which the emigrant-trains bore by his house, for the salva-
tion of the valley of the Mississippi. To-day, they see that
yery man kneeling to that Slave Power, and begging her
to take all, but only consent to grant him such a Union,
—Union with such a power! How, then, shall Kossuth
answer, when Austria laughs him to scorn? Shall Eu-
rope see the slaveholder kick the reluctant and kneeling
North out of such a Union? How, then, shall Gari-
bald dare look in the face of Napoleon? If, therefore,
it were only to honor self-government, to prove that it
men, not pedlers and cowards, let us proclaim

our faith that honest labor can stand alone; its own right
hand amply able to earn its bread and defend its rights
[applause] ; and, if it were not so, our readiness at any
cost to welcome disunion when it comes bringing freedom

DISUNION. 857

prevent or punish it, the very States whose citizens have
‘been outraged have been too indifferent even to remon-
‘strate. Massachusetts, who once remonstrated, saw her
own agent mobbed out of Charleston with her full con-
sent.

Before the Union existed, Washington and Jefferson
uttered the boldest antislavery opinions ; to-day they
would be lynched in their own homes; and their senti-
ments have been mobbed this very year in every great
city of the North, The Fogitive Slave Bill could never
have been passed nor executed in the days of Jay. Now
no man who hopes for office dares to insist that it is un-
constitutional. Slavery has turned our churches of Christ
to churches of commerce.

John Quincy Adams, the child of our earlier civilization,
said the Union was worthless, weighed against that liberty
‘it was meant to secure. Mr, Seward, the child of the
Union, says there are few men, and there onght to be few,
who would not prefer saving the Union to securing free-
dom ; and standing to-day at the head of nineteen millions
of freemen, he confesses he does not deem it prudent to
‘express his * most cherished convictions” on this subject,*
while eyery honest man fears, and three fourths of Mr.
Seward’s followers hope, that the North, in this conflict of
Tight and wrong, will, spite of Horace Greeley’s warning,
“Love liberty less than profit, dethrone conscience, and
set up commerce in its stead.” You know it. A Union

* Mr. Seward suid, at St.Paul, last September: “I do not beliove there
has been one day, since 1787, until now, when slayery had any power in this
govermment, except what it derived from buying up men of weak virtue, no
‘Principle, and great cupidlity, und terrifying mon of weak nerye, in the Free
Suwics. ..... Fellow-citizens, either in one way or the other, whether you
agree with me in nttributing it to the interposition of Divine Providence or
‘Rot, this hatile has beca fought, this victory has been won, Slavery vo-day
‘is, for the first time, not only powerless, but without influence in the Ameri-
an republic. ..... For the first time in the history of the republic, the

’

DISUNION. 859

‘The cunning which equivocates to-day, in order to se~
cure a peaceful inauguration on the 4th of March, will
yield up all its principles before the Ist of July. Beside,
‘when opiate speeches have dulled the Northern conscience,
and kneeling speeches have let down its courage, who can

“be sure that even Seward’s voice, if he retain the wish,
can conjure up again such a North as stands face to face

with Southern arrogance to-day ?

‘The Union, then, is a failure.” What barm can come
from disunion, and what good ?

The seceding States will form a Southern Confederacy.
We may judge of its future from the history of Mexico.
The Gulf States intend to reopen the slave-trade. If
Kentucky and ‘Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, and North
Carolina secede, the opening of thatitrade will ruin them,
and they will gravitate to us, free. Louisiana cannot
secede, except on paper; the omnipotent West needs her
territory, as the mouth of its river. She must stay with
us as a State or a conquered proyinee, and may have her
choice, [Laughter.] Beside, she stands on sugar, and
free-trade bankrupts her. Consider the rest of the Slave
States as one power, how can it harm us? Let us see
the ground of Mr. Seward’s fears. Will it inctease our
‘expenses or lessen our receipts? No; every one of those
Stutes costs the Union more than it contributes to it.
Can it harm us by attacks? States without commerce or
manufactures, and with an army of four millions of natural
enemies encamped among them, have given bonds to keep
the peace. Will they leave us so small and weak by going
that we cannot stand alone? Let us see. There is no
reason to suppose that the Free States, except California,
will not cling together. Idem velle, idem nolle, —to like
and dislike the same things, says the Latin proverb, is
friendship. When a great number of persons agree in a
great number of things, that insures a union ; that is not

ne |
DISUNION, B61
’
dread of losing the Union, which so frightens the people
that, in view of it, Mr. Seward, as a practical man, dares
not now tell, as he says, what he really thinks and wishes,
is the child of his and Webster's insincere idolatry of the
Union. To serve party and personal ambition, they made
a god of the Union; and to-day their invention returns to
plague the inventors. They made the people slaves to a
falsehood; and that same deluded people have turned
their fetters into gags for Mr. Seward’s lips. Thank God
for the retribution!
But the Union created commerce ; disunion will kill it.
The Union the mother of commerce? I doubt it. I
question whether the genius and energy of the Yankee
race are not the parent of commerce and the fountain of
wealth, much more than the Union, That race, in Hol-
land, first created a country, and then, standing on piles,
called modern commerce into being. That race, in Eng-
land, with territory just wide enough to keep its eastern
and western harbors apart, monopolized, for centuries, the
trade of the world, and annexed continents only as coffers
wherein to garner its wealth, Who shall say that the
same blood, with only New England for its anchorage,
* could not drag the wealth of the West into its harbors?
Who shall say that the fertile lands of Virginia and the
Mississippi enrich us because they will to do so, and not
because they are compelled? As long as New England
is made of granite, and the nerves of her sons of steel,
she will be, as she always has been, the brain of North
America, united or disunited; and harnessing the ele-
ments, steam and lightning, to her car of conquest, she
will double the worth of every prairie acre by her skill,
cover ocean with her canvas, and gather the wealth of the
Western hemisphere into her harbors.
Despite, then, of Seward’s foreboding, our confederacy
will be strong, safe, and rich, Honest it will be, and .

862 DISUNION.

therefore happy. Its nobleness will be, that, laughing at
prophets, and scorning chances, it has taken the“prop from
the slave system, and in one night the whole fabric will
tumble to pieces. Disunion is abolition! That is all the
value disunion has for me. J care little for forms of goy-
ernment or extent of territory; whether ten States or
thirty make up the Union, No foreign state dare touch
us, united or disunited. It matters not to me whether
Massachusetts is worth one thousand millions, as now, or
two thousand millions, as she might be, if she had no
Carolina to feed, protect, and carry the mails for. The
musie of disunion to me is, that at its touch the slave
breaks into voice, shouting his jubilee.

What supports slavery? Northern bayonets, calming
the masters’ fears. Mr. Seward's words, which I have
just quoted, tell you what he thinks the sole use of our
army and navy. Disunion leaves God's natural laws to
work their good results, God gives every animal means
of self-protection. Under God’s law, insurreetion is the
tyrant’s check. Let us stand out of the path, and allow
the Divine law to have free course.

Next, Northern opinion is the opiate of Southern con-
science. Disunion changes that. Public opinion forms
governments, and again governments react to méuld opin-
ion, Here is a government just as much permeated by
slavery as China or Japan is with idolatry.

‘The Republican party take possession of this
ment. How are they to undermine the Slave Power?
That power is composed, 1st, of the inevitable influence
of wealth, $2,000,000,000,—the worth of the slaves in
the Union, —so much capital drawing to it the sympathy
of all other capital; 24, of the artificial aristocracy created
by the three-fifths slave basis of the Constitution; Sd, by~
the potent and baleful prejudice of color.

The aristocracy of the Constitution! Where have you

ill

DISUNION. 363

seen an aristocracy with half its power? You may take a
small town here in New England, with a busy, active

of 2,500, and three or four such men as Gov-
emor Aikin, of South Carolina, riding leisurely to the
polls, and throwing in their visiting-cards for ballots, will
blot out the entire influence of that New England town in
the Federal Government. ‘hat is your Republicanism!
Then, when you add to that the element of prejudice,
which is concentrated in the epithet that spells negro with
two “g's,” you make the three-strand cable of the Slave
Power, — the prejudice of race, the omnipotence of money,
and the alnost irresistible power of aristocracy. ‘That is
the Slave Power,

How is Mr. Lincoln to undermine it while in the
Union? Certainly, by turning every atom of patronage
and pecuniary profit in the keeping of the Federal Gov-
ernment to the support of freedom. You know the con
|trary policy has been always acted upon ever since Wash-
ington, and been openly avowed ever since Fillmore. No
aman was to receive any office who was not sound on the
slavery question, You remember the debate in the Sen-
fate, when that was distinctly avowed to be the policy of
Mr. Fillmore. You remember Mr. Clay letting it drop
out accidentally, in debate, that the slaveholders had
always closely watched the Cabinet, and kept a majority
there, in order to preserve the ascendency of slavery.
‘This is the policy which, in the course of fifty years, has
built up the Slave Power. Now, how is the Republican
party ever to beat that power down? By reversing that
poliey, in favor of freedom, Cassius Clay said to me, five
years ago: “If you will allow me to have the patronage
of this government five years, and exercise it remorse
Tessly, down to New Orleans; never permit any one but
an avowed Abolitionist to hold office under the Federal
Government, I will revolutionize the Slave States them-

DISUXION, 365

national evil. Mr. Seward’s way is to take the Union
asa * fixed fact," and then educate polities up to a certain
level. In that way we have to live, like Sinbad, with
Cushing and Hillard and Hallett and O'Connor and
Donglas, and men like them, on our shoulders, for the
next thirty or forty years; with the Deweys and Presi-
dent Lords, and all that class of men, —and all this timid
servility of the press, all this lack of virtue and manhood,
all this corruption of the pulpit, all this fossil hunkerism,
all this selling of the soul for a mess of pottage, is to
linger, working in the body politic for thirty or forty
| years, and we are gradually to eliminate the disease!
What an awful future! What a miserable chronic dis-
ease! What a wreck of a noble nation the American
Republic is to be for fifty years !
And why? Only to save a piece of parchment that El-
bridge Gerry had instinct enough to think did not deserve
. as long ago as 1789! Mr. Seward would leave
New York united to New Orleans, with the hope (sure to
de balked) of getting freer and freer from year to year. I
want to place her, at once, in the same relation towards
‘New Orleans that she bears to Liverpool. You can do it,
the moment you break the political tie. What will that
do? Iwill tell you. The New York pulpit is to-day one
end of a magnetic telegraph, of which the New Orleans
cotton-mnarket is the other. The New York stock-market
is one end of the magnetic telegraph, and the Charleston
is the other. New York statesmanship! Why,
even in the lips of Seward, it is sealed, or half sealed, by
considerations which take their rise in the canebrakes and
totton-fields of fifteen States. Break up this Union, and
the ideas of Sonth Carolina will have no more influence
on Seward than those of Palmerston. The wishes of
New Orleans would have no more influence on Chief
Tastice Bigelow than the wishes of London, The threats

—_

DISUNION. 367

relation which now rests upon it. What 1 would do with
Massachusetts is this: I would make her, in relation to
South Carolina, just what England is. I would that T
could float her off, and anchor her in mid-ocean!
Severed from us, South Carolina must have a govern-
ment. You sce now a reign of terror,—threats to raise
means. That can only last a day. Some system must
give support to a government, It is an expensive luxury,
| You must lay taxes to support it. Where will you levy
your taxes? They must rest on productions. Produe-
tions are the result of skilled labor. You must educate
your laborer, if you would have the means for carrying on
government. Despotisms are cheap; free governments
are a dear Inxury,—the machinery is complicated and
expensive. If the South wants a theoretical republic, she
must pay for it,—she must have a basis for taxation.
‘How will she pay for it? Why, Massachusetts, with a
million workmen, — men, women, and children, — the
little fect that can just toddle bringing chips from the
wood-pile, — Massachusetts only pays her own board and
Todging, and lays by about four per cent a year, And South
Carolina, with one half idlers, and the other half slaves, —
aslave doing only half the work of a freeman, — only one
_ quarter of the population actually at work, —how much do
yon suppose she lays up? Lays up a loss! By all the
Jaws of political economy, she lays up bankruptey; of
course she does! Put her ont, and let her see how shel-
tered she has been from the laws of trade by the Union !
The free labor of the North pays her plantation patrol ;
‘we pay for her government, we pay for her postage, and
for everything else. Launch her out, and let her see if
she can make the year’s ends meet! And when she tries,
she must educate her labor in order to get the basis for
taxation. Educate slaves! Make a locomotive with its
furnaces of open wire-work, fill them with anthracite coal,

—

DISUNTON. 869

greater sctivity by the unwillingness of France and Eng-
land to trust their supply to States convulsed by political
quarrels; —and then sce if, in such circumstances, the
price of cotton in the markets of the world will not rule so
Jow, that to raise it by slovenly slave-culture will not be
utter loss, —so utter as to drive it wholly from our States,
at least while they remain Slave State:

Indeed, the Gulf States are essentis
dition, an aristocracy resting on slaves, —no middle class.
‘To sustain government on the costly model of our age
necessitates a middle class of trading, manufacturing en-
ergy. The merchant of the nineteenth century spurns to
bea subordinate. The introduction of such a class will
create in the Gulf States that very irrepressible conflict
which they leave us to avoid, —which, alive now in the
Border States, makes these unwilling to secede, — which
‘once created will soon undermine the aristocracy of the
Gulf States and bring them back to us free.

Take your distorted Union, your nightmare monster,
out of the Tight and range of these laws of trade and com-
petition ; then, withont any sacrifice on your part, slavery
will go to pieces! God made it a law of his universe, that
villany should always be loss ; and if you will only not at-
tempt, with your puny efforts, to stand betwixt the inevit-
able laws of God's kingdom, as you are doing to-day, and
have done for sixty years, by the vigor that the industry
of sixteen States has been able to infuse into the sluggish
veins of the South, slavery will drop to pieces by the very
influence of the competition of the nineteenth century.
That is what we mean by Disunion !

That is my coercion! “Northern pulpits cannonading the
Southern conscience ; Northern competition emptying its
pockets; educated slaves awaking its fears ; civilization
and Christianity beckoning the South into their sisterhood.
Soon every breeze that sweeps over Carolina will bring to

ory

870 DISUNION.

our ears the music of repentance, and even she will carve
on her Palmetto, ‘‘ We hold this truth to be self-evident »
— that all men are created equal.”

All hail, then, Disunion! ‘‘ Beautiful on the mountain =
are the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publish. _-
eth peace, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth.” Th ¢
sods of Bunker Hill shall be greener, now that their greammmat
purpose is accomplished. Sleep in peace, martyr of Har—ar.
per’s Ferry !— your life was not given in vain. Rejoice,
spirits of Fayette and Kosciusko!—the only stain upom—,
your swords is passing away. Soon, throughout all Ame—
ica, there shall be neither power nor wish to hold a slay —p,

PROGRESS.*

* And Jacob mid unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage
fare an hundred and thirty years : few and evil have the days of the years of
‘my life been, und have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of
my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”

IHUS spoke a prince who had won from his elder

brother both birthright and blessing; who had seen
“the angels of God ascending and descending” ; was able
tosay, “With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and
now I am become two bands”; who had seen God face to
face, and still lived; to whom was pledged the Divine
promise, “I will make of thee a great nation, in thy seed
shall all the families of the earth be blessed”; whose ears
had just drunk in the glad tidings of his favorite son,
“Joseph is yet alive; he is governor over all the land of
Egypt.” Thus timid and disconsolate gray hairs bewail
their own times. To most men, the golden age is one
long past.

But Nature is ever growing. Science tells us every
change is improvement. This globe, once a mass of
tolten granite, now blooms almost a paradise. So in
man’s life and history. One may not see it in his own
Short day. You must stand afar off to judge St. Peter's,
‘The shadow on the dial seems motionless, but it touches

* Address delivered before the Twenty-cighth Congregational Society in
“Mauzsic Hall, Boston, Sunday forenoon, February 17, 1861: the mob, ns be-
fore, filling many parts of the Hall and the avenues leading to it,

PROGRESS, 373

science, new ideas in morals or art, obliterates rank, and
makes the lowest man useful or necessary to the state.
Popes and kings no longer mark the ages; but Luther
and Raphael, Fulton and Faust, Howard and Roussean.
A Massachusetts mechanic, Eli Whitney, made cotton
king; a Massachusetts printer, William Lloyd Garrison,
has undermined its throne. Thus civilization insures
equality. Types are the fathers of democrats.

Tt is not always, however, ideas or moral principles that
push the world forward. Selfish interests play a large
part in the work. Our Revolution of 1776 succeeded be-
cause trade and wealth joined hands with principle and
enthusiasm,—a union rare in the history of revolutions.
Northern merchants fretted at England’s refusal to allow
them direct trade with Holland and the West Indies.
Virginia planters, heavily mortgaged, welcomed anything
whieh would postpone payment of their debts, —a motive
that doubtless avails largely among Secessionists now. So
merchant and planter joined heartily with hot-headed
Sam Adams, and reckless Joseph Warren, penniless John
Adams, that brilliant adventurer Alexander Hamilton,
and that young scapegrace Aaron Burr, to get indepen-
dence, [Laughter-] To merchant, independence meant
only direct trade, —to planter, cheating his creditors,

Present conflict of interests is another instrument of
progress. Religious persecution planted these States ;
commercial persecution brought about the Revolution ;
John Bull’s perseverance in a seven-years war fused us
into one nation ; his narrow and ill-tempered effort to gov-
ern us by stealth, even after the peace of 1783, drove us
to the Constitution of 1789,

T think it was Coleridge who said, if he were a clergy-
man in Cornwall, he should preach fifty-two sermons a
year against wreckers. In the same spirit, I shall find the
best illustration of our progress in the history of the slave
question,

874 PROGRESS.

Some men sit sad and trembling for the future, because
the knell of this Union has sounded. But the heavens are
almost all bright ; and if some sable clouds linger on the
horizon, they have turned their silver linings almost wholly
to our sight. Every man who possesses his soul in par
tience sees that disunion is gain, disunion is peace, disunion
is virtue.

Thomas Jefferson said: “ It is unfortunate that the ef-
forts of mankind to recover the freedom of which they
have been deprived should be accompanied with violence,
with errors, and even with crime. But while we weep
over the means, we must pray for the end.””

‘We may see our future in the glass of our past history.
The whole connection of Massachusetts Colony with Eng-
land was as much disgrace as honor to both sides. On the
part of England, it was an attempt to stretch principles
which were common sense and justice applied to an island,
but absurd and tyrannical applied across the ocean. It
was power without right, masked in form. On the side
of the Colony, it was petty shifts, quibbles, equivocations,
cunning dodges, white lies, ever the resource of weakness.
While England was bulldog, Massachusetts was fox.
Whoever cannot take his right openly by force, steals
what he can by fraud. The Greek slave was a liar, as all
slaves are. ‘Tocqueville says, “ Men are not corrupted by
the exercise of power, nor debased by submission ; but by
the exercise of power they think illegal, and submission
toa rule they consider oppressive.” That sentence is a
key to our whole colonial history. When we grew strong
enough to dare to be frank, we broke with England.
Timid men wept ; but now we see how such disunion was
gain, peace, and virtue. Indeed, seeming disunion was
real union. We were then two snarling hounds, leashed
together; we are now one in a true marriage, one in
blood, trade, thought, religion, history, in mutual love and

PROGRESS. 875

respect; where one then filched silver from the other,
each now pours gold into the other's lap ; our only rivalry,
which shall do most honor to the blood of Shakespeare and
Milton, of Franklin and Kane.

In that glass we see the story of North and South since
1787, and I doubt not for all coming time. The people of
the States between the Gulf and the great Lakes, yes,
between the Gulf and the Pole, are essentially one. We
are one in blood, trade, thought, religion, history ; nothing
can long divide us. If we had let our Constitution grow,
as the English did, as oaks do, we had never passed
throngh such scenes as the present. The only thing that
divides us now, is the artificial attempt, in 1787, to force
us into an unripe union. Some lawyers got together and
wrote out a constitution. The people and great interests of
the land, wealth, thought, fashion, and creed, immediately
Jaid it upon the shelf, and proceeded to grow one for them~
selyes. The treaty power sufficed to annex a continent,
and change the whole nature of the government. The
war power builds railroads to the Pacific. Right to regu-
Tate commerce builds observatories and dredges out lakes.
Right to tax protects manufactures ; and had we wanted a
king, some ingenious Yankee would have found the right
to have one clearly stated in the provision for a well-regu-
lated militia, [Laughter.] All that is valuable in the
United States Constitution is a thousand years old. What
is good is not new, and what is new is not good. That
vaunted statesmanship which concocts constitutions never
las amounted to anything. The English Constitution,
always found equal to any crisis, is an old mansion, often
repaired, with quaint additions, and seven gables, each of
different pattern. Our Constitution is a new clapboard
house, so square and sharp it almost cuts you to look at
it, staring with white paint and green blinds, as if dropped
in the Iandscape, or come out to spend an afternoon.

[LLanghter.]

876 PROGRESS.

The trouble now is, that, in regard to the most turbu-
Tent question of the age, our politicians and a knot of
privileged slaveholders are trying to keep the people in
side of this parchment band. Like Lyeungus, they would
mould the people to fit the Constitution, instead of entting
the Constitution to fit the people. Goethe said, “If you
plant an oak in a flower-vase, one of two things will hap-
pen,—the oak will die, or the vase break.” Our acorn
swelled; the tiny leaves showed themselves under the
calm eye of Washington, and he laid down in hope. By
and by the roots enlarged, and men trembled. Of late,
Webster and Clay, Everett and Botts, Seward and Adams,
have been anxiously clasping the vase, but the roots have
burst abroad at last, and the porcelain is in pieces. [Sen
sation.] All ye who love oaks, thank God for so much!
That Union of 1787 was one of fear; we were driven into
it by poverty and the commercial hostility of England.
‘As cold masses up all things, —sticks, earth, stones, and
water into dirty ice,—heat first makes separation, and
then unites those of the same nature. The heat of sixty
years’ agitation has severed the heterogeneous mass; wait
awhile, it will fuse together all that is really one.

Let me show you why I think the present so bright,
and why I believe that disunion is gain, peace, and honer.

Why is the present hour sunshine? Because, for the
first time in our history, we have a North. That event
which Mr. Webster anticipated and prophesied has come
to pass. In a real, true sense, we have a North. By
which I do not mean that the North rules; though, politi
cally speaking, the crowned and sceptred North does
indeed, take her scat in that council where she has thus
far been only a tool. But I mean that freemen, honest
labor, makes itself heard in our State. The North ceases
to be fox o spaniel, and puts on the lion. She asserts anil
claims. She no longer begs, cheats, or buys.

PROGRESS. sit

Understand me, In 1787, slave property. worth, per-
haps, two hundred million of dollars, strengthened by the
sympathy of all other capital, was a mighty power. It
was the Rothschild of the state. The Constitution, by its
three-fifths slave basis, made slaveholders an order of nobles.
Tt was the house of Hapsburg joining hands with the
house of Rothschild. Prejudice of race was the third
strand of the cable, bitter and potent as Catholic ever bore
Huguenot, or Hungary ever spit on Moslem. This fear-
ful trinity won to its side that mysterious omnipotence
called Faskion,—a power which, without concerted ac-
tion, without either thought, law, or religion on its side,
seems stronger than all of them, and fears no foe but
wealth, Such was slavery. In its presence the North
always knelt and whispered. When slavery could not
bully, it bubbled its victim. In the convention that
framed the Constitution, Massachusetts men said, as
Charles Francis Adams says now, “ What matters a piti-
fal three-fifths slave basis, and guaranty against insurrec-
tion, to an institution on its death-bed, — gasping for its
last breath? It may conciliate,—is only a shadow,—
nothing more,—why stand on words? So they shut
their eyes, as he does, on realities, and chopped excellent
logic on forms.

But at that moment, the Devil hovered over Charles-
ton, with a handful of cotton-seed. [Applause.] Dropped
into sea-island soil, and touched by the magic of Massa-
chusetts brains, it poisoned the atmosphere of thirty
States. That cotton fibre was a rod of empire such as
Cwsar never wielded. It fattened into obedience pulpit
and rostrum, court, market-place, and college, and leashed
New York and Chicago to its chair of state. Beware,
Mr. Adams, “he needs along spoon who sups with the
Deyil.” In the kaleidoscope of the future, no statesman
eye can foresee the forms, God gives manhood but one

—

378 PROGRESS.

clew to suecess, —utter and exact justice: that he guaran

-tees shall be always expediency. Deviate one hair's
breadth, —grant but a dozen slaves,—only the tiniest
seed of concession, —you know not how “many and tall
branches of mischief shall grow therefrom.” That hand-
ful of cotton-seed has perpetuated a system which, as
Emerson says, “impoverishes the soil, depopulates the
country, demoralizes the master, curses the vietim, en-
vages the bystander, poisons the atmosphere, and hinders
civilization.”

I need not go over the subsequent compromises in le-
tail, They are always of the same kind: mere words,
Northern men assured us, — barren concessions.“ Phys
ical geography and Asiatic scenery” hindered any harm.
But the South was always specially anxious to have these
barren “words,” and marvellously glad when she got
them, Northern politicians, in each case, were either
bullied or cheated, or feigned to be bullied, as they are
about to do now, And the people were glad to have it so.
I do not know that the politicians are a whit better now
than then. I should not be willing to assert that Seward
and Adams are any more honest than Webster and Win-
throp, and certainly they have just as much spaniel in
their make.

“But the gain to-day is, we have a people. Under their
vigilant eyes, mindful of their sturdy purpose, sustained
by their determination, many of our politicians act much
better. And out of this popular heart is growing a Con-
stitution which will wholly supersede that of 1787.

A few years ago, while Pierce was President, the Re-
publican party dared to refuse the appropriations for sup-
port of government, — the most daring act ever ventured
in a land that holds Bunker Hill and Brandywine. They
dared to persevere some twenty or thirty days. Tt seems
a trifle; but it is « very significant straw. Then for week’

PROGRESS. 879

when Banks was elected, and a-year ago, again, the whole
government was checked till the Republicans put their
Speaker in the chair. Now the North elects her Presi-
dent, the South secedes. I suppose we shall be bargained
away into compromise. I know the strength and virtue
of the farming West. It is one of the bright spots that
our seeptre tends there, rather than to the seaboard.
Four’ or eight years hence, when this earthquake will
repeat itself, the West may be omnipotent, and we shall
see brave things. It is not the opinion of the absolute
majority which rules, but that amount of public opinion
which can be brought to bear on a particular point at a
given time. Therefore the compact, energetic, organized
Seaboard, with the press in its hand, rules, spite of the
wide-spread, inert, unorganized West. While the agri-
cultural frigate is getting its broadside ready, the commer-
cial clipper has half finished its slave voyage.

In spite of Lincoln's wishes, therefore, I fear he will
never be able to stand against Seward, Adams, half the
Republican wire-pullers, and the Seaboard. But even
now, if Seward and the rest had stood firm, as Lineoln,
Samner, Chase, Wade, and Lovejoy, and the Tribune
have hitherto done, I believe you might have polled the.
North, and had a response, three to one: ** Let the Union
go to pieces, rather than yield one inch.” I know no
sublimer hour in history. The sight.of these two months
is compensation for a life of toil. Never let Europe taunt
us again that our blood is wholly cankered by gold. Our
people stood, willing their idolized government should go
to pieces for an idea. True, other nations have done so.
England in 1640,—France in 1791,—our colonies in
1975. Those were proud moments. But to-day touches
anobler height. Their idea was their own freedom. To-
day, the idea, loyal to which our people willingly see their
Thion wrecked, is largely the hope of justice to a depen-

he:

380 PROGRESS.

dent, helpless, hated race? Revolutions never go back
ward. The live force of a human pulse-beat can rive tho
dead lumber of government to pieces. Chain the Hellee
pont, Mr. Xerxes-Seward, before you dream of balking
the Northern heart of its purpose, —freedom to the slave!
The old sea never langhed at Persian chains more haugh-
tily than we do at Congress promises.

I reverently thank God that he has given me to see
such a day as this. Remember the measureless love of
the North for the Union, —its undoubting faith that dis
union is ruin, —and then value as you ought this last three
months. If Wilberforce could say on his death-bed, after
fifty years’ toil, * Thank God, I have lived to see the day
that England is willing to give twenty million sterling for
the abolition of slavery,” what onght our gratitnde to be
for such a sight as this? ‘Twenty millions of people will
ing, would only their leaders permit, to barter their gov
ment for the hope of justice to the negro! And this
result has come in defiance of the pulpit, spite of the half
omnipotence of commerce, with all the so-called leaders of
public opinion against us, — literature, fashion, prejudice
of race, and present interest. It is the uprising of com-
mon sense, the protest of common conscience, the un-
taught, instinctive loyalty of the people to justice and
right. :

Bat you will tell*me of dark clouds, mobs in every
Northern city. Grant it, and more. When Lovejoy was
shot at Alton, Illinois, while defending his press, and his
friends were refused the use of Faneuil Hall, William
Ellery Channing, William Sturgis, and George Bond, the
saints and merchants of Boston, rallied to the defence of free
speech. Now we hold meetings only when and how the
Mayor permits [hisses and great applause], yet no mer
chant prince, no pulpit hero, rallies to our side. But raise
your eyes from the disgraced pavements of Boston, and

PROGRESS. 881

Took out broader. That same soil which drank the blood
of Lovejoy now sends his brother to lead Congress in its
fiercest hour; that same prairie lifts his soul’s son to erush
the Union as he steps into the Presidential chair. Sleep
in peace, martyr of Alton, good has come out of Nazareth!
‘The shot which turned back our Star of the West from the
waters of Charleston, and tolled the knell of the Union, was
the rebound of the bullet that pierced your heart,

When Lovejoy died, men used to ask, tauntingly, what
good has the antislavery cause done? what changes has it
wrought? As well stand over the cradle, and ask what
use isa baby? He will be a man some time, —the anti-
slavery ‘eanse is now twenty-one years old.

This hour is bright from another cause. Since 1800,
our government has been only a tool of the Slave Power.
The stronghold of antislavery has been the sentiment of
the people. We have always prophesied that our govern
ment would be found too weak to bear so radical an agita-
tion as this of slavery, It has proved so; the government
isa wreck, But the people have shown themselves able
to deal with it,—able to shake this sin from their lap as
easily as the lion does dew-drops from his mane.

Mark another thing. No Northern man will allow you
to charge him with a willingness to extend slavery. No
matter what his plan, he is anxious to show you it is not a
compromise ! and will not extend slavery one inch! Mr.
Dana is eloquent on this point, Mr. Adams positive, Mr.
Seward cunning, Thurlow Weed indignant. [Laughter.]
Virtue is not wholly discrowned, while hypocrisy is the
Homage laid at her feet. With such progress, why should
we compromise ?

Everybody allows—North and South—that any com-
Promise will only be temporary relief. The South knows
it isa lie, meant to tide over a shallow spot. The North

it, too. The startled North, in fact, now s:

882 PROGRESS,

“Yes, I'll continue to serve you till my bair be grown,
then I’ll bring down the very temple itself." That is
what a compromise really means. The progress is seen in
this. The South always has said: “Yes, give me so much;
I will not keep my part of the bargain, but hold you to
yours, and get more the moment I ean.” Hitherto, the
North has said yes, and her courage consisted in skulking.
Seward would swear to support the Constitution, but not
keep the oath, I use his name to illustrate my idea, But
it is always with the extremest reluctance I bring myself
to see a spot on the fame of that man, who, at his own
cost, by severe toil, braving fierce odium, saved our civili-
zation from the murder of the idiot Freeman.

But you may also ask, if compromise be even a tempo-
rary relief, why not make it?

1st. Because it is wrong.

2d, Because it is suicidal, Secession, appeased by com-
promise, is only emboldened to secede again to-morrow,
and thus get larger concessions. The cowardice that yields
to threats invites them.

3d. Because it delays emancipation, ‘To-day, England,
horror-struck that her five million operatives who live on
cotton should depend on States rushing into anarchy, is
ransacking the world for a supply. Leaye her to toil ander

that lash, and in five years, South Carolina will be starved
into virtue, One thousand slaves are born each day.
Hurry emancipation three years, and you raise a mil

human beings into freeborn men,

4th. Compromise demoralizes both parties. Mark! the
North, notwithstanding all its progress, does not now quit
the South, In the great religious bodies and the state, it
is the sinners who kick the virtuous out of the covenant
with death! Mr. Dana, in his recent speech, does not
secede because unwilling to commit the three constitir
tional sins, The South secedes from him because he will
not commit one more.

PROGRESS. 383

5th. Compromise risks insurrection, the worst door at
which freedom can enter. Let universal suffrage have
free sway, and the ballot supersedes the bullet. But Jet
an arrogant and besotted minority curb the mujority by
tricks Tike these, and when you have compromised away
Lincoln, you revive John Brown. On this point of insur-
rection, let me say a word,

Strictly speaking, I repudiate the term * insurrection.”*
‘The slaves are not a herd of vassals. They are a nation,
four millions strong; having the same right of revolution
that Hungary and Florence have. 1 acknowledge the
right of two million and a half of white people in the seven
seceding States to organize their government as they
choose. Just as freely I acknowledge the right of four
million of black people to organize their government, and
to vindicate that right by arms.

Men talk of the peace of the South under our present
government. Itisno real peace. With the whites, it is
only that bastard peace which the lazy Roman loved, —ué
4¢ apricaret, —that he might sun himself, It is only safe
idleness, sure breeder of mischief. With the slave, it is
only war in disguise. Under that mask is hid a war
keener in its pains, and deadlier in its effects, than any
open fight. As the Latin adage runs,— mars gravior aub
pace latet, —war bitterer for its disguise.

Thirty years devoted to earnest use of moral means
show how sincere our wish that this question should have
& peaceful solution. If your idols —your Websters,
Clays, Calhouns, Sewards, Adamses— had done their
duty, so it would have been. Not ours the guilt of this
storm, or of the future, however bloody, But I hesitate
Rot to say, that I prefer an insurrection which frees the
slave in ten years to slavery for a century. A slave I
pity. A rebellious slave I respect. I say now, as I said
ten years ago, I do not shrink from the toast with which

384 PROGRESS.

Dr. Johnson flavored his Oxford Port, * Success to the
first insurrection of the blacks in Jamaica!’ I do not
shrink from the sentiment of Southey, in a letter to
Dupp: “There are scenes'of tremendous horror which I
could smile at by Mercy’s side, An insurrection which
should make the negroes masters of the West Indies is
one.” I believe both these sentiments are dictated by
the highest humanity. I know what anarchy is, I know
what civil war is, I can imagine the scenes of blood
through which a rebellious slave population must march to
their rights. They are dreadful. And yet, I do not
know, that, to an enlightened mind, a scene of civil war
is any more sickening than the thought of a hundred and
fifty years of slavery, Take the broken hearts; the be-
reaved mothers; the infant, wrung from the hands of its
parents; the husband and wife torn asunder; every right
trodden under foot; the blighted hopes, the imbrnted
souls, the darkened and degraded millions, sunk below the
level of intellectual life, melted in sensuality, herded with
beasts, who have walked over the burning marl of Soath-
em slavery to their graves; and where is the battle-field,
however ghastly, that is not white, —white as an angel's
wing,—compared with the blackness of that darkness
which has brooded over the Carolinas for two hundred
years? Do you love merey? Weigh out the fifty thou-
sand hearts that have beaten their last pulse amid agonies
of thought and suffering fancy faints to think of; and the
fifty thousand mothers, who, with sickening senses, watel
for footsteps which are not wont to tarry long in their com
ing, and soon find themselves left to tread the pathway of
life alone ; add all the horrors of cities sacked and lands
laid waste,—that is war; weigh it now against some
trembling young girl sent to the auction-block, some mam,
like that taken from our court-house and carried back into
Georgia; multiply this individual agony into four mil-

PROGRESS. 585

lions ; multiply that into centuries; and that into all the
relations of father and child, husband and wife; heap on
wl the deep, moral degradation, both of the oppressor and.
the oppressed, and tell me if Waterloo or Thermopyle
can claim one tear from the eye even of the tenderest
spirit of mercy, compared with this daily system of hell
amid the sost civilized and Christian people on the face
of the earth! *

No, Iconfess I am not a non-resistant. The reason
why T have advised the slave to he guided hy a poliey of
peace is because he has had, hitherto, no chance. If he
had one, if he had as good a chance as those who went up
to Lexington years ago, I should call him the basest rec~
reant that ever deserted wife and child, if he did not
vindieate his liberty by his own right hand.

