fog and the way so hidden, the features of the country so singularly
cleansed from the reality, that he cannot safely move. But if some friendly
mountain side lets him ascend a few hundred feet above, he finds himself
suddenly in a clear atmosphere with a blue sky and a shining sun. Below him
the smaller objects that misled and bewildered him lie hidden; before him
stand out, salient and clear, the leading ridges and great outlines of the
country which point out to him the right way, and show him where he may
reach a place of security and repose for the night, and he goes on his
journey confidently. And so it is with those men who devote their lives,
unflinchingly and singly, to the public good to the maintenance of
principles and the advocacy of great reforms. They live in a pure
atmosphere. And such ought also to be the character of the men whom we
elevate to our high places. Raised into that upper air, and charged with
the general safety, they are expected to be impersonal; they are expected
to see over and beyond the personal ambitions and individual interests
which of necessity influence men acting individually; their horizon is
universal, and they see broadly defined the great principles which lead a
nation continuously on to a settled prosperity and a sure glory. And as a
condition of our material safety we should see to it that only such men are
put in such places. Men capable of receiving a conviction and realizing a
necessity--men able to comprehend the spirit of the age and the country in
which we live, and fearless in working up to it.
J. C. Fremont.
CCLXXII.
PUBLIC RUMOR.
The counsel for the prosecution has said that if the Reverend defendant has
not been duly charged with heretical teachings by actual evidence, he has
been so charged by public rumor; and he gravely contends that a clergyman
charged by public rumor may be required to exculpate himself before an
ecclesiastical council. There is a passion known among men as the most
eager, implacable, remorseless of passions, a moral curiosity, named by
psychologists the odium theologicum. It thrives on the slightest possible
food. It lives on air. Public rumor is substantial enough for its richest
diet. Public Rumor! I was educated to despise it. An established public
opinion, we must treat with due respect, but disparaging rumor, however
public, I should be ashamed to own as a motive for one action of my life.
When the counsel for the prosecution passed his eulogy on the memory of Dr.
Croswell, I could not but think what a rebuke his whole life was to public
rumor. If ever man was the destined victim of public rumor, that man was
William Croswell. Not left to its low haunts, but elevated by Episcopal
sanction, promulgated by Episcopal proclamation, it charged him with
teaching doctrines and observances "degrading to the character of the
Church and perilling the souls of the people." But in patience and
confidence he lived it all down. He went forward in the discharge of his
noble duties, in daily prayers, daily public service, daily ministrations
to the poor, sick and afflicted, not without much suffering from the
relentless attacks of party spirit,--sufferings which shortened his days on
earth,--and the daily beauty of his life made ugly the countenance of
detraction and defamation. Public confidence, a plant of slow growth, grew
about him. Public justice was rendered to him without a movement of his
own. He fell, at his post, with all his armor on. At the time of the
evening sacrifice, the angel touched him and he was called away. He fell,
with his face to the altar, with the words of benediction on his lips,
surrounded by a devoted congregation, mourned by an entire community. All
men rose up and called him blessed. From the distinguished Rector of St.
Paul's, exclaiming, in the words of the prophet, "My father, my father, the
chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" to the humble orphan child in
the obscure alley, who missed his daily returning visit,--all, all, with
one accord, sent up their voices as incense to Heaven.
I had the privilege to be one of the number who received him on his
entrance into this city, to take charge of his newly formed parish. I am
proud and grateful to remember that I was one of those on whom, in his long
struggle, in a measure, according to my ability, he leaned for support. And
after seven years, I believe seven years to the very day that we received
him, I had the melancholy privilege, with that same company, of bearing his
body up that aisle which he had so often ascended in his native dignity and
in the beauty of holiness.
I should be an unworthy parishioner, pupil, I may say friend of his, if I
allowed myself to defer for a moment to public rumor on a question of
character or principle. I should be forgetful of his example if I permitted
any one to do so who looked to me for counsel or direction. No, gentlemen,
let us all, laymen or clergymen, call to mind his life and his death, and
let public rumor blow past us as the idle wind.
