Chapter XVIII: Conclusion: Of Farewell Address at New Orleans (1)

I found you trembling at the terrors of servile insurrection All danger of this I have prevented by so treating the slave that he had no cause to rebel. I found the dungeon, the chain, and the lash your only means of enforcing obedience in your servants. I leave them peaceful, laborious, controlled by the laws of kindness and justice. I have demonstrated that the pestilence can be kept from your borders. I have added a million of dollars to your wealth in the form of new land from the batture of the Mississippi. I have cleansed and improved your streets, canals, and public squares, and opened new avenues to unoccupied land. I have given you freedom of elections greater than you have ever enjoyed before. I have caused justice to be administered so impartially that your own advocates have unanimously complimented the judges of my appointment. You have seen, therefore, the benefit of the laws and justice of the government against which you have rebelled. Why, then, will you not all return to your allegiance to that government,--not with lip-service, but with the heart.

I conjure you, if you desire ever to see renewed prosperity, giving business to your streets and wharves--if you hope to see your city become again the mart of the Western world, fed by its rivers for more than three thousand miles, draining the commerce of a country greater than the mind of man hath ever conceived--return to your allegiance. If you desire to leave to your children the inheritance you received from your fathers--a stable constitutional government; if you desire that they should in the future be a portion of the greatest empire the sun ever shone upon--return to your allegiance.

There is but one thing that stands in the way. There is but one thing that at this hour stands between you and the Government--and that is slavery. The institution, cursed of God, which has taken its last refuge here, in His providence will be rooted out as the tares from the wheat, although the wheat be torn up with it. I have given much thought to the subject. I came among you, by teachings, by habit of mind, by political position, by social affinity, inclined to sustain your domestic laws, if by possibility they might be with safety to the Union. Months of experience and observation have forced the conviction that the existence of slavery is incompatible with the safety either of yourselves or of the Union. As the system has gradually grown to its present huge dimensions, it were best if it could gradually be removed; but it is better, far better, that it should be taken out at once, than that it should longer vitiate the social, political, and family relations of your country. I am speaking with no philanthropic views as regards the slave, but simply of the effect of slavery on the master.

See for yourselves. Look around you and say whether this saddening, deadening influence has not all but destroyed the very framework of your society. I am speaking the farewell words of one who has shown his devotion to his country at the peril of his life and his fortune, who, in these words, can have neither hope nor interest, save the good of those he addresses; and let me here repeat, with all the solemnity of an appeal to Heaven to bear me witness, that such are the views forced upon me by experience. Come, then, to the unconditional support of the Government. Take into your own hands your own institutions; remodel them according to the laws of nations and of God, and thus attain that great prosperity assured to you by geographical position, only a portion of which was heretofore yours. B. F. Butler.

CCLXVIII.

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE UNION.

I am not for the Union as it was. I have the honor to say, as a Democrat, and as an Andrew Jackson Democrat, I am not for the Union as it was, because I saw, or thought I saw, the troubles in the future which have burst upon us; but having undergone those troubles, having spent all this blood and this treasure, I do not mean to go back again and be cheek by jole, as I was before, with South Carolina, if I can help it. Mark me now; let no man misunderstand me; and I repeat, lest I may be misunderstood (for there are none so difficult to understand as those who do not wish to)--mark me again,--I say, I do not mean to give up a single inch of the soil of South Carolina If I had been living at that time, and had the position, the will, and the ability, I would have dealt with South Carolina as Jackson did, and kept her in the Union at all hazards; but now that she has gone out, I would take care that when she comes in again she should come in better behaved; that she should no longer be the firebrand of the Union, ay, that she should enjoy what her people never yet enjoyed, the blessings of a republican form of government. And, therefore, in that view I am not for the reconstruction of the Union as it was. I have spent treasure and blood enough upon it, in conjunction with my fellow-citizens, to make it a little better, and I think we can have a better Union. It was good enough if it had been let alone. The old house was good enough for me, but the South pulled it down, and I propose, when we build it up, to build it up with all the modern improvements.

And one of the logical sequences, it seems to me, that follow inexorably and inevitably, from the proposition that we are dealing with alien enemies, is the question, what is our duty in regard to the confiscation of their property? And that would seem to me to be very easy of settlement under the Constitution, and without any discussion, if my proposition is right. Has it not been held from the beginning of the world down to this day, from the time the Israelites took possession of the land of Canaan, which they got from alien enemies, has it not been held that the whole of the property of those alien enemies belongs to the conqueror, and that it has been at his mercy and his clemency what should be done with it? And for one, I would take it and give it to the loyal man--loyal from the heart,--at the South, enough at least to make him as well as he was before; and I would take the rest of it and distribute it among the volunteer soldiers who have gone forth in the service of their country; and so far as I know them, if we should settle South Carolina with them, in the course of a few years, I should be quite willing to receive her back into the Union. B. F. Butler.