Mr. Richard H. Dana, Jr., says, in such a contest his
sympathies would be with his own race.f Mine would be

® Sines T nid this, ten years ago, T find that Macaulay makes the same
‘comparison between a short civil war and long despotism, — putting into
Milton's month rhe following: «For civil war, that it is an evil T dispute
not. But that it is the grontest of evils, that I stontly deny. It doth indeed
appear to the misjndging to be a worse calamity than bad goverament, be-
‘eqase its miseries are collected together within a short space and time, and
‘may easily, at one view, be taken in and perceived. But the misfortunes of
‘nations ruled by tyrants, being disibuted over many centuries and many
places, a@ they are of greater woight and number, so they aro of less dis-
play,”

4 The following is the pamgraph in Mr. Dana's address referred to by
Mr, Phillips :—

* An appeal to arms is a war of the races. They meet on the equality of
the battlefield, and the victory goes to the strongest ; and I confess thar,
When I consider what the white race is, and what the black race is, what
tivilieation is, and what the white race is und always has heen, and what the
Wack race is and always has been, —and this doctrine of the races has im-
premed ftself' on my mind much more than before, from what I have seen of
nll moos during the Inst year and a half, —1 confess that, in a contest like
that, my duty and my sympathies would go with my own race. I know it
i's contest for freedom, tut it is a contest for lif and for freedom on both

386 PROGRESS,

with the right. “The Almighty has no attribute which
can take sides with us in such a contest,” says Jefferson,
speaking of a struggle in which the black race ‘*is to go
up,” and his own, the white race, is “to go down.” Let
me advise Mr. Dana to learn Christianity of this infidel,
and Justice of this slaveholder. I feel bound to add my
doubt whether a slave insurrection would be a bloody one.
In all revolutions, except the French, the people have
always shown themselves merciful. Witness Switzerland,
St. Domingo, Hungary, Italy. Tyranny sours more than
suffering. The Conservative hates the Abolitionist more
than we do him. The South hates the North, The
master speaks ten bitter words of the slave, where the
slave speaks five of the master. Refuse, then, all compro
mise,—send the Slave States out to face the danger of
which they are fully aware,—announce frankly that we
welcome the black race to liberty, won in battle, as cor-
dially as we have done Kossuth and Garibaldi, and proba-
bly there will never be an insurrection. Prudent and
masterly statesmanship will avert it by just concession.
Thus Disunion is Peace, as well as Liberty and Justice,
But I was speaking of compromise. Compromise de-
grades us, and puts back freedom in Europe. If the
North manfully accepts the Potomac for her barrier,
avows her gladness to get rid of tyrants, her willingness
and her ability to stand alone, she can borrow as much
money in Enrope as before, and will be more respected.
Free institutions are then proved breeders of men. Tf,
instead of this, the North belittles herself by confessing
her fears, her weakness, her preference for peace at any

sides, because slavery is to end when war bezins. One race is to go up, and
‘one to go down. It is m question of extermination, or banishment, or sulje
gation, orall three. And I have not arrived at that degree of philanthrops,
that desire ro see the black mee controlling all that vast country, and ou
‘own white civilized mice driven out, subjugated, or exterminated.”

PROGRESS, 387

price, what capitalist will trust a rope of sand, —a people
which the conspiracy of Buchanan’s Cabinet could not
disgust, nor the guns of Carolina arouse ?

Will compromise eliminate all our Puritan blood, —
make the census add up against us, and in favor of the
South, —write a new Bible, —blot John Brown from his-
tory, — make Connecticut suck its idle thumbs like a baby,
and South Carolina invent and save like a Yankee? If it
will, it will succeed. If it will not, Carolina don’t want
it, any more than Jerrold’s duck wants you to hold an
umbrella over him in a hard shower. Carolina wants sep-
aration, —wants, like the jealous son, her portion, and
must waste it in riotous madness before she return a re-
pentant prodigal.

Why do T think disunion gain, peace, and virtue?

The Union, even if it be advantageous to all the States,
is surely indispensable only to the South.

Let us rise to the height of our position. This is revo-
lation, not rebellion.

Suppose we welcome disunion, manfully avow our real
sentiment, “liberty and equality,” and draw the line at
the Potomac. We do not want the Border States. Let
them go, be welcome to the forts, take the Capital with
them. [Applause and hisses.] What to us is a hot-house
city, empty streets, and useless marble? Where Mac-
gregor sits is the head of the table. Active brains, free
Tips, and cunning hands make empires. Paper capitals
are vain. Of course, we must assume a right to buy out
Maryland and Delaware. Then, by running our line at
the Potomac, we close the irrepressible conflict, and have
homogeneous institutions. Then we part friends. The
Union thus ended, the South no longer hates the North.
Cuba she cannot have, France, England, and ourselves
forbid. If she spread over Central America, that will
‘bring no cause of war to a Northern confederacy. We

388 PROGRESS.

are no filibusters, Her nearness to us there cannot harm
us. Let Kansas witness that while Union fettered her,
and our national banner clang to the flagstaff’ heavy
with blood, we still made good George Canning’s boust,
“ Where that banner is planted, foreign dominion shall not
come.” With a government heartily on his side, and that
flag floating in the blessings of twenty million of freemen,
the loneliest settler in the shadow of the Rocky Moun-
tains will sleep fearless,

Why, then, should there not be peace between two
such confederacies ? There must be. Let me show you
why :—

Ist. The laws of trade will bind us together, as they
now do all other lands, This side of the ocean, at least,
we are not living in feudal times, when princes make war
for ambition. We live in days when men of common
sense go about their daily business, while frightened kings
are flying along the highways. Leave neighborhood and
trade alone to work their usual results, and we shall be at
peace. Observe, only Northerners are lynched at the
South now. Spaniards, Prench, Scotch are safe. When
English Captain Vaughan is tarred and feathered, the
Mayor offers a reward, and the grand jury indict, After
a fair, sensible disunion, such as I have deseribed, a Bos
ton man will be as well off as Captain Vaughan. Fair
treaties are better security than sham constitutions.

At any rate, disunion could not make the two sections
any more at war than they are now. Any change in thi
respect would be an improvement, If the North anid
Mexico had touchéd boundaries, would they ever have
quarrelled? Nothing but Southern filibusterism, which
can never point North, ever embroiled us with Mexiom
To us in future the South will be another Mexico; #®
shall not wish to attack her; she will be too weak, 10?

intent on her own broils, to attack us.

4 &

PROGRESS, 389

‘Even if the Border States do not secede, let us, for the
slaye’s sake, welcome the schism between them and the
| Gulf States, which that very difference of conduct will be
sure to cause. A house divided against itself cannot
stand. Only twenty-three out of every hundred inhab-
itants are slaves in the Border States, — twenty-three
slayes to seventy-seven freemen. A worn-out soil, fear of
Toss by fugitives, dread of danger to a hated institution,
thus weak in proportion to Northern enemies, will urge
slaveholders to push their slaves southward. Another
census may find the Border States with only ten or fifteen
slayes out of one hundred inhabitants, —ten slaves to
ninety freemen. Reduced to such compass, slavery is
manageable ; we shall soon see plans of emancipation,
compensation, and freedom. On the contrary, the Gulf
States now have forty-six slaves in every hundred inhabi-
tants, — forty-six slaves to fifty-four freemen. Strength-
ened by this tendency of the slave population southward,
| and the opening of the save-trade, we may soon see the
| black race a majority, and either as a nation of mixed
races, or as black republics, the Gulf States will gravitate
back to us free.

‘The South cannot make war on any one. Suppose the
| fifteen States hang together a year, —which is almost an
| impossibility, —

Ast. They have given bonds in two thousand millions of

dollars — the value of their slaves — to keep the peace.
| 2d. They will have enough to do to attend to the irre-

pressible conflict at home. Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri,
‘will be their Massachusetts; Winter Davis, Blair, and
Cassius Clay, their Seward and Garrison.

$d° The Gulf States will monopolize all the offices. A
man must have Gulf principles to belong to a healthy
party. Under such a lead, disfranchised Virginia, in op-
Position, will not have much heart to attack Pennsylvania,

390 PROGRESS.

4th. The census shows that the Border States are push-
ing their slaves South. Fear of their free Northern neigh-
bors will quicken the process, and so widen the breach
between Gulf and Border States by making one constantly
more and the other less Slave States. Free trade in sugar
bankrupts Louisiana, Free trade in men bankrupts Vir-
ginia. Free trade generally lets two thirds of the direct
taxation rest on the numerous, richer, and more comfort-
able whites of the Border States; hence further conflict.
Such a despotism, with every third man black and a foe,
will make no wars.

Why should it attack us? We are not a cannon thun-
dering at its gates. We are not an avalanche overhang-
ing its sunny vales. Our influence, that of freedom, is
only the air, penetrating everywhere ; like heat, permeat-
ing all space. The South cannot stand isolated on a glass
cricket. The sun will heat her, and electricity conyulse,
She must outwit them before she can get rid of ideas. A
fevered child in July might as well strike at the sun, as
the South attack us for that, the only annoyance we cat
give her, — the sight and influence of our nobler eiviliza-
tion.

Disunion is gain. I venture the assertion, in the fice
of State Street, that of any fiye Northern men engaged
in Southern trade, exclusively, four will end in bankrupt
ey. If disunion sifts such commerce, the North will lose
nothing.

I venture the assertion, that seven at least of the Soutl-
em States receive from the government more than they
contribute to it. So far, their place will be more profitable
than their company,

The whole matter of the Southern trade has been grossly
exaggerated, as well as the importance of the Mississippi
River. Freedom makes her own rivers of iron. Facts
show that for one dollar the West sends or brings by the

PROGRESS. Bie

river, she sends and brings four to and from the East by
wagon and rail.

Tf, then, Mississippi and Louisiana bar the river with
forts, they will graciously be allowed to pay for them,
while Northern railroads grow rich carrying behind steam
that portion of wheat, bacon, silk, or tea, which would
otherwise float lazily np and down that yellow stream,

‘The Cincinnati Press, which has treated the subject with
rare ability, asserts that, excepting. provisions which the
South must, in any event, buy of the West, the trade of
Cincinnati with Southern Indiana alone is thrice her trade
with the whole South. As our benevolent societies get
about one dollar in seven south of Mason and Dixon's
line, so onr traders sell there only abont one dollar in five.
Such trade, if ent off, would rnin nobody. In fact, the
South buys little of us, and pays only for about half she
buys. [Laughter and hisses.]

Now we build Southern roads, pay Southern patrol,
carry Southern letters, support, ont of the nation’s treas~
ures, an army of Southern office-holders, waste more
money at Norfolk in building ships which will not float, than
4s spent in protecting the five Great Lakes, which bear up
millions of commerce. These vast pensions come back to
us in shape of Southern traders, paying on the average
one half their debts. Dissolve the Union, and we shall
save this outgo, and probably not sell without a prospect
of being paid. While the laws of trade guarantee that
even if there be two nations, we shall have their carrying-
trade and manufacture for them just so long as we carry
and manufacture cheaper than other men.

Southern trade is a lottery, to which the Union gives all
the prizes. Put it on a sound basis by disunion, and the
North gains. If we part without anger, the South buys,
4s every one does, of the cheapest seller, We get her
honest business, without being called to fill up the gap of

302 PROGRESS.

bankruptcy which the wasteful system of slave-labor must
occasion. In this generation, no Slave State in the Union
has made the year’s ends mest. In counting the wealth
of the Union, such States are a minus quantity, Should
the Gulf States, however, return, I have no doubt the
United States treasury will be called on to pay all these
secession debts,

Disunion is honor. I will not point to the equivoeating
hypocrisy of all our Northern leaders, I will not count
up all the bankrupt statesmen, —blighted names, —skele-
tons marking the sad path of the caravan over our desert
of seventy years, —they are too familiar. As years roll
on, history metes out justice. But take the last instance,
—take Mr. Richard H. Dana, Jr, as example, a name
historic for generations, a scholar of world-wide fame.
He finds in the Constitution the duty of returning fugitive
slaves, all alike, “the old and the ignorant, the young and
the beautiful,” to be surrendered to the master, whether
he be man or brute. Mr. Dana avows his full readiness
to perform this legal duty. All honor at least to the
shameless effrontery with which he avows his willingness:
Most of our public men, like the English Tories of 1689,
are “ashamed to name what they are not ashamed to do,”
He paints the hell of slavery in words that make the blood
cold, ant then boasts, this Massachusetts scholar, —gen-
tleman, his friends would call him, —boasts that no man
can charge him with having ever said one word against
the surrender of fugitive slaves! Counsel in all the Bos
ton slave-eases, he “never suffered himself to utter oné
word which any poor fugitive negro, or any friend of is,
could construe into an assertion that a fugitive slave should
not be restored”!

He unblushingly claims merit for himself and Mass-
chusetts, —I doubt if, in the scornful South, he will have
“his claim allowed,’ —that he and Massachusetts have

PROGRESS. 393

constantly exeeuted laws which “ offended their sense of
honor, and ran counter to their moral sentiments,” which
he considers a “painful duty.” To be sure, Mr. Dana
has discovered, in his wide travels and extensive voyages, a
“peculiar” class of people, narrow-minded, very little read
in Greek, who think, poor simpletons, that this slave-hunt-
ing isasin, But then, Aristotle did not look at things in
this light. He took broader views, and proves conclusively
that three virtues and one sin exactly make a saint, and
‘Mr. Dana is too good a churchman to dispute with Aris-
totle. He sees no reason why, notwithstanding this clause,
as to forcing our fellow-men back into hell, “a conscien-
tious man”’ should not swear to obey the Constitution, and
actually obey it. Now Mr. Seward and Mr. Joel Parker,
who both believe in the fugitive-slave clause, and willingly
meear to enforce it, have each given public notice they will
not enforce it. Mr. Dana will swear, and perform too.
‘They will swear, but not perform. ‘Their guilt is perjury ;
his is man-stealing. On the whole, I should rather be
Seward than Dana; for perjury is the more gentlemanly
vice, to my thinking. Perjury only filches your neigh-
bor’s rights, Man-stealing takes rights and neighbor too.

After all this, Mr. Dana objects to the Crittenden eom-
promise. Something short of that he can allow, because
he does not call these other offers, Adams's and such like,
“compromises”! It seems he objects more to the word
than the thing. But the Crittenden proposal he is set
against, for a reason which may strike you singular in a
man willing to return slaves; but then we are bundles of
inconsistencies, all of us. But this slave-hunter cannot
abide Crittenden, because, listen! because he thinks “an
investment in dishonor is a bad investment! An invest-
ment in infidelity to the principles of liberty is a bad in-
vestment!"’ Hunt slaves? Yes, it is a duty, Give some
territory to slavery, and peril the Republican party ?

PROGRESS, 395

Mr. Dana is a man above the temptations of politics,
‘The President of the Faneuil Hall meeting has no politi-
cal aspirations, an independent merchant. Such speeches
show how wide the gangrene of the Union spreads. Mr.
Dana's speech was made, he says, in the shadow of Bun-
ker's Hill, in sight of the spot where Washington first
drew his sword. The other speech was borne to the roof
of Faneuil Hall by the plaudits of a thousand merchants,
Snrely, such were not the messages Cambridge and our
old Hill used to exchange! Can you not hear Warren
and Otis crying to their recreant representatives: “* Sons,
scorn to be slaves! Believe, for our sakes, we did not
fight for such a government, ‘Trample it underfoot. You
cannot be poorer than we were. It cannot cost you more
than our seven years of war. Do it, if only to show that
we have not lived in vain”?

UNDER THE FLAG*

«Therefore thus saith the Lond: Ye have not hearkened wnto me in pro-
claiming liberty every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbor :
behold, T proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pes
tilence, and to the famine.” —Jan. xxxiv. 17.

ANY times this winter, here and elsewhere, I have

counselled peace, — urged, as well as I knew how,
the expediency of acknowledging a Southern Confederacy,
and the peaceful separation of these thirty-four States
One of the journals announces to you that I come here
this morning to retract those opinions. No, not one of
them! [Applause.] I need them all,—every word I
have spoken this winter, —every act of twenty-five years
of my life, to make the weleome I give this war
and hot, Civil war is a momentous evil. It needs the
soundest, most solemn justification. I rejoice before God
to-day for every word that I have spoken counselling peace ;
but I rejoice also with an especially profound gratitade,
that now, the first time in my antislavery life, I speak
under the stars and stripes, and welcome the tread of
Massachusetts men marshalled for war, [Enthusiastic
cheering.] No matter what the past has been or said;
to-day the slave asks God for a sight of this banner, and
counts it the pledge of his redemption, [Applause.]
Hitherto it may have meant what you thought, or what I

* A Disconrse delivered in the Music Hall, Boston, April 21, 1861, before
the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, the platform
with the Stars and Stripes.

UNDER THE FLAG. 397

did; to-day it represents sovereignty and justice. [Re-
newed applause.) The only mistake that I have made,
was in supposing Massachusetts wholly choked with cotton
dust and cankered with gold. [Loud cheering] The
South thought her patience and generous willingness for
peace were cowardice ; to-day shows the mistake. She
has been sleeping on her arms since *83, and the first
‘cannon-shot brings her to her feet with the war-cry of the
Reyolution on her lips. [Loud cheers.] Any man who
loves either liberty or manhood must rejoice at such an
hour. [Applause.]

Let me tell you the path by which I at least have trod
my way up to this conclusion. I do not acknowledge the
motto, in its full significance, “Our country, right or
wrong.” If you let it trespass on the domain of morals,
itis knavish. But there is a fall, broad sphere for loyal-
ty; and no war-cry ever stirred a generous people that
had not in it much of truth and right. It is sublime, this
rally of a great people to the defence of what they think
their national honor! A “noble and puissant nation
rousing herself like a strong man from sleep, and shaking
her invincible locks.” Just now, we saw her “ reposing,
peaceful and motionless ; but at the call of patriotism, she
ruffles, as it were, her swelling plumage, collects her seat-
tered elements of strength, and awakens her dormant
thunders.”

But how do we justify this last appeal to the God of
battles? Let me tell you how I do. I have always be-
lieved in the sincerity of Abraham Lincoln. You have
heard me express my confidence in it every time I have
spoken from this desk. I only doubted sometimes whether
lie were really the head of the government. To-day he
is at any rate Commander-in-chief.

The delay in the action of government has doubtless
been necessity, but policy also. Traitors within and with-

—_

$98 UNDER THE FLAG.

out made it hesitate to move till it had tried the machine
of government just given it. But delay was wise, as it
matured a public opinion definite, decisive, and ready to
keep step to the music of the government mareh. The
very postponement of another session of Congress till Jnly
4th plainly invites diseussion, — evidently contemplates
the ripening of public opinion in the interval. Fairly to
examine public affairs, and prepare a community wise to
co-operate with the government, is the duty of every
pulpit and every press,

Plain words, therefore, now, before the nation goes mad
with excitement, is every man’s duty. Every public
meeting in Athens was opened with a curse on any one
who should not: speak what he really thought. “I have
never defiled my conscience from fear or favor to my
superiors,” was part of the oath every Egyptian soul was
supposed to utter in the Judgment-Hall of Osiris, before
admission to heaven. Let us show to-day a Christian
spirit as sincere and fearless. No mobs in this hour of
vietory, to silence those whom events have not converted.
We are strong enough to tolerate dissent. That flag
which floats over press or mansion at the bidding of a
mob, disgraces both victor and victim.

All winter long, I have acted with that party which
cried for peace. The antislavery enterprise to which I
belong started with peace written on its banner, We
imagined that the age of bullets was over; that the age
of ideas had come; that thirty millions of people were
able to take a great question, and decide it by the confliet
of opinions; that, without letting the ship of state foun-
der, we could lift four millions of men into Liberty and
Justice. We thought that if your statesmen would throw
away personal ambition and party watchwords, and devote
themselves to the great issue, this might be accomplished.
To a certain extent it has been. The North has answered

UNDER THE FLAG, 899

to the call. Year after year, event by event, has indi-
cated the rising education of the people, —the readiness
for a higher moral life, the calm, self-poised confidence
in onr own convictions that patiently waits —like master
for a pupil —for a neighbor’s conversion. The North
has responded to the call of that peaceful, moral, intel-
lectual agitation which the antislavery idea has initiated.
Our mistake, if any, has been that we counted too much
on the intelligence of the masses, on the honesty and
wisdom of statesmen as a class. Perhaps we did not give
weight enough to the fact we saw, that this nation is made
up of different ages; not homogeneous, but a mixed mass
of different centuries, ‘The North thinks, —can appreci-
ate argument,—is the nineteenth century, —hardly any
struggle left in it but that between the working class and
the money-kings. The South dreams,—it is the thir-
teenth and fourteenth century,—baron and serf, —noble
and slave. Jack Cade and Wat Tyler loom over its
horizon, and the serf, rising, calls for another Thierry to
record his struggle. There the fagot still burns which the
Doctors of the Sorbonne called, ages ago, “the best light
to guide the erring.” There men are tortured for opin-
ions, the only punishment the Jesuits were willing their
pupils should look on. This is, perhaps, too flattering a

of the South. Better call her, as Sumner does,
“the Barbarous States.” Our struggle, therefore, is be-
tween barbarism and civilization. Such can only be set-
tled by arms. [Prolonged checring.] The government
has waited until its best friends almost suspected its
courage or its integrity; but the cannon shot against Fort
Sumter has opened the only door out of this hour. ‘There
were but two. One was compromise; the other was
Vattle, The integrity of the North closed the first; the
generous forbearance of nineteen States closed the other.
The South opened this with cannon-shot, and Lincoln

400 UNDER THE FLAG.

shows himself at the door. [Prolonged and enthusiastic
cheering.] ‘The war, then, is not aggressive, but in self
defence, and Washington has become the Thermopylae of
Liberty and Justice. [Applanse.] Rather than surren-
der that Capital, cover every square foot of it with a living
body [loud cheers]; crowd it with a million of men, and
empty every bank vault at the North to pay the cost,
[Renewed cheering.] Teach the world once for all, that
North America belongs to the Stars and Stripes, and
under them no man shall wear a chain. [Enthusiastic
cheering.] In the whole of this conflict, I have looked
only at Liberty, —only at the slave. Perry entered the
battle of the Lakes with “Don’r orve vr THe sui!”
floating from the masthead of the Lawrence. When
with his fighting flag he left her crippled, heading north,
and, mounting the deck of the Niagara, turned her bows
due west, he did all for one and the same purpose, —to
rake the decks of the foe. Steer north or west, acknowl
edge secession or cannonade it, I care not which; but
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the
inhabitants thereof.” [Lond cheers.] ,,

I said, civil war needs momentous and solemn justit
tion. Enrope, the world, may claim of us, tnat, before we
blot the nineteenth century by an appeal to arms, we
shall exhaust every concession, try every means to keep
the peace; otherwise, an appeal to the God of battles is
an insult to the civilization of our age; it is a confession
that our culture and our religion are superficial, if nota
failure. I think that the history of the nation and of the
government both is an ample justification to our own
times and to history for this appeal to arms, TI think the
South is all wrong, and the administration is all right.
[Prolonged cheering.] Let me tell you why. For thiny
years the North has exhausted conciliation and compro
mise, They have tried every expedient, they have relin«

UNDER THE FLAG. 401

quished every right, they have sacrificed every interest,
they have smothered keen sensibility to national honor,
and Northern weight and supremacy in the Union; have
forgotten they were the majority in numbers and in
wealth, in education and strength; have left the helm of
government and the dictation of policy to the Southern
States. For all this, the conflict waxed closer and hotter,
The administration which preceded this was full of trai-
tors and thieves. It allowed the arms, ships, money,
military stores of the North to be stolen with impunity.
Mr. Lincoln took office, robbed of all the means to defend
the Constitutional rights of the government. He offered
to withdraw from the walls of Sumter everything but the
flag. He allowed secession to surround it with the strong-
est forts which military science could build. The North
offered to meet in convention her sister States, and ar-
range the terms of peaceful separation. Strength and right
yielded everything,—they folded their hands, waited
the retarning reason of the mad insurgents. Week after
week elapsed, month after month went by, waiting for the
sober second-thought of two millions and a half of people.
‘The world saw the sublime sight of nineteen millions of
wealthy, powerful, united citizens, allowing their flag to be
insulted, their rights assailed, their sovereignty defied and
broken in pieces, and yet waiting, with patient, brotherly,
magnanimons kindness, until insurrection, having spent its
fury, should reach out its hand for a peaceful arrangement.
Men began to call it cowardice, on the one hand ; and we,
who watched closely the crisis, feared that this effort to
be magnanimous would demoralize the conscience and the
courage of the North. We were afraid that, as the hour
went by, the virtue of the people, white-heat as it stood
on the fourth day of March, would be cooled by the temp-
tations, by the suspense, by the want and suffering which it
was feared would stalk from the Atlantic to the valley of
26

402 UNDER THE FLAG.

the Mississippi. We were afraid the government would
wait too long, and find at last, that, instead of a united
people, they were deserted, and left alone to meet the foe.

All this time, the South knew, recognized, by her own
knowledge of Constitutional questions, that the govern-
ment could not advance one inch towards acknowledging
secession ; that when Abraham Lincoln swore to support
the Constitution and laws of the United States, he was
bound to die under the flag on Fort Sumter, if necessary.
[Loud applause.] ‘They knew, therefore, that the eall on
the administration to acknowledge the Commissioners of
the Confederacy was a delusion and a swindle. I know
the whole argument for secession. Up to a certain ex-
tent, I accede to it. But no administration that is not
traitor can acknowledge secession until we are hopelessly
beaten in fair fight. [Cheers.] The right of a State to
secede, under the Constitution of the United States, —it is
an absurdity; and Abraham Lincoln knows nothing, has «
right to know nothing, but the Constitution of the United
States, [Lond cheers.] The right of a State to secede,
as a revolutionary right, is undeniable ; but it is the nation
which is to recognize that; and the nation offered, at the
suggestion of Kentucky, to meet the question in fall con-
vention. The offer was declined. The government and
the nation, therefore, are all right. [Applause.] They
are right on constitutional law; they are right on the
principles of the Declaration of Independence, [Cheers]

Let me explain this more fully, for this reason; becaust
—and I thank God for it, every American should be
prond of it—yon cannot maintain a war in the United
States of America against a constitutional or a revolution-
ary right. The people of these States have too large brains
and too many ideas to fight blindly, —to lock horns like @
couple of beasts in the sight of the world. [Applanse.]
Cannon think in this nineteenth century; and you must

UNDER THE FLAG. 408

put the North in the right, —wholly, undeniably, in-
side of the Constitution and out of it,—before you ean
justify her in the face of the world ; before you can pour
Massachusetts like an avalanche through the streets of
Baltimore, [great cheering,] and carry Lexington on the
19th of April south of Mason and Dixon's line. [Re-
newed cheering.] Let us take an honest pride in the
fact that our Sixth Regiment made a, way for itself
through Baltimore, and were the first to reach the threat-
ened Capital. Tn this war Massachusetts has a right to be
the first in the field.

I said I knew the whole argument for secession. Very
briefly let me state the points. No government provides
for its own death; therefore there can be no constitutional
might to secede. But there is a revolutionary right. The
Declaration of Independence establishes, what the heart
of every American acknowledges, that the people —mark

THE PeorLe!—have always an inherent, paramount,
inalienable right to change their governments, whenever
they think—whenever they think—that it will minister
to their happiness, That is a revolutionary right. Now,
how did South Carolina and Massachusetts come into the
Union? They came into it by a convention representing
the people. South Carolina alleges that she has gone out
hy convention. So far, right. She says that when the
people take the State rightfully out of the Union, the right
to forts and national property goes with it. Granted. She
says, also, that it is no matter that we bought Louisiana of
France, and Florida of Spain. No bargain made, no money
paid, betwixt us and France or Spain, could rob Florida or
Louisiana of her right to remodel her government when-
ever the people found it would be for their happiness. So
far, right. Tae rroriz,—mark you! South Carolina
Presents herself to the administration at Washington, and
says, ‘There is a vote of my convention, that I go out of

404 UNDER THE FLAG.

the Union.” “TI cannot see you,” says Abraham Lincoln.
[Loud cheers.] “As President, I have no eyes but con-
stitutional eyes; I cannot see you.” [Renewed cheers]
He could only say, like Speaker Lenthal before Charles the
First, “I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak but
as the Constitution is pleased to direct me, whose servant I
am.” He was right. But Madison said, Hamilton said,
the Fathers said, in 1789, “No man but an enemy of lib-
erty will ever stand on technicalities and forms, when the
essence is in question.” Abraham Lincoln could not see
the Commissioners of South Carolina, but the North could;
the nation could; and the nation responded, “Tf you want
a Constitutional secession, such as you claim, but which I
repudiate, I will waive forms: let us meet in convention,
and we will arrange it.” [Applause.] Surely, while one
claims a right within the Constitution, he may, without
dishonor or inconsistency, meet in convention, even if
finally refusing to be bound by it. To decline doing so
is only evidence of intention to provoke war. Everything
under that instrument is peace. Everything under that
instrament may be changed by a national convention
The South says, “No!” She says, “If you don’t allow
me the Constitutional right, I elaim the revolutionary
right.” The North responds, “ When you have torn the
Constitution into fragments, T recognize the right of ‘rm
vrorte of South Carolina to model their government.
Yes, I recognize the right of the three hundred and
eighty-four thousand white men, and four hundred and
eighty-four thousand black men to model their Constita-
tion. Show me one that they have adopted, and I will
recognize the revolution. [Cheers.] But the moment
you tread ontside of the Constitution, the black man fs
not three fifths of a man,—he is a whole one’? [Loud
cheering.] Yes, the South has the right of revolution;
the South has a right to model her government; and the

UNDER THE FLAG. 405

moment she shows us four million of black votes thrown
even against it, and balanced by five million of other
votes, I will acknowledge the Declaration of Independence
is complied with [loud applause],— that the vrore
south of Mason and Dixon's line have remodelled their
government to suit themselves; and our function is
only to recognize it.

Further than this, we should have the right to remind
them, in the words of our Declaration of Independence,
that * governments. long established are not to be changed
for light and transient causes,” and that, so long as gov-
ernment fulfils the purposes for which it was made, — the
Tiberty and happiness of the people, —no one section has
the right capriciously to make changes which destroy joint
interests, advantages bought by common toil and sacrifice,
and which division necessarily destroys. Indeed, we should
have the right to remind them that no faction, in what has
been recognized as one nation, ean claim, by any law, the
right of revolution to set up or to preserve a system
which the common conscience of mankind stamps as wicked
and infamous. The law of nations is only another name
for the common sense and average conscience of mankind.
Tt does not allow itself, like a county court, to be hood-
winked by parchments or confused by technicalities. In
its vocabulary, the right of revolution means the right of
the people to protect themselves, not the privilege of ty-
rants to tread under foot good laws, and claim the world’s
sympathy in riveting weakened chains.

Tsay the North had a right to assume these positions.
She did not. She had a right to ignore revolution until
these conditions were complied with; but she did not.
She waived.it, In obedience to the advice of Madison, to
the long history of her country’s forbearance, to the mag-
nanimity of nineteen States, she waited; she advised the
Qovernment to wait. Mr, Lincoln, in his inaugural, indi-

406 UNDER THE FLAG.

eated that this would be the wise course. Mr. Seward
hinted it in his speech in New York. The London Times
bade us remember the useless war of 1776, and take warn-
ing against resisting the principles of popular sovereignty.
The Tribune, whose unflinching fidelity and matchless
ability make it in this fight “the white plume of Na-
varre,” has again and again avowed its readiness to waive
forms and go into convention, We have waited. We
said, “Anything for peace.” We obeyed the magnani-
tesmanship of John Quincy Adams. Let me
read you his advice, given at the “ Jubilee of the Consti-
tution,” to the New York Historical Society, in the year
1839, He says, recognizing this right of the people of a
State, — mark you, not a State: the Constitution in this
matter knows no States; the right of revolution knows no
States: it knows only THz Prorie. Mr, Adams says:—

“The propix of each State in the Union have a right
to secede from the confederated Union itself.

“ Thus stands the nicut. But the indissoluble link of
union between the people of the several States of this
confederated nation is, after all, not in the réght, but in
the jeart.

“Tf the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it!)
when the affections of the people of these States shall be
alienated from h other, when the fraternal spirit shall
give way to cold indifference, or collisions of interest sbull
fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not
long hold together parties no longer attracted by the mag-
netism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies 5 and
far better will it be for the people of the disunited States
ndship from each other, than to be held ti
straint. Then will be the time for reverting
to the precedents which oceurred at the formation ald
adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect
union, by dissolving that which could no longer bind; and

mous s

UNDER THE FLAG. 407

to leave the separated parts to be’ reunited by the law of
political gravitation to the centre.”

The North said “ Amen” to every word of it. They
waited. They begged the States to meet them. They
were silent when the cannon-shot pierced the flag of the
Star of the West. They said “ Amen" when the govern-
ment offered to let nothing but the bunting cover Fort
Sumter. They said “‘ Amen” when Lincoln stood alone,
without arms, in a defenceless Capital, and trusted him-
self to the loyalty and forbearance of thirty-four States.

The South, if the truth be told, cannot wait. Like all
usarpers, they dare not give time for the people to criticise
their power. War and tumult must conceal the irregular
ity of their civil course, and smother discontent and eriti-
cism at the same time. Besides, bankruptcy at home can
live out its short term of possible existence only by con-
quest on land and piracy at sea, And, further, only by
war, by appeal to popular frenzy, can they hope to delude
the Border States to join them. War is the breath of
their life.

To-day, therefore, the question is, by the voice of the
South, “Shall Washington or Montgomery own the con-
tinent?” And the North says, “From the Gulf to the
Pole, the Stars and Stripes shall atone to four millions of
negroes whom we have forgottem for seventy years; and,
before you break the Union, we will see that justice is
done to the slave.” [Enthusiastic and long-continued
cheers.]

There is only one thing those cannon-shot in the har-
bor of Charleston settled, — that there never can be a
compromise. [Loud applause.] We Abolitionists have
doubted whether this Union really meant justice and lib-
erty. We have doubted the intention of nineteen mil-
ions of people. ‘They have said, in answer to our criti-
cism: “We believe that the Fathers meant to establish

408 UNDER THE FLAG.

justice. We believe that there are hidden in the armory
of the Constitution weapons strong enough to seeuro it,
We are willing yet to try the experiment. Grant us
time.” We have doubted, derided the pretence, as we
supposed. During these long and weary weeks we have
waited to hear the Northern conscience assert its purpose.
Tt comes at last. [An impressive pause.] “Massachusetts
blood has consecrated the pavements of Baltimore, and
those stones are now too sacred to be trodden by slaves.
[Loud cheers.]

You and I owe it to those young martyrs, you and I owe
it, that their blood shall be the seed of no mere empty tri-
umph, but that the negro shall teach his children to bless
them for centuries to come. [Applause.] When Mussa-
chusetts goes down to that Carolina fort to put the Stars
and Stripes again over its blackened walls [enthusiasm],
she will sweep from its neighborhood every institution
which hazards their ever bowing again to the palmetto.
[Loud cheers.] All of you may not mean itnow. Our
fathers did not think in 1775 of the Declaration of Inde
pendence. The Long Parliament never thought of the
scaffold of Charles the First, when they entered on the
struggle; but having begun, they made thorough work
[Cheers.] It is an attribute of the Yankee blood,—
slow to fight, and fight‘once. [Renewed cheers] It |
was a holy war, that for Independence: this is a holt |
and the last, — that for Lrserry. [Loud applause.]

T hear a great deal about Constitutional liberty. The
mouths of Concord and Lexington guns have room anly
for one word, and that is Lisenry. You might as well
ask Niagara to chant the Chicago Platform, as to say how
far war shall go. War and Niagara thunder to a musi¢ of
their own. God alone can launch the lightnings, that they
may go and say, Here we are. The thunderbolts of His
throne always abase the proud, lift up the lowly, and exe |
cute justice between man and man,

2 i

UNDER THE FLAG. 409

Now let me turn one moment to another consideration.
What should the government do? I said * thorough”
should be its maxim, When we fight, we are fighting for
justice and an idea. A short war and a rigid one is the
maxim, Ten thousand men in Washington! it is only a
Bloody fight. Five hundred thousand men in Washington,
and none dare come there but from the North. [Loud
cheers.] Occupy St. Louis with the millions of the West,
and say to Missouri, “ You cannot go out!” [Applause.]
Cover Maryland with a million of the friends of the ad-
‘ministration, and say: “* We must have our capital within
reach. [Cheers.] If you need compensation for slaves
taken from you in the convulsion of battle, here it is.
[Cheers.] Government is engaged in the fearful struggle
to show that "89 meant justice, and there is something
Detter than life, holier than even real and just property,
in such an hour as this.” And again, we must remember
another thing,—the complication of such a struggle as
this. Bear with me a moment. We put five hundred
thousand men on the banks of the Potomac. Virginia is
held by two races, white and black. Suppose those black
men flare in our faces the Declaration of Independence,
What are we to say? Are we to send Northern bayonets
to keep slaves under the feet of Jefferson Davis? {Many
voices, “No!” “Never!”"] In 1842, Governor Wise
‘of Virginia, the symbol of the South, entered into argu-
ment with Quincy Adams, who carried Plymouth Rock to
Washington. [Applause] It was when Joshua Gid-
dings offered his resolution stating his constitutional doc-
twine that Congress had no right to interfere, in any event,
in any way, with the slavery of the Southern States,
Plymouth Rock refused to vote for it. Mr. Adams said
(substantially) : “If foreign war comes, if civil war comes,
if insurrection comes, is this beleaguered capital, is this
besieged government, to see millions of its subjects in arms,

—_

410 UNDER THE FLAG.

and have no right to break the fetters which they are
forging into swords? No; the war power of the govern-
ment can sweep this institution into the Gulf” [Cheers.]
Ever since 1842, that statesman-like claim and warning
of the North has been on record, spoken by the lips of
her wisest son. [Applause.]