R. H. Dana, Jr.
CCLXXIII.
THE POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NORTH.
Mr. Chairman; Will the people of the Free States unite in one earnest
effort to recover their personal and political equality, and to retrieve
the honor of the country? It must be done! But, let us not deceive
ourselves. The task is no easy one. Oligarchies have ruled the world. Our
national government has always been qualified by the element of a
slaveholding aristocracy. This aristocracy is powerful,--powerful in its
unity of interest, the common slave property, with its values and its
perils. It is powerful in its character as a caste. Unlike all other modern
aristocracies it is a caste, and the most formidable, exclusive and
ineradicable of all castes--a caste founded on race and color. It is
powerful in the ordinary elements of power which oligarchies possess. The
slaveholding education gives elements of control, the bearing and habit of
command, and the assertion of superiority. This exercises its influence
over weak minds. People doubtful of their own gentility bow to the
established aristocracy of slavery. The thing that hath been is that which
shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun.
What forces are we to bring into the field against them?--the divided,
heterogeneous masses of a free and equal people. The vast class of the
timid, mercenary and time-serving belong to the strongest. Slavery has had
them. We shall never have them until we show ourselves the strongest. Will
the trading and moneyed interests, so powerful in the Northern cities, do
their duty? Is there force enough, virtue enough, in our thirteen millions
to assert their political equality, to achieve their own enfranchisement,
to make freedom national and slavery sectional; to secure the future to
freedom? The few next years will answer this question. You appeal to the
spirit of 1776. Remember that the Dutch revolution was as glorious as our
own. Holland began in civil and religious liberty, with heroism, freedom,
industry and prosperity. In time the Dutch learned to make material
interests their ruling motive. They ceased to live for ideas, and where
are they now? Prosperous, educated, industrious and--despised! The high
tone, the glory is gone!
But is such to be the fate of Massachusetts,--of New England?
Massachusetts, in times past, has lived and suffered for ideas, for
principles, for abstractions. Powerful influences have been exerted, from
the highest quarters, to bring her into subjection to material interests
and unheroic maxims, to sap the chivalry and enthusiasm of her youth. But
it is not too late, Let her slough this all off in her hour of trial! Let
her cast off her disguises and her rags together, and stand forth in the
garb and attitude of a hero! This work must be done. If the men of
scholarship and accomplishments and wealth who have heretofore enjoyed
prominence, do not feel themselves up to the work, the people will call the
cobbler from his stall, the factory-boy from his loom, the yeoman from his
plough, but the work shall be done. Fishermen and tent-makers renovated
the world. The Roman centurion was sent to a fisherman who lodged at the
house of a tanner by the seaside, to hear what, should be done for
mankind.
Why do we hesitate? What provocation more do we propose to wait for? They
have added Slave States by a coup d'état: shall we wait until they have
added Cuba and Mexico? They are forcing slavery upon the Territories: must
we wait until they have succeeded? They have violated one solemn compact:
how many more must they break before we assert our right? They have struck
down a Senator in his place. They are already designating the next victim:
must we wait until he has fallen? The Senator from Georgia spoke truth when
he said the deed was done in the right time and right manner. There needed
an act as bad as it could be made to rouse the spirit of the North. Let the
priest be slain at the altar-stone. Let these Herods mingle blood with
their sacrifices. It is needed. We have been so long sentient that the
spirit of freedom must be roused by violence. It is not fit that the land
of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer! By the duty we owe to justice
and liberty throughout the world, by the natural pride of men, by the
cultivated honor of gentlemen, it is not fit that we bear the shame longer!
R. H. Dana, Jr.
CCLXXIV.
THE EDUCATION OF THE WAR.