CCLXIX.

SPEECH AT THE UNION SQUARE MEETING IN NEW YORK.

But we are called upon to act. There is no time for hesitation or indecision--no time for haste and excitement. It is a time when the people should rise in the majesty of their might, stretch forth their strong arm, and silence the angry waves of tumult. It is time the people should command peace. It is a question between union and anarchy--between law and disorder. All politics for the time being are and should be committed to the oblivion of the grave. The question should be, "Our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country." We should go forward in a manner becoming a great people, But six months ago, the material prosperity of our country was at its greatest height. To-day, by the fiat of madness, we are plunged in distress and threatened with political ruin, anarchy, and annihilation. It becomes us to stay the hands of this spirit of disunion. The voice of the Empire State can be potential in this unnatural strife. She has mighty power for union. She has great wealth and influence, and she must bring forward that wealth and exert that influence. She has numerous men, and she must send them to the field, and in the plenitude of her power command the public peace. This is a great commercial city--one of the modern wonders of the earth. With all the great elements that surround her, with her commercial renown, with her architectural magnificence, and with her enterprise and energy, she is capable of exercising a mighty power for good in silencing the angry waves of agitation.

While I would prosecute this war in a manner becoming a civilized and a Christian people, I would do so in no vindictive spirit. I would do it as Brutus set the signet to the death-warrant of his son--"Justice is satisfied, and Rome is free." I love my country; I love this Union. It was the first vision of my early years; it is the last ambition of my public life. Upon its altar I have surrendered my choicest hopes. I had fondly hoped that in approaching age it was to beguile my solitary hours, and I will stand by it as long as there is a Union to stand by and when the ship of the Union shall crack and groan, when the skies lower and threaten, when the lightnings flash, the thunders roar, the storms beat, and the waves run mountain-high, if the ship of State goes down, and the Union perishes, I would rather perish with it than survive its destruction. Let us, my friends, stay up the hands of Union men in other sections of the country. How much have they sacrificed of advantage of national wealth, of political promotion! Let us aid them and cheer them on. Let us, my fellow-citizens, rally round the flag of our country, the flag of our fathers, the glorious flag known and honored throughout the earth, and now rendered more illustrious by the gallant Anderson. In the spirit of peace and forbearance he waved it over Fort Sumter. The pretended authorities of South Carolina and the other Southern States attacked him because they seemed to consider him a kind of minister plenipotentiary. Let us maintain our flag in the same noble spirit that animated him, and never desert it while one star is left. If I could see my bleeding, torn, maddened, and distracted country once more restored to quiet and lasting peace under those glorious stars and stripes, I should almost be ready to take the oath of the infatuated leader in Israel--Jephthah and swear to sacrifice the first living thing that I should meet on my return from victory. D. S. Dickinson.

CCLXX.

THE PERPETUITY OF THE UNION.

Give up the Union? Never! The Union shall endure, and its praises shall be heard when its friends and its foes, those who support, and those who assail, those who bare their bosoms in its defence, and those who aim their daggers at its heart, shall all sleep in the dust together. Its name shall be heard with veneration amid the roar of the Pacific's waves, away upon the river of the North and East where liberty is divided from monarchy, and be wafted in gentle breezes upon the Rio Grande. It shall rustle in the harvest and wave in the standing corn, on the extended prairies of the West, and be heard in the bleating folds find lowing herds upon a thousand hills. It shall be with those who delve in mines, and shall hum in the manufactories of New England, and in the cotton-gins of the South. It shall be proclaimed by the Stars and Stripes in every sea of earth, as the American Union, one and indivisible; upon the great thoroughfares, wherever steam drives, and engines throb and shriek, its greatness and perpetuity shall be hailed with gladness. It shall be lisped in the earliest words, and ring in the merry voices of childhood, and swell to Heaven upon the song of maidens. It shall live in the stern resolve of manhood, and rise to the mercy-seat upon woman's gentle availing prayer. Holy men shall invoke its perpetuity at the altars of religion, and it shall be whispered in the last accents of expiring age. Thus shall survive and be perpetuated the American Union; and when it shall be proclaimed that time shall be no more, and the curtain shall fall, and the good shall be gathered to a more perfect union, still may the destiny of our dear land recognize the conception, that

"Perfumes as of Eden flowed sweetly along,
And a voice, as of angels, enchantingly sung,
Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The Queen of the world, and the child of the skies."
D. S. Dickinson.

CCLXXI.

OUR REFORMERS.

