Chapter XXII: Section 7: And be it further enacted, That, after the appointment of (6)

From its origin you will see its true character beyond question. Certain slave-masters, after long years of conspiracy, rose against the Republic and struck at its life. The reason assigned for this parricide was strange as the deed. It was simply because the people of the United States, by constitutional majority, according to prescribed forms of law, had elected Abraham Lincoln as President. On this alleged reason, and to defeat his administration, Rebellion was organized. You are familiar with the succession of parricidal blows that ensued. State after State, beginning with South Carolina, always traitorous, undertook to withdraw from the Union. Their Senators and Representatives in Congress actually withdrew from the National Capitol, leaving behind menaces of war. Custom-houses, post-offices, mints, arsenals, forts, all possessions of the National Government, one after another, were seized by the Rebel slave-masters. As early as the 1st of January, 1861, while James Buchanan was President, the palmetto flag was hoisted over the custom-house and post-office at Charleston. Already it had been hoisted over Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie in the harbor of Charleston, while the national force allowed in these fortresses surrendered to Rebel slave-masters. This was followed by the seizure of Fort Pulaski at Savannah, Fort Morgan at Mobile, Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip at New Orleans, Fort Barrancas and Fort McRae with the navy-yard at Pensacola. Throughout that whole Rebel region two fortresses only remained to the National Government: these were Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens. The steamer Star of the West, bearing reinforcements to the small garrison cooped in Fort Sumter, was fired at in the harbor of Charleston, and compelled to put back discomfited. This was war. Meanwhile the Rebel States had taken the form of a confederacy, with Slavery as corner-stone, and proceeded to organize an immense military force in the service of the Rebellion. At last, after long-continued preparations, the Rebel batteries opened upon Fort Sumter, which, after a defence of thirty-four hours, was compelled to surrender. There was rejoicing at the Rebel capital, and the Rebel Secretary of War, addressing an immense audience, let drop words which reveal the true character of the war. “No man,” said he, “can tell where the war this day commenced will end; but I will prophesy that the flag which now flaunts the breeze here will float over the dome of the old Capitol at Washington before the 1st of May. Let them try _Southern chivalry_ and test the extent of Southern resources, and it may float eventually over Faneuil Hall itself.”[373] It was already the 12th of April, and the Rebel flag was to float over the National Capitol before the 1st of May. It was time that something should be done in self-defence. Not only the National Capitol, but Faneuil Hall, was menaced, while the boast of “Southern chivalry” went forth.

Thus far the National Government had done nothing, absolutely nothing. It had received blow after blow; it had seen its possessions, one after another, wrested from its control; it had seen State after State assume the front of Rebellion; it had seen the whole combined in a pseudo-confederacy, with a Rebel President surrounded by a Rebel Cabinet and a Rebel Congress; and it had bent under a storm of shot and shell from Rebel batteries. At last it spoke, calling the country to arms. Search history, and you can find no instance of equal audacity on the part of rebels, and no instance of equal forbearance on the part of Government.

The country was called to arms. Nobody can forget that day, when the people everywhere, inspired by patriotic ardor, rose in _necessary self-defence_ to save the National Capitol and Faneuil Hall, already menaced. For the Rebellion the war had begun long before; but for the country it began only at that great uprising, when all seemed filled with one generous purpose, and nobody hesitated. Men calling themselves Democrats vied with Republicans. Daniel S. Dickinson and Benjamin F. Butler made haste to join their country. Party differences were forgotten as the tocsin sounded.

It was the tocsin summoning the country to defend itself. The war then and there recognized was, on our part, a war of national defence, and its simple object was to put down the Rebellion. You confuse yourself, if you say that it was to restore the Constitution; and you misrepresent the fact, if you say that it was to abolish Slavery. It was for the suppression of the Rebellion,--nor more, nor less.

* * * * *

Here, then, fellow-citizens, it becomes important to know and comprehend the Rebellion, and especially its animating impulse, or soul. From the beginning, its diagnosis has been essential to the right conduct of the war; and if at any time the war seems to fail, or foreign powers seem to lower, it is because our Government has not recognized the true character of the Rebellion. “Give me to see,” is the exclamation of every patriot, that our blows may not fail. To all familiar with history it was obvious, at once, that this Rebellion stood out in bad eminence, unlike any other of which we have authentic record; that it was not a dynastic struggle, as in the adventurous expeditions of the British Pretender; that it was not a religious struggle, as in the French wars of the League; that it was not a struggle against a conqueror, as in the repeated outbreaks of Ireland; that it was not a struggle for Freedom, like that of Switzerland against Austria, of Holland against Spain, of our fathers against England, of the Spanish-American States against Spain, and of Greece against Turkey; that it had in it none of these elements, whether dynasty, religion, or freedom: for it was simply a struggle for Slavery, and so completely had Slavery entered into and possessed it that the Rebellion was changed to itself. If you would find a parallel to this transcendent wickedness, you must pass “the flaming bounds of place and time,” and look on that earliest Rebellion, when Satan strove against the Almighty Throne to establish the supremacy of Sin, even as now this insensate Rebellion strives to establish the supremacy of Slavery. It is because partisans have failed to see the true character of the Rebellion, or been unwilling to recognize it, that they do not feel how absurd it is to say that the war on our part has been changed, when nothing has been done but to recognize the identity between Slavery and the Rebellion. There has been no change. It is still a war to put down the Rebellion; but we are in earnest, and are determined that the Rebellion shall not save itself by skulking under the _alias_ of Slavery. Call it Rebellion or call it Slavery, it is one and the same.

