The American Union Speaker Part 53

"All around us, in the professions, in the marts of commerce, on the exchange where merchant princes and capitalists do congregate, in these manufactories and workshops where the products of every clime are fas.h.i.+oned into a thousand forms of utility and beauty, on these smiling farms fertilized by the sweat of free labor, in every position of private and of public life,--are our a.s.sociates, who were but yesterday what you call 'hireling laborers,' and therefore, 'essentially slaves!' In every department of human effort are n.o.ble men who sprang from our ranks,-men whose good deeds will be felt, and will live in the grateful memories of men, when the stones reared by the hands of affection to their honored names shall crumble into dust. Our eyes glisten and our hearts throb over the bright, glowing, and radiant pages of our history that record the deeds of patriotism of the sons of New England who sprang from our ranks, and wore the badges of toil. While the names of Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Nathaniel Greene, and Paul Revere, live on the brightest pages of our history, the mechanics of Ma.s.sachusetts and New England will never want ill.u.s.trious examples to incite us to n.o.ble aspirations and n.o.ble deeds.

"Go home, sir, and say to your privileged cla.s.s, which you vauntingly say leads progress, civilization, and refinement, that in the opinion of the 'hireling laborers' of Ma.s.sachusetts, if you have no sympathy for your African bondsmen, you should, at least, sympathize with the millions of your own race, whose labor your have dishonored and degraded by slavery!

You should teach your millions of poor and ignorant white men, so long oppressed by your policy, the 'tremendous secret that the ballot-box is stronger than an army with banners!' You should 'combine' and lead them to the adoption of a policy which shall secure their own emanc.i.p.ation from a degrading thraldom!"

H. Wilson.

CCXCI.

THE DEATH OF SLAVERY THE LIFE OF THE NATION.

We of America have been accustomed to contemplate, with something of gratified and patriotic pride, the wondrous progress of our country, and the strength and stability of our Government. Gazing with beaming eye and throbbing heart upon the grandeur and beauty of this splendid edifice of const.i.tutional government in America, we came to believe that it was as imperishable as the memory of its ill.u.s.trious builders. We dreamed for our native land a glorious destiny--a magnificent career among the nations during the coming ages. But our firm, confident faith is now shaken--our bright hopes are now dimmed--our lofty pride is now humbled--our gorgeous visions of the future glories of the Republic are now obscured by the storm of battle. Our country, the land of so much of affection, of pride and of hope, now presents to the startled and astonished gaze of mankind an appalling, humiliating, and saddening spectacle. Treasonable menaces of other days have now ripened into treasonable deeds. Civil war holds its carnival, and reaps its b.l.o.o.d.y harvest. The nation is grappling with a gigantic conspiracy--struggling for existence--for the preservation of its menaced life--against a rebellion that finds no parallel in the annals of the world.

Why is it that the land resounds with the measured tread of a million of armed men? Why is it that our bright waters all stained and our green fields reddened with fraternal blood? Why is it that the young men of America, in the pride and bloom of early manhood, are summoned from homes, from the mothers who bore them, from the wives and sisters who love them, to the fields of b.l.o.o.d.y strife--there to do soldiers' duties, bear soldiers' burdens, and fill soldiers' graves? Why is it that thousands of the men and the women of Christian America are sorrowing, with aching hearts and tearful eyes, for the absent, the loved, and the lost? Why is it that the heart of loyal America throbs, heavily oppressed with anxiety and gloom, for the future of the country?

These crimes against the peace of the country and the life of the nation are all, all to eternize the hateful dominion of man over the souls and bodies of his fellow-men--to make slavery perpetual and its power forever dominant in Christian and Republican America. These sacrifices of property of health, of life--these appalling sorrows and agonies now upon us, are all the inflictions of slavery, in its gigantic effort to found a slaveholding empire in America. Yes, slavery is the "architect of ruin"

who organized this mighty conspiracy against the unity and existence of the Republic. Slavery is the traitor that plunged the Nation into the fire, and blood, and darkness of civil war. Slavery is the criminal whose hands are dripping with the blood of our murdered sons. Before the tribunal of mankind, of the present and of coming ages--before the bar of the ever-living G.o.d--the loyal heart of America holds slavery responsible for every dollar sacrificed, for every drop of blood shed, for every pang of toil, of agony, and of death for every tear wrung from suffering or affection, in this G.o.dless rebellion now upon us. For these treasonable deeds, these crimes against freedom, humanity, and the life of the Nation, slavery should be doomed by the loyal people of America to a swift, utter, and ignominious annihilation.