What to-day is the position of the men who, for the past thirty years, have worked to bring our practice into conformity with the principles of the Government, and who, in the struggle against established and powerful interests, have accepted political disability and humiliated lives? Have any of these been put in governing places where their proved fidelity would guarantee the direct execution of what is to-day the nearly unanimous will of the people? Certainly not yet. So far, the virtue of the reformers is its own reward. While they are yet living, their mantles have fallen upon the shoulders of others to whom you have given high position, but they are still laboring in narrow paths--broadening, to be sure, and brightening--for the rough ground is passed, and their sun of victory is already rising. We give deep sympathy and honor to the men who, in the interests of civilization, separated themselves from mankind to penetrate the chill solitudes of the Arctic regions. Their names remain an added constellation in polar skies. But, we know that bitter skies and winter winds are not so unkind as man's ingratitude. And why, then, do we withhold sympathy and honor from these men who have so unflinchingly trod their isolated paths of self-appointed duty, accepting political and social excommunication--these heroes of the moral solitudes? But even as it is, our reformers have a better lot than history usually records for such; they have the satisfaction not only to see but to enter, with the people whom they led, into the promised land. And perhaps they are well satisfied to repose, and to rest upon their finished work, feeling surely that they have been faithful servants and that their country will yet say to them, "Well done!"

Sometimes, in unfamiliar countries, the traveller finds himself shrouded in fog and the way so hidden, the features of the country so singularly cleansed from the reality, that he cannot safely move. But if some friendly mountain side lets him ascend a few hundred feet above, he finds himself suddenly in a clear atmosphere with a blue sky and a shining sun. Below him the smaller objects that misled and bewildered him lie hidden; before him stand out, salient and clear, the leading ridges and great outlines of the country which point out to him the right way, and show him where he may reach a place of security and repose for the night, and he goes on his journey confidently. And so it is with those men who devote their lives, unflinchingly and singly, to the public good to the maintenance of principles and the advocacy of great reforms. They live in a pure atmosphere. And such ought also to be the character of the men whom we elevate to our high places. Raised into that upper air, and charged with the general safety, they are expected to be impersonal; they are expected to see over and beyond the personal ambitions and individual interests which of necessity influence men acting individually; their horizon is universal, and they see broadly defined the great principles which lead a nation continuously on to a settled prosperity and a sure glory. And as a condition of our material safety we should see to it that only such men are put in such places. Men capable of receiving a conviction and realizing a necessity--men able to comprehend the spirit of the age and the country in which we live, and fearless in working up to it. J. C. Fremont.

CCLXXII.

PUBLIC RUMOR.

The counsel for the prosecution has said that if the Reverend defendant has not been duly charged with heretical teachings by actual evidence, he has been so charged by public rumor; and he gravely contends that a clergyman charged by public rumor may be required to exculpate himself before an ecclesiastical council. There is a passion known among men as the most eager, implacable, remorseless of passions, a moral curiosity, named by psychologists the odium theologicum. It thrives on the slightest possible food. It lives on air. Public rumor is substantial enough for its richest diet. Public Rumor! I was educated to despise it. An established public opinion, we must treat with due respect, but disparaging rumor, however public, I should be ashamed to own as a motive for one action of my life. When the counsel for the prosecution passed his eulogy on the memory of Dr. Croswell, I could not but think what a rebuke his whole life was to public rumor. If ever man was the destined victim of public rumor, that man was William Croswell. Not left to its low haunts, but elevated by Episcopal sanction, promulgated by Episcopal proclamation, it charged him with teaching doctrines and observances "degrading to the character of the Church and perilling the souls of the people." But in patience and confidence he lived it all down. He went forward in the discharge of his noble duties, in daily prayers, daily public service, daily ministrations to the poor, sick and afflicted, not without much suffering from the relentless attacks of party spirit,--sufferings which shortened his days on earth,--and the daily beauty of his life made ugly the countenance of detraction and defamation. Public confidence, a plant of slow growth, grew about him. Public justice was rendered to him without a movement of his own. He fell, at his post, with all his armor on. At the time of the evening sacrifice, the angel touched him and he was called away. He fell, with his face to the altar, with the words of benediction on his lips, surrounded by a devoted congregation, mourned by an entire community. All men rose up and called him blessed. From the distinguished Rector of St. Paul's, exclaiming, in the words of the prophet, "My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" to the humble orphan child in the obscure alley, who missed his daily returning visit,--all, all, with one accord, sent up their voices as incense to Heaven.

I had the privilege to be one of the number who received him on his entrance into this city, to take charge of his newly formed parish. I am proud and grateful to remember that I was one of those on whom, in his long struggle, in a measure, according to my ability, he leaned for support. And after seven years, I believe seven years to the very day that we received him, I had the melancholy privilege, with that same company, of bearing his body up that aisle which he had so often ascended in his native dignity and in the beauty of holiness.