A glance at the immediate origin of this war is enough for the present occasion. But to dispel all darkness, and to determine our duty, let me take you, for a few moments, back to the distant origin of the two elemental forces now in deadly conflict.

Looking at the question abstractly, these two elemental forces are nothing but Slavery and Liberty. It is superfluous to add that these are natural enemies, and cannot exist together. Where Slavery is, there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is, there Slavery cannot be. To uphold Slavery, there must be uncompromising denial of Liberty; to uphold Liberty, there must be uncompromising denial of Slavery. Each, in self-defence, must stifle the other. Therefore between the two is constant hostility and undying hate. This eternal warfare is not peculiar to our country. It belongs to the nature of universal man. If it fails to show itself anywhere, it is because Slavery has won its most detestable triumph, and blotted out the Heaven-born sentiment of Freedom. Circumstances among us, going back to our earliest history, have given unprecedented activity to these two incompatible principles, and have at last brought them into bloody battle, face to face. But it is only part of the universal conflict which must endure so long as a single slave shall wear a chain. Slavery itself is _a state of war_, ready to burst forth in blood, whenever the slave reclaims that liberty which is his right, or whenever mankind refuses to sanction its inhuman pretensions.

Go back to the earliest days of Colonial history, and you will find the conflict already preparing. It was in 1620 that twenty slaves were landed at Jamestown, in Virginia,--the first that ever pressed the soil of our country. In that same year the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. Those two cargoes contained the hostile germs which have ripened in our time. They fitly symbolize our gigantic strife. On one side is the slave-ship, and on the other is the Mayflower. Early events derive importance as we learn to recognize their undoubted consequences, and these two ships will be regarded with additional interest when it is seen that in them were the beginnings of the present war.

Perhaps, in all the romantic legends of the sea, there is nothing more striking than the contrast of these two vessels. Each had ventured upon an untried and perilous ocean to find an unknown and distant coast. In this they were alike; but in all else how unlike! One was freighted with human beings forcibly torn from their own country, and hurried away in chains to be sold as slaves: the other was filled with good men, who had voluntarily turned their backs upon their own country, to seek other homes, where at least they might be free. One was heavy with curses and with sorrow: the other was lifted with anthem and with prayer. And thus, at the same time, beneath the same sun, over the same waves, each found its solitary way. By no effort of imagination do we see on one Slavery and on the other Liberty, traversing the ocean to continue here, on this broad continent, their perpetual, immitigable war.

I am not alone in homage to the Mayflower. Others have delighted to picture her, and none with more of that consummate art which makes us see the petty craft transfigured by the divine cargo than an illustrious contemporary.

“Hail to thee, poor little ship Mayflower, of Delft-Haven!
poor, common-looking ship, hired by common charter-party for
coined dollars; calked with mere oakum and tar; provisioned
with vulgarest biscuit and bacon: yet what ship Argo, or
miraculous epic ship built by the Sea-Gods, was other than
a foolish bumbarge in comparison? Golden fleeces, or the
like, these sailed for, with or without effect: thou, little
Mayflower, hadst in thee a veritable Promethean spark, the
life-spark of the largest nation on our earth,--so we may
already name the Transatlantic Saxon Nation.”[374]

There is no record of what passed on board the slave-ship, before the landing of the slaves. The wail of Slavery, the clank of chains, and the voice of the master counting his cargo, there must have been. But the cabin of the Mayflower witnessed another scene, of which there is authentic record, as the whole company, by solemn compact, deliberately constituted themselves a body politic, and set the grand example of a Christian Commonwealth,[375]--thus indicating the character which they had claimed for themselves, as “knit together as a body in a most strict and sacred bond and covenant of the Lord, of the violation whereof we make great conscience, and by virtue whereof we do hold ourselves straitly tied to all care of each other’s good, and of the whole by every one, and so mutually.”[376] And so these two voyages closed; but the two cargoes have endured, surviving successive generations.

The early social life of the two warring sections attests the prevailing influence. Virginia continued to be supplied with slaves, so that Slavery became part of herself. On the other hand, New England always set her face against Slavery. To her great honor, in an age when Slavery was less condemned than now, the Legislature of Massachusetts censured a ship-master who had “fraudulently and injuriously taken and brought a negro from Guinea,” and by solemn vote resolved that the negro should be “sent back without delay”;[377] and not long after enacted the law of Exodus, “If any man stealeth a man or man-kind, he shall surely be put to death.”[378] Thus at that early day stood Virginia and New England: for such, at that time, was the designation of the two provinces which divided British America by a line of demarcation very nearly coïncident with the recent slave-line of our Republic.

The contrast appears equally in the opposite character of their respective settlers. Like seeks like, and the Pilgrims of the Mayflower were followed by others of similar virtues, whose first labors on landing were to build churches and schools. Many of them had the best education of England; some were men of substance, and there was no poverty among them that could cause a blush; while all were most exact and exemplary in conduct. They were a branch from that grand Puritan stock, to which, according to the reluctant confession of Hume, “the English owe the whole freedom of their Constitution.”[379] We are told by Burke that there is a sacred veil to be drawn over the beginnings of all governments, and that, where this is not happily supplied by time, it must be found in a discreet silence. But no veil is needed for the Puritan settlers of New England. It is very different with the early settlers of Virginia, recruited from the castaways and shirks of Old England, and mostly needy men, of desperate fortunes and dissolute lives, who cared nothing for churches or schools. Such naturally became slave-lords. I should not lift the veil which charity would kindly draw, if a just knowledge of their character had not become important in illustrating the origin of our troubles.