When the South cannonaded Fort Sumter the bones
of Adams stirred in his coffin. [Cheers.] And you
might have heard him, from that granite grave at Quincy,
proclaim to the nation: “The hour has struck! Seize
the thunderbolt God has forged for you, and annihilate
the system which has troubled your peace for seventy
years!” [Cheers.] Do not say this is a cold-blooded
suggestion. I hardly ever knew slavery go down in any
other circumstances. Only once, in the broad sweep of
the world’s history, was any nation lifted so high that she
could stretch her imperial hand across the Atlantic, und
lift by one peaceful word a million of slaves into liberty.
God granted that glory only to our mother-land.

You heedlessly expected, and we Abolitionists hoped,
that such would be our course. Sometimes it really
seemed so, and we said confidently, the age of bullets is
over. At others the sky lowered so darkly that we felt
our only exodus would be one of blood; that, like other
nations, our Buastile would fall only before revolution.
‘Ten years ago I asked you, How did French slavery go
down? How did the French slave-trade go down ?
When Napoleon came back from Elba, when his fate
hung trembling in the balance, and he wished to gather
around him the sympathies of the liberals of Europe, he
no sooner set foot in the Tuileries than he signed the=
edict abolishing the slave-trade, against which the Aboli—
tionists of England and France had protested for twent=~
years in vain. And the trade went down, because Napo—
leon felt he must do something to gild the darkeningy

UNDER THE FLAG. 411

honr of his second attempt to clutch the seeptre of France.
How did the slave system go down? When, in 1848, the
Provisional Government found itself in the Hétel de Ville,
obliged to do something to draw to itself the sympathy
and liberal feeling of the French nation, they signed an
edict — it was the first from the rising republie —abolish-
ing the death-penalty and slavery. The storm which
rocked the vessel of state almost to foundering snapped
forever the chain of the French slave. Look, too, at the
history of Mexican and South American emancipation ;
you will find that it was in every instance, I think, the
child of convulsion,

‘That hour has come to us. So stand we to-day. The
Abolitionist who will not now ery, when the moment
serves, “Up, boys, and at them!” is false to liber-

[Great cheering. A voice, “So is every other
man.”] Yes, to-day Abolitionist is merged in citizen, —
in American, Say not it isa hard lesson. Let him who
fully knows his own heart and strength, and feels, as he
looks down into his child’s cradle, that he could stand and
see that little nestling borne to slavery, and submit, —let
him cast the first stone. But all you, whose blood is wont
tw stir over Naseby and Bunker Hill, will hold your peace,
unless you are ready to cry with me,— Sic semper tyran-
nis! “So may it ever be with tyrants!” [Lond ap-
plause.]

Why, Americans, I believe in the might of nineteen

_ millions of people. Yes, I know that what sewing-ma-
chines and reaping-machines and ideas and types and
school-houses cannot do, the maskets of Illinois and Mas-
sachusetts can finish up. [Cheers.] Blame me not that
I make everything turn on liberty and the slave. I be-
lieve in Massachusetts. 1 know that free speech, free toil,
school-houses, and ballot-boxes are a pyramid on its broad-
est base. Nothing that does not sunder the solid globe can

412 UNDER THE FLAG.

disturb it. We defy the world to disturb us. [Cheers.]
The little errors that dwell upon our surface, we have
medicine in our institutions to cure them all. [Ap
plause.] :

‘Therefore there is nothing left for a New England
man, nothing but that he shall wipe away the stain which
hangs about the toleration of human bondage. As Web-
ster said at Rochester, years and years ago: “If I thought
that there was a stain upon the remotest hem of the gar-
ment of my country, I would devote my utmost labor to
wipe it off” [Cheers.] To-day that call is made upon
Massachusetts. That is the reason why I dwell so much
on the slavery question. I said I believed in the power
of the North to conquer ; but where does she get it. Ido
not believe in the power of the North to subdue two mil-
lions and a half of Southern men, unless she summons jus
tice, the negro, and God to her side [cheers] ; and in that
battle we are sure of this, —we are sure to rebuild the
Union down to the Gulf. [Renewed cheering.] In that
battle, with that watchword, with those allies, the thirteen
States and their children will survive, —in the light of the
world, a nation which has vindicated the sincerity of the
Fathers of ‘87, that they bore children, and not pedlers, to
represent them in the nineteenth century. [Repeated
cheers.] But without that, — without that, T know also
we shall conquer. Sumter annihilated compromise, Noth-
ing but victory will blot from history that sight of the Stars
and Stripes giving place to the palmetto, But without
justice for inspiration, without God for our ally, we shall
break the Union asundet; we shall be a confederacy,
and so will they. ‘This war means one of two things, —
Emaneipation or Disunion. [Cheers.] Out of the smoke
of the conflict there comes that, — nothing else. Tt is im
possible there should come anything else. Now, I believe
in the future and permanent union of the races that cover

UNDER THE FLAG. 413

this continent from the pole down to the Gulf. One in
race, one in history, one in religion, one in industry, one
in thought, we never can be permanently separated.
Your path, if you forget the black race, will be over the
gulf of Disunion, —years of unsettled, turbulent, Mexican
and South American civilization, back through that desert
of forty years to the Union which is sure to come.

But I believe in a deeper conscience, I believe in a
North more educated than that. I divide you into four
sections. The first is the ordinary mass, rushing from
mere enthusiasm to

“A battle whose great aim and seope
‘They little care to know,
Content, like men-at-arms, 10 cope
Each with his fronting foe.”

Behind that class stands another, whose only idea in
this controversy is sovereignty and the flag. The sen-
board, the wealth, the just-converted hunkerism of the
country, fill that class, Next to it stands the third ele-
ment, the people; the cordwainers of Lynn, the farmers
of Worcester, the dwellers on the prairie, —Iowa and
Wisconsin, Ohio and Maine,—the broad surface of the
people who have no leisure for technicalities, who never
studied law, who never had time to read any further into
the Constitution than the first two lines, —“ Establish
Justice and secure Liberty.” They have waited long
enough ; they have eaten dirt enough; they have apolo-
gized for bankrupt statesmen enough ; they have quieted
their consciences enough ; they have split logic with their
Abolition neighbors long enough ; they are tired of trying
to find a place between the forty-ninth and forty-eighth
corner of a constitutional hair [langhter] ; and now that
they have got their hand on the neck of a rebellious aris-
tocracy, in the name of the rzorte, they mean to strangle
it, That I believe is the body of the people itself, Side

414 UNDER THE FLAG.

by side with them stands a fourth class, —small, but active,
—the Abolitionists, who thank Ged that he has let them
see his salvation before they die. [Cheers.]

The noise and dust of the conflict may hide the real
question at issne. Europe may think, some of us may,
that we are fighting for forms and parchments, for sover-
eignty and a flag. But really the war is one of opinions:
it is Civilization against Barbarism; it is Freedom against
Slavery. The cannon-shot against Fort Sumter was the
yell of pirates against the Dectaration or INDEPENDENCE}
the war-cry of the North is the echo of that sublime
pledge. The South, defying Christianity, clutches its vie-
tim: The North offers its wealth and blood in glad atone-
ment for the selfishness of seventy years. ‘The result is as
sure as the throne of God, I believe in the possibility of
justice, in the certainty of union. Years hence, when
the smoke of this conflict clears away, the world will sce
under our banner all tongues, all creeds, all races, — one
brotherhood,—and on the banks of the Potomac, the
Genius of Liberty, robed in light, four and thirty stars for
her diadem, broken chains under feet, and an olive-branch
in her right hand. [Great appliuse.]

THE WAR FOR THE UNION.*

ADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It would be impossi-

ble for me fitly to thank you for this welcome; you

will allow me, therefore, not to attempt it, but to avail

myself of your patience to speak to you, as I have been
invited to do, upon the war.

T know, Ladies and Gentlemen, that actions —deeds,
not words—are the fitting duty of the hour. Yet, still,
cannon think in this day of ours, and it is only by putting
thought behind arms that we render them worthy, in any
degree, of the civilization of the nineteenth century. [Ap-
planse.] Besides, the government has two thirds of a
million of soldiers, and it has ships sufficient for its pur-
pose. The only question seems to be, what the govern-
ment is to do with these forces, —in what path, and how
far it shall tread. You and I come here to-night, not to
criticise, not to find fault with the Cabinet. We come
here to recognize the fact, that in moments like these the
statesmanship of the Cabinet is but a pine shingle upon the
rapids of Niagara, borne which way the great popular
heart and the national purpose direct. It is in vain now,
with these scenes about us, in this crisis, to endeavor to
create public opinion; too late now to educate twenty
millions of people. Our object now is to concentrate and
to manifest, to make evident and to make intense, the ma-
tured purpose of the nation. We are to show the world,

* Lecture delivered in New York and Boston, December, 1861,

416 THE WAR FOR THE UNION,

if it be indeed so, that democratic institutions are strong
enough for such an hour as this. Very terrible as is the
conspiracy, momentous as is the peril, Democracy wel-
comes the struggle, confident that she stands like no deli-
cately-poised throne in the Old World, but, like the Pyra-
mid, on its broadest base, able to be patient with national
evils, — generously patient with the long forbearance of
three generations, —and strong enough when, after that
they reveal themselves in their own inevitable and hideous
proportions, to pronounce and execute the unanimons ver
dict, —Death !

Now, Gentlemen, it is in such a spirit, with such a pur-
pose, that I come before you to-night to sustain this war,
Whence came this war? You and I need not curiously ~
investigate. While Mr, Everett on one side, and Mr.
Sumner on the other, agree, yon and I may take for
granted the opinion of two such opposite statesmen, — the
result of the common sense of this side of the water and
the other,— that slavery is the root of this war. [Ap-
plause.] I know some men have loved to trace it to die
appointed ambition, to the success of the Republican party,
convincing three hundred thousand nobles at the South,
who have hitherto farnished us the most of the presidents,
generals, judges, and ambassadors we needed, that they
would have leave to stay at home, and that twenty millions
of Northerners would take their share in public affairs, 1
do not think that cause equal to the result, Other men be-
fore Jefferson Davis and Governor Wise haye been disap-
pointed of the Presidency. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster,
and Stephen A. Douglas were more than once disappointed,
and_yet who believes that either of these great men could
have armed the North to avenge his wrongs? Why, then,
should these pigmies of the South be able to do what the
giants I have named could never achieve ? Simply be-
cause there is a radical difference between the two sec

THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 41T

tions, and that difference is slavery. A party victory may
have been the occasion of this outbreak. So a tea-chest
was the oceasion of the Revolution, and it went to the
bottom of Boston harbor on the night of the 16th of De-
cember, 1773; but that tea-chest was not the cause of the
Revolution, neither is Jefferson Davis the cause of the re-
bellion. If you will look upon the map, and notice that
every Slave State has joined or tried to join the rebellion,
and no Free State has done so, I think you will not doubt
substantially the origin of this convulsion.

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, you know me
you who know me at all—simply as an Aboli
am proud and glad that you should have known me as
such. In the twenty-five years that are gone, —I say it
with no wish to offend any man before me,—but in the
quarter of a century that has passed, I could find no place
where an American could stand with decent self-respect,
except in constant, uncontrollable, and loud protest against
the sin of his native land. But, Ladies and Gentlemen,
do not imagine that I come here to-night to speak simply
and exclusively as an Abolitionist. My interest in this
war, simply and exclusively as an Abolitionist, is about as
much gone as yours in a novel where the hero has won
the lady, and the marriage has been comfortably celebrated
in the last chapter. I know the danger of political prophe~
cy,—a kaleidoscope of which not even a Yankee can guess
the next combination, — but for all that, I yenture to offer
my opinion, that on this continent the system of domestic
slavery has received its death-blow. [Loud and long-con-
tinued applause.] Let me tell you why I think so. Leav-
ing out of view war with England, which I do not expect,
there are but three paths out of this war. One is, the
North conquers; the other is, the South conquers; and
the third is, a compromise. Now, if the North conquers,
or there be a compromise, one or the other of two things

418 THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

must come, —either the old Constitution or a new one. I
believe that, so fur as the slavery clanses of the Constitution
of 789 are concerned, it is dead. It seems to me impossible
that the thrifty and painstaking North, after keeping six
hundred thousand men idle for two or three years, at # cost
of two million dollars a day; after that flag lowered at
Sumter; after Baker and Lyon and Ellsworth and Win-
throp and Putnam and Wesselhwft have given their lives
to quell the rebellion ; after our Massachusetts boys, hur
rying from ploughed field and workshop to save the eapital,
have been foully murdered on the pavements of Baltimore,
—I cannot believe in a North so lost, so craven, as to put
back slavery where it stood on the 4th of March last
[Cheers.] But if there be reconstruction without these
slave clauses, then in a little while, longer or shorter, slay-
ery dies, —indeed, on any other basis but the basis of
*89, she has nothing else now to do but to die, On the
contrary, if the South—no, I cannot say conquers —my
lips will not form that word —but if she balks us of vie-
tory, the only way she can do it is to write Emancipation
on her own banner, and thus bribe the friends of liberty
in Europe to allow its aristocrats and traders to divide the
majestic republie whose growth and trade they fear and
envy. Either way, the slave goos free, Unless England
flings her fleets along the coast, the South can never spring
into separate existence, except from the basis of negro
freedom ; and I for one cannot yet believe that the North
will consent again to share his chains. Exclusively as an
Abolitionist, therefore, I have little more interest in this
war than the frontiersman’s wife had in his struggle with
the bear, when she didn’t care which whipped, But be
fore I leave the Abolitionists, let me say one word. Some
men say we are the cause of this war. Gentlemen, you
do us too much honor! If it be so, we have reason to be
proud of it; for in my heart, as an American, I beliew

ie i

THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 419

this year the most glorious of the Republic since "76.
The North, craven and contented until now, like Mam-
mon, saw nothing even in heaven but the golden pave-
ment; to-day she throws off her chains. We have a
North, as Daniel Webster said. This is no epoch for
nations to blush at. England might blush in 1620, when
Englishmen trembled at a fool’s frown, and were silent
when James forbade them to think; but not in 1649,
when an outraged people cut off his son’s head. Massa-
chusetts might have blushed a year or two ago, when an
insolent Virginian, standing on Bunker Hill, insulted the
Commonwealth, and then dragged her citizens to Wash-
ington to tell what they knew about John Brown; bat
she has no reason to blush to-day, when she holds that
same impudent Senator an acknowledged felon in her

i In my view, the bloodiest war ever waged
is infinitely better than the happiest slavery which ever
fattened men into obedience. And yet 1 love peace.
But it is real peace; not peace such as we have had;
not peace that meant lynch-law in the Carolinas and mob-
law in New York; not peace that meant chains around
Boston Court-Honse, a gag on the lips of statesmen, and
the slave sobbing himself to sleep in curses, No more
sich peace for me; no peace that is not born of justice,
and does not recognize the rights of every race and every
man,

Some men say they would view this war as white men.
T condescend to no such narrowness. I view it as an
American citizen, proud to be the citizen of an, empire
that knows neither black nor white, neither Saxon nor
Indian, but holds an equal sceptre over all. [Loud
cheers.] If I am to love my country, it must be lovable ;
if T am to honor it, it must be worthy of respect. What
is the function God gives us, — what is the breadth of re~
sponsibility he lays upon us? An empire, the home of

420 THE WAR FOR THE UNION,

every race, every creed, every tongue, to whose citizens
is committed, if not the only, then the grandest system of
pure self-government. Tocqueville tells us that all na-
tions and all ages tend with inevitable certainty to this
result; but he points out, as history does, this land as the
normal school of the nations, set by God to try’ the experi~
ment of popular education and popular government, to
remove the obstacles, point out the dangers, find the best
way, encourage the timid, and hasten the world’s progress.
Let us see to it, that with such a crisis and such a past,
neither the ignorance, nor the heedlessness, nor the cow-
andice of Americans forfeits this high honor, won for us by
the toils of two generations, given to us by the blessing of
Providence. It is as a citizen of the leading State of this
Western continent, vast in territory, and yet its territory
nothing when compared with the grandeur of its past and
the majesty of its future, —it is as such a citizen that I
wish, for one, to find out my duty, express as am indi-
vidual my opinion, and aid thereby the Cabinet in doing
its duty under such responsibility. It does not lie in one
man to ruin us, nor in one man to save us, nor in a dozen,
It lies in the twenty millions, in the thirty millions, of
thirty-four States.

Now how do we stand? In a war,—not only that,
but a terrific war,—not a war sprung from the eaprice
of a woman, the spite of a priest, the flickering ambition
of a prince, as wars usually have; bunt a war inevitable;
in one sense, nobody's fault; the inevitable result of past
training, the conflict of ideas, millions of people grappling
each other's throats, every soldier in each camp certain
that he is fighting for an idea which holds the salvation
of the world,—every drop of his blood in earnest. Such
a war finds no parallel nearer than that of the Catholic
and the Huguenot of France, or that of Aristocrat and
Republican in 1790, or of Cromwell and the Irish, when

THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 421

victory meant extermination, Such is oar war. I look
upon it as the commencement of the great struggle be-
tween the disguised aristocracy and the democracy of
America, You are to say to-day whether it shall last ten
years or seventy, as it usually has done. It resembles
closely that struggle between aristocrat and democrat
which begun in France in 1789, and continues still.
While it lasts, it will have the same effect on the nation
as that war between blind loyalty, represented by the
Stuart family, and the free spirit of the English Constitu-
tion, which lasted from 1660 to 1760, and kept England
‘a second-rate power almost all that century.
Such is the era on which you are entering. I will not
of war in itself, —I have no time; I will not say,
with Napoleon, that it is the practice of barbarians ; I will
not say that it is good. It is better than the past. A
thing may be belter, and yet not good. This war is better
than the past, but there is not an element of good in it,
I mean, there is nothing in it which we might not have
gotten better, fuller, and more perfectly in other ways.
And yet it is better than the craven past, infinitely better
than a peace which had pride for its father and subser-
viency for its mother. Neither will I speak of the cost of
war, although you know that we never shall get out of this
‘one without a debt of at least two or three thousand mil-
lions of dollars, For if the prevalent theory prove correct,
and the country comes together again on anything like the
old basis, we pay Jeff Davis's debts as well as our own.
Neither will I remind you that debt is the fatal disease of
republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine
government and corrupt the people. The great debt of
England has kept her back in civil progress at least a
hundred years, Neither will I remind you that, when we
go out of this war, we go out with an immense disbanded
army, an intense military spirit embodied in two thirds of

hae

422 THE WAR FOR THE UNION,

a million of soldiers, the fruitful, the inevitable source
of fresh debts and new wars. I pass by all that; yet lying
within those causes are things enough to make the most
sanguine friends of free institutions tremble for our future,
I pass those by. But let me remind you of another ten-
deney of the time. You know, for instance, that the writ
of Aabeas corpus, by which government is bound to render
a reason to the judiciary before it Jays its hands upon a
citizen, has been called the high-water mark of English lib-
erty, Jefferson, in his calm moments, dreaded the power
to suspend it in any emergency whatever, and wished to
have it in “eternal and unremitting force.” The present
Napoleon, in his treatise on the English Constitution, calls
it the gem of English institutions. Lieber says that habeas
corpus, free meetings like this, and a free press, are the
three elements which distinguish liberty from despotism.
All that Saxon blood has gained in the battles and toils of
two hundred years are these three things. But to-day,
Mr. Chairman, every one of them—habeae corpus, the
right of free meeting, and a free press —is annihilated in
every square mile of the Republic. We live to-day,
every one of us, under martial law. ‘The Secretary of
State puts into his bastile, with a warrant as irresponsible
as that of Louis, any man whom he pleases. And you
know that neither press nor lips may yenture to arraign
the government without being silenced. At this moment
one thousand men, at least, are “bastiled” by an authority
as despotic as that of Louis,—three times as many is
Eldon and George IIT. seized when they trembled for his
throne. Mark me, I am not complaining, Ido not say
it is not necessary. It is necessary to do anything to save
the ship. [Applause.] It is necessary to throw every-
thing overboard in order that we may float. It is a meré
question whether you prefer the despotism of Wushingtoa
or that of Richmond. I prefer that of Washington. [Loud

THE WAR FOR THE UNION, 423

applause.] But, nevertheless, I point out to you this ten-
dency, because it is momentous in its significance. We
are tending with rapid strides, you say inevitably, —I do
not deny it; necessarily, —I do not question it; we are
tending toward that strong government which frightened
Jefferson ; toward that unlimited debt, that endless army.
We haye already those alien and sedition laws which, in
1798, wrecked the Federal party, and summoned the
Democratic into existence, For the first time on this
continent we have passports, which even Louis Napoleon
pronounces useless and odious. For the first time in our

government spies frequent our great cities. And
this model of a strong government, if you reconstruct it on
the old basis, is to be handed into the keeping of whom ?
if you compromise it by reconstruction, to whom are you
to give these delicate and grave powers? To compro-
misers. Reconstruct this government, and for twenty
years you can never elect a Republican. Presidents must
be so wholly without character or principle, that two
angry parties, each hopeless of success, contemptuously
tolerate them as neutrals. Now I am not exaggerating
the moment. I can parallel it entirely. It is the same
position that England held in the times of Eldon and Fox,
when Holeroft and Montgomery, the poet, Horne Tooke
and Frost and Hardy, went into dungeons, under laws
which Pitt executed and Burke praised,—times when Fox
said he despaired of English liberty but for the power of
insurrection, —times which Sidney Smith said he remem-
bered, when no man was entitled to an opinion who had
not £3,000 a year. Why! there is no right —do I ex-
aggerate when I say that there is no single right ?— which
government is scrupulous and finds itself able to protect,
except the pretended right of a man to his slaves!’ Every
other right has fallen now before the necessities of the
hour.

424 THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

Understand me, I do not complain of this state of
things ; but it is momentous. I only ask you, that out of
this peril you be sure to get something worthy of the crisis
through which you have passed. No government of free
make could stand three such tnals as this. I only paint
you the picture, in order, like Hotspur, to say: “ Out of
this nettle, danger, be you right eminently sure that you
pluck the flower, safety.” [Applause.] Standing in
such a crisis, certainly it commands us that we should
endeayor to find the root of the difficulty, and that now,
once for all, we should put it beyond the possibility of
troubling our peace ayain. We cannot aifurd, as Repub-
licans, to run that risk, The vessel of state, —her tim-
bers are strained beyond almost the possibility of surviving.
‘The tempest is one which it demands the wariest pilot to
outlive. We cannot afford, thus warned, to omit anything
which ean save this ship of state from a second danger of
the kind.

What shall we do? The answer to that question comes
partly from what we think has been the cause of this eon-
vulsion, Some men think —some of your editors think
—many of ours, too—that this war is nothing but the
disappointment of one or two thousand angered politicians,
who have persuaded eight millions of Southerners, against
their convictions, to take up arms and rush to the battle-
field ;—no great compliment to Southern sense! [Laugh-
ter.) They think that, if the Federal army could only
appear in the midst of this demented mass, the eight
millions will find out for the first time in their lives that
they have got souls of their own, tell us so, and then we
shall all be piloted back, float back, drift back into the
good old times of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.
[Laughter.] There is a measure of truth in that. I
believe that if, a year ago, when the thing first showed
itself, Jefferson Davis and Toombs and Keitt and Wise,

THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 425

and the rest, had been hung for traitors at Washington,
and a couple of frigates anchored at Charleston, another
couple in Savannah, and half a dozen in New Orleans,
with orders to shell those cities on the first note of resist-
ance, there never would have been this outbreak [ap-
plause], or it would have been postponed at least a dozen
years; and if that interval had been used to get rid of
slavery, we never should have heard of the convulsion.
But you know we had nothing of the kind, and the con-
sequence is, what? Why, the amazed North has been
summoned by every defeat and every success, from its
workshops and its factories, to gaze with wide-opened eyes
at the Iurid heavens, until at last, divided, bewildered,
confounded, as this twenty millions were, we have all of us
fused into one idea, that the Union meant justice, —shall
‘mean justice, — owns down to the Gulf, and we will have
it [Applause.] What has taken place meanwhile at the
South ? Why, the same thing. The divided, bewildered
South has been summoned also out of her divisions by
every suecess and every defeat (and she has had more of
the first than we have), and the consequence is, that she
too is fused into a swelling sea of State pride, hate of
the North, —
“ Unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hato,
Ani courage never to subsnit nor yield.”

She is in earnest, every man, and she is as unanimous
as the Colonies were in the Revolution, In fact, the South
recognizes more intelligibly than we do the necessities of
her position. 1 do not consider this a secession. Tt is no
secession, I agree with Bishop-General Polk, —it is a
conspiracy, not a secession. There is no wish, no inten~
tion to go peaceably and permanently off. It is a con-
spiracy to make the government do the will and accept
the policy of the slaveholders. Its root is at the South,

426 THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

‘but it has many a branch in Wall Street and in State
Street, [Cheers.] It is a conspiracy, and on the one
side is every man who still thinks that he that steals his
brother is a gentleman, and he that makes his living is not,
[Applause.] It is the aristocratic element which survived
the Constitution, which our fathers thought could be safely
left under it, and the South to-day is forced into this war
by the natural growth of the antagonistic principle, You
may pledge whatever submission and patience of Souther
institutions you please, it is not enough. South Carolina
said to Massachusetts in 1835, when Edward Everett was
Governor, “Abolish free speech,—it is a nuisance.”
She is right, —from her stand-point it is. [Laughter]
‘That is, it is not possible to preserve the quiet of South
Carolina consistently with free speech ; but you know the
story Sir Walter Scott told of the Seotch laird, who said
to his old butler, “Jock, you and I can't live under this
roof." “And where does your honor think of going?”
So free speech says to South Carolina to-day. Now I ay
you may pledge, compromise, guarantee what you plense.
The South well knows that it is not your purpose, —it #
your character she dreads. It is the nature of Northem
institutions, the perilous freedom of discussion, the flavor
of our ideas, the sight of our growth, the very neighbor
hood of such States, that constitutes the danger, Itis
like the two vases launched on the stormy sea. The int
said to the crockery, “ won't come near you.” “‘Thask
you,” said the weaker vessel; “there is just as much
danger in my coming near you.” This the South feels;
hence her determination ; hence, indeed, the imperious
necessity that she should rule and shape our governmiity
or of sailing out of it. I do not mean that she plans
take possession of the North, and choose onr Northem
Mayors; though she bas dene that in Boston for the last
dozen years, and here till this fall. But she conspires atid

THE WAR FOR THE UNION: 427

aims to control just so much of our policy, trade, offices,
presses, pulpits, cities, as is sufficient to insure the undis-
turbed existence of slavery. She conspires with the full
intent so to mould this government as to keep it what it has
been for thirty years, according to John Quincy Adams,
—a plot for the extension and perpetuation of slavery,
As the world advances, fresh guaranties are demanded.
The nineteenth century requires sterner gags than the
eighteenth. Often as the peace of Virginia is in danger,
you must be willing that a Virginia Mason shall drag your
citizens to Washington, and imprison them at his pleasure.
So long as Carolina needs it, you must submit that your
ships be searched for dangerous passengers, and every
Northern man lynched. No more Kansas rebellions. It
is a conflict between the two powers, Aristocracy and
Democracy, which shall hold this belt of the continent. You
may live here, New York men, but it must be in submis-
sion to such rules as the quiet of Carolina requires. That
is the meaning of the oft-repeated threat to call the roll of
‘one’s slaves on Bunker Hill, and dictate peace in Faneuil
Hall. Now, in that fight, I go for the North, — for the
Union.

In order to make out this theory of “ irrepressible con
flict,” it is not necessary to suppose that every Southerner
hates every Northerner (as the Atlantic Monthly urges).
Bat this much is true: some three hundred thousand slaye-
holders at the South, holding two thousand millions of so-
called property in their hands, controlling the blacks, and
Defooling the seven millions of poor whites into being their
tools, — into believing that their interest is opposed to ours,
—this order of nobles, this privileged class, has been able
for forty years to keep the government in dread, dictate
terms by threatening disunion, bring us to its verge at
Teast twice, and now almost to break the Union in pieces.
A power thus consolidated, which has existed seventy

428 THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

years, setting up and pulling down parties, controlling the
policy of the government, and changing our religion, and
is emboldened by uniform success, will not burst like a
Dubble in an hour. For all practical purposes, it is safe
to speak of it as the South; no other South exists, or will
exist, till our policy develops it into being. ‘This is what
I mean. An aristocracy rooted in wealth, with its net-
work spread over all social life, its poison penetrating
every fibre of society, is the hardest possible evil to de-
stroy. Its one influence, Fasuron, is often able to mock
at Religion, Trade, Literature, and Politics combined.
One half the reason why Washington has been and is in
peril, —why every move is revealed and checkmated, —
is that your President is unfashionable, and Mrs. Jefferson
Davis is not. Unseen chains are sometimes stronger than
those of iron, and heavier than those of gold.

It is not in the plots, it is in the inevitable character of
the Northern States, that the South sees her danger. And
the struggle is between these two ideas, Our fathers, as
I said, thought they could safely be left, one to outgrow the
other. They took gunpowder and a lighted match, forced
them into a stalwart cannon, screwed down the muzzle,
and thought they could secure peace. But it has resulted
differently ; their cannon has exploded, and we stand among
fragments.

Now some Republicans and some Demoerats—not But
ler and Bryant and Cochrane and Cameron, not Boutwell
and Bancroft and Dickinson, and others —but the old set
—the old set say to the Republicans, “ Lay the pieoes cart
fully together in their places; put the gunpowder and the
match in again, say the Constitution backward instead of
your prayers, and there will never be another rebellion!”
I doubt it. It seems to me that like causes will produce
like effects. If the reason of the war is because we are
two nations, then the cure must be to make us one nativl

THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 429

to remove that cause which divides us, to make our insti-
tutions homogeneous. If it were possible to subjugate the
South, and leave slavery just as it is, where is the security
that we should not have another war in ten years? In-
deed, such a course invites another war, whenever dema-
gogues please. I believe the policy of reconstruction is
impossible. And if it were possible, it would be the great
est mistake that Northern men could commit. [Cheers.]
I will not stop to remind you that, standing as we do to-
day, with the full constitutional right to abolish slavery, —
a right Southern treason has just given us, —a right, the
use of which is enjoined by the sternest necessity, —if,
after that, the North goes back to the Constitution of *89,
she assumes, a second time, afresh, unnecessarily, a crimi-
nal responsibility for slavery. Hereafter no old excuse
will ayail us. A second time, with open eyes, against our
highest interest, we clasp bloody hands with tyrants to
uphold an acknowledged sin, whose fell evil we have fully
proved,

But that aside, peace with an unchanged Constitution
would leave us to stand like Mexico, States married, not
matehed ; chained together, not melted into one; foreign
nations aware of our hostility, and interfering to embroil,
rob, and control us. We should be what Greece was
under the intrigues of Philip, and Germany when Louis
XIY. was in fact her dictator. We may see our likeness
in Austria, every fretful province an addition of weakness 5
in Italy, twenty years ago, a leash of angry hounds. A
Union with unwilling and subjugated States, smarting
with defeat, and yet holding the powerful and dangerous
element of slavery in it, and an army disbanded into
Taborers, food for constant disturbance, would be a stand-
‘ing invitation to France and England to insult and dictate,
to thwart our policy, demand changes in our laws, and
trample on us continually,

—_

430 ‘THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

Reconstruction is but another name for the submission
of the North. It is her subjection under a mask. It is
nothing but the confession of defeat. Every merchant, in
such a case, puts everything he has at the bidding of Wig-
fall and Toombs in every cross-road bar-room at the
South. For, you see, never till now did anybody but a
few Abolitionists believe that this nation could be mar-
shalled one section against the other in arms. But the
secret is out. The weak point is discovered. Why does
the London press lecture us like a schoolmaster his seven-
year-old boy? Why does England use a tone such as
she has not used for half a century to any power? Be-
eause she knows us as she knows Mexico, as all Europe
knows Austria, —that we have the cancer concealed in
our very vitals. Slavery, left where it is, after having
created such a war as this, would leave our commerce and
all our foreign relations at the mercy of any Keitt, Wig-
fall, Wise, or Toombs. Any demagogue has only to stir
up a proslavery crusade, point back to the safe experiment
of 1861, and lash the passions of the aristocrats, to cover
the sea with privateers, put in jeopardy the trade of
twenty States, plunge the country into millions of debt,
send our stocks down fifty per cent, and cost thousands
of lives, Reconstruction is but making chronic what now
is transient. What that is, this week shows, What that
is, we learn from the tone England dares to assume
toward this divided republic. I do not believe recon
struction possible. I do not believe the Cabinet intend it.
True, I should care little if they did, since I believe the
administration can no more resist the progress of events,
than a spear of grass can retard the step of an avalanehe.
But if they do, allow me to say, for one, that every dollar
spent in this war is worse than wasted, every life lost isa
public murder, and that any statesman who leads thest
States back to reconstruction will be damned to an infamy

THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 431

eompared with which Arnold was a saint and James Bu-
chanan a public benefactor. [Slight disturbance in the
rear part of the hall; cries of “Put him out!” ete.] No,
do not put him out; his is the very mind I wish to reach.
T said reconstruction is not possible. I do not believe it is,
for this reason; the moment these States begin to appear
vietorious, the moment our armies do anything that
evinces final success, the wily statesmanship and uncon-
querable hate of the South will write “Emancipation” on
her banner, and welcome the protectorate of a European
power. And if you read the European papers of to-day,
you need not doubt that she will have it. Intelligent
men agree that the North stands better with Palmerston
for minister, than she would with any minister likely to
succeed him, And who is Palmerston? While he was
Foreign Secretary, from 1848 to 1851, the British press
ridiculed every effort of the French Republicans, —
sneered at Cavaignac and Ledru Rollin, Lamartine and
Hugo,—while they cheered Napoleon on to his usurpa-
tion; and Lord Normanby, then Minister at Paris, early
in December, while Napoleon’s hand was still wet with
the best blood of France, congratulated the despot on his
vietory over the Reds, applying to the friends of Liberty
the worst epithet that an Englishman knows. This last
outrage lost Palmerston his place; but he rules to-day, —
though rebuked, not changed.