I should be an unworthy parishioner, pupil, I may say friend of his, if I allowed myself to defer for a moment to public rumor on a question of character or principle. I should be forgetful of his example if I permitted any one to do so who looked to me for counsel or direction. No, gentlemen, let us all, laymen or clergymen, call to mind his life and his death, and let public rumor blow past us as the idle wind. R. H. Dana, Jr.

CCLXXIII.

THE POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NORTH.

Mr. Chairman; Will the people of the Free States unite in one earnest effort to recover their personal and political equality, and to retrieve the honor of the country? It must be done! But, let us not deceive ourselves. The task is no easy one. Oligarchies have ruled the world. Our national government has always been qualified by the element of a slaveholding aristocracy. This aristocracy is powerful,--powerful in its unity of interest, the common slave property, with its values and its perils. It is powerful in its character as a caste. Unlike all other modern aristocracies it is a caste, and the most formidable, exclusive and ineradicable of all castes--a caste founded on race and color. It is powerful in the ordinary elements of power which oligarchies possess. The slaveholding education gives elements of control, the bearing and habit of command, and the assertion of superiority. This exercises its influence over weak minds. People doubtful of their own gentility bow to the established aristocracy of slavery. The thing that hath been is that which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun.

What forces are we to bring into the field against them?--the divided, heterogeneous masses of a free and equal people. The vast class of the timid, mercenary and time-serving belong to the strongest. Slavery has had them. We shall never have them until we show ourselves the strongest. Will the trading and moneyed interests, so powerful in the Northern cities, do their duty? Is there force enough, virtue enough, in our thirteen millions to assert their political equality, to achieve their own enfranchisement, to make freedom national and slavery sectional; to secure the future to freedom? The few next years will answer this question. You appeal to the spirit of 1776. Remember that the Dutch revolution was as glorious as our own. Holland began in civil and religious liberty, with heroism, freedom, industry and prosperity. In time the Dutch learned to make material interests their ruling motive. They ceased to live for ideas, and where are they now? Prosperous, educated, industrious and--despised! The high tone, the glory is gone!

But is such to be the fate of Massachusetts,--of New England? Massachusetts, in times past, has lived and suffered for ideas, for principles, for abstractions. Powerful influences have been exerted, from the highest quarters, to bring her into subjection to material interests and unheroic maxims, to sap the chivalry and enthusiasm of her youth. But it is not too late, Let her slough this all off in her hour of trial! Let her cast off her disguises and her rags together, and stand forth in the garb and attitude of a hero! This work must be done. If the men of scholarship and accomplishments and wealth who have heretofore enjoyed prominence, do not feel themselves up to the work, the people will call the cobbler from his stall, the factory-boy from his loom, the yeoman from his plough, but the work shall be done. Fishermen and tent-makers renovated the world. The Roman centurion was sent to a fisherman who lodged at the house of a tanner by the seaside, to hear what, should be done for mankind.

Why do we hesitate? What provocation more do we propose to wait for? They have added Slave States by a coup d'état: shall we wait until they have added Cuba and Mexico? They are forcing slavery upon the Territories: must we wait until they have succeeded? They have violated one solemn compact: how many more must they break before we assert our right? They have struck down a Senator in his place. They are already designating the next victim: must we wait until he has fallen? The Senator from Georgia spoke truth when he said the deed was done in the right time and right manner. There needed an act as bad as it could be made to rouse the spirit of the North. Let the priest be slain at the altar-stone. Let these Herods mingle blood with their sacrifices. It is needed. We have been so long sentient that the spirit of freedom must be roused by violence. It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer! By the duty we owe to justice and liberty throughout the world, by the natural pride of men, by the cultivated honor of gentlemen, it is not fit that we bear the shame longer! R. H. Dana, Jr.

CCLXXIV.

THE EDUCATION OF THE WAR.

Over and above the ordinary and universal means of intellectual development, the Divine Providence, now and then, prepares extraordinary means to the same end, in those social convulsions and calamities that shake whole nations with the mighty upheavals of thought and passion. A war of secession and disintegration is upon us. The nation's integrity and its very life are at stake. It is an epoch that the most sluggish minds cannot sleep through. They who never thought before must think now. They who never felt before must feel now. The intellect of the nation is aroused in the presence of this immense issue. It is an educational epoch. Its perils, trials, sacrifices, are the school-discipline of God. The mind of the people grows up whole cubits of stature in a short time. The heart of the people is moved to its deepest depths,--of all classes, but most of the most numerous and the governing class, the agricultural. And the heart is always the head's best ally. Deep feeling begets strong thinking. Sentiments of patriotism and loyalty, newborn and fervid, awaken and reinforce the intellect, raise up character, enlarge the whole man. And this reviving and reinvigorating influence will not pass away with the trials that produced it. When God educates it is not for a day, but for generations. When He quickens a new life in the soul of a people, it is a life that lasts. When He touches the human harp with His own mighty, but tender hand, the sound remains in the strings for an age, and for ages.