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It is a common boast of these slave-lords that they constitute a modern “chivalry,” derived from the “Cavaliers” of England, and reinforced by the “ennobling” influences of African Slavery.[380] This boast has been so often repeated, that it has obtained a certain acceptance among those not familiar with our early history, and even well-informed persons allow themselves to say that the conflict in which we are now engaged is a continuance of the old war between Cavalier and Roundhead. So far as it is intended to say that the war is part of the ever-recurring conflict between Slavery and Liberty, there is no objection to this illustration. But if it be intended that the Rebels are cavaliers, or descendants of cavaliers, there is just ground of objection. I know not if the armies of the Union, now fighting the world’s greatest battle for Human Rights, may not be called “Roundheads”; but I am sure that Rebels now fighting for Slavery cannot be called “Cavaliers” in any sense. They are not so in character, as their barbarism attests; and they are as little so historically.

The whole pretension is a preposterous absurdity, by which the country has been too much deceived. It is not creditable to the general intelligence that such a folly should play such a part. Unquestionably there were settlers in Virginia, as there were also in New England, connected with aristocratic families. But in each colony they were too few to modify essentially the prevailing population, which took its character from the mass rather than from any individual. The origin of Virginia is so well authenticated as to leave little doubt with regard to its population, unless you reject all the concurrent testimony of contemporaries and all the concurrent admissions of historians. There is nothing in our early history with regard to which authorities are so various and so clear. From their very abundance, it is difficult to choose.

The original “Cavaliers” were English; but it is an historical fact that the Rebel colonies were not settled exclusively from England. The blood of Scotch, Irish, Dutch, Germans, Swiss, French, and Jews commingled there, all of which is amply attested. Huguenots of France, cruelly banished by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, found a home in both the Carolinas. William Gilmore Simms, the novelist of South Carolina, in a history of his native State, after mentioning the arrival of the Huguenots, says: “Emigrants followed, though slowly, from Switzerland, Germany, and Holland; and the Santee, the Congaree, the Wateree, and Edisto now listened to the strange voices of several nations, who in the Old World had scarcely known each other, except as foes.”[381] From Hewit’s “Historical Account of South Carolina,” published in 1779, we have details of settlement by Dutch, French, Swiss, Scotch, and Germans, followed by the remark, “But of all other countries none has furnished the province with so many inhabitants as Ireland.”[382] A similar story is told of North Carolina.[383] Here is nothing of the boasted “chivalry”; and if we search the testimony with regard to the character and condition of these early settlers, the whole “cavalier” pretension becomes still more improbable, if not impossible.[384]

Even before English colonization had begun, and before Sir Walter Raleigh or Captain John Smith had landed on our coasts, the “temperate and fertile parts of America” had been proposed as a substitute for the prison and gibbet. I quote from a Dedicatory Epistle of Richard Hakluyt “to the right worshipful and most virtuous Gentleman, Master Philip Sydney, Esquire.”

“Yea, if we would behold with the eye of pity how all our
prisons are pestered and filled with able men to serve their
country, which for small robberies are daily hanged up in great
numbers, even twenty at a clap out of one jail (as was seen at
the last assizes at Rochester), we would hasten and further,
every man to his power, the deducting of some colonies of our
superfluous people into those temperate and fertile parts of
America, which, being within six weeks’ sailing of England, are
yet unpossessed by any Christians, and seem to offer themselves
unto us, stretching nearer unto her Majesty’s dominions than to
any other part of Europe. We read that the bees, when they grow
to be too many in their own hives at home, are wont to be led
out by their captains to swarm abroad, and seek themselves a
new dwelling-place.”[385]

This recommendation, associated with the names of Hakluyt and Sydney, was followed,--with what success you shall know.

* * * * *

I begin with the early patron of Virginia, Lord Delaware, who, after visiting the colony, described the people there, in a letter dated at Jamestown, July 7, 1610, as “men of distempered bodies and infected minds, whom no examples daily before their eyes, either of goodness or punishment, can deter from their habitual impieties or terrify from a shameful death.”[386] Little of chivalry here!

The colony, which began with bad men, was increased by worse. In November, 1619, King James wrote to the Virginia Company, “commanding them forthwith to send away to Virginia an hundred dissolute persons, which Sir Edward Zouch, the Knight Marshal, would deliver to them.”[387] Thus by royal command was this colony made a Botany Bay.

The Company, not content with the “hundred dissolute persons” supplied by the king’s order, entreated for more, until Captain John Smith, the hero of Virginia, was moved to express his disgust. He testified to the evil, when he wrote in 1622: “Since I came from thence, the Honorable Company have been humble suitors to his Majesty _to get vagabond and condemned men_ to go thither; nay, so much scorned was the name of Virginia, _some did choose to be hanged, ere they would go thither, and were_.”[388] This was bad enough.

