deny--that slavery is the ruling idea of this rebellion. It is slavery
which marshals these hosts and breathes into their embattled ranks its own
barbarous fire. It is slavery which stamps its character alike upon
officers and men. It is slavery which inspires all, from the general to the
trumpeter. It is slavery which speaks in the words of command, and which
sounds in the morning drum-beat. It is slavery which digs trenches and
builds hostile forts. It is slavery which pitches its white tents and
stations its sentries over against the national capital. It is slavery
which sharpens the bayonet and casts the bullet; which points the cannon
and scatters the shell, blazing, bursting with death. Wherever this
rebellion shows itself--whatever form it takes--whatever thing it
does--whatever it meditates--it is moved by slavery; nay, it is slavery
itself, incarnate, living, acting, raging, robbing, murdering, according to
the essential law of its being.
C Sumner.
CCLXIV.
ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
Mr. President, with unspeakable delight I hail this measure and the
prospect of its speedy adoption. It is the first instalment of that great
debt which we all owe to an enslaved race, and will be recognized in
history as one of the victories of humanity. At home, throughout our own
country, it will be welcomed with gratitude, while abroad it will quicken
the hopes of all who love freedom. Liberal institutions will gain
everywhere by the abolition of slavery at the national Capital. Nobody can
read that slaves were once sold in the markets of Rome, beneath the eyes of
the sovereign Pontiff without confessing the scandal to religion, even in a
barbarous age; and nobody can hear that slaves are now sold in the markets
of Washington, beneath the eyes of the President, without confessing the
scandal to liberal institutions. For the sake of our good name, if not for
the sake of justice, let the scandal disappear.
Slavery, beginning in violence, can have no legal or constitutional
existence, unless through positive words expressly authorizing it. As no
such positive words can be found in the Constitution, all legislation by
Congress supporting slavery must be unconstitutional and void, while it is
made still further impossible by positive words of prohibition guarding the
liberty of every person within the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress. But
the question is asked, Shall we vote money for this purpose? I cannot
hesitate; and I place it at once under the sanction of that commanding
charity proclaimed by prophets and enjoined by apostles, which all history
recognizes and which the Constitution cannot impair. From time immemorial
every government has undertaken to ransom its subjects from captivity,--and
sometimes a whole people has felt its resources well bestowed in the ransom
of its prince. Religion and humanity have both concurred in this duty, as
more than usually sacred. "The ransom of captives is a great and excelling
office of justice," exclaims one of the early fathers. The power thus
commended has been exercised by the United States under important
circumstances with the coöperation of the best names of our history, so as
to be without question.
If slavery be unconstitutional in the national Capital, and if it be a
Christian duty, sustained by constitutional examples, to ransom slaves,
then your swift desires cannot hesitate to adopt the present bill, and it
becomes needless to enter upon other questions, important perhaps, but
irrelevant.
C. Sumner.
CCLXV.
THE SAME CONCLUDED.
Of course, I scorn to argue the obvious truth that the slaves here are as
much entitled to freedom as the white slaves that enlisted the early
energies of our Government. They are men by the grace of God, and this is
enough. There is no principle of the Constitution, and no rule of justice,
which is not as strong for the one as for the other. In consenting to the
ransom proposed, you will recognize their manhood, and, if authority be
needed, you will find it in the example of Washington, who did not hesitate
to employ a golden key to open the house of bondage.
Let this bill pass, and the first practical triumph of freedom for which
good men have longed, dying without the sight--for which a whole
generation has petitioned, and for which orators and statesmen have
pleaded--will at last be accomplished. Slavery will be banished from the
national Capital. This metropolis, which bears a venerated name, will be
purified; its evil spirit will be cast out; its shame will be removed; its
society will be refined; its courts will be made better; its revolting
ordinances will be swept away; and even its loyalty will be secured. If not
moved by justice to the slave, then be willing to act for your own good and
in self-defence. If you hesitate to pass this bill for the blacks, then
pass it for the whites. Nothing is clearer than that the degradation of
slavery affects the master as much as the slave; while recent events
testify that wherever slavery exists, there treason lurks, if it does not
flaunt. From the beginning of this rebellion, slavery has been constantly
manifest in the conduct of the masters, and even here in the national
Capital, it has been the traitorous power which has encouraged and
strengthened the enemy. This power must be suppressed at every cost, and if
its suppression here endangers slavery elsewhere, there will be a new
motive for determined action.