Long after this war shall have closed, and its distresses passed away, its moral and intellectual compensations will remain. Every village will have its war-worn veterans to tell the story of Antietam, and Gettysburg, and Port Hudson, and many another field of daring achievement. Almost every farm-house in the land will have its sacred and inspiring memories of a father, son, or brother, who fought for his country, whom they, and their posterity after them, must henceforth love and take thought for as their very mother.

And every village graveyard will have its green mounds, that shall need no storied monuments to clothe them with a peculiar consecration,--graves that hold the dust of heroes,--graves that all men approach with reverent steps,--graves out of whose solemn silence shall whisper inspiring voices, telling the young from generation to generation, how great is their country's worth and cost, and how beautiful and noble it was to die for it. G. Putnam.

CCLXXV.

WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY FEBRUARY 22, 1864.

Meanwhile, the military signs of the hour are auspicious. Already we seem to see the dawn breaking in the horizon. In these latter months, we have heard it from all loyal tongues, and seen it in all loyal faces--the confident hope that the day of triumph and peace is ready to break and shine on into noonday fulness.

The nation's banner, torn and soiled in battle, but with every star and stripe kept whole and radiant in its fair expanse, shall be brought back to the Capitol; and it may well be that he, the illustrious civic leader, who first flung it to the breeze in the nation's necessity, should be the man whose hands shall be privileged to furl it again in Peace,--he, who sits worthily in the chair that once held Washington; he, so honest and pure in his great function, so wise and prudent, so faithful and firm;--God bless and preserve Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States!

Therefore, if it be in our hearts this day, bending at the shrine of Washington, to renew our vow to preserve the country which he gave us for a sacred inheritance, we can do it with good hope. And verily we must vow, and keep the vow, cost what it may of time or wealth, or blood,--for his sake, and our own, and our children's, and humanity's sake, we must.

It is true, there is no perpetuity for national existence, or for individual influence or renown. Earthly empires must decay at last, and with them the vital presence, the living influence of their founders and fathers.

This magnificent polity--his, ours--must, doubtless, one day, share the common fate, and where it goes down, the star of Washington must set with it, and his name pass, an unheeded word, into the dead annals of the obsolete ages. But O! not yet--say it, Americans!--not now!

The laurel chaplet must not be torn from his brow while it is still so fresh and green, and not yet fully wreathed. His statues must not be pushed from their pedestals to be crumbled into common earth, until the centuries have had time to hallow them with their venerable stains.

This fair palace of national freedom, of which he was the master-builder, must not crumble into ruin, till it shall have given a shelter and a home, security, glory, and peace, to the children's children, and the remote posterity of those for whom he reared it with the loving ardor of his great soul and the strength of his mighty arm.

It must not, need not, shall not be. To think of it for a moment is base recreancy and intolerable shame. Forbid it, thou God of nations, and our fathers God! Forbid it, ye, my countrymen, as ye have the power--ay, ten times the power that is requisite. Only rise up again, and yet again, in your strength, and by all that is dear and sacred in the name and fame of your country's Father, swear that it shall not be, and then it cannot be. Give anew your heart and soul and faith, unswerving fidelity, whole-hearted loyalty--your voice, your strength, your wealth all that you are or possess, to this great cause, give these unitedly, fervently, with one shout, one blow, and in perfect accord, and then it will not be. Then the mad enterprise of rebellion is crushed, and the fiend goes howling back, baffled, to his place. Then your birthright is rescued from the destroyer, And when this anniversary shall return, next year, or the next, yonder marble form in our Capitol shall exchange the look of majestic sorrow which seems to have gathered over it, for a smile of grateful joy; and those lips of stone shall move and grow fervid with words of exultant and benedictory congratulation.

Forth, then, friends and compatriots, to the work that shall save the storm-tossed ark of our liberties and our hopes. G. Putnam.

CCLXXVI.

OUR HEROIC DEAD.