Slavery, bold, proud, domineering with hate in its heart, scorn in its eye, defiance in its mien, has p.r.o.nounced against the existence of republican inst.i.tutions in America, against the supremacy of the Government, the unity and life of the Nation. Slavery, hating the cherished inst.i.tutions that tend to secure the rights and enlarge the privileges of mankind, despising the toiling ma.s.ses, as "mudsills" and "white slaves," defying the Government, its Const.i.tution and its laws, has openly p.r.o.nounced itself the mortal and unappeasable enemy of the Republic. Slavery stands now the only clearly p.r.o.nounced foe our country has on the globe. Therefore, every word spoken, every line written, every act performed, that keeps the breath of life, for a moment, in slavery, is against the existence and perpetuity of democratic inst.i.tutions against the dignity of the toiling millions of America--against the liberty, the peace, the honor, the renown, and the life of the Nation. In the lights of to-day that flash upon us from camp and battle-field, the loyal eye, heart, and brain of America sees and feels and realizes that THE DEATH OF SLAVERY IS THE LIFE OF THE NATION! The loyal voice of patriotism throughout all the land p.r.o.nounces, in clear accents, that AMERICAN SLAVERY MUST DIE THAT THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC MAY LIVE!

H. Wilson.

CCXCII.

THE FANATICISM OF Ma.s.sACHUSETTS.

This, sir, is not the first time in her history that Ma.s.sachusetts has drawn upon herself reproach and rebuke for unbending adherence to the rights of human nature. In the days of her colonial existence, her unshrinking devotion to the rights of mankind often drew upon her the censure of the pliant supporters of the British Crown; but the world now quotes and commends her inspiring example. Now her abhorrence of human slavery brings upon her the condemnation of its advocates and apologists, but the hour will yet come, in the march of time, when her unwavering fidelity to an unpopular cause in spite of obloquy and reproach, will be a source of inspiration to men struggling to recover lost rights.

Ma.s.sachusetts clings with the tenacity of profound conviction to the teachings of her own ill.u.s.trious sons. She was taught by Benjamin Franklin that "slavery is an atrocious debas.e.m.e.nt of human nature;" by John Adams that "consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust;" by John Quincy Adams that "slavery taints the very sources of moral principle"--"establishes false estimates of virtue and vice;" by Daniel Webster that "it is a continual and permanent violation of human rights"--"opposed to the whole spirit of the Gospels and to the teachings of Jesus Christ;" by William Ellery Channing that "to extend and perpetuate the evil, we cut ourselves off from the communion of nations; we sink below the civilization of our age; we invite the scorn, indignation and abhorrence of the world." Ma.s.sachusetts cannot forget or repudiate these words of her immortal sons.

The distinguis.h.i.+ng opinion of Ma.s.sachusetts concerning slavery in America is often flippantly branded in these Halls, as wild, pa.s.sionate, unreasoning fanaticism. Senators of the South! tell me, I pray you tell me, if it be fanaticism for Ma.s.sachusetts to see in this age, what your peerless Was.h.i.+ngton saw in his age "the direful effects of slavery?" Is it fanaticism for Ma.s.sachusetts to believe as your Henry believed, that "slavery is as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible, and destructive to liberty?" Is it fanaticism for her to believe as your Madison believed, that "slavery is a dreadful calamity?" Is it fanaticism for her to believe with your Monroe, that "slavery has preyed upon the vitals of the union and has been prejudicial to all the States in which it has existed?" Is it fanaticism for her to believe with your Martin that "slavery lessens the sense of the equal rights of mankind, and habituates us to tyranny and oppression?" Is it fanaticism for her to believe with your Pinckney that "it will one day destroy the reverence for liberty, which is the vital principle of a Republic?" Is it fanaticism for her to believe with your Henry Clay, that "slavery is a wrong, a grievous wrong, and no contingency can make it right?" Surely, Senators who are wont to accuse Ma.s.sachusetts of being drunk with fanaticism, should not forget that the n.o.blest men the South has given to the service of the Republic, in peace and in war, were her teachers.

H. Wilson.

CCXCIII.

DEFENCE OF Ma.s.sACHUSETTS.