Over and above the ordinary and universal means of intellectual
development, the Divine Providence, now and then, prepares extraordinary
means to the same end, in those social convulsions and calamities that
shake whole nations with the mighty upheavals of thought and passion. A war
of secession and disintegration is upon us. The nation's integrity and its
very life are at stake. It is an epoch that the most sluggish minds cannot
sleep through. They who never thought before must think now. They who never
felt before must feel now. The intellect of the nation is aroused in the
presence of this immense issue. It is an educational epoch. Its perils,
trials, sacrifices, are the school-discipline of God. The mind of the
people grows up whole cubits of stature in a short time. The heart of the
people is moved to its deepest depths,--of all classes, but most of the
most numerous and the governing class, the agricultural. And the heart is
always the head's best ally. Deep feeling begets strong thinking.
Sentiments of patriotism and loyalty, newborn and fervid, awaken and
reinforce the intellect, raise up character, enlarge the whole man. And
this reviving and reinvigorating influence will not pass away with the
trials that produced it. When God educates it is not for a day, but for
generations. When He quickens a new life in the soul of a people, it is a
life that lasts. When He touches the human harp with His own mighty, but
tender hand, the sound remains in the strings for an age, and for ages.
Long after this war shall have closed, and its distresses passed away, its
moral and intellectual compensations will remain. Every village will have
its war-worn veterans to tell the story of Antietam, and Gettysburg, and
Port Hudson, and many another field of daring achievement. Almost every
farm-house in the land will have its sacred and inspiring memories of a
father, son, or brother, who fought for his country, whom they, and their
posterity after them, must henceforth love and take thought for as their
very mother.
And every village graveyard will have its green mounds, that shall need no
storied monuments to clothe them with a peculiar consecration,--graves that
hold the dust of heroes,--graves that all men approach with reverent
steps,--graves out of whose solemn silence shall whisper inspiring voices,
telling the young from generation to generation, how great is their
country's worth and cost, and how beautiful and noble it was to die for it.
G. Putnam.
CCLXXV.
WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY FEBRUARY 22, 1864.
Meanwhile, the military signs of the hour are auspicious. Already we seem
to see the dawn breaking in the horizon. In these latter months, we have
heard it from all loyal tongues, and seen it in all loyal faces--the
confident hope that the day of triumph and peace is ready to break and
shine on into noonday fulness.
The nation's banner, torn and soiled in battle, but with every star and
stripe kept whole and radiant in its fair expanse, shall be brought back to
the Capitol; and it may well be that he, the illustrious civic leader, who
first flung it to the breeze in the nation's necessity, should be the man
whose hands shall be privileged to furl it again in Peace,--he, who sits
worthily in the chair that once held Washington; he, so honest and pure in
his great function, so wise and prudent, so faithful and firm;--God bless
and preserve Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States!
Therefore, if it be in our hearts this day, bending at the shrine of
Washington, to renew our vow to preserve the country which he gave us for a
sacred inheritance, we can do it with good hope. And verily we must vow,
and keep the vow, cost what it may of time or wealth, or blood,--for his
sake, and our own, and our children's, and humanity's sake, we must.
It is true, there is no perpetuity for national existence, or for
individual influence or renown. Earthly empires must decay at last, and
with them the vital presence, the living influence of their founders and
fathers.
This magnificent polity--his, ours--must, doubtless, one day, share the
common fate, and where it goes down, the star of Washington must set with
it, and his name pass, an unheeded word, into the dead annals of the
obsolete ages. But O! not yet--say it, Americans!--not now!
The laurel chaplet must not be torn from his brow while it is still so
fresh and green, and not yet fully wreathed. His statues must not be pushed
from their pedestals to be crumbled into common earth, until the centuries
have had time to hallow them with their venerable stains.
This fair palace of national freedom, of which he was the master-builder,
must not crumble into ruin, till it shall have given a shelter and a home,
security, glory, and peace, to the children's children, and the remote
posterity of those for whom he reared it with the loving ardor of his great
soul and the strength of his mighty arm.
It must not, need not, shall not be. To think of it for a moment is base
recreancy and intolerable shame. Forbid it, thou God of nations, and our
fathers God! Forbid it, ye, my countrymen, as ye have the power--ay, ten
times the power that is requisite. Only rise up again, and yet again, in
your strength, and by all that is dear and sacred in the name and fame of
your country's Father, swear that it shall not be, and then it cannot be.