But the Virginia Company was insensible to the shame of such a settlement. Its agents and orators vindicated the utility of the colony. In a work entitled “_Nova Britannia_, offering most Excellent Fruits by Planting in Virginia,” published in London in 1609, and dedicated to “one of his Majesty’s Council for Virginia,” it was openly argued, that, unless “swarms of idle persons in lewd and naughty practices” were sent abroad, “we must provide shortly _more prisons and corrections_ for their bad conditions”; and that it was “most profitable for our state to rid our multitudes of such as lie at home, pestering the land with pestilence and penury, and infecting one another with vice and villany, worse than the plague itself.”[389] Dr. Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s, poet also, in a sermon “preached to the Honorable Company of the Virginian Plantation, November 30th, 1622,” thus sets forth the merits of the colony: “The plantation shall redeem many a wretch from the jaws of death, from the hands of the executioner.… _It shall sweep your streets and wash your doors from idle persons_ and the children of idle persons, and employ them.”[390] Such were the puffs by which recruits were gained for Virginia.

History records the unquestionable result, and here authorities multiply. Sir Josiah Child, in his “Discourse of Trade,” published in 1694, says: “_Virginia_ and Barbadoes were _first peopled_ by a sort of loose, vagrant people, vicious, and destitute of means to live at home, … such as, had there been no English foreign plantation in the world, could probably never have lived at home to do service to their country, but must have come to be hanged or starved, or died untimely of some of those miserable diseases that proceed from want and vice, or else have sold themselves for soldiers, to be knocked on the head or starved in the quarrels of our neighbors.”[391] Dr. Douglass, in his “British Settlements in North America,” printed in 1749, is very positive, saying, “Virginia and Maryland have been for many years, and continue to be, a sink for transported criminals.”[392] “Our plantations in America, _New England excepted_, have been generally settled, (1.) by malcontents with the Administrations from time to time; (2.) by fraudulent debtors, as a refuge from their creditors; (3.) and by convicts or criminals, who chose transportation rather than death.”[393] Grahame, the Scotch historian, who has written so conscientiously of our country, speaking of the first settlers, says of Virginia: “A great proportion of the new emigrants consisted of profligate and licentious youths, sent from England by their friends, with the hope of changing their destinies, or for the purpose of screening them from the justice or contempt of their country, … with others like these, more likely to corrupt and prey upon an infant commonwealth than to improve or sustain it.”[394] The historian of Virginia, William Stith, whose work was published at Williamsburg in the last century, is not less explicit. “I cannot but remark,” he says, “how early that custom arose of transporting loose and dissolute persons to Virginia, as a place of punishment and disgrace, which, although originally designed for the advancement and increase of the colony, yet has certainly proved a great prejudice and hindrance to its growth; for it hath laid one of the finest countries in British America under the unjust scandal of being _a mere hell upon earth_, another Siberia, and only fit for the reception of malefactors and the vilest of the people; so that few people, at least few large bodies of people, have been induced willingly to transport themselves to such a place, and our younger sisters, the Northern Colonies, have accordingly profited thereby.”[395] But this is not all. Another historian of Virginia, of our own day, whose work was published at Richmond in 1848, while showing that pride in his State which would change every settler into a “cavalier,” is compelled to make the following most rueful confession: “Gentlemen, reduced to poverty by gaming and extravagance, too proud to beg, too lazy to dig; broken tradesmen, with some stigma of fraud yet clinging to their names; footmen, who had expended in the mother country the last shred of honest reputation they had ever held; rakes, consumed with disease and shattered in the service of impurity; libertines, whose race of sin was yet to run; and unruly sparks, packed off by their friends to escape worse destinies at home: these were the men who came to aid in founding a nation, and to transmit to posterity their own immaculate impress.”[396] And this same historian confesses that social life in Virginia, beginning in such baseness, after more than a century, had developed “an aristocracy neither of talent nor learning nor moral worth, but of landed and slave interest.”[397] So much for the testimony of history, even when written and printed in Virginia. In harmony with this testimony was the honest exclamation of a Virginian in 1751: “In what can Britain show a more sovereign contempt for us than by emptying their jails into our settlements, unless they would likewise empty their jakes on our tables?”[398]

I know not the number of desperate persons shipped to Virginia; but there were enough to leave an indelible impress on the colony, and to give it a name in the literature of the time. It was this colony which suggested to Bacon the most pregnant words of one of his Essays, which furnished to De Foe several striking passages in one of his romances, which furnished a confirmatory article in the Dictionary of Postlethwayt, and which provoked Massinger to a dialogue in one of his dramas. Glance for a moment at these illustrations.

It is in the Essay on “Plantations” that Bacon thus brands the early settlement of Virginia: “It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take _the scum of people and wicked condemned men_ to be the people with whom you plant; and not only so, but it _spoileth the plantation_, for they will ever live like rogues.” Surely there is nothing in this out of which to construct a “cavalier.”

In the narrative of Moll Flanders, the author of “Robinson Crusoe,” who gives to all his sketches such life-like character that they seem to be sun-pictures, exhibits this same colony. Here is a glimpse. “The greatest part of the inhabitants of that colony came thither in very indifferent circumstances from England. Generally speaking, they were of two sorts: either, first, such as were brought over by masters of ships to be sold as servants; or, second, such as are transported, after having been found guilty of crimes punishable with death. When they come here, we make no difference; the planters buy them, and they work together in the field till their time is out.… Hence many a Newgate bird becomes a great man; and we have several justices of the peace, officers of the trained bands, and magistrates of the towns they live in, that have been burnt in the hand.… Some of the best men in the country are burnt in the hand, and they are not ashamed to own it. There’s Major ----, he was an eminent pickpocket; there’s Justice Ba----r, was a shoplifter; and both of them were burnt in the hand; and I could name you several such as they are.”[399] Nothing is said here of “cavaliers.”