The value of the English news this week is the indica-
tion of the nation’s mind. No one doubts now, that, should
the South emancipate, England would make haste to recog-
nize and help her. In ordinary times, the government and
aristocracy of England dread American example, They
may well admire and envy the strength of our government,
when, instead of England's impressment and pinched levies,
patriotism marshals six hundred thousand volunteers in six
months. The English merchant is jealous of our growth ;

—

432 THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

only the liberal middle classes really sympathize with us.
When the two other classes are divided, this middle class
rules. But now Herod and Pilate are agreed. The aris
tocrat, who usually despises a trader, whether of Manchester
or Liverpool, as the South does a negro, now is Seeession-
ist from sympathy, as the trader is from interest. Such
amnion no middle class ean checkmate. The only danger
of war with England is, that, as soon as England declared
war with us, she would recognize the Southern Confed-
eracy immediately, just as she stands, slavery and all, asa
military measure. As such, in the heat of passion, in the
smoke of war, the English people, all of them, would allow
such a recognition even of a slayeholding empire. War
with England insures disunion, When England declares
war, she gives slavery a fresh lease of fifty years. Even
if we have no war with England, let another eight or ten
months be as little successful as the last, and Europe will
acknowledge the Southern Confederacy, slavery and all,
as a matter of course. Further, any approach toward
victory on our part, without freeing the slave, gives him
free to Davis. So far, the South is sure to succeed, either
by victory or defeat, unless we anticipate her. Indeed,
the only way, the only sure way, to break this Union, is
to try to save it by protecting slavery. ‘ Every moment
lost,” as Napoleon said, “ is an opportunity for misfortune.”
Unless we emancipate the slave, we shall never conquer
the South without her trying emancipation. Every South-
erner, from Toombs up to Fremont, bas acknowledged it
Do you suppose that Davis and Beauregard, and the rest,
mean to be exiles, wandering contemned in every great
city of Europe, in order that they may maintain slavery
and the Constitution of ’89? They, like ourselves, will
throw everything overboard before they will submit
defeat, —defeat from Yankees. I do not believe, there-
fore, that reconciliation is possible, nor do I believe the

‘THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 433

Cabinet have any such hopes. Indeed, I do not know
where you will find the evidence of any purpose in the
administration at Washington. [Hisses, cheers, and langh-
ter.] If we look to the West, if we look to the Potomac,
what is the policy? If, on the Potomac, with the aid of
twenty Governors, you assemble an army, and do nothing
‘but return fugitive slaves, that proves you competent and
efficient. If, on the banks of the Mississippi, unaided, the
magic of your presence summons an army into existence,
and you drive your enemy before you a hundred miles
farther than your second in command thought it possible
for you to advance, that proves you incompetent, and
entitles your second in command to succeed you. [Tre-
‘mendous applause, and three cheers for Fremont.]
Looking in another direction, you see the government
announcing « policy in South Carolina. What is it?
Well, Mr. Secretary Cameron says to the general in
command there: “ You are to welcome into your camp all
comers; you are to organize them into squads and com-
panies; use them any way you please ;—but there is to
Le no general arming.’” That is a very significant exeep-
tion. The hint is broad enough for the dullest brain.
Tn one of Charles Reade’s novels, the heroine flies away
to hide from the hero, announcing that she never shall
see him again. Her letter says: *T will never see you
again, David. You, of course, won't come to see me
at my old nurse's dear little cottage [laughter], be-
tween eleven in the morning and four in the afternoon,
because I sha’n’t see you.” [Laughter.] So Mr. Cam-
eron says there is to be no general arming, but I suppose
there is to be a very particular arming. [Langhter.] But
le goes on to add: * This is no greater interference with
the institutions of South Carolina than is necessary, —
than the war will cure.” Does he mean he will give the
Slaves back when the war is over? I don’t know. All I
2

434 THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

know is, that the Port Royal expedition proved one thing,
—it laid forever that ghost of an argument, that the blacks
loved their masters, — it settled forever the question
whether the blacks were with us or with the South. My
opinion is, that the blacks are the key of our position. [A
Voice, That is it."] He that gets them wins, and he
that loses them goes to the wall. [Applause.] Port
Royal settled one thing, —the blacks are with us, and not
with the South, At present they are the only Unionists,
I know nothing more touching in history, nothing that art
will immortalize and poetry dwell upon more fondly, —I
know no tribute to the Stars and Stripes more impressive
than that incident of the blacks coming to the water-sidle
with their little bundles, in that simple faith whieh had
endured through the long night of so many bitter years
They preferred to be shot rather than driven from the
sight of that banner they had so long prayed to see. And
if that was the result when nothing but General Sherman's
equivocal proclamation was landed on the Carolinas, what
should we have seen if there had been eighteen thousand
veterans with Fremont, the statesman-soldier of this war,
at their head [loud applause], and over them the Stars
and Stripes, gorgeous with the motte, “Freedom for all!
freedom forever!” If that had gone before them, in my
opinion they would have marched across the Carolinas, and
joined Brownlow in East Tennessee. [Applause] The
bulwark on each side of them would have been one hin-
dred thousand grateful blacks ; they would have cat this
rebellion in halves, and while our fleets fired salutes acras |
New Orleans, Beauregard would have been ground
powder between the upper millstone of McClellan ani
the lower of a quarter-million of blacks rising to greet the
Stars and Stripes. [Great cheering-] McClellan may
drill a better army, — more perfect soldiers. He
never marshal a stronger force than those grateful thot

‘THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 435

sands. That is the way to save insurrection. He is an
enemy to civil liberty, the worst enemy to his own land,
who asks for such delay or perversion of government
policy as is sure to result in insurrection. Our duty is to
save these four millions of blacks from their own passions,
from their own confusion, and cight millions of whites
from the consequences of it. [‘Hear, hear!""] And in
order to do it, we nineteen millions of educated, Christian
Americans are not to wait for the will or the wisdom of a
single man, —we are not to wait for Fremont or McClel-
lan: the government is our dictator. It might do for
Rome, a herd of beggars and soldiers, kept quict:only by
the weight of despotism, — it might do for Rome, in mo-
‘ments of danger, to hurl all responsibility into the hands
ofa dictator. But for us, educated, thoughtful men, with
institutions modelled and matured by the experience of two
lundred years, — it is not for us to evade responsibility by
deferring toa single man. I demand of the government a
policy, I demand of the government to show the doubt-
ing infidels of Europe that democracy is not only strong
| enough for the trial, but that she breeds men with brains
large enough to comprehend the hour, and wills hot enough
to fuse the purpose of nineteen millions of people into one
decisive blow for safety and for Union, [Cheers.] You
will ask me how it is to be done. I would have it done
by Congress. We have the power.
When Congress declares war, says John Quincy Adams,
Congress has all the powers incident to carrying on war.*
® Sir, in the anthority given to Congress by the Constitution of the
Tinited States to declare war, all the powers incidental to war are, by neces
‘sary implication, conferred upon the government of the United States... ..
‘There are two classes of powers vested by the Constitation of the United
‘States in their Congress and executive government ; the powers to be exe-
‘ented in time of pence and the powers incident to war. ‘That the pawers of
‘peace are limited by provisions within the body of the Constitntion itself;
‘but that the powers of war are limited and regulated only by the laws and,

436 THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

It is not an unconstitutional power, —it is a power con-
ferred by the Constitution ; but the moment it comes into
play it rises beyond the limit of constitational checks. I
know it is a grave power, this trusting the government
with despotism. But what is the use of government, ex-
cept just to help us in critical times? All the checks and
ingenuity of our institutions are arranged to secure for us
men wise and able enough to be trusted with grave pow-
ers, — bold enough to use them when the times require.
Lancets and knives are dangerous instruments. The use
of surgeons is, that, when lancets are needed, somebody
may know how to use them, and save Tife. One great
merit of democratic institutions is, that, resting as they
must on educated masses, the government may safely be
trusted, in a great emergency, with despotic power, with-
out fear of harm, or of wrecking the state. No other
form of government can venture such confidence without

sages of nations, and are subject to no other limitation... ....1do not
wlmit that there is, even among the pence powers of Congress, no such ak
thority ; but in war, there are many ways by which Congress net only ‘have te
authority, but cre bound to interfere with the institution of slewery in the Stee

= When the Southern States are the buttle-field between Slavery and
Emancipation, Congress may sustain the institution hy war, or perhape
abolish it by treaties of peace ; and they will not only possess the constie |
tional power so to Interfere, but they will be bound in chuty to do i, ta) the a
press provivions of the Constitution itelf. ‘From the instant the alaveholdig
‘States become the theatre of a war, civil, servile, or foreign, from that insiast
the war powers of Congress extend to interference with the institution of slavery it
every way ty which it can be interfered with. +. With @ call to keep down
slaves, in an insurrection and a civil war, comos a full and plenary power!
this Howse and to the Senate over the whole subjoct Te is m war pwr
Whether it be a war of invasion or a war of insurrection, Cougres fie
power to carry on the war, and mast erry it on, according to the law Ot
war; and by the laws of war an invaded country has alll its laws aul enh
cipal institutions swept by the board, and martial law takes the place of hem
haps, never been called into exercise under
preseut Constitution of the United States.” — Speeches of Fohn (uiiey Adam
in he U.S. Howe of Representatives, 1896 ~ 1849.

THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 437

risk of national ruin. Doubtless the war power is a very
grave power ; so are some ordinary peace powers. I will
not cite extreme cases, — Louisiana and Texas, We ob-
tained the first by treaty, the second by joint resolutions ;
each case an exercise of power as grave and despotic as
the abolition of slavery would be, and, unlike that, plainly
unconstitutional, —one which nothing but stern necessity
and subsequent acquiescence by the nation could make
valid. Let me remind you that seventy years’ practice
has incorporated it as a principle in our constitutional law,
that what the necessity of the hour demands, and the con-
fimed assent of the people ratifies, is law. Slavery has
“established that rule, We might surely use it in the cause
of justice. But I will cite an unquestionable precedent.
Tt was a grave power, in 1807, in time of peace, when
Congress abolished commerce ; when, by the embargo of
Jefferson, no ship could quit New York or Boston, and
Congress set no. limit to the prohibition, It annihilated
commerce. New England asked, “Is it constitutional ?”
‘The Sapreme Court said, “ Yes.” New England sat down
and starved, Her wharves were worthless, her ships rot-
ted, her merchants beggared. She asked no compensa-
tion. The powers of Congress carried bankraptey from
New Haven to Portland; but the Supreme Court said,
“It is legal,” and New England bowed her head. We
commend the same cup to the Carolinas to-day. We say
to them that, in order to save the government, there re-
sides somewhere despotism. It is in the war powers of
Congress. That despotism can change the social arrange~
ments of the Southern States, and has a right to do it.
Every man of you who speaks of the emancipation of the
allows it would be decisive if it were used. You
allow that, when it is a military necessity, we may use it.
What I claim is, in honor of our institutions, that we are
not put to wait for the wisdom or the courage of a

438 THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

general, Our fathers left us with no such miserable plan
of government. They gave us a government with the
power, in such times as these, of doing souething that
would save the helm of state in the hands of its citizens,
[Cheers.] We could cede the Carolinas; I have some-
times wished we could shovel them into the Atlantic.
[Applause and laughter] We can cede a State. We
can do anything for the time being; and no theory of gov-
ernment can deny its power to make the most unlimited
change. The only alternative is this: Do you prefer the
despotism of your own citizens or of foreigners ? ‘That is
the only question in war. [Cheers.] In peace no man
may be deprived of his life but “by the judgment of his
peers, or the law of the land.” To touch life, you must
have a grand jury to present, a petit jury to indict, a judge
to condemn, and a sheriff to execute. That is constitu-
tional, the necessary and invaluable bulwark of liberty, in
peace. But in war the government bids Sigel shoot Lee,
and the German is at once grand jury, petit jury, judge,
and executioner. That, too, is constitutional, necessary,
and invaluable, protecting a nation’s rights and Tife.

Now this government, which abolishes my right of
habeas corpus, —which strikes down, because it is néce>
sary, every Saxon bulwark of liberty, — which proclaims
martial lay id holds every dollar and every man at the
will of the Cabinet, —do you tarn round and tell me that
this same government has no rightful power to break the
cobweb — it is but a cobweb — which binds a slave-to
his master, — to stretch its hands across the Potomac, and
root up the evil which, for seventy years, has troubled its
peace, and now culminates in rebellion? I maintaill
therefore, the power of the government itself to imaugi-
rate such a policy ; and T say, in order to save the Union,
do justice to the bl [Applause.]

T would claim of Congress —in the exact language of

THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 439

Adams, of the government ”—a solemn act abolishing
slavery throughout the Union, securing compensation to
loyal slaveholders, As the Constitution forbids the States
to make and allow nobles, I would now, by equal au-
thority, forbid them to make slaves or allow slaveholders,

This bas been the usual course at such times, Nations,
convulsed and broken by too powerful elements or insti~
tutions, have used the first moment of assured power —
the first moment that they clearly saw and fully appreci-
ated the evil —to cut up the dangerous tree by the roots.
So France expelled the Jesuits, and the Middle Ages the
Templars. So England, in her great rebellion, abolished
nobility and the Established Church; and the French
Revolution did the same, and finally gave to euch child an
equal share in his deceased father’s lands. For the same
purpose, England, in 1745, abolished clanship in Scotland,
the root of the Stuart faction; and we, in "76, abolished
nobles and all tenure of estates savoring of privileged
classes. Such a measure supplies the South just what she
needs, —capital. That sum which the North gives the
loyal slaveholder, not as acknowledging his property in
the slave, but a measure of conciliation, — perhaps an
acknowledgment of its share of the guilt, —will call mills,
ships, agriculture, into being. The free negro will redeem
to use lands never touched, whose fertility laughs Illinois
toseorn, and finds no rival but Egypt. And remember,
as Montesquieu says, “ The yield of Jand depends
Jess on its fertility than on the freedom of its inhabitants.”
Such a measure binds the negro to us by the indissoluble
tie of gratitude ; the loyal slaveholder, by strong self-inter~
est, —our bonds are all his property ; the other whites,
by prosperity, —they are lifted in the scale of civiliza-
tion and activity, educated and enriched, Our insti-
tutions are then homogeneous. We grapple the Union
together with hooks of stecl,—make it as lasting as the
granite which underli at

440 THE WAR FOR THE VNION,

People may say this is a strange language for me,—a
Disunionist. Well, I was a Disunionist, sincerely, for
twenty years, I did hate the Union, when Union meant
lies in the pulpit and mobs in the street, when Union
meant making white men hypocrites and black men slaves.
[Cheers.] did prefer purity to peace, —T acknowledge
it. The child of six generations of Puritans, knowing well
the value of union, I did prefer disunion to being the
accomplice of tyrants. But now, when I see what the
Union must mean in order to last, when I see that you
cannot have union without meaning justice, and when
I see twenty millions of people, with a current as swift
and as inevitable as Niagara, determined that this Union
shall mean justice, why should I object to it? I endeay-
ored honestly, and am not ashamed of it, to take nineteen
States out of this Union, and consecrate them to liberty,
and twenty millions of people answer me back, “ We like
your motto, only we mean to keep thirty-four States undet
it." Do you suppose I am not Yankee enough to buy |
union when I can have it at a fair price? I knowthe |
value of union ; and the reason why I claim that Gare
lina has no right to secede is this: we are not a partners
ship, we are a marriage, and we have done/« great many
things since we were married in 1789 which aendenlt
unjust for a State to exercise the right of revolution ot
any ground now alleged. I admit the right, I acknowl
edge the great principles of the Declaration of Tndepen-
dence, that a state exists for the liberty and happiness uf
the peuple, that these are the ends of government, ami
that, when government ceases to promote those ends, the
people hare a right to remodel their institutions. 1
acknowledge the right of revolution in South Carolinty
but at the same time I acknowledge that right of revolu-
tion only when government has ceased to promote thos
ends. Now we have been married for seventy years

‘THE WAR For’ THE UNION, 441

We have bought Florida. We rounded the Union to the
Gulf. We bought the Mississippi for commercial parposes.
We stole Texas for slave purposes. Great commercial
"interests, great interests of peace, have been subserved by
rounding the Union into a perfect shape ; and the money
and sacrifices of two generations have been given for this
purpose. To break up that Union now, is to defraud us
of mutual advantages relating to peace, trade, national se-
curity, which cannot survive disunion. The right of rev-
olution is not matter of caprice. “Governments long
established,” says our Declaration of Independence, “ are
not to be changed for light and transient causes.” When
s0 many important interests and benefits, in their nature
indivisible and which disunion destroys, have been secured
by common toils and cost, the South must vindicate her
revolution by showing that our government has become
destructive of its proper ends, else the right of revolution
does not exist, Why did we steal Texas? Why have
we helped the South to strengthen herself? Because she
said that slavery within the girdle of the Constitution
would die out through the influence of natural principles.
She said: “ We acknowledge it to be an evil; but at the
same time it will end by the spread of free principles and
the influence of free institutions.’ And the North said:
“Yes; we will give you privileges on that account, and
we will return your slaves for you.” Hyery slave sent
back from a Northern State is a fresh oath of the South
that she would not secede. Our fathers trusted to the
promise that this race should be left under the influence
of the Union, until, in the maturity of time, the day should
arrive when they would be lifted into the sunlight of God's
equality. I claim it of South Carolina. By virtue of that
pledge she took Boston and put a rope round her neck in
that infamous compromise which consigned to slavery An-
thony Burns. I demand the fulfilment on her part even of

442 THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

that infamous pledge. Until South Carolina allows me a

the influence that nineteen millions of Yankee lips, asking
infinite questions, have upon the welfare of those four mil-
lions of bondsmen, I deny her right to secede, [Applause.]
Seventy years has the Union postponed the negro. For
seventy years has he been beguiled with the promise, as
she erected one bulwark after another around slavery,
that he should have the influence of our common institn-
tions. I claim it to-day. Never, with my consent, while
the North thinks that the Union can or shall mean justice,
shall those four hundred thousand South Carolina slaves
go beyond the influence of Boston ideas, That is my
strong reason for clinging to the Union. This is also one
main reason why, unless upon most imperatice und mani
fest grounds of need and right, South Carolina has no
right of revolution; none till she fulfils her promise in
this respect.

I know how we stand to-day, with the frowning cannon
of the English fleet ready to be thrust out of the port-holes
against us. But I can answer England with a better an-
swer than William H. Seward ean write. I can answer
her with a more statesmanlike paper than Simon Cameron
can indite. I would answer her with the Stars and Stripes
floating over Charleston and New Orleans, and the itiner-
ant Cabinet of Richmond packing up archives and wearing-
apparel to ride back to Montgomery. There is one thing, |
and only one, which John Bull respects, and that is su |
cess, It is not for us to give counsel to the government |
on points of diplomatic propriety; but I suppose we may |
express our opinion ; and my opinion is, that, if I were the
President of these thirty-four States, while I was, I should
want Mason and Slidell to stay with me. I say, thet
first, as a matter of justice to the slave, we owe it to him;
tle day of his deliverance has come. The long promis
of seventy years is to be fulfilled, The South draws back

THE WAR FOR THE UNION, 443

from the pledge. The North is bound, in honor of the
memory of her fathers, to demand its exact fulfilment, and
in order to save this Union, which now means justice and
peace, to recognize the rights of four millions of its vic-
tims. This is the dictate of justice ;—justice, which at
this hour is craftier than Seward, more statesmanlike than
Cameron ; justice, which uppeals from the cabinets of
Europe to the people ; justice, which abases the proud
and lifts up the humble ; justice, which disarms England,
saves the slaves from insurrection, and sends home the
Confederate army of the Potomac to guard its own
hearths; justice, which gives us four millions of friends,
spies, soldiers in the enemy’s country, planted each one
at their very hearth-sides ; justice, which inscribes every
cannon with ‘“ Holiness to the Lord!” and puts a North-
ern heart behind every musket ; justice, which means
yictory now and peace forever. To all cry of demagogues
asking for boldness, I respond with the ery of “Justice,
immediate, absolute justice!" And if I dared to descend
to a lower level, I should say to the merchants of this
metropolis, Demand of the government a speedy settle-
ment of this question, Every hour of delay is big with
risk. Remember, as Governor Boutwell suggests, that
our present financial prosperity comes because we have
corn to export in place of cotton ; and that another year,
should Europe have a good harvest and we an ordinary
one, while an inflated currency tempts extravagance and
large imports, general bankruptcy stares us in the face.
Do you love the Union? Do you really think that on the
other side of the Potomac are the natural brothers and
customers of the manuficturing ingenuity of the North ?
Ttell you, certain as fate, God has written the safety of
that relation in the same scroll with justice to the negro.
‘The hour strikes. You may win him to your side; you
may anticipate the South; you may save twelve millions

THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 445

“Longed and struggled and begged to be admitted into
the purtnership of tyrants, and they were kicked out!”
And the South would spring into the same arena, bearing
on-her brow, —* She flung away what she thought gain-
fal and honest, in order to gain her independence!” A
record better than the gold of California or all the brains
of the Yankee.

Righteousness is preservation. You who are not Aboli-
tionists do not come to this question as I did,—from an
interest in these four millions of black men. I came on
this platform from sympathy with the negro. I acknowl
edge it. You come to this question from an idolatrous
regard for the Constitution of '89. But here we stand.
‘On the other side of the ocean is England, holding out,
not I think a threat of war,—TI do not fear it, — but
holding out to the South the intimation of a willingness,
if she will but change her garments, and make herself
decent, [laughter,] to take her in charge, and give
Ther assistance and protection. There stands England,
the most selfish and treacherous of modern governments.
[Loud and long-continued cheers.] On the other side of
the Potomac stands a statesmanship, urged by personal
‘and selfish interests, which cannot be matched, and be-
‘tween them they have but one object,—it is in the end
to divide the Union,

Hitherto the negro has been a hated question. The
Union moved majestic on its path, and shut him out,
eclipsing him from the sun of equality and happiness. He
has changed his position to-day. He now stands between
‘us and the sun of our safety and prosperity, and you and
1 are together on the same platform,—the same plank,
—our object to save the institutions which our fathers
planted. Save them in the service of justice, in the ser-
‘vice of peace, in the service of liberty; and in that service
demand of the government at Washington that they shall

—

446 THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

mature and announce a purpose, That flag lowered at
Sumter, that flight at Bull Run, will rankle in the heart
of the republic for centuries. Nothing will ever medicine
that wound but the government announcing to the world
that it knows well whence came its trouble, and is deter-
mined to effect its cure, and, consecrating the banner to
liberty, to plant it on the shores of the Gulf, [Applause.]
I say in the service of the negro; but I do not forget the
white man, the eight millions of poor whites, thinking
themselves our enemies, but who are really our friends.
‘Their interests are identical with our own, An Alabama
slaveholder, sitting with me a year or two ago, said: —

“In our northern counties they are your friends. A man owns
one slave or two slaves, and he eats with them, and sleeps in the
same room (they have but one), as much as ® hired man hers
eats with the farmer he serves. There is no difference. They
‘are too poor to send their sons North for education. They have
no newspapers, and they know nothing but what they are told by
us. If you could get at them, they would be on your side, but
we mean you never shall.” <

Tn Paris there are one hundred thousand men whom
caricature or epigram can at any time raise to barricade
the streets, Whose fault is it that such men exist? The
government’s; and the government under which such a
mass of ignorance exists deserves to be barricaded. The
government under which eight millions of people exist, so
ignorant that two thousand politicians and a hundred thou-
sand aristocrats can pervert them into rebellion, deserves
to be rebelled against. In the service of those men I
mean, for one, to try to fulfil the pledge my fathers made
when they said, “We will guarantee to every State a
republican form of government.” [Applause.] A privi-
leged class, grown strong by the help and forbearance of
the North, plots the establishment of aristocratic govern—
ment in form as well as essence, —conspires to rob the

THE WAR FOR THE UNION. AMT

non-claveholders of their civil rights. This is just the
danger our national pledge was meant to meet, Our
fathers’ honor, national good faith, the cause of free in-
stitutions, the peace of the continent, bid us fulfil this
pledge, —insist on using the right it gives us to preserve
the Union.

I mean to fulfil the pledge that free institutions shall be
preserved in the several States, and I demand it of the
government, I would have them, therefore, announce to
the world what they have never yet done. I do not won
der at the want of sympathy on the part of England with
us. The South says, “I am fighting for slavery.” The
North says, “I am not fighting against it.” Why should
England interfere? The people have nothing on which
to hang their sympathy.

T would have government announce to the world that
we understand the evil which has troubled our peace for
seventy years, thwarting the natural tendency of our in-
stitutions, sending ruia along our wharves and through
our workshops every ten years, poisoning the national
conscience. We know well its character. But Democ-
racy, unlike other governments, is strong enough to let
evils work out their own death,—strong enough to face
them when they reveal their proportions. It was in this
sublime consciousness of strength, not of weakness, that
our fathers submitted to the well-known evil of slavery,
and tolerated it until the viper we thought we could safely
tread on, at the touch of disappointment, starts up a fiend
whose stature reaches the sky. But our cheeks do not
Ilanch. Democracy accepts the struggle. After this for-
hearance of three generations, confident that she has yet
power to execute her will, she sends her proclamation
down to the Gulf, — Freedom to every man beneath the
Stars, and death to every institution that disturbs our
peace or threatens the future of the republic.

—-

THE CABINET,*

T QUITE agree with the view which my friend (Rev.
M. D, Conway) takes of the present situation of the
country, and of our fatare, I have no hope, as he has not,
that the intelligent purpose of our government will ever
find us a way out of this war, I think, if we find any
way out of it, we are to stumble out of it by the gradual
education of the people, making their own way on, a great
mass, without leaders, I do not think that anything
which we can call the government has any purpose to get

rid of slavery. On the contrary, I think the present pur-
pose of the government, so far as it has now a purpose, is

to end the war and save slavery. I believe Mr, Lincoln

is conducting this war, at present, with the purpose of

e of policy, so far
indications of any policy reach us. The
Abolitionists are charged with a desire to make this a po-
litical war, All civil wars are necessarily political wars,
—they can hardly be anything else. Mr. Lincoln is in-
tentionally waging a political war, He knows as well as

we do at this moment, as well as every man this side ofa —
Innatic hospital knows, that, if he wants to save lives and —
money, the way to end this war is to strike at slavery. I=
do not believe that McClellan himself is mad or idiotie=——
enough to have avoided that idea, even if he has tried tom

* Speech at Abington, in the Grove, August 1, 1862,

‘THE CABINET, 449

do so. But General McClellan is waging a political war;
so is Mr. Lincoln. When General Butler ordered the
women and children to be turned out of the camps at New
Orleans, and one of the colonels of the Northwest remon-
strated, and hid himself in his tent, rather than witness the
misery which the order occasioned, — when the slavehold-
ers came to receive the women and children who were to
be turned out of the camps, and the troops actually
eharged upon them with bayonets to keep them out of
the line, —General Butler knew what he was doing, It
‘was not to save rations, it was not to get rid of individ-
uals ; it was to conciliate New Orleans. It was a political
move. When Mr. Lincoln, by an equivocal declaration,
nullifies General Hunter, he does not do it because he
doubts either the justice or the efficiency of Hunter's
proclamation ; he does it because he is afraid of Kentucky
on the right hand, and the Daily Advertiser on the left.
[Laughter.] He has not taken one step since he entered
the Presidency that has been a purely military step, and
he could not. A civil war can hardly be anything but a
political war. That is, all civil wars are a struggle be-
tween opposite ideas, and armies are but the tools, If
Mr. Lincoln believed in the North and in Liberty, he
would let our army act on the principles of Liberty. He
does not. He believes in the South as the most efficient
and vital instrumentality at the present moment, therefore
defers to it. I had a friend who went to Port Royal,
went among the negro huts, and saw the pines that were
growing between them shattered with shells and cannon-
balls. He said to the negroes, “When those balls came,
were you here?" “Yes.” “Didn't yourun?” “No,
massa, we knew they were not meant for us." Tt was a
sublime, childlike faith in the justice, the providence, of
the Almighty. Every Southern traitor on the other side
of the Potomae can say of McClellan’s cannon-ball, if he
29

—

450 THE CABINET.

ever fires one, “ We know it is not meant for us.” Fur
they know he is fighting political war, as all of us must;
the only question is, In the service of which political idex
shall the war be waged,—in the service of saving the
Union as it was, or the Union as it ought tobe? Mr.
Lincoln dare not choose between these two phrases. He
is waging a war which he dare not describe, in the service
of a political idea that he dare not shape into words. He
is not fighting vigorously and heartily enough even to get
good terms in case of a treaty, —not to talk of victory.
All savages call clemency cowardice; they respect noth-
ing but force. The Southern barbarians mistake elem-
ency for cowardice; and every act of Lincoln, which he
thinks is conciliation, they take for evidence of his con-
ardice, or his distrust. I do not say that McClellan isa
traitor, but I say this, that if he had been a traitor from
the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he could not
have served the South better than he has done since he
was commander-in-chief [applause]; he could not have
carried on the war in more exact deference to the polities
of that side of the Union. And almost the same thing may
be said of Mr. Lincoln, — that if he had been a traitor, he
could not have worked better to strengthen one side, and
hazard the success of the other. There is more danger
to-day that Washington will be taken than Richmond.
Washington is besieged more truly than Richmond is.
After fifteen months of war, such is the position of the
strongest nation on the globe; for the nineteen Northern
States, led by a government which serves their ideas, are
the strongest nation on the face of the globe. Now, I
think, and if I were in the Senate I should have said to
the government, that every man who under the present
policy loses his life in the swamps of the South, and every
dollar sent there to be wasted, only prolongs a murderous==
and wasteful war, waged for no purpose whatever, ‘Thiam

‘THE CABINET. 451

is my meaning, In this war, mere victory on a battle-
field amounts to nothing, contributes little or nothing
toward ending the war. If our present policy led to de-
cisive victories, therefore, (which it does not,) it would be
worth little. The war ean only be ended by annihilating
that oligarchy which formed and rules the South and
makes the war, —by annihilating a state of society, No
social state is really annihilated, except when it is replaced
hy another, Our present policy neither aims to annihilate
that state of things we call “the South,” made up of
pride, idleness, ignorance, barbarism, theft, and murder,
nor to replace it with a substitute. Such an aimless war
T call wasteful and murderous. Better that that South
should go to-day, than that we should prolong such a war.
To keep 500,000 men in the field, we must have 560,000
men on the rolls, for there are 58,000 or 60,000 men
“necessarily invalid in an army of half a million; and to
Keep that 560,000 good, you must have a fresh recruiting
every year of 123,000 men. This nation is to give, year
by year, while this war lasts, 123,000 men to the army,
and that number are to fall out of the ranks, according to
the experience of the last sixteen months, by death either
from disease or the sword; or, if not death, then wounds
s0 serious as to make a man’s life only a burden to him-
self and the community. A hundred and twenty-three
thonsand men a year, and, I suppose, a million of dollars
a day, and a government without a purpose !

You say, “Why not end the war?” We cannot.
Jefferson said of slavery, “We have got the wolf by
the ears; we can neither hold him nor let him go.” That
was his figure We have now got the South—this wolf
—by the ears; we must hold her; we cannot let her go.
There is to be no peace on this continent, as I believe,
until these thirty States are united. You and I may live
to be seventy years old; we shall never see peace on this

462 THE CABINET.

continent until we see one flag from the Lakes to the
Gulf, and we shall never see it until slavery is eliminated
from the institutions of these States. Let the South go
to-morrow, and you have not got peace, Intestine war
here, border war along the line, aggression and intrigue
on the part of the South! She has lived with us for
seventy years, and kept us constantly in turmoil. Exas-
perated by suffering, grown haughty by success, the mo-
ment she goes off, is such a neighbor likely to treat us any
better, with our imaginary line between us, than she hus
treated us for seventy years while she held the sceptre?
The moment we ask for terms, she counts it victory, and
the war in another shape goes on. You and I are never
to see peace, we are never to see the possibility of putting
the army of this nation, whether it be made up of nine-
teen or thirty-four States, on a peace footing, until slavery
is destroyed. A large army, immense expenses, a fureign
party encamped among us, a despotie government, msitig
necessarily despotic war powers, — that is the future until
slavery is destroyed. As long as you keep a tortoise at
the head of the government, you are digging a pit with
one hand and filling it with the other. The war means
digging a pit with your two hands, and filling it up with
the lives of your sons and the accumulations of your
fathers, Now, therefore, until this nation announces, it
some form or other, that this is a war, not against Jeffer
son Davis, but against the system; until the whole mation
indorses the resolution of the New York Chamber of
Commerce, “ Better every rebel die than one loyal
soldier,” [applause,] and begs of the government, de
mands of the government, to speak that word which i
victory and peace, — until we do that, we shall have 1?
prospect of peace.

I do not believe in the government. T agree entirely
with Mr. Conway. I do not believe this government bit

THE CABINET. 453

got either vigor or a purpose, It drifts with events. If
Jefferson Davis is a sane man, if he is a sagacious man,
and has the power to control his army, he will never
let it take Washington ; for he knows as well as we do,
that shelling the dome of that Capitol to ashes, that the
Capitol in flames or surmounted with the rebel flag, would.
be the fiery cross to melt the North into unity, and to
demand emancipation. [Applause.] We are paying a
million of dollars a day for soldiers to dig ditehes in the
Chickahominy swamps, but the best expense we could be
pat to would be to lose the marble Capitol under the shells
of Beauregard; for the very telegraph that flashed the
news North and West would go back laden with the
demand that if, in the providence of God, Lincoln had
survived the bombardment of Washington, and Hamlin
was not President, —which I wish he were, — he should
proclaim emancipation. Possibly that would make even
him over into an Abolitionist. Ido not believe that Jef-
ferson Davis, while he is able to control his forces, will
ever allow them to take Washington. He wants time.
Tf we float on until the 4th of March, 1863, England
could hardly be blamed if she did acknowledge the South.
A very fair argument could be urged, on principles of
international law, that she onght to do it. The South
will have gone far to prove her right to be acknowledged.
She will have maintained herself two full years against
such efforts as no nation ever made. Davis wants to tide
oyer to, that time, without rousing the North. He does
not wish any greater successes than will just keep us
where we are, and allow Europe to see the South strong,
Vigorous, and the North only her equal. One such move
as that on Washington, “and the South would kick the
beam. He knows it. If any man has light enough on
the future to pray God to do any particular thing, I advise
him to pray for an attack on Washington and its capture,

454 THE CABINET.

for nothing less than that seems likely, within a fow
months, to wake up these Northern States to the present
emergency. But for these considerations, I see not why
Jefferson Davis should not throw all his troops y
Washington, first informing General McClellan of the
proposed attack, and demanding of him enough Federal
troops to protect the rebel property at Richmond during
Beauregard’s absence.

‘The President, judged by both proclamations that bave
followed the late confiscation act of Congress, has no mind
whatever. He has not uttered a word which gives even a
twilight glimpse of any antislavery purpose. He may be
honest, —nobody cares whether the tortoise is honest or
not; he has neither insight, nor prevision, nor decision.
It is said in Washington streets that he long ago wrote a
proclamation abolishing slavery in the State of Virginia,
but McClellan bullied him out of it. It is said, too,—
what is extremely probable, — that he has more than
once made up his mind to remove McClellan, and Ken-
tucky bullied him out of it. The man who has been
beaten to that pulp in sixteen months, what hope can we
have of him? None. There is no ground for any ex-
pectations from this government. We are to pray for
such blows as will arouse the mass of the people inte
‘ic, matured, intelligent interference in the action
of the government. When I was here a year ago, T said
TI thought the President needed the advice of great bodies
of prominent men, That has taken a year. The New
York Chamber of Commerce, the Common Council, and
the Defence Committee, have just led the way. Some of
the Western Councils have followed, it is said. Let us =
hope that the have decisive effect at Washington ; =
but T do not b T do not believe there ism
in that Cabinet — Seward, Chase, Stanton, Wells, or tho==
President of the country — enough to make a leaders) Ie

systen

THE CABINET 455,

McClellan should capitulate in his swamp, if Johnston
should take Washington, if Butler should be driven out of
New Orleans, if those ten fabulous iron ships from Eng-
Jand at Mobile could be turned into realities, and Palm-
erston acknowledge the Confederacy, I should have hope ;
for I do not believe these nineteen millions of people mean
to he beaten ; and if they do, I do not believe they can
afford to be beaten. I think, when we begin to yield,
the South will demand such terms as even the Boston
Courier cannot get low enough to satisfy them. [Laugh-
ter and applause.] Yon do not know the sublime impu-
dence and haughtiness of the tyrants of the South. You
have not yet measured the terms which Jefferson Davis
will impose upon the North, when, if ever, it proposes
accommodation. The return of fugitives, the suppression
of antislayery discussion, monopoly of the Mississippi, sur-
render of some Border States,—a thousand things that
would make the yoke too heavy to be borne. I never did
believe in the capacity of Abraham Lincoln, but I do
believe in the pride of Davis, in the vanity of the South,
in the desperate determination of those fourteen States ;
and I believe in a sunny future, because God has driven
them mad; and their madness is our safety, They will
never consent to anything that the North can grant; and
you must whip them, because, unless you do, they will
grind you to powder.

