War Begun—Firing upon Fort Sumter—“The American Eagle as you want
it”—Death of Col. Ellsworth—Equips his Sons—Personal Feeling
yields to Patriotism—His House a Store-House of Military
Supplies—Sends a Regiment as his Substitute—Our National Flag—The
Camp, its Dangers and Duties—Bull Run—Becomes Editor of the
_Independent_—Salutatory—The _Trent_ Affair—Fight, Tax—Soldiers or
Ferrets—Characteristics as an Editor—One Nation, one Constitution,
one Starry Banner—McClellan Safe, and Richmond too—Mildly Carrying
on War—The Root of the Matter—The only Ground—A Queer
Pulpit—President’s Proclamation of Emancipation—Let come what
will—Close of the Third Era.
For five months the daily papers had borne for their prominent
headlines, “The National Crisis,” “Pro-Slavery Rebellion,” “Pro-Slavery
Revolution,” “The War-Cloud.” At length the issue of April 12, 1861, was
headed, “The War Commenced: The first Gun fired by Fort Moultrie against
Fort Sumter”; the next day, “Fort Sumter Fallen.”
Mr. Beecher was lecturing in Cincinnati when the tidings came North of
the bombardment of Fort Sumter. The committee who had charge of the
lecture were alarmed, and, remembering the old pro-slavery riots of
thirty years before, declared that it would be unsafe for him to deliver
his lecture. He told them that to give that lecture was his object in
coming to Cincinnati, and do it he should; if not in a hall, then on the
public street. With many misgivings on their part, he was permitted to
go ahead, but so great was the fear of a riot that few attended. That
night he turned his steps homeward. Eager to learn his opinion of the
matter, we met him on the doorsteps. His oldest son, having left his
position up the river, had stopped at a recruiting station on Broadway,
already opened, and enlisted, and had then come home. Fearing something
of the kind, the mother gave strict commands that he should not leave
the house until his father’s return—a command which he was the more
ready to obey since the business had already been attended to. Naturally
he felt some little solicitude as to what his father should say, and his
first words were: “Father, may I enlist?” and was answered: “If you
don’t I’ll disown you.”
The next day was Sunday. The report of his sermon was headed thus:
“Henry Ward Beecher on the Crisis: ‘What will you do, stand still or go
forward?’
“The good people of Brooklyn have shared with us all the fears and
anxiety of the past weeks. Yesterday there was, if possible, a more
dense mass of human beings than usual packed within the walls of
Plymouth Church, and a more than ordinary curiosity on the part of
strangers, and a more than customary solemnity pervading the
congregation. It was manifestly the belief of all there that the pastor
would not fail to improve the occasion by preaching to the people of
this age upon the duties of the present trying hour, and that he would
deal with so grand a subject in a manner befitting its character, its
importance, and its universal occupation of the American mind. Nor were
they disappointed. Mr. Beecher delivered a sermon from the text, ‘Speak
to the children of Israel that they go forward.’”
The above appeared in one of the daily papers. We have not time to give
the synopsis of the reporter. The sermon was a careful review of the
present condition of affairs and a sober counting the cost of both
advance and retreat.
“Peace can be had by two-thirds of the nation yielding to the one-third;
by legalizing the right of any discontented community to rebel; by
changing our charter of universal freedom into a charter of deliberate
oppression; by becoming partners in slavery and ratifying this gigantic
evil; by surrendering all right of discussion, of debate or criticism.
On these terms,” he said, “we may have peace.
“You can have your American eagle as you want it. If, with the South,
you will strike out his eyes, then you shall stand well with Mr. Davis
and Mr. Stephens, of the Confederate States; if, with the Christians of
the South, you will pluck off his wings, you shall stand well with the
Southern churches; and if, with the new peacemakers that have risen up
in the North, you will pull out his tail-feathers, you shall stand well
with the Society for the Promotion of National Unity! But when you have
stricken out his eyes, so that he can no longer see; when you have
plucked off his wings, so that he can no longer fly; and when you have
pulled out his guiding tail-feathers, so that he can no longer steer
himself, but rolls in the dirt, a mere buzzard—then will he be worth
preserving? Such an eagle it is that they mean to depict upon the banner
of America.