The author of the “Dictionary of Commerce,” quoted often in courts, confirms the testimony of Moll Flanders, when he says: “Even your transported felons, sent to Virginia instead of Tyburn, thousands of them, if we are not misinformed, have, by turning their hands to industry and improvement, and, which is best of all, to honesty, become rich, substantial planters and merchants, settled large families, and been famous in the country; nay, we have seen many of them made magistrates, officers of militia, captains of good ships, and masters of good estates.”[400] Here, again, is nothing said of “cavaliers.”

Another writer, who travelled through the colonies in 1742-3, says, in the same vein, that “several of the best planters, or their ancestors, have in the two colonies [Virginia and Maryland] been originally of the convict class, and therefore are much to be praised and esteemed for forsaking their old courses.”[401]

While all this cumulative evidence shows that the settlers did better in Virginia than in England, it fails to support the Rebel pretension of to-day.

I have referred to Massinger. Here is a curious bit from a grave comedy of that poet dramatist.

“_Luke._ It is but to Virginia.

“_Lady Frugal._ How? Virginia?
High Heaven forbid! Remember, Sir, I beseech you,
What creatures are shipped thither.

“_Anne._ Condemned wretches,
Forfeited to the law.

“_Mary._ For the abomination of their life,
Spewed out of their own country.”[402]

Thus from every quarter the testimony accumulates. And yet, in face of these impartial and unimpeachable authorities, we are constantly told that Virginia was settled by “cavaliers.”

The territory now occupied by South Carolina originally constituted part of Virginia. Out of Virginia it was carved into a separate colony. Although differing in some respects, the populations seem to have been kindred in character. Ramsay, the historian of the State, in a work published at Charleston in 1809, says that “the emigrants were a medley of different nations and principles,” and that among them were persons “who took refuge from the frowns of Fortune and the rigor of creditors,” “young men reduced to misery by folly and excess,” and “restless spirits, fond of roving.” To these were added Huguenots from France.[403] But Grahame tells us that “not a trace of the existence of an order of clergymen is to be found in the laws of Carolina during the first twenty years of its history.”[404] And another historian says that “the inhabitants, far from living in friendship and harmony among themselves, have been seditious and ungovernable.”[405] Such a people were naturally insensible to moral distinctions, so that, according to Hewit, pirates “were treated with great civility and friendship,” and “by bribery and corruption they often found favor with the provincial juries, and by this means escaped the hands of justice.” All of which is declared by the historian to be “evidences of the licentious spirit which prevailed in the colony.”[406] Grahame uses still stronger language, when he says, “The governor, the proprietary deputies, and the principal inhabitants degraded themselves to a level with the vilest of mankind by abetting the crimes of pirates, and willingly purchasing their nefarious acquisitions.”[407] Such is the testimony with regard to South Carolina. To call such a people “cavaliers” is an abuse of terms.

I hope I do not take too much time in exposing a vainglorious pretension, which has helped to give the Rebellion a character of respectability it does not deserve. I dismiss it to general contempt, as one of the lies by which Slavery, the greatest lie of all, is recommended to the weak who can be deceived by names. But you will not fail to remark how naturally Slavery flourished among such a congenial people. Convicts and wretches who had set at nought all rights of property and all decency were the very people to set up the revolting pretension “of property in man.” If these were called “cavaliers,” and if their conduct was called “chivalry,” it was only under the ancient rule of opposites, because they were in no respect “cavaliers,” nor had they even the semblance of “chivalry.”

Not in Slavery or its battles is “chivalry” found, not in vain pretension, not in any indignity to the poor and lowly. From one who has studied it in its deeds, we learn that it is “that general spirit or state of mind which disposes men to heroic and generous actions, and keeps them conversant with all that is beautiful and sublime in the intellectual and moral world.”[408] How little of this in our Rebel slave-masters!

* * * * *

I come back to the postulate with which I began, that the present war is simply a conflict between Slavery and Liberty. This is a plain statement, which will defy contradiction. To my mind it is more satisfactory than that other statement, often made, that it is a conflict between Aristocracy and Democracy. This in a certain sense is true; but from its generality it is less effective than the more precise and restricted statement. It does not disclose the whole truth; for it does not exhibit the unique and exceptional character of the pretension which we combat. For centuries there has been a conflict between Aristocracy and Democracy, or, in other words, the few on one side have been perpetually striving to rule and oppress the many. But now, for the first time in the world’s annals, a people professing civilization has commenced war to uphold the intolerable pretension of _compulsory labor without wages_, and that most disgusting coïncident, the whipping of women and the selling of children. Call these pretenders aristocrats or oligarchs, if you will; but be assured that their aristocracy or oligarchy is the least respectable ever attempted, and is so entirely modern that it is antedated by the Durham bull Hubbuck, short-horn progenitor of the oligarchy of cattle, and by the stallion Godolphin, Arabian progenitor of the oligarchy of horses, each of which may be traced to the middle of the last century. And also know, that, if you would find a prototype in brutality, you must turn your back upon civilized history, and repair to those distant islands which witnessed an oligarchy of cannibals, or go to barbarous Africa, which has been kept in barbarism by an oligarchy of men-stealers.