Give anew your heart and soul and faith, unswerving fidelity, whole-hearted
loyalty--your voice, your strength, your wealth all that you are or
possess, to this great cause, give these unitedly, fervently, with one
shout, one blow, and in perfect accord, and then it will not be. Then the
mad enterprise of rebellion is crushed, and the fiend goes howling back,
baffled, to his place. Then your birthright is rescued from the destroyer,
And when this anniversary shall return, next year, or the next, yonder
marble form in our Capitol shall exchange the look of majestic sorrow which
seems to have gathered over it, for a smile of grateful joy; and those lips
of stone shall move and grow fervid with words of exultant and benedictory
congratulation.
Forth, then, friends and compatriots, to the work that shall save the
storm-tossed ark of our liberties and our hopes.
G. Putnam.
CCLXXVI.
OUR HEROIC DEAD.
There is a history in almost every home of Massachusetts, which will never
be written; but the memory of kindred has it embalmed forever. The
representatives of the pride and hope of uncounted households, departing,
will return no more. The shaft of the archer, attracted by the shining
mark, numbers them among his fallen. In the battles of Big Bethel, of Bull
Run, of Ball's Bluff, of Roanoke Island, of Newbern, of Winchester, of
Yorktown, of Williamsburg, of West Point, of Fair Oaks, the battles before
Richmond from Mechanicsville to Malvern Hill, of James Island, of Baton
Rouge, of Cedar Mountain, of Bull Run again, of Chantilly of Washington in
North Carolina, of South Mountain, of Antietam, of Fredericksburg, of
Goldsborough,--through all the capricious fortunes of the war, the
regiments of Massachusetts have borne her flag by the side of the banner of
the Union. And, beyond the Atlantic slope, every battle-field has drunk the
blood of her sons, nurtured among her hills and sands, from which in
adventurous manhood they turned their footsteps to the West. Officers and
enlisted men have vied with each other in deeds of valor. This flag, whose
standard-bearer, shot down in battle, tossed it from his dying hand nerved
by undying patriotism, has been caught by the comrade, who in his turn has
closed his eyes for the last time upon its starry folds as another
hero-martyr clasped the splintered staff and rescued the symbol at once of
country and of their blood-bought fame.
How can fleeting words of human praise gild the record of their glory? Our
eyes suffused with tears, and blood retreating to the heart, stirred with
unwonted thrill, speak with the eloquence of nature, uttered but
unexpressed. From the din of the battle, they have passed to the peace of
eternity. Farewell! warrior, citizen, patriot, lover, friend,--whether in
the humbler ranks or bearing the sword of official power, whether private,
captain, surgeon, or chaplain, for all these in the heady fight have passed
away,--Hail! and Farewell! Each hero must sleep serenely on the field
where he fell in a cause "sacred to liberty and the rights of mankind."
"Worn by no wasting, lingering pain,
No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,
And freed his soul the nearest way."
J. A. Andrew.
CCLXXVII.
HONOR TO OUR HEROES.
The heart swells with unwonted emotion when we remember our sons and
brothers, whose constant valor has sustained on the field, during nearly
three years of war, the cause of our country, of civilization, and liberty.