”... So far as I myself am concerned, I utterly abhor peace on any such
grounds. Give me war redder than blood and fiercer than fire, if this
terrific infliction is necessary that I may maintain my faith in God, in
human liberty, my faith of the fathers in the instruments of liberty, my
faith in this land as the appointed abode and chosen refuge of liberty
for all the earth! War is terrible, but that abyss of ignominy is yet
more terrible!“
He then pointed out the steps that must be taken in the going forward.
They were, deepening and cleansing our convictions, making them more
earnest and religious; drawing the lines; cherishing feelings of
benevolence, and aiming at a peace built on foundations of God’s
immutable truth, so solid that nothing can reach to unsettle it.
To show the spirit which he cherished in those days, we cannot do better
than give one of the familiar lecture-room discussions which were so
frequent between him and his people. It was immediately after the death
of Colonel Ellsworth, which took place May 21, 1861:
”_Ques._ Will you please explain one point? I am so much a natural man
as not to be able to obey the injunction which calls upon me to love my
enemies; and when I stand on Broadway in New York, and see men in
regiments which are bound for the field of battle, having been taken
from their homes, their wives, their children, and all that is dear to
them on earth, by the conduct of miscreants, I cannot understand how you
can have such feelings as you express. I wish you would speak on that
subject.”
“I have no doubt that the brother feels just as he says he does, and I
have no doubt that I do not feel a bit so. When I consider the interests
of God’s advancing kingdom of justice, and judgment, and mercy, and
purity, and truth, and liberty, I think that all the things in the earth
are of no value at all in the comparison, and that the earth might melt
with fervent heat, the elements dissolve, and the globe vanish away
rather than that this kingdom should not prevail. ‘Let God be true, but
every man a liar.’ Let the nations perish, let everything go, but let
the eternal treasures of God—truth, liberty, mercy, judgment, and
purity—be preserved. I feel lifted up to a sovereign height of
inspiration when I conceive of the majesty of these treasures, effluent
from the heart of God, which He is seeking to embody in our time, in our
earth, in this nation. Therefore, when I see justice put down I feel
like a lion. When I see a great moral principle overborne there are no
bounds to my indignation. When I see a great humanity trodden under foot
I long to be a champion for it. And when I look on the face of an
ignorant, erring, wicked multitude, I think of a great many things
besides....
“For the sake of these great principles I would give my life as quick as
I would pour out a glass of water; or I will do what is harder than
that—I will keep it and use it for forty years, if God spares it,
increasing its toil every year. I will make any sacrifice or perform any
labor for the sake of a moral principle. But when I look at the South,
other feelings besides those of vengeance are excited in me. Every one
of those traitors is as wicked as you think, and more. The Floyds, the
Davises, the Toombses, the Rhetts, and all such as they, are more wicked
than we know; and yet the Lord Jesus Christ is the Saviour held up for
every such one. They are all immortal, they are all, like myself,
pilgrims toward the bourne of the eternal. And when I think how many
ignorant creatures are led by those base men to do wicked things, half
of the wickedness of which they do not know, I feel compassion for them
and am sorry for them. If they array themselves against justice it is
necessary that they should be overborne; but not one blow more than is
necessary for the defence of the principle assailed should be struck. We
are not authorized to inflict vengeance. ‘Vengeance is mine, I will
repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he
thirst, give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on
his head.’ About the use of every single sword and spear and ball
needful to assert a divine principle there should be no squeamishness. I
am for war just so far as it is necessary to vindicate a great moral
truth. But one particle of violence beyond that is a flagrant treason
against the law of love. And I can say to-night that I would go to war
with every State in the Southern Confederacy, if called of God to join
the army, and would hold them to the conflict till the cause of right
was vindicated; and that I could, at the same time, pray for those
misguided men as easily as to-night I can pray for my own babes. I am as
sorry for them as for any set of men in the world. I do not think I
utter a prayer on any morning that I do not pray for them, and that God
does not see my feeling of tenderness and sorrow toward them. And that
is not all. I regard them as citizens yet. I love this whole country. I
love its past and its prospective history. God do so to me, and more
also, if I ever cease to feel for them all, misguided though they be, as
anxiously as for my own kin and brethren. We cannot afford to be very
critical with wickedness.