Thus it stands. The conflict is directly between Slavery and Liberty. But because Slavery aims at the life of the Republic, the issue involves our national existence; and because our national death would be the despair of Liberty everywhere, it involves this great cause throughout the world. And so I would not for one moment lose sight of the special enemy; for our energies can be properly directed only when we are able to confront him. “Give me to see!” said the old Greek; and this must be our exclamation now.

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Slavery, from the beginning, has been a disturber, as it is now a red-handed traitor. I do not travel back before the Revolution, but, starting from that great event, I show you Slavery always offensive, and forever thrusting itself in the path of national peace and honor. The Declaration of Independence, as originally prepared by Jefferson, contained a vigorous passage denouncing King George for patronage of the slave-trade. The slave-masters insisted upon striking it out, and it was struck out; and here was their first victory. At the adoption of the National Constitution, they insisted upon recognition of the slave-trade as a condition of Union; and here was another victory. In the earliest Congress under the Constitution they commenced the menace of disunion, and this menace was continued at every turn of public affairs, especially at every proposition or even petition touching Slavery, until it triumphed signally in that atrocious Fugitive Slave Bill which made all the Free States a hunting-ground for slaves. Throughout these contests Slavery was vulgar, brutal, savage, while its braggart orators and chaplains heralded its claims. Hogarth, in his famous picture of Bruin, painted Slavery, when he portrayed an immense grizzly bear hugging, as if he loved it, an enormous gnarled bludgeon, with a brand of infamy labelled on every knot, such as _Lie Twelve_, _Lie Fifteen_, and about his throat a clerical band, torn, crumpled, and awry. In the States where it flourished speech and press were both despoiled of freedom, and the whole country seemed to be fast sinking under its degrading tyranny. Everything in science, or history, or church, or state, was bent to its support. There was a new political economy, teaching the superiority of slave labor,--a new ethnology, excluding the slave from the family of man,--a new heraldry, admitting the slavemonger to the list of nobles,--a new morality, vindicating the rightfulness of Slavery,--a new religion, recognizing Slavery as a missionary enterprise,--a new theodicy, placing Slavery under the sanctions of Divine benevolence,--and a new Constitution, installing Slavery in the very citadel of Liberty. By such strange inventions the giant felony fortified itself. At last it struck the pioneers of Liberty in Kansas. There was its first battle. The next was when it took up arms against the National Government, and rallied all its forces in bloody rebellion. Thus is this Rebellion, by unquestionable pedigree, derived from Slavery, and the parent lives in the offspring.

Therefore, if you are in earnest against the Rebellion, you must be in earnest, also, against Slavery; for the two are synonymous, or convertible terms. The Rebellion is nothing but belligerent Slavery. It is Slavery armed and equipped in deadly grapple with Liberty.

Only when we see the Rebellion _as it is_, in its true light, face to face, do we see our whole duty. Then must the patriot, whatever his personal prejudices or party associations, insist, at all hazards, that Slavery shall not be suffered to escape from that righteous judgment which is the doom of the Rebellion. No false tenderness, no casuistry of politics, must intrude to save it anywhere; for you cannot save Slavery anywhere without just to that extent saving the Rebellion. Show me anywhere a sympathiser with Slavery, and I show you a sympathiser with the Rebellion.

Our duty is clear. In the sacred service of patriotism nothing can be allowed to stand in the way. Fortress, camp, citadel, each and all, must be overcome; but the animating soul of every fortress, camp, or citadel throughout the Rebellion is Slavery. Surely, when the country is in danger, there can be no hesitation. And as the greater contains the less, so this greatest charity of country embraces for the time all other charities.

In striking at Slavery, there is another advantage not to be forgotten. Such a blow is in strict obedience to the laws of Nature; and we are reminded by the great master of thought, Lord Bacon, that only through such obedience can victory be won,--_vincit parendo_. It is in conformity, also, with all the attributes of God; so that His Almighty arm will give strength to the blow. Thus do we bring our efforts in harmony with the sublime laws, physical and moral, which govern the universe, while every good influence, every breath of Heaven, and every prayer of man, is on our side. We also bring ourselves in harmony with our own Declaration of Independence, so that all its early promises become a living letter, and our country is at last saved from that practical inconsistency which has been a heavy burden in her history.

To do all this seems so natural and so entirely according to the dictates of patriotism, that we may well be astonished that it should meet opposition. But there is a wide-spread political party, which, true to its history, now comes forward to save belligerent Slavery,--even at this last moment, when it is about to be trampled out forever. Not to save the country, but to save belligerent Slavery, is the object of the misnamed Democracy. Asserting the war, in which so much has been done, to be a failure,--forgetting the vast spaces it has already reclaimed, the rivers it has opened, the ports it has secured, and the people it has redeemed,--handing over to contempt officers and men, living and dead, who have waged its innumerable battles,--this political party openly offers surrender to the Rebellion. I do not use too strong language. It is actual surrender and capitulation that are offered, in one of two forms: (1.) by acknowledging the Rebel States, so that they shall be treated as independent; or (2.) by acknowledging Slavery, so that it shall be restored to its old supremacy over the National Government, with additional guaranties. The different schemes of opposition are all contained in one or the other of these two propositions.