Our volunteers have represented Massachusetts, during the year just ended,
on almost every field and in every department of the army where our flag
has been unfurled. At Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson,
and Fort Wagner, at Chickamauga, Knoxville, and Chattanooga,--under Hooker,
and Meade, and Banks, and Gillmore, and Rosecrans, Burnside, and Grant; in
every scene of danger and of duty, along the Atlantic and the Gulf, on the
Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Mississippi and the Rio Grande,--under
Dupont and Dahlgren, and Foote, and Farragut and Porter,--the sons of
Massachusetts have borne their part, and paid the debt of patriotism and
valor. Ubiquitous as the stock they descend from, national in their
opinions and universal in their sympathies, they have fought shoulder to
shoulder with men of all sections and of every extraction. On the ocean, on
the rivers, on the land, on the heights where they thundered down from the
clouds of Lookout Mountain the defiance of the skies, they have graven with
their swords a record imperishable,
The Muse herself demands the lapse of silent years to soften, by the
influences of Time, her too keen and poignant realization of the scenes of
War--the pathos, the heroism, the fierce joy, the grief of battle. But,
during the ages to come, she will brood over their memory. Into the hearts
of her consecrated priests will breathe the inspirations of lofty and
undying Beauty, Sublimity and Truth, in all the glowing forms of speech, of
literature and plastic art. By the homely traditions of the fireside--by
the head-stones in the church-yard consecrated to those whose farms repose
far off in rude graves by the Rappahannock, or sleep beneath the
sea,--embalmed in the memories of succeeding generations of parents and
children, the heroic dead will live on in immortal youth. By their names,
their character, their service, their fate, their glory, they cannot
fail:--
"They never fail who die
In a great cause; the block may soak their gore;
Their heads may sodden in the sun, their limbs
Be strung to city gates and castle walls;
But still their spirit walks abroad. Though years
Elapse and others share as dark a doom,
They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
Which overpower all others, and conduct
The world at last to Freedom."
The edict of Nantes maintaining the religious liberty of the Huguenots gave
lustre to the fame of Henry the Great, whose name will gild the pages of
philosophic history after mankind may have forgotten the martial prowess
and the white plume of Navarre. The Great Proclamation of Liberty will lift
the Ruler who uttered it, our Nation and our Age, above all vulgar destiny.
The bell which rang out the Declaration of independence, has found at last
a voice articulate, to "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all
the Inhabitants thereof." It has been heard across oceans, and has modified
the sentiments of cabinets and kings. The people of the Old World have
heard it, and their hearts stop to catch the last whisper of its echoes.
The poor slave has heard it, and with bounding joy, tempered by the mystery
of religion, he worships and adores. The waiting Continent has heard it,
and already foresees the fulfilled prophecy, when she will sit "redeemed,
regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible Genius of Universal
Emancipation."
J. A. Andrew.
CCLXXVIII.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONTEST.
I hold this armed contest to be a great historical movement, and to have
high moral interest and significance because it is to determine the
character of the institutions under which we, and those who come after us,
are to live. You are not merely sustaining the administration of President
Lincoln against unlawful combinations, but you are fighting on the side of
law, order, government, civilization and progress. The result of this war
is to settle the question whether they who are hereafter to inhabit this
magnificent country are or are not to have that primal blessing of a good
government, without which the most abundant material resources are as
valueless as scientific books or philosophical installments would be among
the most barbarous tribes of Africa or Australia. Surely there cannot be
imagined a war more worthy of calling forth all the energies of a great
people than this.
And if I am asked to define my meaning more distinctly and precisely, I say
that the questions now submitted to the stern arbitrament of war are
substantially these: Is the Constitution of the United States a compact or
a law? Is this Union a Commonwealth, a State, or is it merely a confederacy
or a copartnership? Is there a right of secession in the separate States,
singly or collectively, other than the right of revolution? These are
momentous questions, and if they can be settled in no other way than by a
war, then such a war is worth the price it costs, great as that is. For if
the right of secession be fairly and logically deducible from the
Constitution--if any State, upon its own mere motion, with cause or without
cause, can withdraw from the Union as a partner may dissolve a
copartnership--then the Constitution itself is a stupendous failure, the
men who made it were bungling journeymen and not master-mechanics, and to
institutions of our country, so far from deserving our gratitude and
admiration, are worthy only of our contempt. The hour has come, and the men
have come, to settle these issues, fraught with such vital consequences to
unborn millions. The dusky clouds, surcharged with electric fires, that
stand front to front in mid air and darken the heavens with their power,
have been long in gathering; let the storm continue till the air is
cleared--and no longer.