“However, there are some difficulties involved in this question. Colonel
Ellsworth, who has just been murdered by one of these ‘miscreants’ of
whom you speak, I knew well. I was thinking of my own sensations when I
walked over from New York after hearing the sad news. Why, I was forty
feet high! I was scared, I grew so fast. I walked so lordly that every
step seemed to have the weight of a mountain; yet I did not feel the
touch of the earth. For one hour I think I had enough volume of feeling
to have swept away a continent. I was almost frightened at the turbulent
and swelling tide within me, and I said: ‘Suppose my Master should come
and say: My child, what are you doing with such feelings? Where is My
teaching? What are you taking on yourself My supreme attribute for?
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”’ Is it not charming
how these texts will exorcise the devil? I put that passage on my head
as a crown, and I have felt as peaceful as a lamb ever since. And
although it was very base and wicked for that man to murder Colonel
Ellsworth as he did, I can say that had he not expiated his crime, and
had the victim been my brother, I could still have forgiven him and
prayed for him.
“Now, my brethren, I am going to fight this battle right straight
through from beginning to end, and not lose my Christian feelings
either. I am going to stick close to my Saviour. And, with regard to the
past, I am not sorry for one sermon that I have preached among you, or
that I have preached during the last twenty years of my life. If the
question were put to me to-night, ‘When you look back upon your public
life and see what you have done to bring about the present issue, are
you not sorry for the ground you have taken?’ I would say, _No_. I bless
God for every word I have spoken and every influence I have exerted in
that direction. Knowing all that was to be, I would do over again all
that I have done if the same state of things existed, only my little
finger should be as heavy as my loins have been.
“Now that the time of conflict has come, we must accept it. I mean to go
through it, and you shall; and I pray God that the whole anointed Church
at the North may, bearing the banner of Christ along with the banner of
our country. The stars over us shall not be brighter and purer than
those that we carry into this very conflict. We have had examples enough
to know that even in such a desperate case as civil war a man may be a
Christian. I thank God that praying men have gone into the army from
this church. Every day and night there is a prayer-meeting in our camp,
and there will be to the end. And I believe that among our soldiers are
those who, if they saw the bitterest and most blasphemous of the enemy
suffering and dying, would relieve their sufferings by kind offices and
soothe their last moments by comforting words. God grant that it may be
so, and that, both in the service of the country and in the service of
the Lord Jesus Christ, they may be true soldiers!”
It is impossible to describe, or even, in our time, to conceive, the
fervor of patriotism that followed the firing upon Fort Sumter.
Patriotic meetings were held in nearly every village of the North, and
the raising of flag-poles with their accompanying exercises was the
order of the day. A monster mass-meeting was held in Union Square, New
York, over which John A. Dix presided, and where the flag which had been
lowered at Sumter was displayed. The attack on the Massachusetts
regiment in Baltimore as it hastened to the defence of Washington
deepened and increased the excitement. The ranks of military companies
already organized were speedily filled, and the young men met, in most
of our Northern cities, week by week for military drill. A squad of
these was formed in Brooklyn. Some fifteen of us wanted to go to the
front, and offered ourselves to one of the New York regiments, but the
offer was refused with thanks. Their ranks were full and they had no
place for us. Hearing of this, Mr. Beecher, who took a deep interest in
this whole matter and used to attend our drills, proposed that two of
us, his own son and one who expected to belong to his family, should
join a cavalry regiment then being enlisted in New York. He gave us each
a horse, brought us home our equipment of pistols, bowie-knives, etc.,
and, the next day, went with us to New York to see us enlist; but the
enlisting officer had received notice from Washington the day before to
accept no more recruits—cavalry regiments were not thought to be
necessary for the ninety days’ struggle; and so we were refused. One of
us went to Riker’s Island, and, after a month of waiting, was able to
get into service; the other, having just finished his theological
course, and having for weeks been importuned by a church to become its
pastor, concluded that it was God’s will that he should preach, left the
city, and went to work.
