At a public meeting held in Chicago, after the announcement of the
assassination, Rev. Dr. Tiffany, in an able and eloquent address said:
"God alone is great. At rare intervals he sends us a man beyond the
limit of our measure. Our attention has been directed to the excellences
of the character which belonged to our late President, and to the spirit
of the system which gave strength to the blow of the assassin. A more
terrible topic is now to be discussed--our relation to that spirit--our
responsibility for that blow.
We have been accustomed to say, "slavery is sectional, and freedom
national," let those who elect slavery take the results of slavery to
themselves; let them suffer, if their choice brings suffering; but as
for us, we wash our hands in innocency, and hold ourselves guiltless of
blood." And so we have been going on ever since the outbreak of slavery
in the form of armed rebellion. "They are the guilty parties, let them
suffer." But has all this been right? Have we had no responsibility?
Is no guilt ours? We may not have owned slaves, but we may have made
a common cause with men owners--may have brought condemnation upon
ourselves by our tolerance, by our compromises.
Sad and almost disgraceful is the record which exhibits our complicity
with this sin. We began by making free States wait at the door of the
Union until slavery had a counterpoise, or balance adjusted in the form
of slave State, to preserve the balance against freedom in the National
Senate. We compromised the territories west of the Mississippi, by
tolerating slaves there, and as one demand after another was made it was
granted, till we even allowed slave rule in free States, by submitting
to the Fugitive Slave law--these things could not have been done without
our votes. When they threatened and blustered we fawned and cringed,
until they knew and avowed their belief that the crack of a slave whip
would bring the north to its knees. All they asked we granted, more than
they demanded we offered. We held out our wrists for manacles. When we
elected the great good man, who embodied our idea of nationality and
freedom; and even after official announcement had been made of the
position slavery occupied in their proposed nationalism, we guarded
their slaves, and kept them secure to labor for the support of the
masters who were fighting against us. When these slaves, acting on an
intuition of freedom, came fleeing to us, we sent them back to chains
and bondage. In all this we showed our complicity with the sin which
struck the blow which killed our good President.
And after the slaughter of thousands in battle, and the death of as many
more in hospitals, of fever, starvation and wounds, still was our hatred
of the sin which caused them not deep enough. We talked of amnesty and
non-humiliation, and God has permitted the sad cup to come to each lip
in bitterness. Each one mourns to-day as if personally bereaved. The
blackness of darkness is in our homes, and the whole nation mourns
its first-born--its first-loved. May not--does not--a measure of
responsibility rest upon us for this last sad event? Have we not been
tolerant of the treason which has wrought this crime? Have we not been
apologists for infamy under the name of different political opinions?
Have we not spared when we should have punished--been merciful when
mercy was but cruelty? We seem to have believed that because there were
more serpents away from our homes, the few left here had no venom. We
felt secure because the loyalists were more numerous than the traitors.
But of the few who were here, and tolerated here, some plotted the
escape of rebel prisoners, some the burning of our city, some the
conflagration of New York, and some the murder of the Cabinet, while
one has killed the good President. Had they all been driven out, or put
under strict surveillance, there would have been none of these things
from them. We have lost our President by tolerating traitors in our
streets.
Who was the assassin of the President? Not an armed rebel, clothed with
belligerent rights; not a political refugee, who had skulked into our
lines for rapine and for plunder; but the citizen of a free State, who
could visit and send his cards to the Vice-President with a flippant
familiarity, which his aristocratic slave-holding associates presume
to use,--a man allowed to go about the streets of Washington, breathing
treason and blaspheming God, without rebuke. He could command attention
from proprietors of houses and saloons, from owners of blooded stock,
from men who were called loyal, and the toleration of this killed our
good President.
He was a wretch, of whom a press said, but yesterday, that he was
sincere in thinking he should rid the earth of a tyrant, by slaying the
President, this sincerity must place him on a level with John Brown.
[Hisses and cries of _The Times_.] This was said yesterday, and read
by thousands, and I know of no steps taken to prevent the utterance
of similar insult and outrage to-morrow. For this tolerance we are
responsible, and tolerance like this killed the good President. When
a far-seeing military commandant ordered the suppression of published
treason, there were men in high places, and men all over the land, who
outraged the loyal masses by interfering to prevent the execution of
that order, on the ground of disturbing the freedom of the press; but
when our ministers went into Richmond they were muzzled, and the
result has been that treason has been littered, the good man called an
_imbecile_--the generous man a _tyrant_--the restraint of traitors has
been referred to as, _usurpation_ of power, and prisons have been called
_Bastiles_. All this has been, and we have tolerated it. This has given
aid and comfort to treason in the South, and traitors in the North, and
this has killed the good President.
The measure of our responsibility is the amount of our connivance at
these things. No man is free from guilt who has winked at this wrong,
who has interfered to prevent the punishment of wrong-doers, who has
apologies for treason, who has not done all in his power to rebuke,
denounce and punish the foes of the nation, at home and abroad. We
stand, to-day, as though in the presence of the nation's dead, and here,
on the tomb of our chieftain, let us swear eternal enmity to treason
and to traitors. Nor let us, when the assassin shall be arrested and
punished--oh! let us not then think we have done our duty. I had rather
the profane wretch who has done this deed were never taken, than that
his execution should relieve our minds from one thought of our personal
responsibility. No; rather let the wretch be a fugitive and vagabond,
with the mark of Cain upon him. Let none slay him, for we ourselves are
not guiltless. And as he flies from men, with hate in his eyes and hell
in his heart, let every home be an asylum from which he shall be barred,
and every honest, loyal heart a sanctuary where no thought of complicity
with him, or sympathy for him may enter. Let us bow before God to-day in
humble penitence; let us ask of Him forgiveness--Father forgive us, for
we knew not what we did--that His hand be stayed, and the measure of our
responsibility be canceled."
In this connection, we may with propriety, introduce the following
extract from President Johnson's recent speech to the Indiana
delegation:
"We are living at a time when the public mind had almost become
oblivious of what treason is. The time has arrived, my countrymen, when
the American people should be educated and taught what crime is, and
that treason is crime, and the highest crime known to the law and the
Constitution. Yes, treason against a State, treason against all the
States, treason against the Government of the United States, is the
highest crime that can be committed, and those engaged in it should
suffer all the penalties. It is not promulgating anything that I have
not heretofore said, to say that traitors must be made odious; that
treason must be made odious; that traitors must be punished and
imprisoned. [Applause.] They must not only be punished, but their social
power must be destroyed. If not, they will still maintain an ascendency,
and may again become numerous and powerful; for, in the words of a
former senator of the United States, when traitors become numerous
enough, treason becomes respectable. And I say that, after making
treason odious, every Union man and the Government, should be
remunerated out of the pockets of those who have inflicted the great
suffering upon the country. [Applause.] But do not understand me as
saying this in a spirit of anger; for, if I understand my own heart, the
reverse is the case; and, while I say that the penalties of the law,
in a stern and inflexible manner, should be executed upon conscious,
intelligent, and influential traitors,--the leaders who have deceived
thousands upon thousands of laboring men, who have been drawn into
the rebellion; and while I say, as to leaders, punishment, I also say
leniency, conciliation, and amnesty, to the thousands whom they have
misled and deceived, and, in relation to this, as I have remarked, I
might have adopted your speech as my own."
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