Amidst all present solicitudes the future cannot be doubtful. At the
national Capital slavery will give way to freedom; but the good work will
not stop here. It must proceed. What God and nature decree rebellion cannot
arrest. And as the whole wide-spreading tyranny begins to tumble, then,
above the din of battle, sounding from the sea and echoing along the land,
above even the exaltations of victory on well-fought fields, will ascend
voices of gladness and benediction, swelling from generous hearts wherever
civilization bears sway, to commemorate a sacred triumph whose trophies,
instead of tattered banners, will be ransomed slaves.
C. Sumner.
CXLXVI.
EXTRACT FROM FAREWELL ADDRESS AT NEW ORLEANS.
I shall speak in no bitterness, because I am not conscious of a single
personal animosity. Commanding the Army of the Gulf, I found you captured,
but not surrendered; conquered, but not orderly; relieved from the presence
of an army, but incapable of taking care of yourselves. I restored order,
punished crime, opened commerce, brought provisions to your starving
people, reformed your currency, and gave you quiet protection, such as you
had not enjoyed for many years. The enemies of my country unrepentant and
implacable, I have treated with merited severity. I hold that rebellion is
treason, and that treason persisted in is death, and any punishment short
of that due a traitor gives so much clear gain to him from the clemency of
the government. Upon this thesis have I administered the authority of the
United States, because of which I am not unconscious of complaint. I do not
feel that I have erred in too much harshness, for that harshness has ever
been exhibited to disloyal enemies to my country, and not to my loyal
friends. To be sure, I might have regaled you with the amenities of British
civilization, and yet been within the supposed rules of civilized warfare.
You might have been smoked to death in caverns, as were the Covenanters of
Scotland, by the command of a general of the royal house of England; or
roasted, like the inhabitants of Algiers during the French campaign; your
wives and daughters might have been given over to the ravisher, as were the
unfortunate dames of Spain in the Peninsular war; or you might have been
scalped and tomahawked, as our mothers were at Wyoming by the savage allies
of Great Britain, in our own Revolution; your property could have been
turned over to indiscriminate "loot," like the palace of the Emperor of
China; works of art which adorned your buildings might have been sent away,
like to paintings of the Vatican; your sons might have been blown from the
mouths of cannon, like the Sepoys at Delhi; and yet all this would have
been within the rules of civilized warfare as practised by the most
polished and the most hypocritical nations of Europe. For such acts the
records of the doings of some of the inhabitants of your city toward the
friends of the Union, before my coming, were a sufficient provocative and
justification. But I have not so conducted. On the contrary, the worst
punishment inflicted, except for criminal acts punishable by every law, has
been banishment with labor to a barren island, where I encamped my own
soldiers before marching here.
It is true I have levied upon the wealthy rebels, and paid out nearly half
a million of dollars to feed forty thousand of the starving poor of all
nations assembled here, made so by this war. I saw that this rebellion was
a war of the aristocrats against the middling men--of the rich against the
poor; a war of the landowner against the laborer; that it was a struggle
for the retention of power in the hands of the few against the many; and I
found no conclusion to it, save in the subjugation of the few and the
disenthralment of the many. I, therefore, felt no hesitation in taking the
substance of the wealthy, who had caused the war, to feed the innocent
poor, who had suffered by the war. And I shall now leave you with the proud
consciousness that I carry with me the blessings of the humble and loyal,
under the roof of the cottage and in the cabin of the slave! and so am
quite content to incur the sneers of the salon, or the curses of the rich.
B. F. Butler.
CCLXVII.
CONCLUSION OF FAREWELL ADDRESS AT NEW ORLEANS.
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!"