need but name the service of hospitals, the care and education of the
freedmen,--for these are charities that have long been before the eyes
of the community, and have employed thousands of busy hands: thousands
of sick and dying beds to tend, a race to be educated, civilized, and
Christianized, surely were work enough for one age; and yet this is not
all. War shatters everything, and it is hard to say what in society will
not need rebuilding and binding up and strengthening anew. Not the least
of the evils of war are the vices which a great army engenders wherever
it moves,--vices peculiar to military life, as others are peculiar to
peace. The poor soldier perils for us not merely his body, but his soul.
He leads a life of harassing and exhausting toil and privation, of
violent strain on the nervous energies, alternating with sudden
collapse, creating a craving for stimulants, and endangering the
formation of fatal habits. What furies and harpies are those that follow
the army, and that seek out the soldier in his tent, far from home,
mother, wife, and sister, tired, disheartened, and tempt him to forget
his troubles in a momentary exhilaration, that burns only to chill and
to destroy! Evil angels are always active and indefatigable, and there
must be good angels enlisted to face them; and here is employment for
the slack hand of grief. Ah, we have known mothers bereft of sons in
this war, who have seemed at once to open wide their hearts, and to
become mothers to every brave soldier in the field. They have lived only
to work,--and in place of one lost, their sons have been counted by
thousands.
And not least of all the fields for exertion and Christian charity
opened by this war is that presented by womanhood. The war is
abstracting from the community its protecting and sheltering elements,
and leaving the helpless and dependent in vast disproportion. For years
to come, the average of lone women will be largely increased; and the
demand, always great, for some means by which they may provide for
themselves, in the rude jostle of the world, will become more urgent and
imperative.
Will any one sit pining away in inert grief, when two streets off are
the midnight dance-houses, where girls of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen
are being lured into the way of swift destruction? How many of these are
daughters of soldiers who have given their hearts' blood for us and our
liberties!
Two noble women of the Society of Friends have lately been taking the
gauge of suffering and misery in our land, visiting the hospitals at
every accessible point, pausing in our great cities, and going in their
purity to those midnight orgies where mere children are being trained
for a life of vice and infamy. They have talked with these poor
bewildered souls, entangled in toils as terrible and inexorable as those
of the slave-market, and many of whom are frightened and distressed at
the life they are beginning to lead, and earnestly looking for the means
of escape. In the judgment of these holy women, at least one third of
those with whom they have talked are children so recently entrapped, and
so capable of reformation, that there would be the greatest hope in
efforts for their salvation. While such things are to be done in our
land, is there any reason why any one should die of grief? One soul
redeemed will do more to lift the burden of sorrow than all the
blandishments and diversions of art, all the alleviations of luxury, all
the sympathy of friends.
In the Roman Catholic Church there is an order of women called the
Sisters of the Good Shepherd, who have renounced the world to devote
themselves, their talents and property, entirely to the work of seeking
out and saving the fallen of their own sex; and the wonders worked by
their self-denying love on the hearts and lives of even the most
depraved are credible only to those who know that the Good Shepherd
Himself ever lives and works with such spirits engaged in such a work. A
similar order of women exists in New York, under the direction of the
Episcopal Church, in connection with St. Luke's Hospital; and another in
England, who tend the "House of Mercy" of Clewer.
Such benevolent associations offer objects of interest to that class
which most needs something to fill the void made by bereavement. The
wounds of grief are less apt to find a cure in that rank of life where
the sufferer has wealth and leisure. The _poor_ widow, whose husband was
her all, _must_ break the paralysis of grief. The hard necessities of
life are her physicians; they send her out to unwelcome, yet friendly
toil, which, hard as it seems, has yet its healing power. But the
sufferer surrounded by the appliances of wealth and luxury may long
indulge the baleful apathy, and remain in the damp shadows of the valley
of death till strength and health are irrecoverably lost. How
Christ-like is the thought of a woman, graceful, elegant, cultivated,
refined, whose voice has been trained to melody, whose fingers can make
sweet harmony with every touch, whose pencil and whose needle can awake
the beautiful creations of art, devoting all these powers to the work of
charming back to the sheepfold those wandering and bewildered lambs whom
the Good Shepherd still calls his own! Jenny Lind, once, when she sang
at a concert for destitute children, exclaimed in her enthusiasm, "Is it
not beautiful that I can sing so?" And so may not every woman feel, when
her graces and accomplishments draw the wanderer, and charm away evil
demons, and soothe the sore and sickened spirit, and make the Christian
fold more attractive than the dizzy gardens of false pleasure?