Ma.s.sachusetts, in her heart of hearts, loves liberty--loathes slavery. I glory in her sentiments; for the heart of our common humanity is throbbing in sympathy with her opinions. But she is not unmindful of her const.i.tutional duties, of her obligations to the Union and to her sister States. Up to the verge of const.i.tutional power she will go in maintenance of her cherished convictions; but she has not shrunk, and she does not mean to shrink, from the performance of her obligations as a member of this Confederation of constellated States. She has never sought, she does not seek, to encroach, by her own acts or by the action of the Federal Government, upon the const.i.tutional rights of her sister States. Jealous of her own rights, she will respect the rights of others. Claiming the power to control her own domestic policy, she freely accords that power to her sister States. Concealing the rights of others, she demands her own. Loyal to the Union, she demands loyalty in others. Here, and now, I demand of her accusers that they file their bill of specifications, and produce the proofs of their allegations, or forever hold their peace.

In other days, when Adams, Webster, Davis, Everett, Cus.h.i.+ng, Choate, Winthrop, Mann, Rantoul, and their a.s.sociates graced these chambers, Ma.s.sachusetts was then, as she is now, the object of animadversion and a.s.sault. I have sometimes thought, Mr. President, that these continual a.s.saults upon the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts were prompted--not by her faults, but by her virtues rather--not by the sense of justice, but by the spirit of envy and jealousy and uncharitableness. Unawed, however, by censure or menace, she continues in her course, upward and onward, to the accomplishment of her high destinies. She is but a speck, a mere patch on the surface of America, hardly more than one four-hundredth part of the territory of the Republic, with a rugged soil and still more rugged clime.

But on that little spot of the globe is a Common wealth where common consent is recognized as the only just basis of fundamental law, and personal freedom is secured in its completest individuality. In that Commonwealth are one and a quarter million of freemen, with skilled hand and cultivated brain,--with mechanic arts and manufactures on every streamlet, and commerce on the waves of all the seas--with inst.i.tutions of moral and mental culture open to all, and art, science, and literature ill.u.s.trated by glorious names--with benevolent inst.i.tutions for the sons and daughters of misfortune and poverty, and charities for humanity the wide world over, The heart, the soul, the reason of Ma.s.sachusetts send up unceasing aspirations for the unity, indivisibility, and perpetuity of the North American Republic; but if it shall be rent, torn, dissevered, she will not lose her faith in G.o.d and humanity, she will not go down with the falling fortunes of her country without making a struggle to preserve and perpetuate free inst.i.tutions. So long as the ocean shall roll at her feet, so long as G.o.d shall send her health-giving breezes and suns.h.i.+ne and rain, she will endeavor to ill.u.s.trate, in the future as in the past, the daily beauty of freedom secured and protected by law.

H. Wilson.

CCXCIV.

EMANc.i.p.aTION.

Shall these once slaves but now freemen be remanded back to bondage? No: "personal property once forfeited is always forfeited." No: slaves once legally free are always free. No, no; thrice no, by the ashes of our fathers, by the altar of our G.o.d! The "chosen curses," and the "hidden thunder in the stores of heaven" will forbid the rendition--a crime to them, a malediction to their masters, a shame to us, and a disgrace to the age. If these children of wrong and oppression are the lawful spoil of our victorious arms, give up to the enemy your proudest national memorials--the sword of Was.h.i.+ngton, the staff of Franklin, that time-worn but immortal parchment which just authoritatively published your Independence to the world--give up to him the blood-stained flags and trophies which, upon the bristling crest of battle, our heroic defenders have wrenched from his desperate grasp; give up to him this Capitol itself and throw at his feet the President's head, before you give up the most abject of these bondsmen disenthralled; for in surrendering them you will squander one of those priceless moments, big with the future, worth more than a whole generation of either bond or free, the rare and pregnant occasion placed in your hand by the fortune of war of wiping forever African slavery from the American continent.

If this deliverance is ever vouchsafed, then shall we be purged forever of the sole source of our weakness and dissension in the past; then will pa.s.s away forever the sole cloud that threatens the glory of our future; then will the American Union be transfigured into a more erect and s.h.i.+ning presence, and tread with firm footsteps a loftier plane, and cherish n.o.bler theories, and carry its head nearer the stars; then will it be no profanation to wed its redeemed and unpolluted name to that of immortal Liberty; then Liberty and Union will go on, hand in hand, and, under a holier inspiration and with more benign and blessed auspices, will revive their grand mission of peacefully acquiring and peacefully incorporating contiguous territories, and peacefully a.s.similating their inhabitants; then from the Orient to the Occident, from the flowery sh.o.r.es of the great Southern Gulf to the frozen barriers of the great Northern Bay, will they unite in spreading a civilization, not intertwined with slavery, but purged of its contamination, a civilization which means universal emanc.i.p.ation, universal enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, universal brotherhood.