There was great variety of work to be done. No need now of efforts to
arouse the public mind—the firing upon Fort Sumter had done that; no
need now of urging men to the front—the young men of the nation had
formed into companies and regiments faster than the government was
willing to accept them. Illinois asked permission to furnish all the men
that were required. But another work pressed upon heart and hand. Homes
at the North were being made desolate, not only by the absence but by
the death of their loved ones. Tidings began to reach us of what
afterwards seemed skirmishes, but were important battles in those
days—Big Bethel, Newport News, and others; and the list of the dead,
small to what it afterwards became, carried with it then, as always,
sorrow and heart-break. The bodies of fallen sons and brothers, picked
up on the battle-field or gathered from the hospitals, covered with the
stars and stripes, were being borne through the streets of our cities on
the way to bereaved homes, and the people needed comforting. Then it was
that the words of one perfectly assured of the justice of the cause,
that it was of God, and that those who upheld their country’s flag were
doing His work, and who viewed life and death as only and equally
desirable when they accomplished His will, rang out like the
resurrection challenge of St. Paul: “O death! where is thy sting? O
grave! where is thy victory?”
In a sermon preached May 26, 1861, when but the first mutterings of the
storm had been heard and the first splashes of rain were felt, he says:
“He whose remains are to pass to-day, amid many tears, through yonder
city, lived long though he died early. Why? Because he lived to a moral
purpose. Because he has given his name to patriotism. Millions of men
shall live four-score years and shall not leave any such memorial as he
has left. He had lived long enough. Any man that can give the whole
weight of his being and his heart-life to a great truth or cause has
lived long enough. Measure him by the higher and not by the lower
standard. Do not say that he has lost days, that he has lost coming
honors, that he lost pleasure. He lost nothing. He gained everything. He
gained glory, and paid his life for it in such a way as to take on
immortality.”
One very intimate with him in those days says: “I do not think that he
spent a moment in solicitude for the fate of those who were at the
front, not even of his own flesh and blood. Everything seemed swallowed
up in his zeal for his country, and for her he was ready to sacrifice
everything without complaint or hesitation.”
“My oldest son is in the army, and shall I read with trembling anxiety
the account of every battle to see if he is slain? I gave him to the
Lord, and I shall not take him back and I will not worry and fret myself
about him. I will trust in God though He slay not only him but me also;
and all I have I put on the same ground—I try to, sometimes not
succeeding and sometimes succeeding a little. My God, this Christ
Emmanuel—God with me—has sustained and comforted me in care and trouble,
and taken away my fear and put hope in its place, and I will look to Him
still; and if there are any here that have carried burdens, and whose
faces are wrinkled with care, I beseech of you to try living by faith in
a present Saviour that loves you and ordains all things, and says that
everything shall work for your good if you love God.”
Among the things that occupied his time and called forth all his
energies was the equipment of the Fourteenth Long Island Regiment. His
home at 124 Columbia Heights became a store-house of military goods and
a place of consultation for men interested in the events that were
taking place; Plymouth Church became a rendezvous for regiments passing
to the front, and the church parlors a workshop where the women and
maidens of the church, under the direction of Mrs. Beecher, met daily to
sew and knit and pack for the soldiers. He told Mrs. Beecher to use all
his salary in this direction, except such as was absolutely necessary
for running the household. She did this, and added to the amount by
personal solicitation from families and merchants, until an immense sum
was raised and expended.