There is a history in almost every home of Massachusetts, which will never be written; but the memory of kindred has it embalmed forever. The representatives of the pride and hope of uncounted households, departing, will return no more. The shaft of the archer, attracted by the shining mark, numbers them among his fallen. In the battles of Big Bethel, of Bull Run, of Ball's Bluff, of Roanoke Island, of Newbern, of Winchester, of Yorktown, of Williamsburg, of West Point, of Fair Oaks, the battles before Richmond from Mechanicsville to Malvern Hill, of James Island, of Baton Rouge, of Cedar Mountain, of Bull Run again, of Chantilly of Washington in North Carolina, of South Mountain, of Antietam, of Fredericksburg, of Goldsborough,--through all the capricious fortunes of the war, the regiments of Massachusetts have borne her flag by the side of the banner of the Union. And, beyond the Atlantic slope, every battle-field has drunk the blood of her sons, nurtured among her hills and sands, from which in adventurous manhood they turned their footsteps to the West. Officers and enlisted men have vied with each other in deeds of valor. This flag, whose standard-bearer, shot down in battle, tossed it from his dying hand nerved by undying patriotism, has been caught by the comrade, who in his turn has closed his eyes for the last time upon its starry folds as another hero-martyr clasped the splintered staff and rescued the symbol at once of country and of their blood-bought fame.

How can fleeting words of human praise gild the record of their glory? Our eyes suffused with tears, and blood retreating to the heart, stirred with unwonted thrill, speak with the eloquence of nature, uttered but unexpressed. From the din of the battle, they have passed to the peace of eternity. Farewell! warrior, citizen, patriot, lover, friend,--whether in the humbler ranks or bearing the sword of official power, whether private, captain, surgeon, or chaplain, for all these in the heady fight have passed away,--Hail! and Farewell! Each hero must sleep serenely on the field where he fell in a cause "sacred to liberty and the rights of mankind."

"Worn by no wasting, lingering pain,
No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,
And freed his soul the nearest way."
J. A. Andrew.

CCLXXVII.

HONOR TO OUR HEROES.

The heart swells with unwonted emotion when we remember our sons and brothers, whose constant valor has sustained on the field, during nearly three years of war, the cause of our country, of civilization, and liberty. Our volunteers have represented Massachusetts, during the year just ended, on almost every field and in every department of the army where our flag has been unfurled. At Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner, at Chickamauga, Knoxville, and Chattanooga,--under Hooker, and Meade, and Banks, and Gillmore, and Rosecrans, Burnside, and Grant; in every scene of danger and of duty, along the Atlantic and the Gulf, on the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Mississippi and the Rio Grande,--under Dupont and Dahlgren, and Foote, and Farragut and Porter,--the sons of Massachusetts have borne their part, and paid the debt of patriotism and valor. Ubiquitous as the stock they descend from, national in their opinions and universal in their sympathies, they have fought shoulder to shoulder with men of all sections and of every extraction. On the ocean, on the rivers, on the land, on the heights where they thundered down from the clouds of Lookout Mountain the defiance of the skies, they have graven with their swords a record imperishable,

The Muse herself demands the lapse of silent years to soften, by the influences of Time, her too keen and poignant realization of the scenes of War--the pathos, the heroism, the fierce joy, the grief of battle. But, during the ages to come, she will brood over their memory. Into the hearts of her consecrated priests will breathe the inspirations of lofty and undying Beauty, Sublimity and Truth, in all the glowing forms of speech, of literature and plastic art. By the homely traditions of the fireside--by the head-stones in the church-yard consecrated to those whose farms repose far off in rude graves by the Rappahannock, or sleep beneath the sea,--embalmed in the memories of succeeding generations of parents and children, the heroic dead will live on in immortal youth. By their names, their character, their service, their fate, their glory, they cannot fail:--

"They never fail who die
In a great cause; the block may soak their gore;
Their heads may sodden in the sun, their limbs
Be strung to city gates and castle walls;
But still their spirit walks abroad. Though years
Elapse and others share as dark a doom,
They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
Which overpower all others, and conduct
The world at last to Freedom."

The edict of Nantes maintaining the religious liberty of the Huguenots gave lustre to the fame of Henry the Great, whose name will gild the pages of philosophic history after mankind may have forgotten the martial prowess and the white plume of Navarre. The Great Proclamation of Liberty will lift the Ruler who uttered it, our Nation and our Age, above all vulgar destiny.

The bell which rang out the Declaration of independence, has found at last a voice articulate, to "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof." It has been heard across oceans, and has modified the sentiments of cabinets and kings. The people of the Old World have heard it, and their hearts stop to catch the last whisper of its echoes. The poor slave has heard it, and with bounding joy, tempered by the mystery of religion, he worships and adores. The waiting Continent has heard it, and already foresees the fulfilled prophecy, when she will sit "redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible Genius of Universal Emancipation." J. A. Andrew.

CCLXXVIII.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONTEST.