This war is to go on. There will be drafting in three
months or six. The hunker, when he is obliged to go to
war, will be like the man of whom Mr, Conway told us,
who was willing to sit by a negro in the cars rather than
stand all night, —he will be willing that the negro shall
fight, with him or without him. That is a part of the logie
of events which will be very effective ; but even that will
not make Lincoln declare for emancipation, We shall wait
one year or two, if we wait for him, before we get it. In

456 THE CABINET.

the mean time what an expense of blood and’ treasure euch
day! It is a terrible expense that democracy pays for its
mode of government. If we lived in England now, if we
lived in France now, a hundred mén, convinced of the
exigency of the moment, would carry the nation here or
there. It is the royal road, short, sharp, and stern, like
the 2d of December, with Napoleon’s cannon enfilading
every street in Paris. Democracy, when it moves, has te
carry tie whole people with it. The minds of nineteen
millions of people are to be changed and educated. Min-
isters and politicians have been preaching to them that the
negro will not fight, that he is a nuisance, that slavery is
an ordination of God, that the North ought to bar him out
with statutes, The North wakes up, its heart poisoned, its
hands paralyzed with these ideas, and says to its tortoise
President, “Save us, but not through the negro!” Yon
do not yet believe in the negro. The papers are aceumu~
lating statistics to prove that the negro will work, and
asking whether he will fight, If he will not fight, we are
gone, that is all! If he will not work without the lash,
the Union is over. If the hunker theory is correct, there
can be no peace nor union on this continent, except under
the heel of a slaveholding despotism. Tt is not the South

to conquer; it is the Egypt of the Southern half
33 iti in the editor's chair of the Boston
Courier [merriment]; it is the lump of unbaked dough,
with no vitality except hatred of Charles Sumner, which
sits in the editorial chair of the Daily Advertiser fap-
planse] ; it is the man who goes down to Virginia with
the army, and thinks he goes there to wateh the house
of General Lee, and make the slaves work for him, while
the master has gone to Corinth or to Richmond. These
are the real enemies of the republic; and if Lincoln could
be painted, as Vanity Fair once painted him, like Sinbad
with the Old Man of the Sea on his shoulders, it should be

THE CABINET. A5T

these conservative elements weighing down the heart and
the purpose of your President that the limner should pre-
sent, If we go to the bottom, it will be because we have,
in the providence of God, richly deserved it. It is the
pro-slavery North that is her own greatest enemy. Lin-
coln would act, if he believed the North wanted him to.
The North, by an overwhelming majority, is ready to have
him act, will indorse and support anything he does, yes,
hopes he will go forward, True, it is not yet ripe enough
to demand ; but it is fully willing, indeed waits, for action,
With chronic Whig distrust and ignorance of the people,
Lincoln halts and fears. Our friend Conway has fairly
painted him. He is not a genius; he is not aman like
Fremont, to stamp the lava mass of the nation with an
idea; he is not a man like Hunter, to coin his experience
into ideas. I will tell you what he is. He is a first-rate
second-rate man. [Laughter.] He is one of the best
specimens of a second-rate man, and he is honestly wait-
ing, like any other servant, for the people to come and
send him on any errand they wish. In ordinary times,
when the seas are calm, you can sail without a pilot, —
almost any one can avoid a sunken ledge that the sun
shows him on his right hand, and the reef that juts out
on his left; but it is when the waves smite heaven, and
the thunder-cloud makes the waters ink, that you need a
pilot; and to-day the nation’s bark scuds, under the tem-
pest, lee-shore and maelstrom on each side, needing no
holiday captain, but a pilot, to weather the storm. Mr.
Conway thinks we are to ride on a couple of years, and
get one. I doubt it. Democracy jis poisoning its fangs.
Tt is making its way among the ballot-boxes of the
nation. I doubt whether our next Congress will be as
good as the last. That is not saying much, I doubt
whether there will be such a weight of decided Repub-
licanism in it as there was in the last Congress. I

458 THE CABINET.

should be afraid to commit to the nation to-day the choice

of a President. What we want is some stunning misfor-
tune; what we want is a baptism of blood, to make the
aching and bereaved hearts of the people ery out for Fre=
mont, for an idea, at the head of the armies. [Applause.]
Meanwhile, we must wander on in the desert, wasteful
murderers. Every life lost in that swamp is murder by

the Cabinet at Washington. Every dollar spent is stolen
from the honest toil of the North, to pamper the conceited
pride of the South in her own institution. Whose fault?
Largely ours, —not wholly Lincoln's. He is as good as

the average North, but not a leader, which is what we
need, In yonder grove, July after July, in years just past,

the Whigs of this Commonwealth lavished their money

to fire guns once every minute to smother the speeches
that were made on our platform. You remember it. The

sons of those men are dying in the South because their
fathers smothered the message which, heeded, might haye=
saved this terrible lesson to the nation. [Sensation.] Who
shall say that God is not holding to their lips the cup which==s
they poisoned? That Massachusetts is to be made oyer===
again, and, under competent leaders, hurled as a thunder-—
bolt against the rebellion, We are not to shrink from the==
idea that this is a political war: it must be. But its poli—=
tics is a profound faith in God and the people, in justio==*
and liberty, as the eternal safety of nations as well as ofa!
men. [Applouse.] It is of that Lincoln should make hi== =
politics, planting the corner-stone of the new Union in tha==—"
equality of every man before the law, and justice to sl al!
races. [Renewed applause.] If military necessity dic==!
not call for a million of blacks in the army, civil necesita
would dictate it. Slavery, instead of being a dreadecoa!
perplexity, something we are to wail over, is a God-givee=™
weapon, a glorious opportunity, a sword rough-ground b=
God, and ready every moment for our use. The nation,

THE CABINET. 459

the most stupid in it,—all but the traitors, —know and
confess that to abolish it would end the rebellion. Thus,
therefore, God gives us knowledge, keeps for us the weapon ;
all we need ask for is courage to use it, I say, there-
fore, as Mr. Conway did, cease believing in the Cabinet ;
there is nothing there for you. Pray God that, before he
abandons this nation, he will deign to humble it by one
blow that shall make it spring to its feet, and use the
strength it has. Beseech him to put despair into the
hearts of the Cabinet. If we are ever called to see an-
other President of the United States on horseback flying
from his Capital, waste no tears! He will return to that
Capital on the arms of a million of adult negroes, the sure
basis of a Union which will never be broken. [Applause.]

T like some of the signs of the times. I like the resolu-
tions of the New York Chamber of Commerce. I like
the article from Wilkes's Spirit of the Times, bidding us
criticise McClellan, and no longer believe that Napoleons
are made of mud. [Laughter.] I think the two poles of
popular influence have been struck; the young men, the
sporting men, the fast men, the dissipated men, the New
York Herald's constituency, and the commercial class, the
merchants and bankers of the great metropolis. The thirty
thousand copies of Wilkes which are circulated every week
haye a mighty influence, When its readers begin to be-
Tieve that McClellan is made of mud, it is a bright sign.
Do not look to the Capital. We did think there was some-
thing in Stanton; there may be; but he is overslaughed,
he is eclipsed, he has gone into retirement behind Seward.
‘The policy which prevails at Washington is to do nothing,
and wait for events. I asked the lawyers of Illinois, who
hiad practised law with Mr, Lincoln for twenty years, “Ts
he a man of decision, is he a man who can say no?” ‘They
all said: “If you had gone to the Illinois bar, and selected
the man least capable of saying no, it would have been

i“

THE CABINET. 461

if, twenty years hence, he renders up an account of his
stewardship to his country, you that live, mark me! will
see him confess that this whole winter he never believed
in McClellan’s ability. That is the sore spot in the char-
acter of an otherwise honest officer, and that is where this
fear of conservatism sends him. Mr. Wickliffe of Ken-
tucky and Mr. Davis of Kentucky put their feet down
and say, “Do this, and the Border States leave you.”
There is not a Republican at the North who will be al-
Towed to say it. Governor Andrew lisped it once, in his
letter to Secretary Stanton, and how few, except the
Abbolitionists, dared to stand by him, even in Massachu-
setts! There is no public opinion that would support Mr.
Sumner, with a loyal Commonwealth behind him, in mak-
ing such a speech, once in the winter, as Garrett Davis
made every day, with a Commonwealth behind him which
has to be held in the Union by the fear of Northern bay-
omets. It is because Conservatism is bold and Republi-
canism is coward [‘ Hear! "] that Abraham Lincoln
has to stand where he does to-day. There will be no
mystery if this nation goes to pieces. It will be God
punishing it according to the measure of its sins. Ten
years ago the Whig party could have educated it, and so
postponed or averted this convulsion, It was left to pass
‘on in its career, and the South finds it divided in senti-
| ment, servile in purpose; our soldiers the servants of
rebels ; our officers, with shoulder-straps, on the soil of a
rebellious State like Virginia, more syeophantic to the
slaveholder who comes to their camp, than Webster was
in the Senate when Clay threatened him with the lash of
Sonthern insolence, fifteen years ago, If this rebellion
cannot shake the North out of her servility, God will keep
her in constant agitation until he does shake us into a self-
respecting, courageous people, fit to govern ourselves,
[Applause.] ‘This war will last just long enough to make

‘THE CABINET, 463

bloodiest war ; and behind it would be the Saxon deter-
mination, which, like that of the bull-dog, its type, will
die in the death-grapple before it yields. Old national
hate, fresh-edged and perpetuated,—untold wealth de-
stroyed, — millions of lives lost, lives of the most culti-
vated nations, — the progress of the race stopped, — chaos
come again over the fairest portion of Christendom, —
fifty millions of people, dealing such death-blows across
the Atlantic in the nineteenth century,—it is a burden
which we are to pray God he will not call upon us to bear,
—a curse from which he will graciously save civilization
and the race. On the contrary, let us hope that Southern
success may be so rapid and abundant, that a blow like
that which stuns the drunkard into sobriety may stun our
Cabinet into vigor, and that nineteen millions of people,
putting forth their real strength in the right direction,
may keep peace outside our borders until we make peace
within. [Lond applause.]

LETTER TO THE TRIBUNE.

To rae Eprror or tHe New Yore Truxe;—

IR: You misrepresent me when you say that I dis
courage enlistments in the Union armies; thongh, for
aught I know, the garbled extracts and lying versions of
New York papers may make me do that and many oiler
things I never thought of. You know, by experience,
that the American press, in general, neither tries nor
means to speak truth about Abolitionists of any type. I
have never discouraged enlistments. In the Union army
are my kindred and some of my dearest friends. Others
rest in fresh and honorable graves. No one of these ever
heard a word from me to discourage his enlisting. T hail
the honor, last March, to address the Fourteenth Massa-
chusetts at Fort Albany, and, this very week, the Thirty
third Massachusetts at Camp Cameron. No man in either
regiment heard anything from my lips to discourage his
whole-souled service of the Union.

Allow me to state my own position. From 1843 to
1861, I was a Disunionist, and sought to break this Union,
convinced that disunion was the only righteous path, and
the best one for the white man and the black. T sought
disunion, not through conspiracy and violence, but by
means which the Constitution itself warranted and pro-
tected. I rejoice in those efforts. They were wise and
useful. Sumter changed the whole question, After that,

LETTER TO THE TRIBUNE. 465

peace and justice both forbade disunion. I now believe
three things: —

1, The destruction of slavery is inevitable, whichever
section conquers in this struggle.

2. There never can be peace or union till slavery is
destroyed.

3. There never can be peace till one government rules
from the Gulf to the Lakes; and having wronged the
negro for two centuries, we owe him the preservation of
the Union to guard his transition from slavery to freedom,
and make it short, easy, and perfect.

Believing these three things, I accept Webster's senti-
ment, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable.” Gladly would I serve that Union, — giving
it musket, sword, voice, pen,—the best I have. But
the Union which has for twenty-five years barred me
from its highest privileges by demanding an oath to a pro-
slavery Constitution, still shuts that door in my face; and
this administration still clings to a policy which, I think,
makes every life now lost in Virginia, and every dollar
now spent there, utter wasfe. I cannot conscientiously
support such a Union and administration. But there is
room for honest difference of opinion. Others can support
it. To such I say, Go; give to the Union your best
blood, your heartiest support.

Ts there, then, no place left for me? Yes. I believe
in the Union. But government and the Union are one
thing. This administration is quite another. Whether
the administration will ever pilot us through our troubles,
T have serious doubts: that it never will, unless it changes
its present policy, I am quite certain. Where, then, is my
place under a republican government which only reflects
and executes public opinion? I believe in getting through
this war by the machinery of regular government, not by
any Cromwell stalking into the Senate-Chamber or the

466 LETTER TO THE TRIDUNE.

White House. Where, then, is my post, especially under

an administration that avowedly sits waiting, begging to

be told what todo? I must educate, arouse, and mature
a public opinion which shall compel the administration to
adopt and support it in pursuing the policy I can aid.
This I do by frankly and candidly criticising its present
policy, civil and military. However “inapt and objec-
tionable” you may think my “means, they are exactly
described in your own words: “The good citizen may
owe his government counsel, entreaty, admonition, to
abandon a mistaken policy, as well as force to sustain it in
the discharge of its great responsibilities.” No adminis-
tration can demand of a citizen to sacrifice his conseience,
and the limits within which he is bound to sacrifice his
opinion are soon reached. If the press had not systemati—
cally eulogized a general, whom none knew, and few
really trusted, we should have saved twelve months, five
hundred millions of dollars, and a hundred thousand lives.
In my opinion, had the Tribune continued, last Auguste
todo its duty and demand vigor of the government, you
would have changed or controlled the Cabinet in another
month, and saved us millions of dollars, thousands of lives,
and untold disgrace. Such riticism is always every”
thinking man’s duty. War excuses no man from this
duty: least of all now, when a change of public sentiment,
to lead the administration to and support it in a new
policy, is our only hope of saving the Union. ‘The Union
belongs to me as much as to Abraham Lincoln, What
right has he or any official — our servants—to claim that
I shall cease criticising his mistakes, when they are drag-

ging the Union to ruin? I find grave faults in President

Lineoln ; but I do not believe he makes any such claim.

I said on the 1st of August, that, had I been in the
Senate, I should have refused the administration a dollar
ora man until it adopted a right policy. That I mepeat

=a _ll

LETTER TO THE TRIBUNE. AGT

Had I been, in that way, a part of the government, I
should have tried so to control its action, You were bound
as a journalist, I think, to have impressed that duty on the
Republican party which holds the administration, Such
a course is right and proper under free governments.
But when Congress has decided, and under its authority,
or by his own, the President demands soldiers, the hour
for such effort or protest is gone. We have no right now
to “discourage enlistments,” as a means to change public
opinion, or to influence the administration. Our remedy
is different. If we cannot actively aid,,we must submit to
the penalty, and strive meanwhile to change that public
thought which alone can alter the action of government.

That duty I try to doin my measure. My criticism is
not, like that of the traitor presses, meant to paralyze the
administration, but to goad it to more activity and vigor,
or to change the Cabinet. I claim of you, as a journalist
of broad influence, that you resume the post which I think
you deserted last summer, and hasten the ripening of that
necessary public purpose by constant and fearless criticism
of the whole policy of the administration, civil and mili-
tary, in order to avert years of war, to save thousands of
lives, to guard the industry of the future from grinding
taxes, to secure speedy and complete justice for the negro,
and to put the Union beyond hazard.

Respectfully yours,
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
“Angust 16, 1862.

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.*

ADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I have been re

quested to offer you a sketch made some years since,
of one of the most remarkable men of the last generation,
—the great St. Domingo chief, Toussaint 'Onvertur,
an unmixed negro, with no drop of white blood in his
veins. My sketch is at once a biography and an argu-
ment,—a biography, of course very brief, of a negro
soldier and statesman, which I offer you as an argument
in behalf of the race from which he sprung. I nm about
to compare and weigh races; indeed, I am engaged to
night in what you will think the absurd effort to convince
you that the negro race, instead of being that object of
pity or contempt which we usually consider it, is entitled,
judged by the facts of history, to a place close by the side
of the Saxon. Now races love to be judged in two ways
—pby the great men they produce, and by the average
merit of the mass of the race. We Saxons are proud of
Bacon, Shakespeare, Hampden, Washington, Franklin
the stars we have lent to the galaxy of history ; and then
we turn with equal pride to the average merit of Saxon
blood, since it streamed from its German home, S0
again, there are three by which races love to be
tried, The first, the basis of all, is courage, —the ele-
ment which says, here and to-day, “This continent is

* Lecture delivered in New York and Boston, December, 1861,

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 469

mine, from the Lakes to the Gulf: let him beware who
secks to divide it!” [Cheers.] And the second is the
recognition that force is doubled by purpose ; liberty
regulated by law is the secret of Saxon progress. And
the third element is persistency, endurance; first a pur-
pose, then death or success, Of these three elements is
made that Saxon pluck which has placed our race in the
yan of modern civilization.

In the hour you lend me to-night, I attempt the Quis-
otic effort to convince you that the negro blood, instead of
standing at the bottom of the list, is entitled, if judged
either by its great men or its masses, either by its courage,
its purpose, or its endurance, to a place as near ours as
any other blood known in history, And, for the purpose
‘of my argument, I take an island, St. Domingo, about the
size of South Carolina, the third spot in America upon
which Columbus placed his foot. Charmed by the mag-
nificence of its scenery and fertility of its soil, he gave it
the fondest of all names, Hispaniola, Little Spain, His
suecestor, more pious, rebaptized it from St. Dominic, St.
Domingo ; and when the blacks, in 1803, drove our white
Blood from its surface, they drove our names wi:h us, and
Began the year 1804 under the old name, Hayéi, the land
of mountains. It was originally tenanted by filibusters,
French and Spanish, of the early commercial epochs, the
pirates of that day as of ours. The Spanish took the
eastern two thirds, the French the western third of the
island, and they gradually settled into colonies. The
French, to whom my story belongs, became the pet colony
of the mother land. Guarded by peculiar privileges,
enriched by the scions of wealthy houses, aided by the
unmatched fertility of the soil, it soon was the richest gem
in the Bourbon crown ; and at the period to which I call
your attention, about the era of our Constitution, 1789,
its wealth was almost incredible, The effeminacy of the

470 TOUSSAINT [/OUVERTURE.

white race rivalled that of the Sybarite of antiquity, while
the splendor of their private life outshone Versailles, and
their luxury found no mate but in the mad prodigality of
the Cesars. At this time the island held about thirty
thousand whites, twenty or thirty thousand mulattoes,
and five hundred thousand slaves. The slaye-trade was
active. About twenty-five thousand slaves were im-
ported annually; and this only sufficed to fill the gap
which the murderous cultare of sugar annually pro
duced. The mulattoes, as with us, were children of
the slaveholders, but, unlike us, the French slaveholder~
never forgot his child by a bondwoman, He gave hime
everything but his name, — wealth, rich plantations
gangs of slaves; sent him to Paris for his educationo-
summoned the best culture of France for the instrac——
tion of his daughters, so that in 1790 the mulatto race==
held one third of the real estate and one quarter of the
personal estate of the island. But though educated ane
rich, he bowed under the same yoke as with us. Sulee—
jected to special taxes, he could hold no public office, ancl,
if convicted of any crime, was punished with double
severity. His son might not sit on the sume seat at schommel
witha white boy; he might not enter a church where a
white man was worshipping; if he reached a town Comm
horseback, he must dismount and lead his horse by tiie
bridle ; aud when he died, even his dust could not rest
the same soil with a white body. Such was the whim t
race and the mulatto, —the thin film of a civilization Lee
neath which surged the dark mass of five hundred thes-u-
sand slaves,

Tt was over such a population, —the white man mele=ed
in sensuality ; the mulatto feeling all the more keenly Huis
degradation from the very wealth and culture he enjaye=d;
the slave, sullen and indifferent, heeding not the quarrels
or the changes of the upper air, — it was over this poya-

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 471

lation that there burst, in 1789, the thunder-storm of the
French Revolution. The first words which reached the
island were the motto of the Jacobin Club, —* Liberty,
Equality.” The white man heard them aghast. He had
read of the streets of Paris running blood. The slave
heard them with indifference; it was a quarrel in the
upper air, between other races, which did not concern
lum. The mulatto heard them with a weleome which no
dread of other classes could quell. Hastily gathered into
conventions, they sent to Paris a committee of the whole
body, laid at the feet of the National Convention the free
gift of six millions of francs, pledged one fifth of their
annual rental toward the payment of the national debt,
and.only asked in return that this yoke of civil and social
contempt should be lifted from their shoulders.

You may easily imagine the temper in which Mirabean
and Lafayette welcomed this munificent gift of the free
mulattoes of the West Indies, and in which the petition
for equal civil rights was received by a body which had
just resolved that all men were equal. ‘The Convention
hastened to express its gratitude, and issued a decree which
commences thus: “ All freeborn French citizens are equal
before the law.” Ogé was selected —the friend of La-
fayette, a lieutenant-colonel in the Dutch service, the son of
‘a wealthy mulatto woman, educated in Paris, the comrade
of all the leading French Republicans —to carry the decree
and the message of French Democracy to the island. He
landed. The decree of the National Convention was laid
on the table of the General Assembly of the island. One
old planter seized it, tore it in fragments, and trampled it
under his feet, swearing by all the saints in the calendar
that the island might sink before they would share their
rights with bastards. They took an old mulatto, worth a
million, who had simply asked for his rights under that
decree, and hung him. A white lawyer of seventy, who

472 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE,

drafted the petition, they hung at his side. ‘They took
Ogé, broke him on the wheel, ordered him to be drawn
and quartered, and one quarter of his body to be hung up
in each of the four principal cities of the island ; and then
they adjourned.

You can conceive better than I can describe the mood
in which Mirabeau and Danton received the news that
their decree had been torn in pieces and trampled under
foot by the petty legislature of an island colony, and their
comrade drawn and quartered by the orders of its Gor
ernor, Robespierre rushed to the tribune and shouted,
“Perish the colonies rather than sacrifice one jota of our
principles! ‘The Convention reaffirmed their decree, and
sent it out a second time to be exeented.

But it was not then as now, when steam has married the
continents. It took months to communicate ; and while
this news of the death of Ogé and the defiance of the Ni-
tional Convention was going to France, and the answer
returning, great events had taken place in the ishind itself:
The Spanish or the eastern section, perceiving these divie
ions, invaded the towns of the western, and conquered
many of its cities. One half of the slaveholders were
Republicasis, in love with the new constellation which had
just gone up in our Northern sky, seeking to be admitted
a State in this Republic, plotting for annexation. The
other half were loyalists, anxious, deserted as they sup-
posed themselves by the Bourbons, to make alliance with
George III, They sent to Jamaica, and entreated its
Governor to assist them in their intrigue. At first, he
lent them only a few hundred soldiers. Some time later,
General Howe and Admiral Parker were sent with sey-
eral thousand men, and finally, the English government
entering more seriously into the plot, General Maitland
landed with four thousand Englishmen on the north aide
of the island, and gained many successes. ‘The mulattott

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 473

were in the moun awaiting events. They distrusted
the government, which a few years before they had assisted
to put down an insurrection of the whites, and which had
forfeited its promise to grant them civil privileges. De-
serted by both sections, Blanchelande, the Governor, had
left the capital, and fled for refuge to a neighboring city.
To this state of affairs, the second decree reached the
island. The whites forgot their quarrel, sought out
Blanchelande, and obliged him to promise that he never
would publish the decree. Affrighted, the Governor con-
sented to that course, and they left him, He then began
to reflect that in reality he was deposed, that the Bour-
bons had lost the sceptre of the island, He remembered
his suecessful appeal to the mulattoes, five years before, to
put down an insurrection. Deserted now by the whites
and by the mulattoes, only one force was left him in the
island, —that was the blacks; they had always remembered
with gratitude the code noir, black code, of Louis XIV.,
the first interference of any power in their behalf. To
the blacks Blanchelande appealed. He sent a deputation
to the slaves. He was aided by the agents of Count
d' Artois, afterward Charles X., who was seeking to do in
St. Domingo what Charles II. did in Virginia, (whence
its name of Old Dominion,) institute a reaction against
the rebellion at home. The two joined forces, and sent
first to Toussaint. Nature made him a Metternich, a di-
plomatist. He probably wished to avail himself of this
offer, foreseeing advantage to his race, but to avail himself
of it so cantiously as to provide against failure, risking as
little as possible till the intentions of the other party had
Deen tested, and so managing as to be able to go on or
withdraw as the best interest of his race demanded. He
had practised well the Greek rule, “ Know thyself,” and
thoroughly studied his own part. Later in life, when criti-
cising his great mulatto rival, Rigaud, he showed how

474 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.

well he knew himself. “I know Rigaud,” he said; “he
drops the bridle when he gallops, he shows bis arm when
she strikes, For me, I gallop also, but know where
stop: when I strike I am felt, not seen. Rigaud works
only by blood and massacre. “I know how to put the peo
ple in movement: but when I appear, all must be calm.”

He said, therefore, to the envoys, “Where are your
credentials?” We have none.” “TI will have pat Se
to do with you.” hey then sought Frangois and Bias—
sou, two other slaves of strong passions, considerable intel—
leet, and great influence over their fellow-slaves, and said =
“ Arm, assist the government, put down the English ore
the one hand, and the Spanish on the other”; and on the=
21st of August, 1791, fifteen thousand blacks, led bye
Frangois and Biassou, supplied with arms from the arsenal
of the government, appeared in the midst of the colony- —
Tt is believed that Toussaint, unwilling himself to head tha=
movement, was still desirous that it should go forward,
trusting, as proved the case, that it would result in benefimat
to his race. He is supposed to have advised Prangois ican
his course, — saving himself for a more momentous hour.

‘This is what Edward Everett calls the Insurrection coef
St, Domingo. It bore for its motto on one side of its bas=—=1-
ner, “Long live the King”; and on the other, * We
elaim the Old Laws.” Singular mottoes for a rebellioramm!
Tn fact, it was the posse comitatus ; it was the only Frene==h
army on the island; it was the only force that had a rig=ait
to bear arms; and what it undertook, it achieved. Te peomit
Blanchelande in his seat; it put the island beneath Baxi
rule. When it was done, the blacks said to the Govermer
they had created, “ Now, grant us one day in seven; giv
us one day’s labor; we will buy another, and with the two
buy a third," —the favorite method of emancipation af
that time. Like the Blanchelande of five years befor,
he refused. He said, “Disarm! Disperse!” and the

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 475

blacks answered, ‘ The right hand that has saved you, the
right hand that has saved the island for the Bourbons, may
perchance clutch some of our own rights"; and they stood
still, [Cheering] This is the first insurrection, if any
such there were in St. Domingo, — the first determined
purpose on the part of the negro, having saved the govern-
ment, to save himself.

‘Now let me stop a moment to remind you of one thing,
Tam about to open to you a chapter of bloody history, —
no doubt of it. Who set the example? Who dug up
feom its grave of a hundred years the hideous punishment
of the wheel, and broke Ogé, every bone, a living man?
‘Who flared in the face of indignant and astonished Europe
the forgotten barbarity of quartering the yet palpitating
body? Our race. And if the black man learned the les-
‘son but too well, it does not lie in our lips to complain,
During this whole struggle, the record is, — written, mark

by the white man, —the whole picture from the pen-
cil of the white race,—that for one life the negro took in
battle, in hot and bloody fight, the white race took, in the
cool malignity of revenge, three to answer for it. Notice,
also, that up to this moment the slave had taken no part
in the’ struggle, except at the bidding of the government;
and even then, not for himself, but only to sustain the
Jaws.

At this moment, then, the island stands thus: The
Spaniard is on the east triumphant; the Englishman is
on the northwest intrenched; the mulattoes are in the
mountains waiting; the blacks are in the valleys victo-
vious; one half the French slaveholding element is re-
publican, the other half royalist; the white race against
the mulatto and the black; the black against both; the
Frenchman against the English and Spaniard; the Span-
jard against both. It is a war of races and a war of
nations. At such a moment Toussaint |'Ouverture ap~

peared.

476 TOUSSAINT L'QUVERTURE.

He had been born a slave on a plantation in the north
of the island, —an unmixed negro, —his father stolen from
Africa. If anything, therefore, that I say of hina to-night
moves your admiration, remember, the black race claims
it all, — we have no part nor lot in it. He was fifiy years
old at this time. An old negro had taught him to read.
His favorite books were Epictetus, Raynal, Military Me
moirs, Plutarch, In the woods, he learned some of the
qualities of herbs, and was village doctor, On the estate,
the highest place he ever reached was that of coachman.
At fifty, he joined the army as physician. Before he
went, he placed his master and mistress on shipboanl,
freighted the vessel with a cargo of sugar and coffve, and
sent them to Baltimore, and never afterward did he forget
to send them, year by year, ample means of support:
And I might add, that, of all the leading negro generals,
each one saved the man under whose roof he was bom,
and protected the family. [Cheering.]

Let me add another thing. If I stood here to-night ta
tell the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lip
of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint
the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I here
to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from
your hearts, — you, who think no marble white enough om
which to carve the name of the Futher of his Country
[Applause.] I am about to tell you the story of a negh!
who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it
from the reluctant testimony of Britons, Frenchmen
Spaniards, — men who despised him as a negro and #
slave, and hated him because he had beaten them in mity
a battle. All the materials for his biography are from the
lips of his enemies.

The second story told of him is this. About the time
he reached the camp, the army bad been subjected to two
insults. First, their commissioners, summoned to mett

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 417

the French Committee, were ignominiously und insult-
ingly dismissed; and when, afterward, Frangois, their
general, was summoned to a second conference, and went
to it on horseback, accompanied by two officers, a young
lieutenant, who had known him as a slave, angered at
seeing him in the uniform of an officer, raised his riding-
whip and struck him over the shoulders. If he had been
the savage which the negro is painted to us, he had only
to breathe the insult to his twenty-five thousand soldiers,
and they would have trodden out the Frenchmen in blood.
But the indignant chief rode back in silence to his tent,
and it was twenty-four hours before his troops heard of
this insult to their general. Then the word went forth,
“Death to every white man!” They had fifteen hun-
dred prisoners. Ranged in front of the camp, they were
about to be shot. Toussaint, who had a vein of rel
fanaticism, like most great leaders, —like Mohammed, like
Napoleon, like Cromwell, like John Brown [cheers], —
hie could preach as well as fight, — mounting a hillock, and
getting the ear of the crowd, exclaimed: ‘ Brothers, this
blood will not wipe out the insult to our chief; only the
blood in yonder French camp can wipe it out. To shed
that is courage ; to shed this is cowardice and cruelty be-
side" ;—and he saved fifteen hundred lives. [Applaus
T cannot stop to give in detail every one of his efforts.
This was in 1793. Leap with me over seven years;
come to 1800; what has he achieved? He has driven
the Spaniard back into his own cities, conquered him
there, and put the French banner over every nish
town; and for the first time, and almost the last, the island
obeys one law. He has put the mulatto under his feet,
He has attacked Maitland, defeated him in pitched battles,
and permitted him to retreat to Jamaica; and when the
French army rose upon Laveaux, their gener
him in chains, Toussaint defeated them, took Lave

d put
“LUX OUE

478 TOUSSAINT L‘OUVERTURE.

of prison, and put him at the head of his own troops. The
grateful French in return named him General-in-Chiel.
Cet homme fait Couverture partout, said one, —* This man
makes an opening everywhere,” —hence his soldiers
named him L’Ouyerture, the opening,

This was the work of seven years, Let us pause 4
moment, and find something to measure him by. You
remember Macaulay says, comparing Cromwell with Ni-
poleon, that Cromwell showed the greater military genins,
if we consider that he never saw an army till he was forty;
while Napoleon was educated from a boy in the best mil-
tary schools in Europe. Cromwell manufactured his own
army ; Napoleon at the age of twenty-seven was placed
at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. They
were both successful ; but, says Macaulay, with such dik
advantages, the Englishman showed the greater genint
Whether you allow the inference or not, you will at lest
grant that it is a fair mode of measurement. Apply it
Toussaint. Cromwell never saw an army till he wis
forty ; this man never saw a soldier till he was fil.
Cromwell manufactured his own army —out of what?
Englishmen, — the best blood in Europe. Out of the
middle class of Englishmen, —the best blood of the island.
And with it he conquered what? Englishmen, —theit
equals. ‘This man manufactured his army out of what?
Out of what you call the despicable race of negroes, dé-
based, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, ont
hundred thousand of them imported into the island withia
four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even (0
each other. Yet out of this mixed, and, as you say, de®
picable mass, he forged a thunderbolt and hurled ita
what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spanianly
and tent him home conquered [cheers] ; at the most wil
like blood in Europe, the French, and put them under lis
feet; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, anl

TOUSSAINT LVOUVERTURE. 479

‘they skulked home to Jamaica, [Applause.] Now if
Cromwell was a general, at least this man was a soldier.
T know it was a small territory ; it was not as large as the
continent ; but it was as Jarge as that Attica, which, with
Athens for a capital, has filled the earth with its fame for
two thousand years. We measure genius by quality, not
by quantity.

Further, — Cromwell was only a soldier ; his fame stops
there. Not one line in the statute-book of Britain can be
traced to Cromwell; not one step in the social life of
England finds its motive power in his brain. The state
he founded went down with him to his grave. But this
‘Man no sooner put his hand on the helm of state, than the
ship steadied with an upright keel, and he began to evince
a statesmanship as marvellous as his military genius, His-
tory says that the most statesmanlike act of Napoleon was
his proclamation of 1802, at the peace of Amiens, when,
believing that the indelible loyalty of a native-born heart
is always a sufficient basis on which to found an empire,
he said: “Frenchmen, come home. I pardon the crimes
‘of the last twelve years; I blot out its parties ; I found
‘my throne on the hearts of all Frenchmen,” —and twelve
years of unclouded success showed how wisely he judged.
That was in 1802. In 1800 this negro made a proclama-
tion; it runs thus: “Sons of St. Domingo, come home.
We never meant to take your houses or your lands. The
negro only asked that liberty which God gave him, Your
hhonses wait for you; your lands are ready; come and
cultivate them” ;—and from Madrid and Paris, from Bal-
timore and New Orleans, the emigrant plunters crowded
hhome to enjoy their estates, under the pledged word that
‘was never broken of a victorious slave, [Cheers.]

Again, Carlyle has said, The natural king is one who
‘melts all wills into his own.” At this moment he turned
to his armies, — poor, ill-clad, and half-starved, —and

480 TOUSSAINT LOUVERTERE.

said to them: Go back and work on these estates you
have conquered; for an empire can be founded only on
order and industry, and you can learn these virtues only
there. And they went. The French Admiral, who wit-
nessed the scene, said that in a week his army melted
back into ts.

Tt was 1800. The world waited fifty years before, in
1846, Robert Peel dared to venture, as a matter of |
tical statesmanship, the theory of free trade.

Smith theorized, the French statesmen dreamed, but no
man at the head of affairs had ever dared to risk it asa
practical measure. Europe waited till 1846 before the
most practical intellect in the world, the English, adopted
the great economic formula of unfettered trade. But in
1800 this black, with the instinct of statesmanship, said to
the committee who were drafting for him a Constitution:
“Put at the head of the chapter of commerce that the
ports of St. Domingo are open to the trade of the world.”
[Cheers.] With lofty indifference to race, superior to all
envy or prejudice, Toussaint had formed this committee
of eight white proprietors and one mulatto, —not a sok
dier nor a negro on the list, although Haytian history
proves that, with the exception of Rigaud, the rarest
genius has always been shown by pure negroes. _ “4

Again, it was 1800, at a time when England was poisoned
on every page of her statute-book with religious intoler
ance, when a man. could not enter the House of Commant
without taking an Episcopal communion, when every
State in the Union, except Rhode Island, was full of the
intensest religious bigotry. This man was a negro. P
say that is a superstitious blood. He was
You say that makes a man narrow-minded. He wa ®
Catholic. Many say that is but another name for intel
ance, And yet—negro, Catholic, slave—he took bit
place by the side of Roger Williams, and said to his com

TOUSSAINT L'‘OUVERTURE. 481

mittee : ** Make it the first line of my Constitution that I
know no difference between religious beliefs.” [Ap-

Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back
with me to the commencement of the century, and select
what statesman you please. Let him be either American
or European ; let him have a brain the result of six gen-
erations of culture ; let him have the ripest training of
university routine ; let him add to it the better education
of practical life; crown his temples with the silver of
seventy years; and show me the man of Saxon lineage
for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel
rich as embittered foes haye placed on the brow of this
negro, —rare military skill, profound knowledge of human
nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust
a state to the blood of its sons, —anticipating Sir Robert
Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of
Roger Williams before any Englishman or American had
won the right;—and yet this is the record which the
Listory of rival states makes up for this inspired black of
St. Domingo, [Cheers.]