In such associations, and others of kindred nature, how many of the
stricken and bereaved women of our country might find at once a home and
an object in life! Motherless hearts might be made glad in a better and
higher motherhood; and the stock of earthly life that seemed cut off at
the root, and dead past recovery, may be grafted upon with a shoot from
the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.
So the beginning of this eventful 1865, which finds us still treading
the wine-press of our great conflict, should bring with it a serene and
solemn hope, a joy such as those had with whom in the midst of the fiery
furnace there walked one like unto the Son of God.
The great affliction that has come upon our country is so evidently the
purifying chastening of a Father, rather than the avenging anger of a
Destroyer, that all hearts may submit themselves in a solemn and holy
calm still to bear the burning that shall make us clean from dross and
bring us forth to a higher national life. Never, in the whole course of
our history, have such teachings of the pure abstract Right been so
commended and forced upon us by Providence. Never have public men been
so constrained to humble themselves before God, and to acknowledge that
there is a Judge that ruleth in the earth. Verily His inquisition for
blood has been strict and awful; and for every stricken household of the
poor and lowly, hundreds of households of the oppressor have been
scattered. The land where the family of the slave was first annihilated,
and the negro, with all the loves and hopes of a man, was proclaimed to
be a beast to be bred and sold in market with the horse and the
swine,--that land, with its fair name, Virginia, has been made a
desolation so signal, so wonderful, that the blindest passer-by cannot
but ask for what sin so awful a doom has been meted out. The prophetic
visions of Nat Turner, who saw the leaves drop blood and the land
darkened, have been fulfilled. The work of justice which he predicted is
being executed to the uttermost.
But when this strange work of judgment and justice is consummated, when
our country, through a thousand battles and ten thousands of precious
deaths, shall have come forth from this long agony, redeemed and
regenerated, then God Himself shall return and dwell with us, and the
Lord God shall wipe away all tears from all faces, and the rebuke of His
people shall He utterly take away.
GOD SAVE THE FLAG!
Washed in the blood of the brave and the blooming,
Snatched from the altars of insolent foes,
Burning with star-fires, but never consuming,
Flash its broad ribands of lily and rose.
Vainly the prophets of Baael would rend it,
Vainly his worshippers pray for its fall;
Thousands have died for it, millions defend it,
Emblem of justice and mercy to all:
Justice that reddens the sky with her terrors,
Mercy that comes with her white-handed train,
Soothing all passions, redeeming all errors,
Sheathing the sabre and breaking the chain.
Borne on the deluge of old usurpations,
Drifted our Ark o'er the desolate seas;
This was the rainbow of hope to the nations,
Torn from the storm-cloud and flung to the breeze!
God bless the Flag and its loyal defenders.
While its broad folds o'er the battle-field wave,
Till the dim star-wreath rekindle its splendors,
Washed from its stains in the blood of the brave!
ANNO DOMINI.
It is right and fitting that this nation should enter upon the new year
with peculiar gratitude and thanksgiving to the Most High. Through all
its existence it has rejoiced in the sunshine of divine favor; but never
has that favor been so benignly and bountifully bestowed as in these
latter days. For the unexampled material prosperity which has waited
upon our steps,--for blessings in city and field, in basket and store,
in all that we have set our hand unto, it is meet that we should render
thanks to the Good Giver; but for the especial blessings of these last
four years,--for the sudden uprising of manhood,--for the great revival
of justice and truth and love, without which material prosperity is but
a second death,--for the wisdom to do, the courage to dare, the patience
to endure, and the godlike strength to sacrifice all in a righteous
cause, let us give thanks to-day; for in these consists a people's life.