I hold this armed contest to be a great historical movement, and to have high moral interest and significance because it is to determine the character of the institutions under which we, and those who come after us, are to live. You are not merely sustaining the administration of President Lincoln against unlawful combinations, but you are fighting on the side of law, order, government, civilization and progress. The result of this war is to settle the question whether they who are hereafter to inhabit this magnificent country are or are not to have that primal blessing of a good government, without which the most abundant material resources are as valueless as scientific books or philosophical installments would be among the most barbarous tribes of Africa or Australia. Surely there cannot be imagined a war more worthy of calling forth all the energies of a great people than this.

And if I am asked to define my meaning more distinctly and precisely, I say that the questions now submitted to the stern arbitrament of war are substantially these: Is the Constitution of the United States a compact or a law? Is this Union a Commonwealth, a State, or is it merely a confederacy or a copartnership? Is there a right of secession in the separate States, singly or collectively, other than the right of revolution? These are momentous questions, and if they can be settled in no other way than by a war, then such a war is worth the price it costs, great as that is. For if the right of secession be fairly and logically deducible from the Constitution--if any State, upon its own mere motion, with cause or without cause, can withdraw from the Union as a partner may dissolve a copartnership--then the Constitution itself is a stupendous failure, the men who made it were bungling journeymen and not master-mechanics, and to institutions of our country, so far from deserving our gratitude and admiration, are worthy only of our contempt. The hour has come, and the men have come, to settle these issues, fraught with such vital consequences to unborn millions. The dusky clouds, surcharged with electric fires, that stand front to front in mid air and darken the heavens with their power, have been long in gathering; let the storm continue till the air is cleared--and no longer.

I want to have it now determined that for all future time any State, or any cluster of States, that may attempt to coerce or bully a legal and constitutional majority by the threat of secession, shall be met with the answer: "You don't go out of this Union unless you are strong enough to fight your way out." I want to have the armed heel of the country crush the serpent head of secession, now and forever, so that it shall never again glare with its baleful eyes, or brandish its venomous tongue. Let not the fate and fortunes of this glorious country be committed to the keeping of a clumsy, misshapen raft, compacted of twenty-four or thirty-four logs, good enough to float down a river, but sure to go to pieces when it gets into deep water; Let let them be embarked on board a goodly ship, well found, well fastened, well manned--in which every timber and plank has been so fashioned as to contribute to the beauty and strength of the whole fabric, with a good seaman at the helm, the Constitution in the binnacle, and the stars and stripes at the masthead. When the time of my departure shall come, let me feel, let me know, that I leave those whom I love under the protection of a government good enough to secure the affection of its subjects, and strong enough to enforce their obedience. Remember that if a strong government be sometimes bad, a weak government is never good. G. S. Hillard.

CCLXXIX.

THE MILITARY CAPACITY OF THE PEOPLE.

We have cause for gratitude in the military capacity which our people have developed. We had no great standing armies. We had but a single thoroughly furnished military school. There was no military profession proper, inviting young men on the threshold of life to choose the trade of arms. A soldier's garb was a rare spectacle, and every child ran to the window to gaze at the passing glitter. Whence should come our fighting men if the bugle should blow? You must have men before you have soldiers. Our institutions raised men. Proverbially the Yankee can turn his hand to anything. He likes to do well what he undertakes. He has a pride in showing himself equal to his position. Above all, he has force of personal character. When a Northern regiment makes a charge, it is not merely the weight of so much physical humanity; there goes weight of character with it. Why, there is an accomplished schoolmaster there, and the best blacksmith of the village, and a solid merchant, and a dexterous lawyer, and the handiest coachman of the stable, and a well known stage-driver on a prominent public route, and a butcher with an unerring cleaver, and a jolly tar whose vessel never missed stays with his hand at the wheel; do you suppose that these men are going to charge like so many nameless Hessians? Why, it is a personal matter with every one of them. They go in under orders, to be sure, but they have not lost the sense of individual responsibility. The thing is to be well done because they are there. I know it, my friends, the personal character of our recruits lends weight and irresistibleness to them as soldiers.

There have been no braver men, no stouter soldiers, in all war's red annals, than these armed clerks, farmers, college boys, and their comrades of every peaceful calling. Each community keeps the name of some young hero, nobler than Spartan mothers ever welcomed on his shield. Redder blood never stained the earth, than those full libations our new mustered ranks have poured out for union, law, and liberty. There has been no fighting in the bloody past of human story, where muzzle to muzzle and steel to steel, bold hearts have more truly played the man, than in those battles of two years past in which our citizen armies have saved our nationality. Never have the hardships of the camp, the march, the field, and the trenches, and the merciless privations of imprisonment been more heroically endured. It was not needed--and our President said it well--to consecrate the sacred acres of Gettysburg; that was already done by the deep baptism that had laved those hills, and not that field only, but all the sands and sods and waves our boys' brave blood have crimsoned. No land beneath the blue heavens was ever kept by stouter living bulwarks; no mourners ever had a nobler heritage than those that mourn our soldier-dead. A. L. Stone.