While many men sent single substitutes, Mr. Beecher determined to be
represented in the war by a whole regiment; and so, after helping to fit
out two regiments, he took upon himself the entire burden of equipping a
new one, called “The Long Island Volunteers,” afterwards the
Sixty-seventh New York. This regiment would never have had any existence
but for the labors of Mr. and Mrs. Beecher, and the members of the
church whom they interested in it. Their eldest son, Henry Barton
Beecher, joined it and was made a lieutenant. In those days the
government had plenty of men and very little money, and therefore
declined to accept this regiment for many weeks after it was organized,
during which time the entire expense of feeding and clothing the men was
borne by subscriptions raised by Mr. Beecher. It was not until after the
battle of Bull Run, at the end of July, 1861, that the regiment was even
in form accepted, and not until much later that it was actually mustered
into the national service.
In those days of multiplied and harassing labors Mr. Beecher did not
lose his hope, his cheerfulness, nor even his mirthfulness. He had a
refuge to which he constantly fled when the pressure became too heavy.
He had also the power of seeing the humorous side of many common or even
tragic events, and drawing from them laughter as well as tears. The
flowers, too, and the clouds had their message for him. He kept the
channels of his soul wide open on every side to receive, and became a
fountain of perpetual inspiration to others.
At this time, while the route through Baltimore was closed against our
troops on their way to Washington, he preached to the “Brooklyn
Fourteenth,” on the eve of their departure to the front, upon “Our
National Flag.” After giving the history of our banner he more
particularly addressed the soldiers before him:
“And now God speaks by the voice of His providence, saying, ‘Lift again
that banner! Advance it full and high!’ To your hands God and your
country commit that imperishable trust. You go forth self-called, or
rather called by the trust of your countrymen and by the Spirit of your
God, to take that trailing banner out of the dust and out of the mire,
and lift it again where God’s rains can cleanse it, and where God’s free
air can cause it to unfold and stream as it has always floated before
the wind. God bless the men that go forth to save from disgrace the
American flag!
“Accept it, then, in all its fulness of meaning. It is not a painted
rag. It is a whole national history. It is the Constitution. It is the
government. It is the free people that stand in the government on the
Constitution. Forget not what it means; and, for the sake of its ideas
rather than its mere emblazonry, be true to your country’s flag. By your
hands lift it; but let your lifting it be no holiday display. It must be
advanced ‘_because of the truth_.’
“That flag must go to the capital of this nation; and it must not go
hidden, not secreted, not in a case or covering, but full high
displayed, bright as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army
with banners! For a single week that disgraceful work, that shameful
circuit, may be needful; but the way from New England, the way from New
York, the way from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, to Washington, _lies
right through Baltimore_, and that is the way the flag must and shall
go! [Enthusiastic cheers.] But that flag, borne by ten thousand and
thrice ten thousand hands, from Connecticut, from Massachusetts (God
bless the State and all her men!), from shipbuilding Maine, from old
granite New Hampshire, from Vermont of Bennington and Green-Mountain-Boy
patriotism, from Rhode Island, not behind any in zeal and patriotism,
from New York, from Ohio, from Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Delaware,
and the other loyal States—that flag must be carried, bearing every one
of its insignia, to the sound of the drum and the fife, into our
national capital, until Washington shall seem to be a forest in which
every tree supports the American banner!
“And it must not stop there. The country does not belong to us from the
Lakes only to Washington, but from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The
flag must go on. The land of Washington shall see Washington’s flag
again. The land that sits in darkness, and in which the people see no
light, shall yet see light dawn and liberty flash from the old American
banner! It must see Charleston again, and float again over every fort in
Charleston harbor. It must go further, to the Alligator State, and stand
there again. And sweeping up through all plantations and over all fields
of sugar and rice and tobacco, and every other thing, it must be found
in every State till you touch the Mississippi; and, bathing in its
waters, it must go across and fill Texas with its sacred light. Nor must
it stop when it floats over every one of the States. That flag must
stand, bearing its whole historic spirit and original meaning, in every
Territory of this nation!”