Tr was 1801. The Frenchmen who lingered on the
island described its prosperity and order as almost inered-
ible. You might trust a child with a bag of gold to go
from Samana to Port-au-Prince without risk. Peace was
inevery household ; the valleys laughed with fertility ; eul-
tare climbed the mountains; the commerce of the world
was represented in its harbors. At this time Europe
concluded the Peace of Amiens, and Napoleon took his
seat on the throne of France. He glanced his eyes across
the Atlantic, and, with a single stroke of his pen, reduced
Cayenne nnd Martinique back into chains. He then said
to his Council, * What shall I do with St. Domingo?
The slayeholders said, ‘Give it to us." Napoleon turned
to the Abbé Gregoire, “What is your opinion?” “I

482 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.

think those men would change their opinions, if they
changed their skins." Colonel Vincent, who had been
private secretary to Toussaint, wrote a letter to Napoleon,
in which he said: “Sire, leave it alone; it is the happiest
spot in your dominions; God raised this man to govern;
races melt under his hand. He has saved you this island;
for I know of my own knowledge that, when the Repub-
lie could not have lifted a finger to prevent it, George
III, offered him any title and any revenue if he would
hold the island under the British crown. He refused, and
saved it for France.” Napoleon turned away from his
Council, and is said to have remarked, “I have sixty
thousand idle troops; I must find them something to do.”
He meant to say, ‘I am about to seize the crown; I dare
not do it in the faces of sixty thousand republican soldiers:
I must give them work at a distance to do.” The gossip
of Paris gives another reason for his expedition against St.
Domingo. It is said that the satirists of Paris had chris-
tened Toussaint, the Black Napoleon; and Bonaparte hated
his black shadow. ‘Toussaint had unfortunately once ad-
dressed him a letter, “The first of the blacks to the first
of the whites.” He did not like the comparison. You
would think it too slight a motive. But let me remind
you of the present Napoleon, that when the epigrammatists
of Paris christened his wasteful and tasteless expense at
Versailles, Shulouguerie, from the name of Soulonque, the
Black Emperor, he deigned to issue a specific order for
bidding the use of the word. The Napoleon blood is very
sensitive. So Napoleon resolved to crush Toussaint from
‘one motive or another, from the prompting of ambition,
or dislike of this resemblance,—which was very close
If either imitated the other, it must have been the white,
since the negro preceded him several years. They
were very much alike, and they were very French,—
French even in yanity, common to both. You remember

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE, 483

Bonaparte’s vainglorious words to his soldiers at the Pyr-
amids: “ Forty centuries look down upon us.” In the
same mood, Toussaint said to the French captain who
urged him to go to France in his frigate, “ Sir, your ship
is not large enough to carry me.” Napoleon, you know,
could never bear the military uniform. He hated the
restraint of his rank; he loved to put on the gray coat
of the Little Corporal, and wander in the camp. Tous-
saint also never could bear a uniform. He wore a plain
coat, and often the yellow Madras handkerchief of the
slaves. A French lieutenant once called him a maggot
in a yellow handkerchief, Toussaint took him prisoner
next day, and sent him home to his mother. Like Napo-
Teon, he could fast many days; could dictate to three sec
retaries at once; could wear out four or five horses. Like
Napoleon, no man ever divined his purpose or penetrated
his plan. He was only a negro, and so, in him, they called
it hypocrisy. In Bonaparte we style it diplomacy. For
instance, three attempts made to assassinate him all failed,
from not firing at the right spot. If they thought he was
in the north in a carriage, he would be in the south on
horseback; if they thought he was in the city in a house,
he would be in the field in a tent, They once riddled his
carriage with bullets; he was on horseback on the other
side, The seven Frenchmen who did it were arrested,
‘They expected to be shot. The next day was some saint's
day; he ordered them to be placed before the high altar,
‘and, when the priest reached the prayer for forgiveness,
came down from his high seat, repeated it with him, and
permitted them to go unpunished. [Cheers.] He had
that wit common to all great commanders, which makes
its way in a camp. His soldiers getting disheartened, he
filled a large vase with powder, and, scattering six grains
of rice in it, shook them up, and said; See, there is the
white, there is the black; what are you afraid of ?” So

484 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE,

when people came to him in great numbers for office, a
it is reported they do sometimes even in Washington, be
learned the first words of a Catholic prayer in Latin, and,
repeating it, would say, ‘Do you understand that!”
“No, sir.” “ What! want an office, and not know Latin?
Go home and learn it!”

Then, again, like Napoleon, —like genius always,—
he had confidence in his power to rale men. You re
member when Bonaparte returned from Elba, and Louis
XVIIL sent an army against him, Bonaparte descended
from his carriage, opened his coat, offering his breast t
their muskets, and saying, “Frenchmen, it is the Bm
peror!” and they ranged themselves behind him, Ais sik
diers, shouting, “ Vive [Empereur!" That was in 1815,
Twelve years before, Toussaint, finding that four of his
regiments had deserted and gone to Leclere, drew his
sword, flung it on the grass, went across the field to them,
folded his arms, and said, “ Children, can you point a bny-
onet at me?” ‘The blacks fell on their knees, praying
his pardon, His bitterest enemies watched him, and non?
‘of them charged him with love of money, sensuality, of
cruel use of power. The only instance in which his
sternest critic has charged him with severity ix this
During a tumult, a few white proprietors who had re
turned, trusting his proclamation, were killed. His
nephew, General Moise, was accused of indecision in
quelling the riot. He assembled a court-martial, and, ot
its verdict, ordered his own nephew to be shot, stermly
Roman in thus keeping his promise of protection to the
whites. Above the lust of gold, pure in private life, gen
erous in the use of his power, it was against such a man that
Napoleon sent his army, giving to General Leclere, the
husband of his beautiful sister Pauline, thirty thousnad
of his best troops, with orders to reintroduce slavery
Among these soldiers came all of Toussaint’s old mulatta
rivals and foes.

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE, 485

Holland lent sixty ships. England promised by special
message to be neutral; and you know neutrality means
sneering at freedom, and sending arms to tyrants. [Loud
and long-continued applause.] England promised neu-
wality, and the black looked out on the whole civilized
world marshalled against him. America, full of slaves,
of course was hostile. Only the Yankee sold him poor
muskets at a very high price. [Laughter.] Mounting
his horse, and riding to the eastern end of the island,
Samana, he looked out on a sight such as no native had
ever seen before. Sixty ships of the line, erowded by the
best soldiers of Europe, rounded the point. They wera
soldiers who had never yet met an equal, whose tread,
Tike Ciesar’s, had shaken Enrope,— soldiers who had
sealed the Pyramids, and planted the French banners on
the walls of Rome. He looked a moment, counted the
flotilla, let the reins fall on the neck of his horse, and,
turning to Christophe, exclaimed: “ All France is come
to Hayti; they can only come to make us slaves ; and we
are lost!" He then recognized the only mistake of his
life, — his confidence in Bonaparte, which had led him to
disband his army.

Returning to the hills, he issued the only proclamation
which bears his name and breathes vengeance: “My
children, France comes to make us slaves. God gave us
liberty ; France has no right to take it away. Burn the
cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the roads with cannon,
poison the wells, show the white man the hell he comes to
make” ;—and he was obeyed. [Applause.] When the
great William of Orange saw Louis XIV, cover Holland
with troops, he said, “Break down the dikes, give Hol-
land back to ocean”; and Europe said, * Sublime!”
When Alexander saw the armies of France descend upon
Russia, he said, “Burn Moscow, starve back the invad-

ers"; and Europe said, “Sublime!” ‘This black saw all

486 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.

Europe marshalled to crush him, and gaye to his people
the same heroic example of defiance.

Tt is true, the scene grows bloodier as we proceed.
But, remember, the white man fitly accompanied his
infamous attempt to reduce freemen to slavery with every
bloody and cruel device that bitter and shameless hate
could invent, Aristocracy is always eruel. The black
man met the attempt, as every such attempt should be
met, with war to the hilt, In his first struggle to gain his
freedom, he had been generous and merciful, saved lives
and pardoned enemies, as the people in every age and
clime have always done when rising against aristocrats.
Now, to save his liberty, the negro exhausted every
means, seized every weapon, and turned back the hateful
invaders with a vengeance as terrible as their own,
though even now he refused to be cruel.

Leclere sent word to Christophe that he was about to
land at Cape City. Christophe said, Toussaint is gor-
ernor of the island. I will send to him for permission.
Tf without it a French soldier sets foot on shore, T will
burn the town, and fight over its ashes.”

Leclere landed. Christophe took two thousand «hile
men, women, and children, and carried them to the moun-
tains in safety, then with his own hands set fire to the
splendid palace which French architects had just finished
for him, and in forty hours the place was in ashes. The
battle was fought in its streets, and the French driven
back to their boats. [Cheers.] Wherever they went,
they were met with fire and sword. Once, resisting am
attack, the blacks, Frenchmen born, shouted the Mar
seilles Hymn, and the French soldiers stood still; they
could not fight the Marseillaise. And it was not till their
officers sabred them on that they advanced, and then
they were beaten. Beaten in the field, the French then
took to lies. They issued proclamations, saying, We do

TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE. 487

not come to make you slaves; this man Toussaint tells
you lies. Join us, and you shall have the rights you
claim.” ‘They cheated every one of his officers, except
Christophe and Dessalines, and his own brother Pierre,
and finally these also deserted him, and he was left alone.
He then sent word to Leclere, “I will submit. I could
continue the struggle for years, —could prevent a single
Frenchman from safely quitting your camp. But I hate
bloodsh« |. I have fought only for the liberty of my race.
Guaran ee that, I will submit and come in.” He took
the oatli to be a faithful citizen ; and on the same crucifix
Leclere swore that he should be faithfully protected, and
that the island should be free. As the French general
glanced along the line of his splendidly equipped troops,
and saw, opposite, Toussaint’s ragged, ill-armed followers,
he said to him, “L’Ouverture, had you continued the
war, where could you have got arms?” “I would have
taken yours,” was the Spartan reply, [Cheers.] He
went down to his house in peace; it was summer, Le-
elere remembered that the fever months were coming,
when his army would be in hospitals, and when one mo-
tion of that royal hand would sweep his troops into the
sea. He was too dangerous to be left at large. So they
summoned him to attend a council; and here is the only
charge made against him, —the only charge, They say he
was fool enough to go. Grant it; what was the record?
The white man lies shrewdly to cheat the negro. Knight-
errantry was truth. The foulest insult you can offer a
man since the Crusades is, You lie. Of Toussaint, Her-
mona, the Spanish general, who knew him well, said,
4 He was the purest soul God ever put into a body.” OF
him history bears witiess, “He never broke his word.”
Maitland was travelling in the depths of the woods to
meet Toussaint, when he was met by a messenger, and
told that he was betrayed. He went on, and met Tous-

488 TOUSSAINT LIOUVERTURE.

saint, who showed him two letters, —one from the French
general, offering him any rank if he would put Maitland
in his power, and the other his reply. It was, “Sir, T
liave promised the Englishman that he shall go buck."
[Cheers.] Let it stand, therefore, that the negro, trath-
ful as a knight of old, was cheated by his lying foe.
Which race has reason to be proud of such a record?

But he was not cheated. He was under espionage.
Suppose he had refused: the government would have
doubted him,—would have fonnd some canse to arrest
him. He probably reasoned thus: “If I go willingly, I
shall be treated accordingly”; and he went, ‘The moment
he entered the room, the officers drew their swords, and
told him he was prisoner; and one young lieutenant who
was present says, ‘‘ He was not at all surprised, but seemed
very sad.” They put him on shipboard, and weighed an-
chor for France. As the island faded from his sight, he
turned to the captain, and said, “ You think yon have
rooted up the treé of liberty, but I am only a branch; T
have planted the tree so deep that all France can never
root it up.” [Cheers.] Arrived in Paris, he was flung
into jail, and Napoleon sent his secretary, Caffarelli, to
him, supposing he had buried large treasures. He lis-
tened awhile, then replied, “ Young man, it is true T have
lost treasures, but they are not such as you come to seek.”
He was then sent to the Castle of St. Joux, to a dungeon
twelve feet by twenty, built wholly of stone, with a nar-
row window, high up on the side, looking out on the snows
of Switzerland. In winter, ice covers the floor; in sum-
mer, it is damp and wet. In this living tomb the child of
the sunny tropic was left to die. From this dungeon he
wrote two letters to Napoleon. One of them ran thus: —

“Sire, Tam a French citizen. T never broke a law. By the
grace of God, I have saved for you the best island of your realm,
Sire, of your merey grant me justice.”

TOUSSAINT L‘OUVERTURE. 489

Napoleon never answered the letters. ‘The command-
ant allowed him five francs a day for food and fuel. Na-
poleon heard of it, and reduced the sum to three. The
loxurious usurper, who complained that the English gov-
eriment was stingy because it allowed him only six thon
‘sand dollars a month, stooped from his throne to cut down
a dollar to a half, and still Toussaint did not die quick
enough.

This dungeon was a tomb. The story is told that, in
Josephine’s time, a young French marquis was placed
there, and the girl to whom he was betrothed went to the
Empress and prayed for his release. Said Josephine to
her, “ Have a model of it made, and bring it to me.”
Josephine placed it near Napoleon. He said, “Take it
away, — it is horrible!” She put it on his footstool, and
he kicked it from him. She held it to him the third time,
and said, “Sire, in this horrible dungeon you have put a
man to die.” “Take him out,” said Napoleon, and the
girl saved her lover. In this tomb Toussaint was buried,
but he did not die fast enough. Finally, the commandant
was told to go into Switzerland, to carry the keys of the
dungeon with him, and to stay four days; when he re-
turned, Toussaint was found starved to death. That im-
perial assassin was taken twelve years after to his prison at
St. Helena, planned for a tomb, as he had planned that of
Toussaint, and there he whined away his dying hours in
pitiful complaints of curtains and titles, of dishes and rides.
God grant that when some future Plutarch shall weigh
the great men of our epoch, the whites against the blacks,
he do not put that whining child at St. Helena into one
scale, and into the other the negro meeting death like a
Roman, without a murmur, in the solitude of his icy
dungeon |

From the moment he was betrayed, the negroes began
to doubt the French, and rushed to arms. Soon every

490 TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE,

negro but Maurepas deserted the French. Leclere sum-
moned Maurepas to his side, He came, loyally bringing
with him five hundred soldiers. Leelere spiked his epau-
lettes to his shoulders, shot him, and flung him into the
sea. He took his five hundred soldiers on shore, shot
them on the edge of a pit, and tumbled them in. Des-
salines from the mountain saw it, and, selecting five hun-
dred French officers from his prisons, hung them on
separate trees in sight of Leclere’s camp; and born, as T
was, not far from Bunker Hill, I have yet found no reason
to think he did wrong. [Cheers.] They murdered
Pierre Tonssaint’s wife at his own door, and after such
treatment that it was mercy when they killed her. The
maddened husband, who had but a year before saved the
lives of twelve hundred white men, carried his next thou-
sand prisoners and sacrificed them on her grave.

The French exhausted every form of torture. The
negroes were bound together and thrown into the sea;
any one who floated was shot,—others sunk with eannon-
balls tied to their feet; some smothered with sulphur
fumes, — others strangled, scourged to death, gibbeted;
sixteen of Toussaint’s officers were chained to rocks in
desert islands,—others in marshes, and left to be de |
voured by poisonous reptiles and insects. Rechambeau
sent to Cuba for bloodhounds. When they arrived, the
young girls went down to the wharf, decked the hounds
with ribbons and flowers, kissed their necks, and, seated
in the amphitheatre, the women clapped their hands to see
a negro thrown to these dogs, previously starved to mage.
But the negroes besieged this very city so closely that
these same girls, in their misery, ate the very hounds they
had welcomed.

Then flushed forth that defying courage and sublime
endurance which show how alike all races are when tried
in the same furnace. The Roman wife, whose husbani

__. = |

TOUSSAINT L‘OUVERTUBE. 491

faltered when Nero ordered him to kill himself, seized the
dagger, and, mortally wounding her own body, cried,
* Poetus, it is not hard to die.” The world records it
with proud tears. Just in the same spirit, when a negro
colonel was ordered to execution, and trembled, his wife
seized his sword, and, giving herself a death-wound, said,
“ Husband, death is sweet when liberty is gone.”

‘The war went on. Napoleon sent over thirty thousand
more soldiers. But disaster still followed his efforts.
What the sword did not devour, the fever ate up. Le-
elere died. Pauline carried his body back to France.
Napoleon met her at Bordeaux, saying, “Sister, I gave
you an army, —you bring me back ashes.” Rochambeau
—the Rochambeau of our history — left in command of
eight thousand troops, sent word to Dessalines: “ When
T take you, I will not shoot you like a soldier, or hang you
like a white man ; I will whip you to death like a slave.”
Dessalines chased him from battle-field to battle-field,
from fort to fort, and finally shut him up in Samana.
‘Heating cannon-balls to destroy his fleet, Dessalines learned
that Rochambeau had begged of the British admiral to
cover his troops with the English flag, and the generous
negro suffered the boaster to embark undisturbed.

Some doubt the courage of the negro. Go to Hayti,
and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best sol-
diers France ever had, and ask them what they think of
the negro’s sword. And if that does not satisfy you, go
to France, to the splendid mausoleum of the Counts of
Rochambean, and to the eight thousand graves of French-
men who skulked home under the English flag, and ask
them. And if that does not satisfy you, come home, and
if it had been October, 1859, you might have come by
ee of quaking Virginia, and asked her what she thought

of negro courage.
You may also remember this,—that we Saxons were

492 TOUSSAINT L!OUVERTURE.

slaves about four hundred years, sold with the land, and
our fathers never raised a finger to end that slavery,
They waited till Christianity and civilization, till commerce
and the discovery of America, melted away their chains.
Spartacus in Italy led the slaves of Rome against the Em-
press of the world. She murdered him, and crucified
them, There never was a slave rebellion successful but
once, and that was in St. Domingo. Every race has
been, some time or other, in chains. But there never
was a race that, weakened and degraded by such chattel
slavery, unaided, tore off its own fetters, forged them into
swords, and won its liberty on the battle-field, but one,
and that was the black race of St. Domingo, God grant
that the wise vigor of our government may avert that
necessity from our land, — may raise into peaceful liberty
the four million committed to our care, and show under
democratic institutions a statesmanship as far-sighted as
that of England, as brave as the negro of Hayti!

So much for the courage of the negro. Now loak at
his endurance, In 1805 he said to the white men, “This
island is ours ; not a white foot shall touch it.” Side by
side with him stood the South American republics, planted
by the best blood of the countrymen of Lope de Vega and
Cervantes. They topple over so often that you could no
more daguerrotype their crumbling fragments than you
could the waves of the ocean. And yet, at their side, the
negro has kept his island sacredly to himself, It is said
that at first, with rare patriotism, the Haytien government
ordered the destruction of all the sugar plantations remail-
ing, and discouraged its culture, deeming that the tempta-
tion which lured the French back again to attempt their
enslavement. Burn over New York to-night, fill up her
canals, sink every ship, destroy her railroads, blot out
every remnant of education from her sons, let her bo
ignorant and penniless, with nothing but her hands to

TOUSSAINT L‘OUVERTURE. 493

begin the world again, —how much could she do in sixty
years? And Enrope, too, would Iend you money, but
she will not lend Hayti a dollar. Hayti, from the ruins
of her colonial dependence, is become a civilized state, the
seventh nation in the catalogue of commerce with this
country, inferior in morals and education to none of the
West Indian isles. Foreign merchants trust her courts
as willingly as they do our own, ‘Thus far, she has foiled
the ambition of Spain, the greed of England, and the
malicious statesmanship of Calhoun. Toussaint made her
what she is. In this work there was grouped around him
‘a score of men, mostly of pure negro blood, who ably
seconded his efforts. They were able in war and skilful
in civil affairs, but not, like him, remarkable for that rare
mingling of high qualities which alone makes trae great~
ness, and insures a man leadership among those otherwise
almost his equals. ‘Toussaint was indisputably their chief,
Courage, purpose, endurance, — these are the tests. He
did plant a state so deep that all the world has not been
able to root it up.

I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his
‘way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of
Blood. This man never broke his word. “No Rerarta-
tion” was his great motto and the rule of his life; and
the last words uttered to his son in France were these:
“My boy, you will one day go back to St. Domingo ; for-
get that France murdered your father.” I would call
him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the
state he founded went down with him into his grave. I
would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held
slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit
the slave-trade in the humblest village of his dominions.

You think me a fanatic to-night, for you rend history,
not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty
years hence, when Truth gots a hearing, the Muse of His-

494 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.

tory will put Phocion for the Greek, and Brutus for the
Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose
‘Washington as the bright, consummate flower of our ear-
lier civilization, and John Brown the ripe fruit-of our noon-
day [thunders of applause], then, dipping her pen in the
sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the
name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint
L’Ouverrurg. ([Long-continued applause.]

A METROPOLITAN POLICE.*

I HAVE been requested to speak to you to-day on
the subject of a Metropolitan Police. That plan has
already been presented, two or three years ago, to this
commanity, and, of Jate, very elaborately and eloquently
argued before a committee of the Legislature, by Edward
L. Peirce, Esq., and still more comprehensively and in
detail by Charles M, Ellis, Esq.; but it is one of vital
importance to the welfare and progress of our city, and,
until the object be achieved, it can never be too frequently
considered and urged. Other cities have led the way in
this path, years ago, The capital of the civilized world,
London, many years ago, found herself utterly unable to
contend with the evils of accumulated population, — found
municipal machinery utterly inadequate for the security
of life or property in her streets ; and the national gov-
ernment, by the hand of Sir Robert Peel, assumed the
police regulation of that cluster of towns which we com-
monly call London, though the plan does not include the
city proper. New York, on our continent, about six
years ago, followed the example; Baltimore and Cincin-
nati have done likewise to a greater or less extent, and so
also have some of the other Western cities. The experi~
ence of all great accumulations of property and population

* A Discourse delivered before the Tweaty-cighth Congregational Society,
in the Melodeon, Boston, April 5, 1863.

496 A METROPOLITAN POLICE.

reads us a lesson, that the execution of the laws therein
demand extra consideration and peculiar machinery. The
self-organized Safety Committees of San Francisco and
other cities prove the same fact. Indeed, great cities are
nests of great vices, and it has been the experience of re~
publics that great cities are an exception to the common
rule of self-governed communities. Neither New York,
nor New Orleans, nor Baltimore—none of the great
cities—has found the ballot-box of its individual voters
a sufficient protection, through a police organization.
Great cities cannot be protected on the theory of re-
publican institutions. We may like it or not,—seventy
years have tried the experiment, and, so far, it is a fail-
ure ; and if there is no resource outside of the city: limits,
then a self-governed great city is, so far as my

goes, the most uncomfortable which any man who loves
free speech can live in. It is no surprise, therefore, that
we ask you no longer to let the police force represent the
voters of Boston. Hitherto, the police regulations in the
city of Boston have been modelled on those of a small
town ; that is, the inhabitants themselves haye called into
existence a body of constables, in fact, to execute the laws
of the State and the by-laws of the city. Our text, in
presenting this subject to you, is this: in Boston, as every-
where else, where large numbers are brought together
and great masses of property are found, a police force ap-
pointed by the voters of the place cannot be relied on to
execute the laws; and, in order to secure their full and
impartial execution, it has been found necessary else-
where, and T shall attempt to show you that it is neces
sary here, to put the control of the police force into other
hands than those of the voters of the place. That is our
claim, —that the men of the peninsula, like those of other
great cities, are not to be trusted with the execution of the
State laws, but that executive power must be based on

A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 40T

broader foundations, Such a course is no uncommon ma-
chinery in democratic institutions, We put the inter-
pretation of the laws—the judiciary —not into the hands
of any local municipal body, but the interpretation of the
State Iaws is in the hands of persons appointed by the
whole State. I invoke the same principle for their exe-
cution, — following old republican precedents, as I shall
shortly show,

In order to sustain this claim before you, I ought to
show three or four things. First, that in important par-
ticulars — important particulars—the law has failed of
execution; that good and vitally important laws have
failed of execution. Secondly, I ought to show you that
this failure is due to the machinery which the city puts in
motion for the execution of the laws. Thirdly, that a bet-
ter machinery may be found. And, fourthly, that it is
important for the welfare of the State that the attempt to
find a better machinery should be made,

‘My first point is to show you that in important particu-
lars, where great and grave interests are involved, the laws
have fuiled of execution. You perceive that this involves,
in fact, an indictment against the city government. It is,
in reality, arraigning the government of the city for failure
todo its duty. Before I pass to it, therefore, let me make
one protest. Ido not come here to find fault with indi-
vidual policemen. I think our body of police is as good,
on the average, as that of any great city I know. I think
upon all trying occasidns they have done their duty, as far
as they have been permitted, and have always shown full
capacity to do their whole duty. Neither do I come here
to arraign the individuals of the city government; not,
however, on account of the same excuse, but beeause L
deem it unnecessary. They are mere puppets, flattering
before us for a little while; they are only victims of a

great system, which they did not originate and eannot con=
32

A METROVOLITAN POLICE. 499

statute-book rests not on bayonets, as in Europe, but on
the hearts of the people. A drunken people can never be
the basis of a free government. It is the corner-stone
neither of virtue, prosperity, nor progress. To us, there-
fore, the title-deeds of whose estates and the safety of
whose lives depend upon the tranquillity of the streets,
upon the virtue of the masses, the presence of any vice
whieh brutalizes the average mass of mankind, and tends
to make it more readily the tool of intriguing and corrupt
Teaders, is necessarily a stab at the very life of the nation,
Against such a vice is marshalled the Temperance Refor-
mation. That my sketch is no mere fancy picture, every
one of you knows. Every one of you can glance back
over your own path, and count many and many a one
among those who started from the goal at your side, with
equal energy and perhaps greater promise, who has found
a drunkard’s grave long before this. The brightness of
the bar, the ornament of the pulpit, the hope and blessing
and stay of many a family, — you know, every one of you
who has reached middle life, how often on your path you
set up the warning, “ Fallen before the temptations of
the streets!" Hardly one house in this city, whether it
be full and warm with all the luxury of wealth, or whether
it find hard, cold maintenance by the most earnest econ-
omy, no matter which,— hardly a house that does not
count, among sons or nephews, some victim of this vice.
The skeleton of this warning sits at every board. The
whole world is kindred in this suffering. The country
mother launches her boy with trembling upon the tempta-
tions of city life; the father trusts his daughter anxiously
to the young man she has chosen, knowing what a wreck
intoxication may make of the house-tree they set up.
Alas! how often are their worst forebodings more than
fulfilled! I have known a ease—and probably many of
‘You ean recall some almost equal to it—where one worthy

A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 501

the State decided that these numberless open doors harmed
the community, and that the method to be adopted was to
shut them up. The majority, after full argument in dis-
trict school-houses, the streets, and the State-House, from
pulpits, lyceum platforms, and everywhere else, decided
that prohibition of the traffic was the only effective method.
‘The law was put upon the statute-book. A reluctant mi-
nority went to the Legislature, and endeavored to repeal
or amend it, alleging that this was not a good law; and
they were voted down, Again they went,—were voted
down. A third time they went, —and were voted down,
They then appealed to the courts, and said, “ This is not a
constitutional law.” The courts said, “Itis."” If anything
ever had the decided, unmistakable sanction of 2 majority
of the people of this Commonwealth, the Maine Liquor Law

it, After a quarter of a century of discussion, it was
enacted ; three times assailed, it was maintained ; subjected
to the erncible of the court, it came out pure gold. We
have a right to say that it is the matured, settled purpose
of the majority of the Commonwealth ; if the majority have
aright to govern, that law is to govern. Is it not so? If
not, let the minority assail again the Gibraltar of te statute.
But meanwhile it, like all other laws not immoral, is to be
obeyed. I have not, therefore, to argue to-day whether
the law is good or not, whether it is wise or not. That is
settled. It is good“and wise in the opinion of the Com-
monwealth, The era of publie opinion is finished, that of
Tao has commenced. This is the history of all legislation.
Do not find fault with us for enacting, in due time, public
opinion into a statute. Where did all statutes come from?
Hundreds of years ago, men argued the question, “ Shall
one man own a separate piece of land?” They argued
it, and settled that he should. ‘That became a statute,
They then began to argue the question, “Shall he trans-
Mit to his children by will?" They argued that for cen-

A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 503

have licensed are “ nuisances,” as it calls them; — houses
yalgar, noisy, disorderly; kept, as the Dogberry of the
Board of Aldermen told us at the State House, by
“imbecile old men and ancient women,’ —as the con-
stable of Shakespeare’s play arrested all “vagrom men.”
‘That is the position of the city. The law is intentionally
and avowedly sot aside. The city government announces
that it does not intend to obey it; makes no effort, and
never hs made any, to enforce it. What is the result ?
The result is, that there are at least three thousand places
in the city where liquor is publicly and continually sold.
‘These consist partly of dram-shops, partly of gambling
saloons, partly of houses of prostitution, ‘They number in
all more than three thousand. I am giving an under esti-
mate of an average for two or three years, What are the
results of these three thousand places of sale? Six million
dollars’ worth of liquor is sold to the retailers of this city
annually; and three million dollars’ worth is annually re-
tailed on the peninsula, With what result? With this.
They produce poverty and crime to this extent: —We
arrest for drunkenness alone, on an average for the last
three years, about seventeen thousand persons annually ;
that is, a little less than one tenth of the population.
There are between twenty-five and thirty thousand per-
sons relieved for poverty by overseers of the poor, and by
the Provident Association, — poverty eansed by intemper-
ance. That is, every seventh man in the city is a pauper,
helped by the community; every tenth man in the city is
‘acriminal, arrested by the police. Let us look at that a
moment. I say every seventh man is a pauper, relieved
by the help of the community, Poverty, wholesome
poverty, is no unmixed evil; it is the motive power that
throws a man up to guide and control the community ; it
is the spur that often wins the race ; it is the trial that
‘calls out, like fire, all the deep, great qualities of « man’s

A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 505

to mould those young souls, step by step, to virtue, to
make them good citizens, Twenty-five thousand with
one hand it lifts up; with the other, it tempts twenty-five
thousand into pollution and crime. It spends four hundred
and seventy-seven thousand dollars a year to do it; for
that is the cost of our police force, of our Overseers of the
Poor, of our Lunatic Asylums (a large portion of whose
inmates are rendered insane by intemperance), our House
of Correction and House of Industry, You might as well
take a third of a million of dollars, and toss it off the end
of Long Wharf, — we should be richer at the end of the
year. Leave all the children idle in the streets, shut up
the grog-shops, shut up the schools, throw a third of a
million into the water, and the city would be better off on
the thirty-first day of December than she is now.

‘The Mayor and Aldermen, to whom you choose to give
the police, take with one hand two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars of your money and mine to educate twen-
ty-five thousand children, and with the other they tear out
a luw from the statute-book in order to ruin twenty-five
thousand adults. The inefficiency of the Mayor and Alder-
men makes it exactly the same as if the cost of our school
system were thrown into the dock from the end of Long
Wharf. We know just as well what educates drunkards
as what educates a school-boy. The Parker House, the
Tremont House, the Revere House, and the Howard
Saloon educate intemperance exactly as the Latin School
educates youth. One educates for heaven, the other for
hell; and the city government says it shall be so.

+ Tam perfectly serious on this ground. I know the
value of the common schools-of Massachusetts. It makes
amy house worth a thousand dollars more to-day ; it makes
my right of free speech doubly valuable ; itemakes my life
safer ; it makes it happier and more honorable to live in
this Commonwealth, That is the value of the common-

506 A METROPOLITAN POLICE.

school system, which at great expense educates the chil-
dren of the State. By its side stands your State system
for breaking up the intemperance of the city. Ido not
say that the Mayor or the Aldermen could prevent it all,
I know well the difficulties. I only ask of any man an
honest effort ; I only ask for evidence that the first step is
taken in that direction, —that there is a willingness, a
disposition, to do it. A great deal could be prevented.
The mob which broke up our Tremont Temple meeting,
two years ago, reeled into it from the gorgeous grog-shops
which surround the Temple. Where do they get their
unblushing shamelessness and so-called respectability ?
They get it from the fact that your Governors, your
Judges, your Senators, your lawmakers, meet week afer
week, and month after month, in these very places, to
violate the law which they have placed upon the statute-
book. No wonder they are ashamed to execute the laws
which they break before the very sun and noonday of
Massachusetts.

Such is the cost of intemperance. One half the crim
inals of the State are found in the city of Boston, We
have one sixth of the population, and yet we have more
than one half the criminals. We have one sixth of the pop-
ulation, but we pay about one half of the criminal expenses
of the State of Massachusetts, —just three times our proper
proportion, What docs it come from? Tam not to charge
it on any particular corporation; 1 am to charge it to a
system. It is the massing up of one third of the capital of
the State, and one sixth the population on this peninsuls.
‘That makes a new order of things, one calling for a new
machinery to check crime,—a hot-bed, where all the ten-
dencies to crime become doubled and trebled, where the
dangerous classes of the community get undue power. It
is because of this peculiarity that we need a different sy
tem from what the country does. Up to a certain point

x awe

‘A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 507

our city government has always acknowledged this. For
instance, in a small country town of a few thousand inhab-
itants they have two or three constables. Nobody knows
who they are. You might visit half a dozen houses, and
they could not tell you. Only once or twice in a year, on
some festive or other occasion, a town meeting, a picnic,
or something of the kind, is he ever seen or needed. He
‘may execute a writ once in a while, If there is any disor-
der in the town, a citizen takes notice of it, reports it to a
justice of the peace, and the difficulty is cured. That is a
sufficient machinery for a small town. But when you
have a Iarge and dense population, great wealth invested
in certain dangerous and tempting forms, you cannot trust
the execution of the laws to the volunteer efforts of the
citizens ; you must have a large body of police constantly
in the streets, ever on the alert, with grave and extraor-
dinary powers, to watch criminals and follow them up.
That has been found necessary. Now the question is
whether something further is not necessary also. The
returns for ten years show that forty-two per cent of
the average population of this county was arrested for
crime, while, in other counties, the number arrested was
only one, two, or three per cent. Why this difference?
Because a city necessarily induces greater temptations,
greater dangers, and more frequent crimes. It needs,
therefore, a more stringent machinery to execute the laws.
Instead of that, in regard to this temperance law, the
city government defy it. They themselves pay—or
did pay till within a year or two, I will not. speak of the
present year, for I have not consulted the reports — about
a thousand dollars a month out of the city treasury for the
indulgences of the Board of Aldermen and Common-Coun-
cilmen at an illegal liquor-shop, which no one of them had
a right to see without presenting it to the courts within
twenty-four hours. In that disgraceful Anthony Burns

508 A METROPOLITAN POLICE.

and Sims experience of the city, upon which Tam shortly
to speak, one of the melancholy features of city sin that
day was, that the men illegally called out to defy the State
laws contracted a bill, within sight of the Supreme Court,
within sight of City Hall, of between one and two thou-
sand dollars, for liquor and food furnished them at an
illegal grog-shop, by order of the city.

Let me leave this question a moment, and turn to an-
other,—free speech. Free speech is so vital an element
of civil life, so important a privilege, that the framers of
our government were not willing to leave it to the law,—
they enshrined it in the Constitution. It was so funda-
mental, that it could not be left to annual legislation; it
was grouted and dovetailed into the very first stratum of
the foundation of the State. Now, the class of men who
have had the ordering of city affairs have never, for the
last twenty years, attempted to protect free speech on this
peninsula. Let me tell you what I mean. If a man liko
the editor of the Boston Post, like the Hon, Edward Ey-
erett, like Mr, Sumner, any popular person in the com-
munity, wished to hold a meeting on this peninsula, he
could always do it; but if any set of men who are unpop-
ular wanted to hold a meeting here, it depended entirely
upon the mood of the mob that month whether they could
hold it or not. These very walls could testify, if they had
voice, how many dozen times they have seen their oecy-
pants, paying an honest price for a day’s use of them,
disturbed hour after hour, and finally, perhaps, in some
instances, the meeting broken up, by a erowd of
that the right hand of one policeman could have quelled;
and when individuals, the very lessees of this hall, would
take one of these disturbers to the courts, he was set free,
and the persons who interfered threatened with a suit
You know that the trustees of the hall from which you
have just removed for a season sat on one occasion until

A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 509

midnight, to decide whether they would dare to risk their
property when the Mayor of the city had let it be known
that he did not intend to defend it against the mob of the
streets. You know too, or you might know, that the
same anxious scene of consultation went on among the
trustees of the Tremont Temple, again and again, whether

would dare to risk their building, when the city au-
thorities had unblushingly and publicly declared that they
would not protect free speech. You know also, that,
when the Massachusetts Antislavery Society was mobbed
out of its hall by the Mayor of the city, the members of
the Legislature refrained from offering the Society the use
of the State-House, though wishing to do so, because the
Executive informed them that he had no means to pro-
tect the State's property against the grog-shops of the
peninsula. Macaulay says, speaking of James the Sec-
ond’s disturbed reign: “ On such occasions, it will ever be
found that the human vermin, which, neglected by minis-
ters of state and ministers of religion, — barbarians in the
midst of civilization, heathen in the midst of Christianity,
—who burrow among all physical and inoral pullution in
the cellars and garrets of great cities, will rise at once into
terrible importance.” It was when that class of the com-
munity found that the Mayor was willing to lead them,
and that they could riot in the most fashionable drinking-
saloons free of expense, that your Governor dared. not
trust the State-House to an orderly and legal assémblage
of the citizens of Massachusetts. It was at a time when
one of the most efficient of the Chiefs of Police said,
“Give me thirty men, and an order, and I will quell that
mob at once.” The difficulty was not that it could not be
quelled. That elass which Macaulay describes never faces
the law until it has bribed it. The moment the court
turns its determined countenance upon them, they retire
to cellars and garrets again. One of the Aldermen of the

510 A METROPOLITAN POLICE.

city said recently, in the State-House, that these mobs
were only “watermelon frolies, — the pounding of men
with the soft side of a cushion”; but it was a cushion
that the Governor dared not trust to touch the State-
House ; it was a mob which the Mayor said, in exense
for inefficiency, that he had not force enough to control.
Perhaps it would not be disrespectful to ask that these
several city dignitaries would arrange beforehand, and
make their lame excuses at least consistent. There isa
class of whom an old proverb affirms that it needs to have
“Jong memories.”