To every nation there comes an hour whereon hang trembling the issues of
its fate. Has it vitality to withstand the shock of conflict and the
turmoil of surprise? Will it slowly gather itself up for victorious
onset? or will it sink unresisting into darkness and the grave?
To this nation, as to all, the question came: Ease or honor, death or
life? Subtle and savage, with a bribe in his hand, and a threat on his
tongue, the tempter stood. Let it be remembered with lasting gratitude
that there was neither pause nor parley when once his purpose was
revealed. The answer came,--the voice of millions like the voice of one.
From city and village, from mountain and prairie, from the granite coast
of the Atlantic to the golden gate of the Pacific, the answer came. It
roared from a thousand cannon, it flashed from a million muskets. The
sudden gleam of uplifted swords revealed it, the quiver of bristling
bayonets wrote it in blood. A knell to the despot, a paean to the slave,
it thundered round the world.
Then the thing which we had greatly feared came upon us, and that
spectre which we had been afraid of came unto us, and, behold, length of
days was in its right hand, and in its left hand riches and honor. What
the lion-hearted warrior of England was to the children of the Saracens,
that had the gaunt mystery of Secession been to the little ones of this
generation, an evening phantom and a morning fear, at the mere mention
of whose name many had been but too ready to fall at the feet of
opposition and cry imploringly, "Take any form but that!" The phantom
approached, put off its shadowy outlines, assumed a definite purpose,
loomed up in horrid proportions,--to come to perpetual end. In its
actual presence all fear vanished. The contest waxed hot, but it wanes
forever. Shadow and substance drag slowly down their bloody path to
disappear in eternal infamy. The war rolls on to its close; and when it
closes, the foul blot of secession stains our historic page no more.
Another book shall be opened.
Remembering all the way which these battling years have led us, we can
only say, "It is the Lord's, doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."
Who dreamed of the grand, stately patience, the heroic strength, that
lay dormant in the hearts of this impulsive, mercurial people? It was
always capable of magnanimity. Who suspected its sublime self-poise?
Rioting in a reckless, childish freedom, who would have dared to
prophesy that calm, clear foresight by which it voluntarily assumed the
yoke, voiced all its strong individual wills in one central controlling
will, and bent with haughty humility to every restraint that looked to
the rescue of its endangered liberty? The cannon that smote the walls of
Sumter did a wild work. Its voice of insult and of sacrilege roused the
fire of a blood too brave to know its courage, too proud to boast its
source. All the heroism inherited from an honored ancestry, all the
inborn wrath of justice against iniquity, all that was true to truth
sprang up instinctively to wrest our Holy Land from the clutch of its
worse than infidels.
But that was not the final test. The final test came afterwards. The
passion of indignation flamed out as passion must. The war that had been
welcomed as a relief bore down upon the land with an ever-increasing
weight, became an ever-darkening shadow. Its romance and poetry did not
fade out, but their colors were lost under the sable hues of reality.
The cloud hung over every hamlet; it darkened every doorway. Even
success must have been accompanied with sharpest sorrow; and we had not
success to soften sorrow. Disaster followed close upon delay, and delay
upon disaster, and still the nation's heart was strong. The cloud became
a pall, but there was no faltering. Men said to one another,
anxiously,--"This cannot last. We must have victory. The people will not
stand these delays. The summer must achieve results, or all is lost."
The summer came and went, results were not achieved, and still the
patient country waited,--waited not supinely, not indifferently, but
with a still determination, with a painful longing, with an eager
endeavor, with a resolute will, less demonstrative, but no less
definite, than that which Sumter roused. Moments of sadness, of gloom,
of bitter disappointment and deep indignation there have been; but never
from the first moment of the Rebellion to this its dying hour has there
been a time when the purpose of the people to crush out treason and save
the nation has for a single instant wavered. And never has their power
lagged behind their purpose. Never have they withheld men or money, but
always they have pressed on, more eager, more generous, more forward to
give than their leaders have been to ask. Truly, it is not in man that
walketh thus to direct his steps!