Despair not, then, soldiers, statesmen, citizens, women, we are fighting energetically for a nation's life. The cloud which now shuts down before your vision will yet disclose its silver lining. Peace shall be born from war, and out of chaos order shall yet emerge. We shall dwell together in harmony, and but one nation shall inhabit our sea-girt borders. We seem sailing along the land, hearing the ripple that breaks upon the sh.o.r.e, where our recreated and regenerated Republic, after it has pa.s.sed through this fiery furnace of war, these gates of death, shall be permanently installed. We shall yet tread its meadows and pastures green, trade in its marts, live in its palaces wors.h.i.+p in its temples, and legislate in its Capitol.

H. C. Deming.

CCXCV.

PROTECTION FOR TENNESSEE.

The amendments to the Const.i.tution which const.i.tute the Bill of Rights, declare that "a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Our people are denied this right secured to them in their own const.i.tution and the const.i.tution of the United States; yet we hear no complaints here of violations of the Const.i.tution in this respect. We ask the Government to interpose to secure us this const.i.tutional right. We want the pa.s.ses in our mountains opened, we want deliverance and protection for a down-trodden and oppressed people who are struggling for their independence without arms. If we had had ten thousand stand of arms and ammunition when the contest commenced, we should have asked no further a.s.sistance. We have not got them. We are a rural people; we have villages and small towns--no large cities. Our population is h.o.m.ogeneous, industrious, frugal, brave, independent; but now harmless and powerless, and oppressed by usurpers. You may be too late in coming to our relief or you may not come at all though I do not doubt you will come--and they may trample us under foot; they may convert our plains into graveyards, and the caves of our mountains into sepulchers; but they will never take us out of this Union, or make us a land of slaves--no, never! We intend to stand as firm as adamant, and as unyielding as our own majestic mountains that surround us. Yes, we will be as fixed and as immovable as are they upon their bases. We will stand as long as we can; and if we are overpowered and Liberty shall be driven from the land, we intend before she departs to take the flag of our country with a stalwart arm, a patriotic heart, and an honest tread, and place it upon the summit of the loftiest and most majestic mountain. We intend to plant it there, and leave it, to indicate to the inquirer who may come in after times, the spot where the G.o.ddess of Liberty lingered and wept for the last time, before she took her flight from a people once prosperous, free, and happy.

We ask the Government to come to our aid. We love the Const.i.tution as made by our fathers. We have confidence in the integrity and capacity of the people to govern themselves. We have lived entertaining these opinions; we intend to die entertaining them. We may meet with impediments, and may meet with disasters, and here and there a defeat; but ultimately freedom's cause must triumph, for--

"Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft, is ever won."

Yes, we must triumph. My faith is strong, based on the eternal principles of right that a thing so monstrously wrong as this rebellion cannot triumph. I say, let the battle go on--it is freedom's cause--until the Stars and Stripes ( G.o.d bless them!) shall again be unfurled upon every cross-road, and from every house-top throughout the Confederacy North and South. Let the Union be reinstated; let tie law be enforced; let the Const.i.tution be supreme.

A. Johnson.

CCXCVI.

THE SUBMISSIONISTS.

With the curled lip of scorn we are told by the disunionists that, in thus supporting a Republican Administration in its endeavors to uphold the Const.i.tution and the laws, we are "submissionists," and when they have p.r.o.nounced this word, they suppose they have imputed to us the sum of all human abas.e.m.e.nt. Well, let it be confessed, we are "submissionists," and weak and spiritless as it may be deemed by some, we glory in the position we occupy. The law says, "Thou shalt not swear falsely;" we submit to this law, and while in the civil or military service of the country, with an oath to support the Const.i.tution of the United States resting upon our consciences, we would not, for any earthly consideration, engage in the formation or execution of a conspiracy to subvert that very Const.i.tution and with it the Government to which it has given birth. Write us down, therefore, "submissionists."

Nor are we at all disturbed by the flippant taunt that, in thus submitting to the authority of our Government, we are necessarily cowards. We know whence this taunt comes, and we estimate it at its true value. We hold that there is a higher courage in the performance of duty than in the commission of crime. The tiger of the jungle and the cannibal of the South Sea Islands have that courage in which the revolutionists of the day make their especial boast; the angels of G.o.d and the spirits of just men made perfect have had, and have that courage which submits to the law. Lucifer was a non-submissionist, and the first secessionist of whom history has given us any account, and the chains which he wears fitly express the fate due to all who openly defy the laws of their Creator and of their country. He rebelled because the Almighty would not yield to him the throne of heaven.