Fellow-citizens, for the last five years, I have been able
to make in New York, in perfect quiet, with the unso-
icited protection of the police, the same speech which I
could not make to you without being surrounded by fifty
armed friends. Again and again have I proved this, dar
ing the last five years. In the city of New York, the
common sewer of the continent, where wealth is massed
up by uncounted millions, where the criminals of all na-
tions take refuge, any man could speak his mind for the
last five years; and if the journals threatened him with
violence, he need not go begging to the City Hall, as
we vainly used to do here; the authorities would take
notice unsolicited, and see to it that he was protected:
But at the same time, in our own city, of one
part of the inhabitants, it was impossible, without the aid
of armed friends, to utter the same words, Why is this?
It is no fault of individuals, as I said before. Three thou-
sand places where drink is sold! Do I exaggerate when
T say that each one of those places represents a voter?
Mr. Ellis has said, with great force, that every one of
those places represents at least ten men whom it influ
ences, which would make thirty thousand,—and doube
less his estimate understates the fact; but I am not going
to speak of those whom those places influence. I am

A METROPOLITAN POLICE, 611

going to speak of the voters which they send to the polls,
and I certainly shall not exaggerate if I say, that each one
of them influences one voter,—the owner of the shop,
the keeper, the tender, or the frequenter of it. Such
liquor-sellers are generally voters. If not, every one has
a father, brother, servant, barkeeper, landlord, men of
whom he buys his supplies, frequenters of his bar. Cer-
tainly, I do not make too large an estimate when I say
that, on an average, each one of these places controls one
vote. There are three thousand voters,— indeed, I
should not exaggerate if I said five thousand. About
fifteen thousand voters on this peninsula usually go to the
polls, sometimes twenty-two thousand, though very rarely.
Now, three thousand voters could always hold the balance
in such a constituency, — Republican, Democratic, Catho-
lic, Protestant, — crumbled up as an independent commu-
nity necessarily is. With all these inevitable varieties of
opinion and purpose, three thousand men, bound together
hy one idea, one interest, with one purpose in view, and
demanding one thing, and nothing more, who know what
they want, stand together for it, and throw their whole
weight to secure it, can always hold the balance. There
never was a city election which that number of votes
massed together could not control. I say, therefore, with-
out the slightest wish to be personally offensive, that the
liquor-shops of Boston choose our Mayors. What is the
result? The result is, that it is as much a bargain as if it
were recorded in the registry of deeds, that the promi-
nent aspirants for city office shall not execute the laws
against the liquor-shops. 1 make no special charge against
the Mayor and Aldermen, — they are as good as most of
us. They want votes; it is the American failing, —most
ten want yotes. One man wants to be Mayor, another
man wants to be Alderman, a third wants to be Sheriff,
and a fourth wants to be Common-Councilman. Very

A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 513

of the telegraph is a man to bring the offender before the
judge. What is the use of a judge? He cannot move
of himself ; he is powerless if you do not bring the crimi-
nals before him. But the city government of Boston,
chosen by this machinery I have spoken of, says to its
police officers, Don’t you furnish that judge with any
criminals ; shut your eyes upon them!” Then, again, if
one is arrested, by any accident, what more? Why, this:
the statute says that our jurymen shall be drawn from a
box, in which the names of citizens of good moral charac-
ter and sound judgment, free from all legal exceptions, are
put. The city weeds out the jury-box on another plan.
In all trials that had antislavery or temperance in them,
you might be certain of one thing, you would never see
fan Abolitionist nor a temperance man on the jury, If he
got there, it was an accident, and there were always
enough to neutralize him. It is just like the black ele-
ment. We have several thousand black men in our
community; you have never seen a black man on a jury
but once, and that was an accident, and he was not allowed
to sit, though he had been regularly drawn. Many of
them are of good moral character, but their names never
get into the box; or, if they get in, never come out. So
of a man known distinctively as an Abolitionist; if his
name goes in, it never comes out. So of a man known as
a temperancé man ; rarely does his name come out. But
liquor-dealers have always been abundant on juries ; po
jury was trusted alone without them. If the State Foxciaine
good judges, and the city, at the other end, furnishes no
criminals, or, when one is by chance caught, fortifies him
with a jury that will disagree on his side, how is the Jaw
tobe executed? As long as the city government is chosen
by men whose interest is on that side, how can it be other-
wise? How is the law to be executed, when you have
intrusted its ex or mean

A METROPOLITAN POLICE, 515

Tn 1843, Latimer was arrested by a policeman with a
lie in his month, In 1851, Sims was surrendered by
policemen acting illegally, and avowing their defiance.
In 1854, Burns was sent back, and his claimants were
aided by the police, contrary to the statute. Unpopular
laws! "The city can execute anything it wishes to, un-
popular or popular. The city executes every one of its
own by-laws perfectly. No man steals with impunity; no
man violates Sunday with impunity; no man sets up a
muisance with impunity. As the Grand Jury said, sev-
eral years ago, of these grog-shops, “The municipal au-
thorities can remove this nuisance, or at least abate it,
whenever they will. It is as much in their power as the
offal in the sewers or the dirt in the streets.”

Tell one hundred and eighty thousand Yankees that
they cannot execute a law when they wish to! Once, by
happy accident, our Mayor left the city, and an exceptional
but most unexceptionable Alderman, Mr. Otis Clapp, took
his place, —no trouble that day in quelling the mob.
Deputy Chief Ham did it in thirty minutes. It is only
the presence of grog-shop Mayors that makes mobs om-
nipotent. But suppose Mayors cannot execute the laws,
—what then? If Berkshire should say, “ We want,
every one of us, to have two wives,” and practise that
plan, sending word up to Boston, * We cannot execute
the other law,” do you think we should sit down quietly,
and let it go? How long?

Boston has five or six trains of railroads, —one to the
Old Colony, one to Providence, one to Worcester, one to
Lowell, one to Fitchburg, one to the eastern counties, All
of them run locomotives where they wish to, Suppose
that, on the Fitchburg Railroad, one locomotive, for a year,
never got farther than Groton, —what do you think the
Directors of that road would do? Would they take up
the rails beyond Groton, or would they turn out the en-

616 A METROPOLITAN POLICE.

gineer? ‘There is a law of the Commonwealth of Massa-
chusetts, thoroughly executed in every county but ours;
and here the men appointed to execute it not only do not
want to, but you cannot expect them to. They were
elected: not to execute it, and they say they can’t execute
it. Shall we take up the rails, or change the engineer? —
which ?

Men say, to take the appointment of the police out of
the hands of the peninsula is anti-democratic. Why, from
1620 down to within ten years, the State always acted on
that plan. The State makes the law, Who executes it?
The State. For two hundred years, the Governor ap-
pointed the sheriff of every county, and the sheriff ap-
pointed his deputies, and they exeeuted the laws. The
constables of the towns were allowed merely a subsidiary
authority to execute by-laws, and help execute the State
law. The democratic principle is, that the law shall be
executed by an executive authority concurrent with that
which makes it, That is democracy. The State law,
naturally, democratically, is to be executed by the State
We have merely, in deference to convenience, changed
that of late in some particulars, and we may reasonubly
go back to the old plan if we find that, in any particular
locality, the new plan fails. Why not? Tn all other
inatters of State concern, as Mr. Ellis has well shown, —
Board of Education, Board of Agriculture, and all the
various boards,— the State has the control. You per
veive this “ anti-democratic” argument can be carried out
to an absurdity. Suppose the Five Points of New York
should send word to the Fifth Avenue, * We don't like
your police ; we mean to have one of our own, and it will
be very anti-democratic for you to take the choice of our
own constables out of our own hands.” Suppose North
Street should send word to the City Hall, “We have
concluded to turn every other house into a grog-shop, oF

A METROPOLITAN POLICE 517

something almost as bad, and to appoint our own police ;
please instruct your police to keep out of our ward.” We
should not say this was democratic. We should say, that
as far as the interest of a community in a law extends, just
so far that community has a right to a hand in the execu-
tion of it. Now the State of Massachusetts feels an in-
terest in the execution of the Maine Liquor Law. We
haye a sixth of the population and a third of the wealth of
the State. Do the influences of these stop with the people
who sleep on this peninsula? Does not our influence
radiate in every direction? Do not twenty thousand men
do business here, but not sleep here? A third of the
wealth! Who owns it? We that sleep here? Not at
all. These costly railroad depots, these rich banks, these
Jarge aggregates of property, who owns them? Why, the
smen that live ten, twenty, thirty miles outside of the city
limits, and come in here in crowds the first of January,
April, July, and October, to get their dividends. Men
who have millions invested on this peninsula no interest in
knowing whether the streets are safe! Sending their sons
into our streets, —no interest in their being morally whole-
some! Trusting their lives here,—no interest in their
being safe !

A fortnight ago, a woman, a teacher in a country town
within twenty miles of Boston, missed her father, —an
honest, temperate farmer, though not a teetotaler. He
came to the city to sell cattle, and had received five hun-
dred dollars. He had been gone a week, and she came
down to the city to hunt him up. She traced him from
spot to spot, and finally found that the grog-shops had
get hold of him, made him drunk, taken his money,
kept him drunk three days, so that a convenient poli
man might see him that number of times and complain
of him as a common drunkard, and he bad gone to the
House of Correction for three months. Has that town

518 A METROPOLITAN POLICE,

no interest in the streets of Boston? Let me tell you
again a story that I have told you once or twice before,
for it holds « grave moral. A few years ago, one spring
afternoon, when T left the city to deliver a lecture, I alight-
ed from the railroad car at the foot of a hill, whose swell
ing side bore the most magnificent of country dwellings.
Architecture and horticulture had exhausted their art, It
was so unlike anything about it, I was led to ask how it came
there. ‘The man who was driving me said it was built by
a village boy, who wanted to show how much money he
jad made in Boston in fifteen years. ‘ He left here with-
out accent,” said the young man; “went to Boston, be-
* came a distiller, returned with two hundred thousand dol-
lars, —that is his residence.” Do you suppose there was
a Yankee boy within sight of that hillside who was not
tempted to repeat this Boston experience, of rapid and
easy wealth? I rode on fourteen miles, and was set down
opposite one of those village homes which Dr. Holmes
describes, —a square house of the Revolutionary period,
—old elms hung over the lawn before it. The same
driver said, “In that front room lies dying the grandson
of the man who built that house, Grandfather and father
died drunkards,—lay about the streets of the village
drunk. That boy and I started together in life. He
went with me to Lowell. We went through the mill
and a mechanic trade. Never did one drop of intoxicat
ing liquor pass his lips. Social frolic, inerease of means,
friendly entreaty, laughing taunts, gay hours, never tempi
ed him. Until thirty, he stood untouched, guarded by an
iron resolution, Having gathered a few thousands, he was
tempted to Boston for a wider trade. He went there, —
stayed six years; came home penniless and a drunkard, t0
lie in the very streets where his father and grandfather
had lain before, He could stand up against every temp-
tation, except Boston streets. There he lies ayia as his

A METROPOLITAN POLICE, 519

grandfather and father before him.” Do you say that the
people of these country towns have no interest in the
streets of Boston? You tempt the virtue, melt the resolu-
tion and corrupt the morals of the Commonwealth, as far
as your influence extends,

No interest! Let me go a little way off, and be less
invidious. New York has one fifth of the population of
the State on Manhattan Island. Recently, in a great
natioral convulsion, the city stirred herself to checkmate
the State. For Wadsworth, the candidate of order, of
liberty, of government, the country counties flung twenty
thousand majority. ‘The demons of discord stirred up the
purliens of the city, and flung thirty thousand against him.
Ten thousand, the ultimate majority, carried their candi-
date to Albany. What was his first blow? Seymour's
first act, when he assumed the Governorship, what was
it? He fulfilled his bargain. He hurled his defiance at
the Metropolitan Police, which kept him and his allies,
conspirators, from carrying the Empire State into the
hands of the Confederacy. These are the times when, as
Macaulay says, “The vermin burrowing in garrets and
cellars show themselves of terrible importance.” Who
Knows that such times may not come upon us?

I have seen the day, in that city of New York, when
Rynders dictated law to the Chief of Police, and Matsell
obeyed him. For twenty years I have seen in your city
the mob rule when they pleased. I have seen your Mayor
order his police, in Faneuil Hall, to take off their badges
and join the mob which clamored down free speech in that
consecrated hall. You saw, two years ago, the State gov-
ernment reeling before the victims of the Tremont House
and Parker House. The Governor complained then, as I
am told he does now, that in the whole county he had not
one single officer whom he could command to execute the
law. Who shall say that it is not for the interest, for the

620 A METROPOLITAN POLICE.

peace, for the prosperity, of the State to make this great
centre of wealth and population independent of such base
control? We too may have a Fernandy Wood, — who
knows? Our sixth part of the population of the State
may attempt, in the interest of liquor and despotism, to
defy the Commonwealth. It is too important a machinery
to be left in the hands of the dangerous classes. We want
to take it out of the hands of the dangerous classes, and
put it into the hands of the Commonwealth, — nothing
else. One of two things is necessary. The law is bad,—
repeal it; or the law is good,—keep it. No other county
would be allowed to defy the law,— why this?

The Mayor says he cannot execute it, Take him at
his word. Undoubtedly, nx cannot, for he was specially
chosen not to do so; but the question is, Can it be exe
cuted? What do the temperance majority of the Com-
monwealth claim? One trial, —nothing more. We have
funded twenty-five years of discussion, any amount of toil
and labor, in that statute. It never has had one trial yet
on this peninsula, May we not ask simply one trial?
The locomotive has never attempted to go beyond Groton.
Why take up the rails yet? If Berkshire should say,
“We can’t execute your law against polygamy,” what
should we do? Why, appoint fresh sheriffs, not repeal
the law. So in this case, let not Massachusetts Imeel and
say, “I too am a slave to the grog-shops of the penin-
sula.” z

We do not claim that drunkenness can be wholly rooted
out. But we do claim that this law can be executed as
perfectly as other laws are, if its execution be intrusted to
competent and faithful hands. No crime is wholly
vented. Our crowded prisons prove that, No law is
perfectly executed. But there is nothing in the Maine
Liquor Law that distinguishes it from other statutes. No
man claims that the use of intoxicating drink ean be wholly

ss) -_ |

A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 621

stopped, But it is idle and ridiculous to say that the pub
lie sale of it cannot be stopped, as much as the indiserimi-
nate keeping of gunpowder, or the opening of shops on
Sunday, or the firing of muskets in crowded streets,
whenever magistrates shall really wish and mean to do
their duty.

A metropolitan police has been necessary in London,
and now its streets are the safest in the world. In New
York it has saved the city from convulsion and bloodshed.
One of its prominent citizens said to me a short time ago,
“ You do not know how near we have been to an outbreak
in this very street. But for our police, the attempt would
have been made to surrender us to Southern dictation.”
‘That same civil disorder may impend over us. What is
the remedy? Let the State hold her hand on the vices
of the peninsula, — claim her old democratic right to exe-
cute the Jaws she has made,— to execute them if the city
cannot, or if, by her constitution of government, she will
not try to execute them faithfully.

Our plan is to have Commissioners — three or five —
appointed hy the Governor or by the Legislature, which-
ever seems best. Let them hold their offices for three or
five years ; they appoint, rule, and remove the members
‘of the police force. Such a Commission would be re-
moved, as fur as anything in our civil system is or ought
to be, from the control of party politics, and would be
largely independent of the “dangerous classes.” This
peninsula needs it immediately, —the neighboring towns
and cities will need it soon. The members of such a po-
lice force should hold their places during good behavior,
and be removed only on charges stated in writing, to
which they may have a chance of replying, Now, every
fall, the liquor-dealer or other criminal, whom an honest
policeman has troubled, holds up his warning finger to the
Alderman of that ward, —* Remove that policeman, or

522 A METROPOLITAN POLICE.

don’t expect my vote.” What officer ean be expected
to do his duty in such circumstances ? Fellow-citizens,
during the two or three months preceding our city elec-
tions, we have, practically, no police, —none that dares
execute a law disagreeable to any influential class,

The moment the liquor interest of the city see that
their mixing in city elections will not secure a police force
in their interest, they will probably leave the election of
Mayor and Aldermen to the natural action of ordinary
politics, as they did in New York, and then we shall have
‘as good officers as our system will secure, with the present
level of education. Such Mayors and Aldermen will,
probably, no longer prostitute the jury-box to defend rum
and shield mobs. They will have no interest to do so.
‘They cannot so wholly corrupt the jury-box as to protect
the liquor-seller. ‘The liquor once poured into the street,
according to the statute, by an honest policeman, he must
be sued by its owner before a jury of the county. No
Mayor could make up a jury wholly of liquor-dealers.
Two or three honest men on it suffice to disagree, and no
verdict, in that case, is in effect a verdict for the officer.
Disagreement of juries now, which a servile Mayor
arranges for, protects the indicted grog-seller; then, to use
a common proverb, the boot would be on the other leg,”
and disagreement of juries executes the law. But if this
change be not an entire relief, we must press forward, and
find a remedy for that. I have full faith in democratic
institutions, Work on, and we shall yet lift them up to
much higher perfection. The future is sure. Honest
men rule in the end. Only show them their interest and
duty, and, in due time, they will rally to do it. ‘Ten years
ago, I made an antislavery speech, painting Southern des-
potism, and demanding that the North should rouse her-
self against her tyrants. The next day, meeting the
oldest statesman of the Commonwealth, he said to me,

, |

A METROPOLITAN POLICE. 523

“ Your speech was all true. I knew it thirty years agu.
But what can you do about it? They won’t listen.” I
answered, ‘I mean to protest, — claim my rights, and de-
nounce those who assail them, whether they listen or not.””
The policy has been somewhat successful. Agitate! and
we shall yet see the laws of Massachusetts rule even
Boston.

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.*

ADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I understand this is

a ward meeting,—the Sixteenth Ward of New
York, the banner ward for radical Republicanism. [Ap-
plause.] A very good-sized meeting for a ward meet-
ing. [Laughter.] I am glad, for the first time in my life,
to be adopted into the politics of New York city. and to
address a ward meeting in behalf of justice and liberty.
The text of my address is, Patience and Faith. Possess
your souls in patience, not as having already attained. not
as if we were already perfect, but because the whole na-
tion, as one man, has for more than a year set its face
Zionward. Ever since September 224 of last year, the
nation has turned its face Zionward; and ever since Burn-
side drew his sword in Virginia, we have moved toward
that point. [Cheers.] Now, a nation moving. and mor-
ing in the right path, —what reason is there for doubt?
what occasion for despair? We have found out at last the
method, and we are in earnest. Patience, all the passion
of great souls, makes vietory certain; when the human
heart is once capable of this greatest courage. no matter
clouds may be on the horizon. now and then Gul
the cloud so as to show us the blue sky behind; no

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 525

matter how dark political mistake or treachery may lower,
the moment comes when the North says that it is all a
phantasmagoria, and behind, the great heart of the nation
heats true to its destiny. [Cheers.] When I stood on
this platform five months ago, men said: You must not
be surprised if blood flows in the streets. Traitors are
trying to take the great Capital of the North out of our
arms, and the Democratic party of the State is behind
them.’ But one fine morning there was prudent hesita-
tion in the leading Democrat of Albany, and the Mayor
of New York defeated him on his first move. [Cheers.]
When the counties came to be represented, the leaders
found an army with officers and no rank and file. And
the Goliath of Connecticut Copperheads has been killed,
not by a stripling, but by a girl. [Applause.] Or if we
must add to her merits that of General Hamilton of Texas,
the eloquent champion of the Union, then we can almost
say that out of the mouths of girls and slaveholders God is
perfecting liberty. [Applause.] Now I neither doubt nor
despair, Gradually, one after another, the shams of the
North fall away. It is to be a long fight, no local strug-
gle,—only one part of the great fight going on the world
over, and which began ages ago,—only one grand di-
vision, one army corps doing its duty in the great battle
between free institutions and caste institutions, the world
over. Freedom and Democracy against the institutions
that rest upon classes. We may be the centre or only the
outskirts of that struggle, but wherever caste lives, wher-
ever class power exists, whether it be on the banks of the
Thames or the Seine, whether by the side of the Ganges
or the Danube, there the South has an ally, just as the
surgeon’s knife gives pain when it touches the living fibre,
[Cheers.] And against this mighty marshalling of every-
thing that is strong in human selfishness the democracy
of the North does battle, Some of our friends are anxiois,

526 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

that able and earnest men shall go to England, make the
real state of the case known there, and so, they think,
avert national collision. Instinct, Mr, Chairman, is a
great matter. ‘The ruling classes of England understand
our quarrel only too well. They feel that victory for the
North is ultimate ruin for them, The more of the trath
you show them, the more their hearts lean to the South-
ern side, — their side.

Every proud man who hates his brother is our enemy,
every idle man too lazy to think is our enemy, every
loafer who seeks a living without working for it is onr
enemy. [Applause.] Every honest man, asking only
for his own, and willing fairly to do his part, is our ally,
whether he eats rice on the banks of the Ganges or is
enrolled in the army under Hooker: never till honest
men realize this can there be peace or union. Till that
time union means a submission to the old slayocracy, a§
bitter and more relentless than ever. The South counted
on two allies in the ranks of her Northern enemy: one
was hatred of the negro,—the other Copperhead Demo-
cratic sympathy with the aristocracy of the South. She
counted confidently on these allies, but found she had
reckoned without her host. We have been accustomed
to say on this platform, for the last ten years, that if cit
cumstances should ever ronse to an antislavery purpose
the rank and file of the Democracy, the victory for free-
dom would be as sure as the existence of God. The
Abolitionists have always claimed that they had an inyin«
cible ally in that democratic prejudice against wealth and
rank, and the ineradicable love which man has at the core
for the rights of his fellow-man, [Applause.] When
the war broke out, the first blow the South aimed at the
Union, as if according to chemical law, crystallized that
level of democracy into an antislavery mould, and from
that hour to this it is the sheet-anchor of the Union, and

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 527

while it holds the future is certain, ‘The only reason why
this element did not grope its way at once to victory was
because it was led by men who did not intend to conquer.
Our statesmen were only ready for the shibboleth, “ Free-
dom, if necessary to save the Union”; it was a contin-
gent freedom, —not freedom for itself and in any event.
No one of them welcomed the war as a God-given oppor
tunity to do justice, and secure for the nation lasting,
immutable peace. Under that sort of leadership we went
to battle. The generals and the Cabinet meant no more
than to play a part in the great drama of justice for which
their hearts were not ready. Lucian tells us of an exhi-
bition in Rome in which monkeys had been trained to
take part ina play. They played their parts perfectly,
for a while, before an audience composed of the beauty and
fashion of the city, but in the midst of the performance
some Roman wag flung upon the stage a handful of nuts,
and immediately the actors were monkeys again. Our
statesmen went to Washington monkeys in human attire,
determined to compromise if possible; the South flung
nuts among them for eighteen months, and they were on
all fours for the temptation. [Laughter and applause.]
That epoch is ended. As in Cromwell's day they
sloughed off such effete elements as Essex and Fairfax,
we should slough off generals and statesmen; and never
can we be successful till routine West Point and rotten
Whiggery have been made to put on decent attire, or
sent back to private life, and those put in their places who
Believe in absolute, uncompromising war.

This real democratic element in the North is strong
enough, were it one and united, to have crushed all its
foes on this continent in ninety days. There never was a
time since the commencement of the struggle when, if the
North had been a unit, the war might not have been ended
in three months ; and, so ended, it would have left slavery

528 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

where it found it. But the North has never been a unit.
With the North as a unit, democratic, intelligent, resolved,
in carnest, the South never would have risked the strug-
gle. But she knew that the North was divided into three
great parties. One was routine, West Point, too lazy to
think. [Great applause.) I resolve hunkerism into ine
dolence and cowardice, too lazy to think, and too timid to
think. The man of the past is the man who got his ideas
before he was twenty, and had rather think as his father
thought than take the labor of thinking himself: he is 4
hunker, and he will probably die such. ei
And the North had a second element,

Saxon contempt for a black skin, disgust with the pat
of the negro, hatred of him as another race, contempt for
him as a slave, and weariness of the question. Outside of
that was the democrat of the North, in the good sense of
the term,—the man who believes in the manhood of his
brother the world over, and is willing he should have his
rights. Against such 2 North the South rebelled,— one
of our hands tied up by negro hatred, and the other by
constitutional scruples, and West Point on our shoulders.
Against such a North the South rebelled. You remem-
ber it well, —the North that never dared to apply the
line and the plummet to the ethics of its civilization, —
that never dared to have a logic which would know no
black, no white, when it studied its duties, —the North
that, both in pulpit and in civil life, believed and obeyed
the old proverb: “When the monkey reigns, let every
man dance before him.” [Laughter-] As long as @
wicked, contemptible institution had honors and wealth
and fashion to bestow, so long the pregnant knee was
crooked before it. That North the South met in battle, and
she mistook, as we Abolitionists did, (that is, the issue will
show whether we did mistake, we hope it is so,) how fir
the canker had gone, how great hold this routine of hun-

. THE STATE OP THE COUNTRY. 529

kerism had on the body of the people: that North rallied
for the struggle, poured out her money like water, and
her sons with ever-growing willingness for the great battle
betwixt democracy and slavery, betwixt God and the
Devil, for the world and the century. The government
was equally in the dark, equally undecided, equally uncer-
tain whut course to pursue, and for a long time we stum-
bled together. We have learned of events, and claim to
know our times. The government seems neither to learn
nor to forget anything. Why? Well, I think, because
our rulers were educated as Whigs. The old Whig party,
good as it was in many respects, virtuous in many of its
impulses, correct in certain of its aspirations, had one great
defect : it had no confidence in the people, no trust in the
masses; it did not believe in the conscience or the intelli-
gence of the million; it looked, indeed, upon the whole
world as in a probate court, in which the educated and
the wealthy were the guardians. And so, when our rulers
entered on the great work of defending the nation in its
utmost peril, they dared not fling themselves on the bosom
of the million, and trust the country to the hearts of those
that loved it. Your President sat in Washington, doubtful
what he ought to do, how far he might go. Month after
month, stumbling, faithless, uncertain, he ventured now a
little step, and now another, surprised that at every step
the nation were before him, ready to welcome any word
he chose to say, and to support any policy he chose to sub-
mit ; so that matters of vexed dispute, matters of earnest
doubt, the moment the bugle gave a certain sound, have
passed into dead issues. You know that when the rebel-
lion first broke forth no man dared speak out touching the
negro. The South fought to sustain slavery, and the
North fought not to have it hurt. But Butler pronounced
that magic word “contraband,” and summoned the negro
into the arena, [Applause.] It was a poor word. Some
34 ‘

530 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

doubt —I do not — whether it is sound law. Lord Chat-
ham said, “ Nullus liber homo” is poor Latin, but it is
worth all the classics. Contraband is a bad word, and may
be bad law, but just then it was worth all the Constitution
[applause] ; for in a moment of critical emergency it sum-
moned saving elements into the arena, and it showed the
government how far the sound fibre of the nation extended.
When Fremont [loud and long-continued applause] —
why won't you ever let me go on when I name Fremont?
[Laughter.] I say, when he pronounced that word Eman-
cipation on the banks of the Mississippi, the whole North,
except the government, said Amen. [Applause.] The
government doubted till the 22d of September, 1862.
But the moment the government pronounced the word, it
floated into a dead issue, and nobody worth minding now
doubts or debates about the emancipation of slaves. [Ap-
plause.] It only shows you how strong the government
is, if it will only act ; how certain the heart of the people
is to support it, if the government will only trust. If Mr,
Lincoln could only be made to accept the line of the old
huntsman song, —
“ Sit close in the saddle and give him his bead,”

he could carry twenty millions of people with him over
every barrier to victory and peace. [Loud applanse.] 1
believe, therefore, in ultimate success, because every act
of the government is more than indorsed by the intelli-
gence and virtue of the people,—the virtue of the people.
‘That is the only point at issue. To-day, your city roars
with the tumult of welcome for returning soldiers. Those
soldiers will find here not a Virginia eaten over with bar-
Temness, not starving people, not empty treasuries; they
will find a North untouched, —so much money that we
have not to go abroad to borrow any [applause], so much
wheat that we could feed the world, such ample munitions
of war that your traitor merchants smuggle them to Caro-

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 531

lina [sensation], —a traveller might journey through half
the North, and if he neither spoke nor read English, he
would never dream there was a war in any part of the
nation, —an untouched North, while the South; muster-
ing all her white men and all her sympathizers the world
over, has not yet reached the garnered treasure of North-
ern strength. We have not yet put forth the first begin-
ning of our power. In Scripture phrase, “ Truly there
has been a hiding of our power.” Tf we fail, it will be
because we deserve to, becanse we have not virtue enough
to prefer the end to the means. There is no question but
of the conscience and intelligence of the North. Now, I
believe in that, because thus far the government has never
asked for anything, nor ventured anything, that the readi-
ness of the people has not both given and indorsed. There
is my ground of hope.

T do not believe in Southern exhaustion. There may
be starving men at the South, starving households, ill-clad
soldiers, but there is no such exhaustion as approaches de-
spair. The South has not yet begun to play her last card,
The moment she feels exhaustion she will proclaim liberty
to the negro. The moment her cause touches its downfall
in the judgment of its leaders, she will call the black into
her ranks,—call him by some proclamation of gradual
emancipation, which will gather to her side the heartiest
sympathy of the English aristocracy. England never was
an antislayery nation, Her ruling classes never accepted
emancipation on any basis. England herself never ac-
cepted immediate abolition on any basis. As O'Connell
well said, the scheme of immediate emancipation was car-
ried over Parliament by the conscience of the middle
classes, and they do not usually rule in England. To-day,
that party in the contest which offers England gradual
emancipation will offer her all that her judgment approves.
Before the South permits her flag to stagger, she will

532 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

write on it gradaal emancipation, and bring the House of
Commons to her side, Ten men in the South will submit
to be colonists of England where one would submit to Lin-
coln, General Hamilton goes to Boston, « slaveholder,
and says on our platform, “I am glad that my slaves ane
gone if" it saves the Union.” If loyal men will surrender
their slaves and save the Union, do you not suppose dix
loyal men will surrender theirs to save the Confederacy?
Do you suppose the South will stop before she puts on to
her banner Emancipation? The moment she utters that
word, I shall admit that she feels weak in the knees, —
never till then. There is no exhaustion yet that touches
a traitor. The men that rebelled are the slaveholders, —
rebelled under the pretence of slavery, with the real pure
pose of killing republican institutions and founding arist-
cratic institutions in their place. Slavery was the point to
be protected, and the pretence that rallied the rebellion.
But, now that it is afoot, its leaders thtow off the mask,
and, without concealment, avow at home that their object
is to put this belt of the continent under the control of
aristocratic institutions, for the perpetnation of that sy
tem, among others, which they love. That element lus
yet felt no exhaustion, —it_ boasts, justly, of rare military
skill, and of as large armies as ordinary men can handle,—
and with that element I have no plea of conciliation. I
am for conciliation, but not for conciliating the slaveholder.
Death to the system, and death or exile to the master, is
the only motto. [Applause.] ‘There is a party for whom
T have ever the right hand of conciliation, and whenever
the foot of military despotism is lifted from that party, I
believe that in the South itself we shall be surprised at the
weight, strength, and number of the men who still lore
the Union. There is a party for whom I have coneiliation,
and this [taking by the hand a beautiful little girl of fire
years old, with a fair complexion and light auburn ring-

‘THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 533

lets] is its representative. In the veins that beat now in
my right hand runs the best blood in Virginia's white
races and the better blood of the black race of the Old
Dominion [applause],—a united race, to whom, in its
virtue, belongs in the fature a country, which the toil and
labor of its ancestors redeemed from nature and gave to
civilization and the nineteenth century. [Applause.] For
that class I have ever an open door of conciliation, — the la-
bor, the toil, the muscle, the virtue, the strength, the demac-
racy, of the Southern States. This blood represents them
all, —the poor white, a non-slaveholder, deluded into re-
Yellion for a system which crushes him,—some equally
deluded and some timid and gagged masters, — the slave
restored to his rights, when now, at last, for the first time
in her history, Virginia has a government, and is not a
horde of pirates masquerading as a State. No, the South
has not yet felt the first symptom of exhaustion. Get no
delusive hope that our success is to come from any such
source.

This war will never be ended by an event. It will
never come to a conclusion by a great battle. It is too
deep in its sources; it is too wide in its infuencé for
that. The great struggle in England between democracy
and nobility lasted from 1640 to 1660, taking a king's life
in its progress, and yet failed for the time. The great
struggle between the same parties in France began in
1780, and it is not yet ended. Our own Revolution began
in 1775, and never, till the outbreak of the French Revo-
lution concentrated the attention of the monarchies of
Europe, was this country left in peace. And it will take
ten or twenty years to clear off the scar of such a strug-
gle. Prepare’ yourself for a life-long enlistment. God
hus launched this Union on a voyage whose only port is
Liberty; and whether the President relucts, or whether

534 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

the cabin-boys conspire, it matters not, — absolute justice
holds the helm, and we never shall come into harbor until
every man under the fag is free. [Applause.] Why do
Isay this? I will tell you. We are accustomed to use
the words North and South familiarly, They once meant
the land toward the pole and the land toward the sun,
‘They have a deeper significance at present. By the North
T mean the civilization of the nineteenth century, —TI mean
that equal and recognized manhood up to which the race
has struggled by the toils and battles of nineteen centuries,
—I mean free speech, free types, open Bibles, the wel-
come rule of the majority, —I mean the Declaration of
+ Independence! [Applause.] And by the South, I mean
likewise a principle, and not a locality, an element of civil
life in fourteen rebellious States. I mean an element
which, like the days of Queen Mary and the Inquisition,
cannot tolerate free speech, and punishes it with the stake.
I mean the aristocracy of the skin, which considers the
Declaration of Independence a sham, and democracy a
snare,— which believes that one third of the race is
born booted and spurred, and the other two thirds ready
saddled for that third to ride. I mean a civilization whieh
prohibits the Bible by statute to every sixth man of its
community, and puts a matron in a felon’s cell for teach.
ing a black sister to read. T mean the intellectual, social,
aristocratic South,—the thing that manifests itself by
barbarism and the bowie-knife, by bullying and Iynch-
Jaw, by ignorance and idleness, by the claim of one man
to own his brother, by statutes making it penal for the
State of Massachusetts to bring an action in her courts
by statutes, standing on the books of Georgia
offering five thousand dollars for the head of William
Lloyd Garrison. ‘That South is to be annihilated. [Lond
applause.) The totality of my common sense —o1 what
ever you may call it—is this, all summed up in one

‘THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 535,

word: This country will never know peace nor union
until the South (using the words in the sense T have de-
scribed) is annihilated, and the North is spread over it. I
do not care where men go for the power. They may find
it in the parchment, —I do, I think, with Patrick Henry,
with John Quincy Adams, with General Cass, we have
ample constitutional powers; but if we had not, it would
not trouble me in the least. [Laughter and applause. ]
I do not think a nation's life is bound up in a parchment.
T think this is the momentous struggle of a great nation
for existence and perpetuity. Two elements are at war
to-day. In nineteen loyal and fourteen rebellious States
those two elements of civilization which I have described: ,
are fighting. And it is no new thing that they are fight-
ing. They could not exist side by side without fighting,
and they never have. In 1787, when the Constitution
was formed, James Madison and Rufus King, followed by
the ablest men in the Convention, announced that the dis-
sension between the States was not between great States
and little, but between Free States and Slave. Even
then the conflict had begun. In 1833, Mr. Adams said,
on the floor of Congress: “ Whether Slave and Free
States can cohere into one Union is a matter of theoretical
speculation. We are trying the experiment.” Tn June,
1858, Mr. Lincoln used ‘the language: “This country is
half slave and half free. It must become either wholly
slave or wholly free,” In October of the same year, Mr.
Seward, in his great “ irrepressible conflict” speech at
Rochester, said: ‘The most pregnant remark of Napo-
leon is, that Europe is half Cossack and half republican.
The systems are not only inconsistent, they are incom-
patible ; they never did exist under one government.
They never can.” “Our fathers,’’ he goes on to say,
“recognized this truth. They saw the conflict developinsz
| when they made the Constitution. And while tender-

Me.

526 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

conscienced and tender-hearted men lament this strife
between slavery and antislavery, our fathers not only
foresaw, but they initiated it.” They knew that these
two systems would fight. But they thought under the
purchment of the Constitution they could fight it out by
types ; they could discuss it to a peaceful solution ; ballots
and parties, types and free speech, would make brother
States and sister States, — settle the conflict between two
irreconcilable civilizations. What is the history of our
seventy years? It is the history of two civilizativas con-
stantly straggling, and always at odds except when one or
the other rule, So long as the South ruled, up to 1819,
we had uniform peace. The Missouri Compromise was
the first solemn protest of rising Northern civilization
against the Southern. It was an unsuccessful protest.
The South put it under her feet, but she did not kill it,
It continued alive through the stormy days of Texas, and
showed its head above water in the Compromise in 1850,
And again it was strangled and put under the heel of
fourteen States. But it culminated again by the irrepres-
sible power of God's own laws, and in 1861 wrote the
name of Abraham Lincoln on the topmost wall of the Re-
public. ‘This was not victory. Not vietory, but the her
rald of victory. Tt was seventeen hundred thousand
ballots recording the strength of the rising North against
the South. And the statesmanship of the South read
correctly this record. She said, ‘I can for four or eight or
twelve years buy this man, and bribe that, and bully the
other, But that is a poor and beggarly existence. There
is another way open to me. I agreed at the outset to
abide the issue of free discussion, and I put my system on
trial against Massachusetts free speech.”