Examining these two propositions, we find them equally flagitious and impracticable. Both allow the country to be sacrificed for the sake of Slavery: one by breaking the Union in pieces, that a new Slave Power may be created; and the other by continuing the Union, so that the old Slave Power may enjoy its sway and masterdom. Both pivot on Slavery. One acknowledges the Slave Power _out of the Union_; the other acknowledges the Slave Power _in the Union_.

Glance, if you please, at these two different forms of surrender.

I.

_And, first, of surrender by acknowledging the Rebel States_, so that they shall be independent. How futile to think that there can be any consent to the establishment of a Slave Power taken from our Republic! Such a surrender would begin in shame; but it would also begin, continue, and end in troubles and sorrows which no imagination can picture.

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1. I do not dwell on the shame that would cover our Republic, but I ask, on the threshold, how you would feel in abandoning to the tender mercies of the Rebellion all those who, from sentiment or conviction or condition, now look to the National Government as deliverer. This topic, it seems to me, has not been sufficiently impressed upon the country. Would that I could make it sink deep into your souls! There are the Unionists, shut up within the confines of the Rebellion, and unable to help themselves. They can do nothing, not even cry out, until the military power of the Rebellion is crushed. Let this be done, let the Rebel grip be unloosed, and you will hear their voices, as joyously and reverently they hail the national flag. And there, also, are the slaves, to whom the Rebellion is an immense, deep-moated, thick-walled, heavy-bolted Bastile, where a whole race is blinded, manacled, and outraged. But these, again, are powerless, so long as Rebel sentinels keep watch and ward over them. To these two classes in the Rebel States we have owed, from the beginning, a solemn duty, which can be performed only by perseverance to the end. The patriot Unionists, who have kept their loyalty in solitude and privation, like the early Christians concealed in catacombs, and also the slaves, who have been compelled to serve their cruel taskmasters, must not be sacrificed.

Perhaps there is no character in which the National Government may exult more truly than that of Deliverer. Rarely in history has such a duty, with its attendant glory, been so clearly imposed. The piety of early ages found vent in the Crusades, those wonderful enterprises of valor and travel, which exercised a transforming influence over modern civilization. But our war is not less important. It is a crusade, not to deliver the tomb, but to deliver the living temples of the Lord, and it is destined to exercise a transforming influence beyond any crusade in history.

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2. If you agree to abandon patriots and slaves in the Rebel States, you will only begin your infinite difficulties. How determine the boundary-line to cleave this continent in twain? Where shall the god Terminus plant his stone? What States shall be left at the North in the light of Liberty? What States shall be consigned to the gloom of Slavery? Surely no swiftness of surrender can make you abandon Maryland, now redeemed by votes of citizen soldiers,--nor West Virginia, received as a Free State,--nor Missouri, which has been made the dark and bloody ground. And how about Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana? There also is the Mississippi, once more free from source to sea. Surely this mighty river will not be compelled again to wear chains.

These inquiries simply open the difficulties in this endeavor. If there were any natural boundary, in itself a barrier and an altar, or if during long generations any Chinese wall had been built for three thousand miles across the continent, then perhaps there might be a dividing line. But Nature and civilization, by solemn decree, have fixed it otherwise, marking this broad land, from Northern lake to Southern gulf, for one Country, with one Liberty, one Constitution, and one Destiny.

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3. If the boundary-line is settled, then will arise the many-headed question of terms and conditions. On what terms and conditions can peace be stipulated? Exulting Rebels, whose new empire is founded on the corner-stone of Slavery, will naturally exact promises for the rendition of fugitive slaves. Are you, who have just emancipated yourselves from this obligation, ready to renew it, and to commit again an inexpiable crime? If you do not, how can you expect peace? Then it will remain to determine the commercial relations between the two separate governments, with rights of transit and travel. If you think that Rebels, flushed with success, and scorning their defeated opponents, will come to any practical terms, any terms which will not leave our commerce and all engaged in it victims of outrage, you place trust in their moderation which circumstances thus far do not justify. The whole idea is little better than an excursion to the moon in a car drawn by geese, as described by the Spanish poet.

Long before the war, and especially in the discussions which preceded it, these Rebels were fiery and most unscrupulous. War has not made them less so. The moral sense which they wanted when it began has not been enkindled since. With such a people there is no chance of terms and conditions, except according to their lawless will. The first surrender on our part will be the signal to a long line of surrenders, each a catastrophe. Nothing too unreasonable or grinding. If our own national debt is not repudiated, theirs at least must be assumed.

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4. Suppose the shameful sacrifice consummated, the impossible boundaries adjusted, and the illusive terms and conditions stipulated, do you imagine that you have obtained peace? Alas, no! Nothing of the sort. You may call it peace; but it will be war in disguise, ready to break forth in perpetual, chronic, bloody battle. Such an extended inland border, over which Slavery and Liberty scowl at each other, will be a constant temptation, not only to enterprises of smuggling, but to hostile incursions, so that our country will be obliged to sleep on its arms, ready to spring forward in self-defence. Every frontier town will be a St. Albans.[409] Military preparations, absorbing the resources of the people, will become permanent instead of temporary, and the arts of peace will yield to the arts of war. The national character will be changed, and this hospitable continent, no longer the prosperous home of the poor and friendless, thronging from the Old World, will become a repulsive scene of confusion and strife, while “each new day a gash is added to her wounds.”