Other sermons of similar character followed. “The Camp, its Dangers and
Duties,” was one:
“For any one that is going forth to meet the temptations of camp life I
had almost said I would sum up in one single word of remembrance a
talisman of safety—temperance, absolute temperance.... The men that are
dangerous in camps are not bloated drunkards, shameless gamblers, and
such as they. But an accomplished officer, a brilliant fellow, who knows
the world, who is gentle in language, who understands all the etiquettes
of society, who is fearless of God, who believes nothing in religion,
who does not hesitate, with wit and humor, to jeer at sacred things, who
takes an infernal pleasure in winding around his finger the young about
him, who is polished and wicked, and walks as an angel of light to tempt
his fellow-men, as Satan did to tempt our first parents—if there be in
camp such a one, he is the dangerous man.
“There ought to be a bold stand taken in favor of virtue by the good in
each one of the various companies. If there is not such a stand taken in
Company C of the Fourteenth Regiment, I shall be ashamed of my
preaching.”
He was constantly invited to lecture, and almost any sum was offered to
secure his services. These, as we may well conceive, were mostly
patriotic addresses upon the great subjects that were then burning in
the minds of the American people.
We remember well his having a course at Providence, Rhode Island, the
third of which was delivered Monday, after the heavy work of the day
previous, and when he took the train he had not touched pen to paper nor
given it a moment’s thought; but his mind and heart were fully awake,
and the resources of a lifetime of thought and labor were at his
command.
The battle of Bull Run, which was fought in July, as is well known, was
the first battle of the war of really national importance. The result
was sobering and humiliating to the North. On the following Sunday
evening Mr. Beecher preached a sermon upon “God in National Affairs.”
After tracing His way in the history of the nation, he says:
“The battle is well begun. If I consult my pride, if I consult my
vanity, I fain would never have seen our banners dip; and yet, if I
consult a larger wisdom, I know not but that the best thing that can
befall us is that humiliation which shall teach us not to rely so much
on words and cheers and newspaper campaigns. A defeat just sufficient to
make us feel that we must fall upon the interior stores of manhood, that
we must have faith in God, that we must set aside everything but a
solemn purpose and an earnest consecration of ourselves to this work
which God has given us to do—such a defeat cannot but be beneficial.”
And so it proved. The battle of Bull Run awoke the North from its dream
of easy conquest, and thenceforth she took up the war in earnest.
In his Thanksgiving sermon in November of that year, upon “Modes and
Duties of Emancipation,” he shows the conservatism of his belief and his
confidence in the national authority if rightly used—“This conflict must
be carried on through our institutions, not over them”—and his view of
the great forces engaged—“While preparations for this conflict have been
going on God has poured money into our coffers and taken it away from
those who might use it to our harm. He is holding back France and
England, and saying to all nations, ‘Appoint the bounds! Let none enter
the lists to interfere while those gigantic warriors battle for victory!
Liberty and God, and slavery and the devil, stand over against each
other, and let no man put hand or foot into the ring till they have done
battle unto death!’ Amen! Even so, Lord Almighty. It is Thy decree, and
it shall stand! And when the victory shall come, not unto us, not unto
us, but—in the voice of thrice ten thousand, and thousands of thousands,
of ransomed ones, mingled with Thine earthly children’s gladness—unto
Thee shall be the praise and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.”
During all these years, almost from the time he came to Brooklyn, Mr.