And side by side, with no unequal step, the great charities have
attended the great conflict. Out of the strong has come forth sweetness.
From the helmeted brow of War has sprung a fairer than Minerva,
panoplied not for battle, but for the tenderest ministrations of Peace.
Wherever the red hand of War has been raised to strike, there the white
hand of Pity has been stretched forth to solace. Wherever else there may
have been division, here there has been no division. Love, the essence
of Christianity, self-sacrifice, the life of God, have forgotten their
names, have left the beaten ways, have embodied themselves in
institutions, and lifted the whole nation to the heights of a divine
beneficence. Old and young, rich and poor, bond and free, have joined in
offering an offering to the Lord in the persons of his wounded brethren.
The woman that was tender and very delicate has brought her finest
handiwork; the slave, whose just unmanacled hands were hardly yet deft
enough to fashion a freedman's device, has proffered his painful hoards;
the criminal in his cell has felt the mysterious brotherhood stirring in
his heart, and has pressed his skill and cunning into the service of his
countrymen. Hands trembling with age have steadied themselves to new
effort; little fingers that had hardly learned their uses have bent with
unwonted patience to the novelty of tasks. The fashion and elegance of
great cities, the thrift and industry of rural villages, have combined
to relieve the suffering and comfort the sorrowful. Science has wrought
her mysteries, art has spread her beauties, and learning and eloquence
and poetry have lavished their free-will offerings. The ancient blood of
Massachusetts and the youthful vigor of California have throbbed high
with one desire to give deserved meed to those heroic men who wear their
badge of honor in scarred brow and maimed limb. The wonders of the Old
World, the treasures of tropical seas, the boundless wealth of our own
fertile inland, all that the present has of marvellous, all that the
past has bequeathed most precious,--all has been poured into the lap of
this sweet charity, and blesseth alike him that gives and him that
takes. It is the old convocation of the Jews, when they brought the
Lord's offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation: "And
they came, both men and women, and brought bracelets, and ear-rings, and
rings, and tablets, all jewels of gold; and every man that offered
offered an offering of gold unto the Lord. And every man with whom was
found blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen and goats' hair and red
skins of rams and badgers' skins brought them. And all the women that
were wise-hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they
had spun, both of blue and of purple and of scarlet and of fine linen.
And the rulers brought onyx-stones, and stones to be set, and spice, and
oil for the light. The children of Israel brought a willing offering
unto the Lord, every man and woman."
Truly, not the least of the compensations of this war is the new spirit
which it has set astir in human life, this acknowledged brotherhood
which makes all things common, which moves health and wealth and leisure
and learning to brave the dangers of the battle-field and the horrors of
the hospital for the comfort of its needy comrade. And inasmuch as he
who hath done it unto one of the least of these his brethren has done it
unto the Master, is not this, in very deed and truth, Anno Domini, the
Year of our Lord?
And let all devout hearts render praises to God for the hope we are
enabled to cherish that He will speedily save this people from their
national sin. From the days of our fathers, the land groaned under its
weight of woe and crime; but none saw from what quarter deliverance
should come. Apostles and prophets arose in North and South, prophesying
the wrath of God against a nation that dared to hold its great truth of
human brotherhood in unrighteousness, and the smile of God only on him
who should do justly and love mercy and walk humbly before Him; but they
died in faith, not having obtained the promises. That faith in God, and
consequently in the ultimate triumph of right over wrong, never failed;
but few, even of the most sanguine, dared to hope that their eyes should
see the salvation of the Lord. Upright men spent their lives in
unyielding and indignant protest, not so much for any immediate result
as because they could do no otherwise,--because the constant violation
of sacred right, the constant defilement and degradation of country,
wrought so fiercely and painfully in their hearts that they could not
hold their peace. Though they expected no sudden reform, they believed
in the indestructibility of truth, and knew, therefore, that their word
should not return unto them void, but waited for some far future day
when happier harvesters should come bringing their sheaves with them.