Have we not war enough now? Are you so enamored of funerals, where the order of Nature is reversed, and parents follow their children to the grave, that you are willing to keep a constant carnival of Death? Oh, no! You all desire peace. But there is only one way to secure it. So conduct the present war, that, when once ended, there shall be no remaining element of discord, no surviving principle of battle, out of which future war can spring. Above all, belligerent Slavery must not rear its crest as an independent power.

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5. There is another consequence not to be omitted. War would not be confined to the two governments representing respectively the two hostile principles, Slavery and Liberty. It would rage with internecine fury among ourselves. Admit that States may fly out of the Union, and where will you stop? Other States must follow, in groups or singly, until our mighty galaxy is broken into separate stars or dissolved into the nebular compost of a people without form or name. Where then is country? Where then those powerful States, the pride of civilization and the hope of mankind? Handed over to ungovernable frenzy, without check or control, until anarchy and chaos are supreme,--as with the horses of the murdered Duncan, which, at the assassination of their master,

“Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending ’gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind. ’Tis said they eat each other.”

The picture is terrible; but it hardly exaggerates the fearful disorder. Already European enemies, looking to their desires for conclusions, predict a general discord. Sometimes it is said that there are to be four or five new nations,--that the Northwest is to be a nation by itself, the Middle States another, the Pacific States another, and our New England States still another, so that Rebel Slavery will be the predominant power on this continent. But it is useless to speculate on the number of these fractional governments. If disunion is allowed to begin, it cannot be stopped. Misrule and confusion will be everywhere. Our fathers saw this at the adoption of the National Constitution, when, in a rude sketch of the time, they pictured the Thirteen States as so many staves bound by the hoops into a barrel. Let a single stave be taken out, and the whole barrel falls to pieces. It is easy to see how this must occur with States. The triumph of the Rebellion will be not only the triumph of belligerent Slavery, but also the triumph of State Rights, to this extent,--first, that any State, in the exercise of its own lawless will, may abandon its place in the Union, and, secondly, that the constitutional verdict of the majority, as in the election of Abraham Lincoln, is not binding. With these two rules of conduct, in conformity with which the Rebellion was organized, there can be no limit to disunion. Therefore, when you consent to the independence of the Rebel States, you disband the whole company of States, and blot our country from the map of the world.

II.

I have said enough of surrender by recognition of the Slave States, or, in other words, of the Slave Power, _out of the Union_. It remains now that I ask attention to that other form of surrender which proposes _recognition of the Slave Power in the Union_. Each is surrender. The first, as we have already seen, abandons part of the Union to the Slave Power; the other subjects the whole Union to the Slave Power.

It is proposed that the Rebel States shall be tempted to lay down their arms by recognition of Slavery in the Union, with new guaranties and assurances of protection. _Slavery cannot exist, where it does not govern._ Therefore must we beg Rebel slave-masters back to govern us. Such, in plain terms, is the surrender proposed. For one, I will never consent to any such intolerable rule.

The whole proposition is not less pernicious than that other form of surrender; nor is it less shameful. It is insulting to reason, and offensive to good morals.

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1. I say nothing of the ignominy it would bring upon the Republic, but call attention at once to its character as a Compromise. In the dreary annals of Slavery it is by compromise that slave-masters have succeeded in warding off the blows of Liberty. It was a compromise by which that early condemnation of the slave-trade was excluded from the Declaration of Independence; it was a compromise which surrounded the slave-trade with protection in the National Constitution; it was a compromise which secured the admission of Missouri as a Slave State; and, without stopping to complete the list, it is enough to say that it was a compromise by which the atrocious Fugitive Slave Bill was fastened upon the country, and the Slave Power was installed in the National Government. And now, after the overthrow of the Slave Power at the ballot-box, followed by years of cruel war, another compromise, greatest of all, is proposed, by which belligerent Slavery, dripping with the blood of murdered fellow-citizens, shall be welcomed to more than its ancient supremacy. Where is national virtue, that such a surrender can be entertained? Where is national honor, that the criminal pettifoggers are not indignantly rebuked?

The proposition is specious in form as baleful in substance. It is said that Rebel slave-masters should have their “rights under the Constitution.” To this plausible language is added that other phrase, “the Constitution as it is.” All this means Slavery, and nothing else. For Slavery men resort to this odious duplicity. Thank God, the game is understood.

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2. But any compromise recognizing Slavery in the Rebel States is impossible, even if you are disposed to accept it. Slavery, by the very act of rebellion, ceased to exist, legally or constitutionally. It ceased to exist according to principles of public law, and also according to just interpretation of the Constitution; and having once ceased to exist, it cannot be revived.[410]

When I say that it ceased to exist _legally_, I found myself on an unquestionable principle of public law, that Slavery is a peculiar local institution, without origin in natural right, and deriving support exclusively from the local government; but if this be true,--and it cannot be denied,--then Slavery must have fallen with that local government.

When I say that it ceased to exist _constitutionally_, I found myself on the principle that Slavery is of such a character that it cannot exist within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution, as, for instance, in the National territories, and that therefore it died constitutionally, when, through disappearance of the local government, it fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution.

The consequences of these two principles are most important. Taken in conjunction with the rule, “Once free, always free,” they establish the impossibility of any surrender to belligerent Slavery _in the Union_.

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