CCLXXX.

LIMIT TO HUMAN DOMINION.

God has given the land to man, but the sea He has reserved to Himself. "The sea is His, and He made it." He has given man "no inheritance in it; no, not so much as to set his foot on." If he enters its domain, he enters it as a pilgrim and a stranger. He may pass over it, but he can have no abiding place upon it. He cannot build his house, nor so much as pitch his tent within it. He cannot mark it with his lines, nor subdue it to his uses, nor rear his monuments upon it. It steadfastly refuses to own him as its lord and master. Its depths do not tremble at his coming. Its waters do not flee when he appeareth. All the strength of all his generations is to it as a feather before the whirlwind; and all the noise of his commerce, and all the thunder of his navies, it can hush in a moment within the silence of its impenetrable abysses. Whole armies have gone down into that unfathomable darkness, and not a floating bubble marks the place of their disappearing. If all the populations of the world, from the beginning of time, were cast into its depths the smooth surface of its oblivion would close over them in an hour; and if all the cities of the earth, and all the structures and monuments ever reared by man were heaped together over that grave for a tombstone, it would not break the surface of the deep or lift back their memory to the light of the sun and the breath of the upper air. The sea would roll its billows in derision, a thousand fathoms deep, above the topmost stone of that mighty sepulchre. The patient earth submits to the rule of man, and the mountains bow their rocky heads before the hammer of his power and the blast of his terrible enginery. The sea cares not for him; not so much as a single hair's breadth can its level be lowered or lifted by all the art, and all the effort, and all the enginery of all the generations of time. He comes and goes upon it, and a moment after it is as if he had never been there. He may engrave his titles upon the mountain top, and quarry his signature into the foundations of the globe, but he cannot write his name on the sea. And thus, by its material uses and its spiritual voices, does the sea ever speak to us, to tell up that its builder and maker is God. He hewed its channels in the deep, and drew its barriers upon the stand, and cast its belted waters around the world. He fitted it to the earth and the sky, and poised them skilfully, the one against the other, when He "measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighted the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance." He gave the sea its wonderful laws, and armed it with its wonderful powers, and set it upon its wonderful work.

"O'er all its breadth His wisdom walks,
On all its waves His goodness shines."
L. Swain.

CCLXXXI.

THE BATTLE OF CIVILIZATIONS.

Our war is only an appeal from the nineteenth century of freedom 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 by cotton-dust, she would kiss her feet. But instead of that, for 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." Now, when shall come peace? Out of this warlike conflict, when shall come peace? Just as it came in the conflict of parties 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 sun. The light shed upon our future is the light of experience. Seventy years have not left us ignorant of what the aristocracy of the South means and plans. The South needs to rule, or she goes by the board. She 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 would 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 to 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 agricultural 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. 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 control 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 discussion of these Northern States. Unless he does that, he is not safe. He knows it. Now I do not say he will succeed, but I tell you what I think is the plan of a statesmanlike leader of this effort. To make slavery safe, he must mould Massachusetts, not into being a slaveholding Commonwealth, but into being a silent, unprotesting Commonwealth; 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 Cæsar of old. He has gathered 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 alliance, a dangerous time, and a terrible battle, will these Eastern States have. For they will never make peace. 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. In other words, Davis 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. Which ever conquers supersedes the other. W. Phillips.

CCLXXXII.

SECESSION THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.

Severed from us, South Carolina must have a government. You see now a reign of terror,--threats to raise means. That can only last a day. Some system must give a 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. Productions are the result of skilled labor. You must educate your laborer, if you would have the means for carrying on a government. Despotisms are cheap; free governments are a dear luxury,--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 feet that can just toddle bringing chips from the wood-pile.--Massachusetts only pays her own board and lodging, and lays by about four per cent a year. And South Carolina, with one half idlers, and the other half slaves, a slave doing only half the work of a freeman,--only one quarter of the population actually at work, how much do you suppose she lays up? Lays up a loss! By all the laws of political economy, she lays up bankruptcy; of course she does! Put her out, and let her see how sheltered 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 wirework, fill them with anthracite coal, and when you have raised it to a white heat, mount and drive it through a powder magazine, and you are safe, compared with a slaveholding community educating its slaves. But South Carolina must do it, in order to get the basis for taxation to support an independent government. The moment she does it, she removes the safeguard of slavery.