Seventy years ago the North flang down the gauntlet
of the printing-press, and said, “I will prove that my sy
tem — freedom — is the best.” The South accepted the

‘THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 587

Constitution of the United States, securing a free press,
and took the risk. She said: “There is my slavery. I
believe it will abide discussion. I am willing to put it into
the caldron.” And Massachusetts put in her land and
character and brains, and we made a “ hodge-podge,” as
the English law says, a general mess, a bowl of punch
[laughter], of all the institutions of the nation, and we
said, “ There is the free press, untrammelled, for one ele-
ment, and whatever cannot bear that must be thrown
away.” [Applause.] For two generations, the experi-
ment went on; and when Lincoln went to Washington,
South Carolina saw the handwriting on the wall, — the
handwriting as of old, —that the free press had conquered,
and that slavery was sinking, like a dead body, to the bot-
tom; and she said, practically: “I know I made the
Dargain, but I cannot abide it. I knowI agreed to put
myself into the general partnership, and now comes the
demand for my submission to the great laws of human
progress, —I cannot submit.” So she loaded her guns,
and turned them, shotted to the lips, against the Federal
Government, saying, ‘* There is a fortification behind the
printing-press, —it is the Minie rifle.” “ All well,” said
the North ; “now we will try that. [Applause.] I offered
you the nineteenth century, — books; you chose to go
back to the fifteenth,—armies; try it!” The South
flung down the gauntlet; the North raised it, and has
flung it back into the Gulf. [Applause.] Beaten in both
ways, conquered on both issues, our civilization triumphant
in brains, and still more emphatically triumphant in bullets
[applause], the question now comes up, Which shall rule
this one and indivisible country? The South said, “I
load my cannon in order that I may annihilate Massacho-
setts.” ‘I accept it,” said the Bay State, and, her can-
non being the largest and the strongest, she annihilates the
South instead. [Renewed applause.] That is the argu-

538 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

ment. We should have gone to the wall had she beaten.
One nation !—she goes to the wall when we beat. That
is common sense ; that is fair, sound policy.

We have been planted as one nation; the normal idea
of our existence is that it is to be one and indivisible. We
are one nation. That being taken for granted at the out-
set, in this battle of civilizations, which is to govern?
The best. I do not think we have any claim to govern
this country on the ground that we have more cannon,
more men, and more money than the South. ‘That is 4
bald, brutal superiority. The claim of the North to govern
must be founded on the ground that our civilization is bet
ter, purer, nobler, higher, than that of the South.

The two ideas have always contended for mastery, till
now by argument, by types;—now, with bullets. Our
war is only an appeal from the nineteenth century of free-
dom and ballots to the system of the sixteenth century.
The old conflict, —a new weapon, that is all. The South
thought because once, twice, thrice, the spaniel North had
gotten down on her knees, that this time, also, poisoned
dy cotton-dust, she would kiss her feet. [A voice, “No
go this time!” and applanse.] But instead of that, far the
first time in our history, the North has flung the insult
back, and said; “By the Almighty, the Mississippi is
mine, and I will have it.” [Applause.] Now, when
shall come peace? Ont of this warlike conflict, when
shall come peace? Just as it came in the conflict of par-
ties and discussion. Whenever one civilization gets the
uppermost positively, then there will be peace, and never
till then. There is no new thing under the sum. ‘The
light shed upon our future is the light of experience,
Seventy years have not left us ignorant of what the aris
tocraey of the South means and plans, if it has left the

Secretary of State ignorant. [Laughter and applanse]
The South needs to rule, or she goes by the board. She

=, sm. il

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY, 639

is a wise power. I respect her for it. She knows that
she needs to rule. What does Mr. Jefferson Davis plan?
Do you suppose he plans for an imaginary line to divide
South Carolina from New York and Massachusetts ?
What good would that do? An imaginary line will not
shut out ideas. But she must bar out those ideas. That
is the programme in the South. He imagines he can
broaden his base by allying himself with a weaker race,
He says: “I will join marriage with the weak races of
Mexico and the Southwest, and then, perhaps, I can draw
to my side the Northwest, with its interests as an agri-
cultural population, naturally allied to me, and not to the
Northeast, with its tariff set of States. And he thinks
thus, a strong, quiet slaveholding empire, he will bar New
England and New York out in the cold, and will have
comparative peace. But if he bar New England out in
the cold, what then? She is still there. [Laughter.]
And give it only the fulcrum of Plymouth Rock, an idea
will upheave the continent. Now, Davis knows that better
than we do,—a great deal better. His plan, therefore,
is to mould an empire so strong, so broad, that it can con-
trol New England and New York. He is not only to
found a slaveholding despotism, but he is to make it so
strong that, by traitors among us, and hemming us in by
power, he is to cripple, confine, break down, the free dis-
cussion of these Northern States. Unless he does that he
is not safe. He knows it. Now I do not say he will suc-
ceed, but I tell you what I think is the plan of a states-
manlike leader of this effort. To make slavery safe, he
must mould Massachusetts, not into being a slaveholding
Commonwealth, but into being a silent, unprotesting Com-
monwealth; that Maryland and Virginia, the Carolinas,
and Arkansas, may be quiet, peaceable populations, He
is a wise man. He knows what he wants, and he wants it
with a will, like Julius Cxsar of old. He has gathered

540 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

every dollar and every missile south of Mason and Dixon's
line to hurl a thunderbolt that shall serve his purpose,
And if he does achieve a separate confederacy, and shall
be able to bribe the West into neutrality, much less alli-
ance, a dangerous time, and a terrible battle will these
Eastern States have. For they will never make

The Yankee who comes out of Cromwell’s bosom will
fight his Naseby a hundred years, if it last so long, but he
will conquer, [Applause.] In other words, Dayis will
try to rule, If he conquers, he is to bring, in his phrase,
Carolina to Massachusetts. And if we conquer, what is
our policy? To carry Massachusetts to Carolina. In
other words, carry Northern civilization all over the South.
It is a contest between civilizations. Whichever conquers
triumphs over the other.

I may seem tedious in this analysis. But it seems to
me that the simple statement includes the whole duty and
policy of the hour. It is a conflict which will never have
an end until one or the other element subdues its rival
Therefore we should be, like the South, penetrated with
an idea, and ready with fortitude and courage to sierifice
everything to that idea. No man can fight Stonewall
Jackson, a sincere fanatic on the side of slavery, but John
Brown, an equally honest fanatic on the other, [Ap-
plause.] They are the only chemical equals, and will
neutralize each other. You cannot neutralize nitric acid
with cologne-water. You cannot hurl William H. Sew=
ard at Jeff Davis. [Great applause and laughter.) You
must have a man of ideas on both sides. Otherwise the
elements of the struggle are unequal,

Our object is to subdue the South, What right has
our civilization to oust out the other? Tt has this right:
We are a Union,—not a partnership,—a marriage.
We put our interests all together in 1787. We joined
our honor and our wealth. This question is not to be

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 541

looked at like a technical lawyer dotting his i’s and cross-
ing his t's, and making his semicolons into colons. It is to
be looked at in the broad light of national statesmanship,
Our fathers, if they were honorable men, as we believe,
aecepted slavery as a part of their civil constitution on the
ground that it was put into a common lot with freedom,
with progress, with wealth, with education. If it stood its
own, well; if it went by the board, so. It was an intelli-
gible, if not an honest, bargain, They consented to be
disgraced by the toleration of slavery ; they consented to
Jot the fresh blood of the young, vigorous free labor of
many States build it up into longer and firmer life, only
on condition that it should take its chances with all the
other great national interests. It was with this funda-
anental understanding that the nation commenced, and the
great special interests of the country are based upon it,
For instance, the Illinois farmer, when he bought of the
Union a thousand acres in the Northwest, he did not
buy a thousand acres isolated in the Northwest; he
bonght a thousand acres with New Orleans for his port of
entry and New York for his counting-honse. And it was
as much a part of the deed as if it had been so written.
Now, if South Carolina can show that Illinois and New
York have broken the deed, she has a right of revolution;
that is, she has a right to reject it. But until she can
show that they have broken the deed, she is a swindler,
Tllinois owns New Orleans as much as Chicago, in a
tional sense. So the negro who sat down and waited
when Samuel Adams, who thought slavery a crime, and
your Gouverneur Morris, who thought it a disgrace and
asin, said, “ Wait, the time will come when the constant
waves of civilization or the armed right hand of the war
power will strike off your fetters,’” and the slave sat down
and waited. In 1819,—the Missouri Compromise, —
when the time had come, as John Randolph said the time

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 548

you? You whip him into a bitterer hate. Where will
that army go? Into a state of society more cruel than
war, — whose characteristics are private assassination, burn-
ing, stabbing, shooting, poisoning. The consequence is,
we have not only an army to conquer, which, being beaten,
will not own it, but we have a state of mind to annihilate.
You know Napoleon said, the difficulty with the German
armies was, they did n’t know when they were beaten,
We have a worse trouble than that. The South will not
only not believe itself beaten, but the materials which
make up its army will not retire back to peaceful pursuits.
Where are they going to retire? They don’t know how
to do anything. You might think they would go back to
trade. They don’t know how to trade; they never bought
nor sold anything. You might think they would go back
to their professions, They never had any. You might
think they would go back to the mechanic arts. They
don’t know how to open a jackknife. [Great merriment. ]
There is nowhere for them to go, unless we send them
half a million of emancipated blacks, to teach them how to
plant cotton. To the North, war is a terrible evil. It
takes the lawyer, the merchant, the mechanic, from his
industrious, improving, inspiring occupation, and lets him
down into the demoralization of a camp; but to the South,
war is a gain. The young man, melted in sensuality,
whose face was never lighted up by a purpose since his
mother looked into his cradle, —the mere wreck of what
should have been a man, —with neither ideas nor inspira
tions nor aspirations, was lifted by the war to a higher
level, Did you ever look into the beautiful faces of those
Roman young men, whose ideas were bounded by coffee
and the opera, —till Garibaldi’s bugle waked them to life,
—beautiful, because human still? Well, that was the
South. Over those wrecks of manhood breathed the
Dugle-note of woman and politics, calling upon them to

544 ‘THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

rally and fight for an idea, —Southern independence, Tt
lifted them, for the moment, into something which looked
like civilization ; it lifted them into something that was a
real life; and war to them is a gain, ‘They go out of it,
and they sink down a hundred degrees in the scale of
civilization. They go back to bar-rooms, to corner-gro-
ceries, to plantation sensuality, to chopping straw, and
calling it politics. [Laughter.]

Now, that South, angry, embittered, having arms in its
hands, what is it going to do? Shoot, burn, poison, vent
its rage on every side. Guerilla barbarities are but the
first drops of the shower, —the first pattering drops of the
flood of barbarism whieh will sweep over those Southern
States, unless our armies hold them. When England con-
quered the Highlands, she held them,—held them until
she could educate them; and it took a generation. That
is just what we have to do with the South; annihilate the
old South, and put a new one there. You do not annihi-
late a thing by abolishing it. You must supply the vacaney.
In the Gospel, when the chambers were swept and gar
nished, the devils came back becanse there were no
there. And if we should sweep Virginia clean, Jeff Davis
would come back with seven other devils worse than him-
self, if he could find them, and oceupy it, unless you pat
free institutions there. Some men say, begin it by export
ing the blacks. If you do, you export the very fulerum
of the lever ; you export the very best material to begin
with. Something has been said about the Alleghanies
moving toward the ocean as the symbol of colonization.
Let me change it, The nation that should shovel down
the Alleghanies, and then build them up again, would be
a wise nation compared with the one that should export
four million blacks, and then import four million of Chinese
to take their places. To dig a hole, and then fill it up
again, to build a wall for the purpose of beating out your

—— _ il

‘THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 545

brains against it, would be Shakespearian wisdom compared
with such an undertaking. I want the blacks as the very
basis of the effort to regenerate the South. They know
every inlet, the pathway of every wood, the whole coun-
try is a map at night to their instinct. When Burnside
unfurled the Stars and Stripes in sight of Roanoke, he
saw a little canoe paddling off to him, which held a single
black man; and in that contraband hand, victory was
brought to the United States of America, led by Burn-
side. He came to the Rhode Island general, and said:
“This is deep water, and that is shoal ; this is swamp, that
is firm land, and that is wood; there are four thousand
men here, and one thousand there.” The whole country
was mapped out, as an engineer could not haye done it in
a month, in the memory of that man. And Burnside was
loyal to humanity, and believed him. [Applause.] _Dis-
loyal to the Northern pulpit, disloyal to the prejudice of
his race, he was loyal to the instincts of our common na~
ture, knew that man would tell him the truth, and obeyed
him, The soldiers forded where the negro bade them,
the vessels anchored in the deep waters he pointed out,
and that victory was planned, if there was any strategy
about it, in the brain of that contraband [applause] ; and
to-day he stands at the right hand of Burnside, clad in
uniform, long before Hunter armed a negro, with the
pledge of the General that, as long as he lives and has
anything to eat, the man who gave him Roanoke shall
have half a loaf. [Enthusiastic applause.] Do you sup-
pose, that if I multiply that instance by four million, the
American people can afford to give up such assistance ?
Of course not. We are to take military possession of the
territory, and we are to work out the great problem of
. unfolding a nation’s life. We want the four million of
Dlacks,—a people instinctively on our side, ready and
skilled to work; the only element the Scuth has which
35

ioe

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. OAT

national action. Confiscate those lands. Colonize them.
Sell them with the guaranty of the government to the
loyal Massachusetts man or New Yorker. Say to him,
“There is a deed as good as the Union. Carry there your
ploughshares, seeds, schools, sewing-machines.” Carry free
Iabor to that soil, and you carry New York to Virginia,
and slavery cannot go back. I want to supply the va-
caney which this war must leave in every Slave State it
subdues. The Slave States; to my mind, are men and
territory, and nothing else. The rebellion has crushed
out all civil forms. New government is to go there. It
seems to me the idlest national work, childish work, for
the President, in bo-peep secrecy, to hide himself in the
White House and launch a proclamation at us on a first
day of January. The nation should have known it sixty
days before, and should have provided fit machinery for
the reception of three million bondmen into the civil state.
Tf we launch a ship, we build straight well-oiled ways
upon which it may glide with facility into its native ele
ment, So when a nation is to be born, the usual aid of
government should have been extended to prepare a path-
way through which to step upon the platform of civil
equality. It is nonsense without. We cannot expect in
hours to cover the place of centuries. It is a great prob-
Jem before us. We must take up the South and organize
itanew. It is not the men we have to fight, —it is the
state of society that produces them. He would be a fool
who, having a fever, scraped his tongue and took no
medicine. Killing Davis is only scraping the tongue;
Killing slavery is taking a wet-sheet pack, destroying the
yery disease, But when we have done it, there remains
behind the still greater and more momentous problem,
whether we have the strength, the balance, the virtue,
the civilization, to absorb six millions of ignorant, embit-
tered, bedeviled Southerners, and transmute them into

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY: 649

in Hooker. [Loud applause.) Men say he has fuults, —
faults which some of his predecessors did not have.
[Laughter.] Perhaps he has, but in my opinion a din-
mond with a flaw is better than a pebble without. [Ap-
planse.] I do not set one defeat against him. I think,
as Lord Bacon says, that a soldier’s honor should be of a
strong web which slight matters will not stick to. I be-
lieve Hooker’s is of that kind. He means to fight; he
knows how to fight; and ‘those two are new elements at
the head of the army. On the other side there are three
elements. Lee means to fight, and knows how to fight,
and he is deadly in earnest. We have had men who
neither knew how to fight, nor meant to fight, — of no
ability. Now we have ability to match the other side.
We yet lack earnestness, ideas, a willingness to sacrifice
everything, a readiness to accept the issue, courage and
industry in thinking. We have now two Commanders-in-
chief. They both live in Washington. The sad news
reaches us to-day that one means to take the field.
[Laughter.] Lincoln and Halleck, —they sit in Wash-
ington, commanders-in-chief, exercising that disastrous
influence which even a Bonaparte would exercise on a
battle, if he tried to fight it by telegraph a hundred miles
distant. But now it is said one of them means to take the
field, Heaven forbid! [Applause.] The difference be-
tween Halleck and Fremont is just this: one has not
learned anything since he graduated at West Point, and
does not wish to. As long as he rules, West Point, dead
lumber, rules. An old adage says, “A fool is never a
great fool till he has learned Latin.” And so a man is
never utterly incorrigible till he graduates at West Point.
{Laughter.] Genoral Halleck does not mean to under-
take the labor of thinking. He is too indolent to go about
to examine a new idea. It is enough for him that it was
not in the text-books when he graduated. [Laughter.]

550 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

Battles were not fought so when he was taught, and if he
is beaten according to the book, he is willing to be beaten.
(Laughter.] The German commanders complained of
Napoleon, when he first launched into the battle-feld,
that he violated all the rules. Now his Missouri rival
occupied the nineteenth century, and thought out the
issues for himself, —had the labor of meeting a new con-
tingency. He went to the head of the army a living man,
—not a dead book. I am beyond likes and dislikes. The
day is too serious for antipathies or likings. All these
men are nothing but dead lumber, to be thrown into the
gulf, that the nation, over the path their bodies make, may
march like an army with banners to liberty and peace.
[Applause.] But never will this rebellion be put down
while West Point rules at Washington. [Applause] Tt
does rule, That second Commander-in-chief cuts off
everything which outgoes his own routine. There are
two great classes in the army and in the state: one is,
such a man as Halleck, who hates negroes, spurns novel-
ties, distrusts ideas, rejects everything but red tape. The
others are Hamilton, Butler, Phelps, and Fremont [loud
applause], Sigel, who mean that this Union shall mean
justice at any rate, and that if it does not mean justice it
shall not exist; who know no nation except one that
secures liberty, [Applause.] ‘These are the men who
are to shape the policy and guide the thanderbolts of the
government. [Apphiuse.] The cook takes an onion and
peels off layer after layer till she gets to the sweet, sound
vegetable. So you will have to peel off Seward and Hul-
leck, Blair and Chase [laughter], till you get to the sound
national element of civil and military purpose, the earnest
belief, the single-hearted, intense devotion to victory, the
entire belief in justice, which can cope with Stonewall
Jackson. [Applause.] Never till then shall we succeed.

Thave compared General Halleck and General Fremont,

Mil

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 661

You may take another parallel. One is Seward, and
another is Butler. Seward does not believe in war, but
in diplomacy or compromise. He has prophesied again
and again that this war, like the divisions of former times,
could be quieted in sixty or ninety days. He thought so ;
if he had not, he never would have risked his fame as a
statesman upon the prophecy. He said by the voice of a
regular army officer in the cabin of that ship which went
down to dismantle Norfolk, when foreign-bred soldiers
begged the American officers to stop and give them three
hundred men to saye two thousand cannon from the
armies of the Confederates, and guaranteed to take that
place and hold it three or six months, with two hundred
men, — one of his class tock a gentleman into the cabin
and said, “ You don’t understand this thing; this is not a
war, it is a quarrel: we have had a dozen of them; we
shall get over it in sixty days.” Seward believes it yet;
he receives commissioners; he sends Frenchmen to Rich-
mond to note terms; he sends letters abroad dealing with
rebels as equals in fact. Butler is the first man who
ever hung a rebel [loud applause], —and it ought to be
recorded on his gravestone. If I were a politician and a
general, I would not live an hour until I was his twin.
[Langhter.] Let it go down to history, that one third of
the nation burst into insurrection, and there was but one
man, and he a Democrat, who dared to hang a felon,
(Loud applause.) A government in arms against crimi-
nals who have wasted its treasures and filled two hundred
and fifty thousand martyred patriot graves, —rebels, not
belligerents. Now in the two distinetions between Hal-
leck, routine, and Fremont, Phelps, Butler, realities, is
the change needed for the future in military affairs; in
the difference between Seward, the politician, and Butler,
the government, is the change needed in civil affairs. If
Seward is a Republican, God grant us a Democratic sue-

TEE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 553

cherishes like a household word in every hovel, and at
whose bidding he will rise to the Stars and Stripes. Will
the slave fight? Well, if any man asks you, tell him no,
Will he work? If any man asks you, tell him no. But
if he asks you whether the negro will fight, tell him yes.
[Applause.] If he asks you whether the negro will work,
tell him yes, —work even for patriotism without wages,
as he has worked at Fortress Monroe, the United States
promising him $10 a month, keeping the first $8 for any
stray contrabands who might join him, taking the second
$4 for clothing the contraband himself, and the other $3
Uncle Sam keeps. [Laughter.]

But men say, “ This is a mean thing; nineteen millions
of people pitched against eight millions of Southerners,
white men, and can't whip them, and now begin to call on
the negroes.” Is that the right statement? Look at it.
What is the South's strength? She has eight millions of
whites. She has the sympathy of foreign powers. She
has the labor of four millions of slaves. What strength
igs the North? Divided about equally — that is a very
poor statement for your side —into Republicans and Dem~-
cerats ; the Republicans willing to go but half way, and
the Democrats not willing to go at all. [Laughter.) I
will tell you what it is. It is like two men fighting. We
will call them Jonathan and Charles. Jonathan is the
North. His right hand, the Democratic party, he holds
behind him. His left hand, his own tenderness of con-
science uses to keep the slaves down. That is how he is
to fight. No, that is not all. Upon his shoulders is
strapped the West Point Academy, like a stone of a hun-
dred weight. [Laughter.] The South stands with both
hands, holding loaded revolvers, and, lest she should lose
any time, John Bull is behind with additional pistols to
hand the moment she needs them. Those are the two
powers which are fighting this battle. Now the question

55 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

is, whether in this great conflict, —not a boy's play be-
tween A and B, but the great struggle for the control of
this continent in behalf of free labor, —is it not the duty
of wise men to use every means within their reach? This
is a contest between slaveholders and free labor, —nothing
more ; and in that contest the people, as in every contest
against an aristocracy, are bound in their own right, in the
right of their children, in the right of the great interests
of the world which hang upon their success, to bestir
themselves to understand, and to use the moment they see
it, every weapon within their reach. I contend, therefore,
that it is both constitutional and rightful, and, more than
that, that it is absolutely necessary, that this government
should, in the hour of its peril, call upon the four millions
of blacks to aid it in a struggle which means liberty to
them. I am not speaking now as an Abolitionist. T hold
the hour to be a momentously serious one. Deeply in
debt, with a terrible loss of blood, having fixed foul shame
upon the cause of democracy by our indecision or delay,
with a future before us complexed by every variety of
dangers, the question is how we shall pilot the ship of
state, the hope of the world, through this storm. ‘The
silver lining of the dark clond that overhangs us is the
irradicable loyalty of four millions of bondmen who hold
the scale in their hands,

‘Throw aside all these idle quibbles: a mighty work is
before us; welcome every helper. Cease to.lean on the
government at Washington. It is a broken reed, if not
worse. We are lost unless the people are able to ride out
this storm withont captain or pilot. Yes, in spite of same-
thing worse at the helm. The President is an honest
man ; that is, he is Kentucky honest, and that is neces,
sarily a yery different thing from Massachusetts or New
York honesty, A man cannot get above the atmosphers
in which he is born. Did you ever see the Life of Luther

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 555

in four volumes of seven hundred pages each? ‘The first
volume contains an account of the mineralogy of his native
country, the trees that grow there, the flowers, the aver-
age length of human life, the color of the hair, how much
rain falls, the range of the thermometer, é&c., and in’the
second volume Luther is born, That was laying the
foundation of Luther's character. Lincoln was born in
Kentucky, and laid the foundation of his honesty in Ken-
tucky. He is honest, with that allowance. He means to
do his duty, and within the limit of the capacity God has
given him he has struggled on, and has led the people
struggling on, up to this weapon, partial emancipation,
which they now hold glittering in their right hand. But
we must remember the very prejudices and moral callous-
ness which made him in 1860 an available candidate, when
angry and half-educated parties were struggling for vic-
tory, necessarily makes him a poor leader,—rather no
leader at all, —in a crisis like this, I have no confidence
in the counsels about him. I have no confidence in the
views of your son of York who stands at his right hand
to guide the vessel of state in this tremendous storm.
[Hisses.] ‘That is right. I honor every man who ex.
presses his opinion. I express mine; I would have every
man-express his dissent, I am saying nothing of the mo-
tives of Mr. Seward, nothing. When a man is dying, an
honest mistake in the medicine is as bad as poison, The
question is whether his is the statesmanship of the hour,
and if it is not, then, on every theory of parliamentary
government, he is bound to retire from his position and
Jet another man occupy it. He has never uttered a
prophecy which events have not falsified, nor initiated
a policy which he has not himself been obliged to forego.

If the hope of the nation rested on the Cabinet he
leads, I should despair; but our government is not at
Washington, neither the brains nor the vigor of Wash-

556 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

ington guide the people. It only blocks the path of the
real government,—the people, —the people whose sub-
stratum purpose, underlying all honest parties and cliques,
is to save the Union by doing justice and securing liberty
to all, At least, if all do not consciously plan this, the
vast majority are willing for it. I know there are those
standing to-day among us who would stretch their hands
over two hundred thousand martyr graves and clasp hands
with the rebels, That element is to be put under our
feet, with the declaration that the helm is ours, by party
right, by natural right, by the right of absolute justice;
and while God gives us the power, we will use it boldly in
the service of freedom and the Union. [Applause.] The
whole social system of the Slave States is to be taken to
pieces; every bit of it, General Butler tells us that in
Louisiana it has gone to pieces. [Great applause, fol-
lowed by an attempt at cheering for Butler, not fully
understood.] He deserves a better cheer than that [three
cheers for General Butler called for, and enthusiastically
responded to] for this reason: he is almost the only gen~
eral in our service who acts upon the principle that we
are all right and the traitors all wrong. [Renewed ap-
plause.] Most of our other generals act upon the princi-
ple that the rebels are half right, and we are half wrong.
When Butler was at New Orleans last summer, he assem-
bled some fifty slaveholders in the parlors of the St.
Charles Hotel, and said to them: “Don't you indulge the
idea that there is a Democratic party in the North making
a bridge back to Washington. I am a Democrat, and
shall always be a Democrat; and I tell you I will barn
every house in the State of Louisiana, and put every
negro's right hand upon every master's throat, before
take down that banner and go home.” [Loud and long
cheering.) Why is General Butler idle? Who can
tell? Abraham Lincoln can’t; he says he knows nothing

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 55T

about it. [Langhter.] General Halleck can’t; he says
he knows nothing about it, William H. Seward can’t;
he says he knows nothing about it. And the best general
in the service, the man who held the third city in the
empire in his right hand like a lamb, that man comes
home to the Capital, and cannot find a man in the Cabinet
who will take the responsibility of saying, “I advised his
recall,” or will tell him the reason why he was recalled.
{Three more cheers for Butler.] Why is he, one of the
ablest of the very few able men this war has thrown to
the surface,—why is he idle?

General Hamilton had the promise of the government at
Washington, over and over again, that he might go and
shut the back door of the rebellion, Texas, out of which
the traitors mean to fly when they are beaten, and through
which Vicksburg gets her strength to-day. Why has he
not gone? Your own great fellow-citizen goes to Washing-
ton under the pledge of the President, too much in a hurry
to allow him to leave Washington for six hours, stays for a
week, and comes back without a commission. Why? Be-
cause Abraham Lincoln is not President of the United
States, or because he too ardently longs and plans to be so
again. Either because the war is henceforth subordinate
to a policy dictated by the next Presidential canvass, or
because behind President Lincoln, curbing his purpose,
making conditions which balk his designs, making him
doubt the purpose and the strength of the North, standing
round him in civil and military positions, are men who do
not mean that this battle shall be bravely and gallantly
fought through. The worst rebellion in the land is the
rebellion of the Cabinet and Generals against common
sense and justice. Cromwell never succeeded until the
Long Parliament sloughed off every man who believed in
the House of Lords, and left nothing but democrats be-
hind. We shall never succeed until we slough off every-

558 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY,

thing that believes in the past, and bring to the front
everything that believes there is but one remedy, — that
is, to save the Union on the basis of liberty. [Cheers.]
I believe that the President may do anything to save the
Union. He may take a man’s houses, his lands, his bank-
stock, his horses, his slaves, —anything to save the Union;
the government may make every slave a free man, no
matter where he is, Kentucky or Louisiana, now or to-
morrow, with compensation or without. We need one
step further, —an act of Congress abolishing slavery
wherever our flag waves. The same war power and mil-
itary necessity which made the proclamation constitutional
authorizes this act as much. There is but one thing the
government can’t do to save the nation, and that is to
make 2 free man into a slave ; everything else is within
its power.

I doubted somewhat when I heard the news from the
Rappahannock, until I sew that reverses had taught
the nation where its strength lay. God grant us so
many reverses that the government may learn its duty-
God grant us that the war may never end till it leaves
us on the solid granite of impartial liberty and justice.
[Cheers.] The government which has had two years
of experience, of warning, and of advice, without profit-
ing by it, must abide the consequences. In the words
of the old proverb, “He that won't be ruled by the rud-
der must be ruled by the rock.” [Applause.] If they
will not be ruled by wise counsels, they must abide dis-
aster; if they won't hear advice, they must expect re-
verses. What we have to teach Washington is, that such
is the fall purpose of the millions, and under it and in it is
the certainty of success, — the millions, not the leaders.
In my judgment, unless the sky soon clears, the Republi-
can party has proved its own incapacity, — written Teha-
tod on its own brow. Judging by the past, whose will

‘THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 559

d wit can we trust? None of them,—I am utterly
impartial, — neither President nor Cabinet nor Senate.
Peel off Seward, peel off Halleck, peel off Blair, peel off
Sumner, — yes, Massachusetts Senators as well as others.
No, I will not say peel off our Massachusetts Senators ;
but I will say their recent action has very materially less-
ened my confidence in their intelligence and fidelity. I
will tell you why. When the government called on New
England for a negro regiment, and we went from county
to county urging the blacks to enlist, one Massachusetts
Colonel dared to say, down in South Carolina, in the face
of the enemy, that he had rather be whipped without
negroes than conquer at their side, —a Massachusetts
Celonel, in that hour of emergency and critical issue.
His case within twenty days went before the Senate of
the United: States, and the very week that his apology
was filed in the War Office at Washington, Massachusetts
Senators begged their reluctant brothers to make hima
Brigadier-General. Yes, Massachusetts Senators, thor-
oughly informed and put upon their guard, against the
repeated remonstrance of their fellow-Senators, insisted
on rewarding the motineer. [Shame, shame.”] A
private, ignorant, uneducated, just mustered into the ser-
yice, mutinied in the streets of Boston, and Colonel Lowell
shot him rightfully, [Cheers.] A Massachusetts Colonel
mutinied in the face of the enemy, and a Massachusetts
Senator made him a Brigadier-General. Such Republi-
canism will never put down the rebellion.* [Cheers.]

* Colonel Stevenson said he had rather be whipped with white men
than conquer with black men; and General Hunter took away his sword.
When Adjutnt-General Thomas went 10 the Southwest to muster negroes
into our ranks, he lifted his index finger, and, pointing to Washington,
said, “The wind blows North there," and from Brigadier to Lieutenant
every man closed his lips and denied all prejudice against color. Negro
Phobia stabs nearer the heart of the government, has more power to wound,
than Davis has. ‘There will be none of it in our army at least, the moment

560 ‘THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

Spite of these sad, sad shorttcomings, I have hope,
Iron, they say, cannot be made to sink in the current
of Niagara, The Cataract tosses it like a chip, and bears
it onward, The Cabinet is unredeemed inefficiency, —
heavy as molten and doubly-hammered iron; but in the
Niagara of 1863 it is tossed onward like a chip. No
thanks to it, but to the Niagara which will not be re-
sisted. Neither the calculating or stupid stand-still-ism
of the Cabinet, nor the weakness nor the blunders of
our own best leaders, can long delay us. In time they
will punish the Colonel who treads on a negro as se
verely as if he had wronged a college graduate, whose
home was on Beacon Street or the Fifth Avenue. The
South is not strong in herself. All her strength con-

government lets its will be uomistaknbly known, ‘That’ is the chief reatou

why I blame our Massachuserts Senators for conferring on Colonel Steven
son the honor of Brigudicr-Generalship just at the moment he defied and
denounced the policy of the government, Gross insubonination existed
in General Hunter's department, — arising out of this among other enases,
—the soldiers, taking cournge from the temper and talk of their officers,
had inflicted terrible outrages on the negroes there; at the North we werw
appealing to the negro to enlist. All over the land men tried to penetrate
the real purpose of government in respect to the nogro ; — its friends, in or
der to help it; the negro, that he might more cheerfully do his duty. Wa
were calling, in our peril, on a wronged race, which had been cheated of te
rights again and aguin in every national emergency, ani begging them now
to trastand to help us, obliged to tell them they would have no commie
sions, but must sorve under white officers. « Will they be men whose hearts
are with us?” we were constantly asked by the negro, We trembled while
‘we answered, “Wo hope s0, we belicve so.” At this crisis, Colonel Ste
‘yenson, standing at Hunter's side, spits on the govermment’s movements.
It was 4 moment and an act which fixed the attention of the gation. Tt was
sun act which, oo fir as one man could, perilled a great and necessary move
ment. Ir deserved, therefore, severe rebuke, Tt was an act which gave the
administration the very best opportanity to show the world its purpose Ie
yond a doubt. One right, decisive word from the Senate, and no

the service would afterwards mistake the purpose of the
dare 10 misuse a uegro, That word was, * Colonel

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 561

sists in our unwillingness to strike? Why this unwill-
ingness to strike? Because we do not yet see John
Hancock under a black skin; and until we do see him,
we shall never wage an honest and utter battle. No
man who does not grant to the negro his just place is fit
to be enlisted in the army of the Union, or to stand in its
Senate, if that Union means liberty ; or if that is an exag-
gerated statement, certainly no man has a right to lead
our Senate or our army who does not carry that idea in
his heart. {Applanse.]

Never until we welcome the negro, the foreigner, all
races as equals, and, melted together in a common nation~
ality, hurl them all at despotism, will the North deserve
triumph or earn it at the hands of a just God. [Applause,]

services and your apology wo overlook your fault; but stay a Colonel till
by faithfnl and hearty co-operation in the new movement you earn the na-
tion’s confidence, and let every officer take warning by your fate.” Such
‘wus the measare we urged the Senste to send to the mutineer, Instead of
that, Massachusetts Senators reward the mutineer to conciliate hunker trea-
son.

‘Thos we see high-handed defiance of the government's policy enter the
Sonate a Colonel and como out a Brigadier. What rule for its conduct
could the army take from such an example? Spit on the government,
and expect promotion, — trample on the negro, and be sure of employ-
ment! Sigel, Fremont, Butler, Hamilton, Phelps, and a host of others idle,
yet a negro-hater promoted on the plea of necessity to get good officers 1
‘When Mr, Sumner let personal feelings lead him to such a step, he betrayed
the negro. If, as his friends allege, he allowed Hunter or Burnside — one
anew convert, the other not converted at all —to dictate such a course, ho
forgot that we chose him, not them, our Senator, and trusted him, not them,
with these grave powers. But I have the hest authority for saying that
General Hunter never asked of any Senator to promote Colonel Stevenson.
T have the best reason for believing that he, like myself, looks on that act of
the Senate as a grave error. This is only one case of a single and soon-for-
goiton individual, but it tests statesmen as much as large matiers. Massa
chnsetts Senators must reform on these points altogether if they expect trast
fn furnre. ‘Let them sce to it, lest, while they think they aro using others
‘for good ends, they may themselves be made tools for base ones.

562 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

Bat the North will triumph. I hear it. Do you remem-
ber in that disastrous siege in India, when the Scotch girl
raised her head from the pallet of the hospital, and said to
the sickening hearts of the English, “I hear the bagpipes,
the Campbells are coming,” and they said, “ Jessie, it is
delirium.” “No, I know it; I heard it far off.” And in
an hour the pibroch burst upon their glad ears, and the
banner of England floated in triumph over their heads.
So I hear in the dim distance the first notes of the jubilee
rising from the hearts of the millions. Soon, very soon,
you shall hear it at the gates of the citadel, and the Stars
and Stripes shall guarantee liberty forever from the Lakes
to the Gulf. [Continued applause. ]

THE END.

Cambridge. Sterectyped and Printed by Welcu, Bigalow, & Co.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
STANFORD AUXILIARY LIBRARY
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305-6004
(650) 723-9201
salcirc@sulmail.stanford.edu
All books ore subject to recall
DATE DUE

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