FELLOW CITIZEN, FRIEND AND BROTHER:--In behalf of the Methodist
Clergymen of this vicinity, I welcome you to our city, our homes, our
hearts. Our desires and prayers were never more sincere for anything,
than for your preservation and deliverance, when we learned that you had
been thrust into a cold, damp prison, for no other crime than loving
your country, and hating treason. Thank God, the prayers of millions of
loyal hearts have been heard in your behalf.
Paul, and Silas, and Peter, Apostles of the Gospel, were liberated from
prison in answer to prayer. The God in whom they trusted has also heard
the prayer in behalf of an Apostle of Liberty and Union.
Your patriotic utterances in your noble paper were eagerly received by
the friends of the Constitution, and, multiplied a thousand fold, those
utterances sped upon the wings of lightning to the most distant parts of
our country. They were inspiring to the loyal people of the United
States. We were thankful to know that there was at least one Parson in
Tennessee who could love God and his country too--his whole country. One
such man can chase a thousand, and two can put ten thousand to flight.
So we conclude that Parson Brownlow and Andy Johnson are good against
ten thousand rebels. With such pains and such pluck, such nerves and
such principles to guide, we trust the State of Tennessee will soon come
right again.
We are aware that your Union principles have cost you something--cost
you everything but life, and that which, to every true man, is dearer
than life,--honor and rectitude. We bid you a warm welcome on this
account. Situated as we have been, we deserve no praise for being Union
men. To be otherwise would be to serve the devil just for its own sake.
It would be like chopping off our hands just to see the blood run, or
thrusting them into the fire just to feel the pain. But with you the
case has been different. Spurning bribes and offers of aggrandizement,
scorning the threats and terrors of traitors, you have preferred to
suffer privations, afflictions and imprisonment, rather than prove false
to the Government that has protected us all. By thus, in the face of
danger and death, taking your stand so nobly against all odds, all
hazards, all temptations, and machinations of wicked seducers, you have
won the undying admiration of a grateful people. Your deeds have thus
become so interwoven with the most eventful period in the annals of our
country, that your name is henceforth to be a household word, so long as
the American Republic shall live in fact or in history. Yours is the
proud satisfaction of having done right for its own sake, in the face of
powerful temptations to do wrong, and you have your reward. And if a
very unpoetic man may be allowed to amend a couplet familiar to our
school-boy days, I would venture to say:
"And more true joy the Parson exiled feels
Than Davis, with the traitors at his heels."
But, thank God, you are no longer exiled or imprisoned. A tide has come
in your affairs to bear you on to fortune. And it will be nothing
strange, and no more than justice, if the same State which has
confiscated your property, and imprisoned your person, should conclude
to honor herself by honoring you, and shall yet say to you, "Well done
good and faithful servant; be thou ruler over ten cities."
All that is necessary to the Union cause is enough of this same earnest,
unflinching, unchanging determination to face and destroy this monstrous
rebellion, no matter who or what opposes.
If the Union can not be preserved without _saltpeter_, then let enough
of this article be employed to secure the result. And, if the disordered
livers of political hypochondriacs can not be restored to healthy action
without the use of _blue pills_, then let enough of these be given to
work a cure.
God has given the American people a goodly heritage--the fairest the
world has ever seen. There is not a nation under all the heaven where
the pulse does not beat quicker, and the hopes rise higher, and the
thoughts grow larger, at the very mention of the American Republic.
Never have the hopes of humanity so centered in any nation. Our country
had come to be regarded as the cradle of liberty, the home of plenty,
and the asylum for the poor and oppressed of other lands.
Shall these high hopes perish? Shall this light of the Nations go out in
everlasting darkness? Shall a few desperate men--desperate by their lust
of power--desperate by disappointed ambition--desperate by their dark
and damning apostacy from the faith of our fathers--shall these be
allowed to destroy our glorious heritage?
Shall the son strike with rude hands the mother that bore him? Nay,
more, shall he tear her limb from limb, and give her flesh to dogs?
Shall the fair fruits of the tree of liberty perish, the branches torn
off, and the roots burned with fire? God forbid! Such a calamity to the
present and coming generations of mankind must be prevented, cost what
it will. It must be prevented, though it be necessary to send every
leading traitor after Judas Iscariot; and if they will not, like Judas,
wait on themselves, others must have the politeness to wait on them.
Again I welcome you to our homes and hearts. Our prayer is that your
health may be restored; that your family may be preserved in your
absence, and that you may be permitted to see a good old age in the
midst of a prosperous, happy and united people.
And when your earthly pilgrimage shall approach its termination, and you
retrospect the past, may you be able to say, in the language of one who
has gone before you, and who preferred a prison to a guilty conscience,
"I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the
faith." And then, as you look to the future, may your eye of faith, like
his, see for you laid up "a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the
righteous Judge, shall give you in that day."