How looks the promise now? A beneficent Providence has outstripped our
laggard hopes. The work which we had so summarily given over to the
wiser generations behind us is rapidly approaching completion beneath
the strokes of a few sharp, short years of our own. Slavery, which was
apologized for by the South, tolerated by the North, half recognized as
an evil, half accepted as a compromise, but with every conscientious
concession and every cowardly expedient sinking ever deeper and deeper
into the nation's life, stands forth at last in its real character, and
meets its righteous doom. Public opinion, rapidly sublimed in the white
heat of this fierce war, is everywhere crystallizing. Men are learning
to know precisely what they believe, and, knowing, dare maintain. There
is no more speaking with bated breath, no more counselling of
forbearance and non-intervention. It is no longer a chosen few who dare
openly to denounce the sum of all villainies; but loud and long and deep
goes up the execration of a people,--the tenfold hate and horror of men
who have seen the foul fiend's work, who have felt his fangs fastened in
their own flesh, his poison working in their own hearts' blood.
Hundreds of thousands of thinking men have gone down into his loathsome
prison-house, have looked upon his obscene features, have grappled,
shuddering, with his slimy strength; and thousands of thousands,
watching them from far-off Northern homes, have felt the chill of
disgust that crept through their souls. The inmost abhorrence of slavery
that fills the heart of this people it is impossible for language to
exaggerate. It is so strong, so wide-spread, so uncompromising, so fixed
in its determination to destroy, root and branch, the accursed thing,
that even the forces of evil and self-seeking, awed and overpowered, are
swept into the line of its procession. Good men and bad men, lovers of
country and lovers only of lucre, men who will fight to the death for a
grand idea and men who fight only for some low ambition, worshippers of
God and worshippers of Mammon, are alike putting their hands to the
plough which is to overturn and overturn till the ancient evil is
uprooted. The very father of lies is, perforce, become the servant of
truth. That old enemy which is the Devil, the malignant messenger of all
evil, finds himself,--somewhat amazed and enraged, we must believe, at
his unexpected situation,--with all his executive ability undiminished,
all his spiritual strength unimpaired, finds himself harnessed to the
chariot of human freedom and human progress, and working in his own
despite the beneficent will of God. So He maketh the wrath of men and
devils to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath He will restrain.
Unspeakably cheering, both as a sign of the sincerity of our leaders in
this great day and as a pledge of what the nation means to do when its
hands are free, are the little Christian colonies planted in the rear of
our victorious armies. In the heart of woods are often seen large tracts
of open country gay with a brilliant purple bloom which the people call
"fire-weed," because it springs up on spots that have been stripped by
fire. So, where the old plantations of sloth and servitude have been
consumed by the desolating flames of war, spring up the tender growths
of Christian civilization. The filthy hovel is replaced by the decent
cottage. The squalor of slavery is succeeded by the little adornments of
ownership. The thrift of self-possession supplants the recklessness of
irresponsibility. For the slave-pen we have the school-house. Where the
lash labored to reduce men to the level of brutes, the Bible leads them
up to the heights of angels. We are as yet but in the beginning, but we
have begun right. With his staff the slave passes over the Jordan of his
deliverance; but through the manly nurture and Christian training which
we owe him, and which we shall pay, he shall become two bands. The
people did not set themselves to combat prejudices with words alone,
when the time was ripe for deeds; but while the Government was yet
hesitating whether to put the musket into his hand for war, Christian
men and women hastened to give him the primer for peace. Not waiting for
legislative enactments, they took the freedman as he came all panting
from the house of bondage; they ministered to his wants, strengthened
his heart, and set him rejoicing on his way to manhood. The Proclamation
of Emancipation may or may not be revoked; but whom knowledge has made a
man, and discipline a soldier, no edict can make again a slave.