The principle of the Southern rebellion is the same. Indeed, in this submission to the laws, is found the chief distinction between good men and devils. A good man obeys the laws of truth, of honesty, of morality, and all those laws which have been enacted by competent authority for the government and protection of the country in which he lives; a devil obeys only his own ferocious and profligate pa.s.sions.

The principle on which this rebellion proceeds, that laws have in themselves no sanctions, no binding force upon the conscience, and that every man, under the promptings of interest, or pa.s.sion, or caprice, may at will, and honorably, too, strike at the government that shelters him, is one of utter demoralization, and should be trodden out as you would tread out a spark that has fallen on the roof of your dwelling. Its unchecked prevalence would resolve society into chaos, and leave you without the slightest guarantee for life, liberty, or property. It is time, that, in their majesty, the people of the United States should make known to the world that this Government, in its dignity and power, is something more than a moot court, and that the citizen who makes war upon it is a traitor, not only in theory but in fact, and should have meted out to him a traitor's doom. The country wants no b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifice, but it must and will have peace, cost what it may.

J. Holt.

CCXCVII.

ADDRESS TO KENTUCKY VOLUNTEERS.

Soldiers, next to the wors.h.i.+p of the Father of us all, the deepest and grandest of human emotions is the love of the land that gave us birth. It is an enlargement and exaltation of all the tenderest and strongest sympathies of kindred and of home. In all centuries and climes it has lived and has defied chains and dungeons and racks to crush it. It has strewed the earth with its monuments, and has shed undying l.u.s.tre on a thousand fields on which it has battled. Through the night of ages, Thermopylae glows like some mountain peak on which the morning sun has risen, because twenty-three hundred years ago, this hallowing pa.s.sion touched its mural precipices and its crowning crags.

It is easy, however, to be patriotic in piping times of peace, and in the sunny hour of prosperity. It is national sorrow, it is war, with its attendant perils and horrors, that tests this pa.s.sion, and winnows from the ma.s.ses those who, with all their love of life, still love their country more. While your present position is a most vivid and impressive ill.u.s.tration of patriotism, it has a glory peculiar and altogether its own.

The mercenary armies which have swept victoriously over the world, and have gathered so many of the laurels that history has embalmed, were but machines drafted into the service of ambitious spirits whom they obeyed, and little understood or appreciated the problems their blood was poured out to solve. But while you have all the dauntless physical courage which they displayed, you add to it a thorough knowledge of the argument on which this mighty movement proceeds, and a moral heroism which, breaking away from the entanglements of kindred, and friends, and State policy enables you to follow your convictions of duty, even though they should lead you up to the cannon's mouth. It must, however, be added, that with elevation of position come corresponding responsibilities. Alike in the inaction of the camp, and amid the fatigues of the march, and the charge and shouts of battle, you will remember that you have in your keeping not only your own personal reputation, but the honor of your native State, and, what is infinitely more inspiring, the honor of that blood-bought and beneficent Republic whose children you are. Any irregularity on your part would sadden the land that loves you; any faltering in the presence of the foe would cover it with immeasurable humiliation.

Soldiers, when Napoleon was about to spur on his legions to combat on the sands of an African desert, pointing them to the Egyptian pyramids that loomed up against the far-off horizon, he exclaimed, "From yonder summits forty centuries look down upon you." The thought was sublime and electric; but you have even more than this. When you shall confront those infuriated hosts, whose battle-cry is, "Down with the government of the United States," let your answering shout be, "The Government as our fathers made it;" and when you strike, remember that not only do the good and the great of the past look down upon you from heights infinitely above those of Egyptian pyramids, but that uncounted generations yet to come are looking up to you, and claiming at your hands the unimpaired transmission to them of that priceless heritage which has been committed to our keeping. I say its unimpaired transmission--in all the amplitude of its outlines, in all the symmetry of its matchless proportions, in all the palpitating fulness of its blessings; not a miserably shrivelled and shattered thing, charred by the fires and torn by the tempests of revolution, and all over polluted and scarred by the b.l.o.o.d.y poniards of traitors.

J. Holt.

CCXCVIII.

THE AMERICAN QUESTION IN ENGLAND.