Beecher had been fortunate in having a channel of communication with the
public, in general so in harmony with his own views and spirit as the
New York _Independent_. In its second number appears an extract from a
sermon of his, followed by frequent contributions from his pen called
“Star Papers,” and for the last three years a sermon in full upon the
second page. He is now called to its head. In the issue of December 19,
1861, appears his “Salutatory.” Since in this he gives, in brief, his
conception of the office and importance of the religious newspaper, it
is given in full:
“The undersigned has to-day assumed the editorial management of the
_Independent_. This will not involve any change in the principles, the
purposes, or general spirit of the paper. The _Independent_ was founded
to illustrate and to defend the truths and doctrines of the Christian
religion; to employ them as the authoritative standards by which to
estimate and influence events, measures, and men; to infuse a spirit of
truth and humanity into the affairs of this nation; to give aid and
encouragement to every judicious scheme of Christian benevolence. It has
sought to leaven with the Christian spirit all the great elements of our
civilization. These were the aims. The results are upon record.
“For the future, studying a catholic sympathy with all who love our Lord
Jesus Christ, and seeking to promote concord among all Christians of
every name, the _Independent_ will still continue explicitly and firmly
to hold and to teach those great cardinal doctrines of religion that are
substantially held in common by the Congregational orthodox churches of
New England and by the Presbyterian churches of our whole land. But, as
heretofore, this will be done for the promotion of vital godliness
rather than for sectarianism.
“The _Independent_ will not deviate from that application of Christian
truth to all public questions which has thus far characterized its
course. While seeking to promote religious feeling, as such, and to
incite and supply devotional wants, it will not forget that there is an
ethical as well as an emotive life in true religion. We shall therefore
assume the liberty of meddling with every question which agitates the
civil or Christian community, according to our own best discretion.
“The editorial profession, with the progress of popular intelligence,
has assumed an importance second to no other. It may unite in it the
elements of power hitherto distributed in the several professions, and
add, besides, many that have belonged to no other calling. He who knows
the scope and power of the press need desire no higher office than the
editorial.
“In that silent realm of influences out of which proceed the actions of
men and the events of history, the editor is the invisible leader. Votes
cannot raise him higher. His pen is more than a sceptre. Profoundly
impressed with such a responsibility, desiring to honor God in the
welfare of men, we ask the sympathy of good men and the remembrance of
all who pray.
“HENRY WARD BEECHER.”
At this time the excitement growing out of the capture of Mason and
Slidell on board the British steamer _Trent_, by Commodore Wilkes on the
_San Jacinto_, was at its height. News had just reached this country of
the bitter feeling awakened by “the outrage,” of the shipment of troops
to Canada, and other hasty preparations by Great Britain to avenge the
insult to her flag. And Mr. Beecher’s first editorial bears the somewhat
ominous title of “War with England.”
As we might expect, it is both temperate and defiant in language and
tone:
“We have no idea that there will be any war with that power. England has
a peculiar practical wisdom in affairs which touch her own material
interests. Her folly will be expended in words; her wisdom reserved for
actions. It is not her interest to go to war with the Northern States in
the interest of the Southern States. There is no probability that she
will allow herself, whatever she has done in other days, to be found
fighting for slavery against freedom....
“There is no desire on our part for so unnatural a war. To avert it we
shall be willing to yield anything but honor. Our hands are sufficiently
full. To have a British fleet thundering at our sea-doors, while the
volcano was yet pouring lava through our Southern States, would be a
little more business on hand than could be attended to with that
thoroughness which our people desire in all warlike enterprises.
“Yet should England force us into war, terrible and atrocious as that
would be, America is determined to put her in the wrong before the
world. If we have transgressed any law of nations; if we have, indeed,
violated any right of England; if we have, to the width of a hair,
passed beyond the line of our own proper duty and right, we shall, upon
suitable showing, need no menace to make ample reparation. We shall do
it for the satisfaction of our own sense of justice. But if we are
right, if we have done right, all the threatenings in the world will not
move this people from their steadfastness....
“Our wish is to unite with England in a race of civilization. But if she
_will_ fight, we _must_.”
Some idea of the variety and character of the work he did at this time
may be gained by a look at his editorials found in the _Independent_ of
January 16, 1862, the third week of his administration as editor. The
first is “Our Help from Above,” in which he directs all burdened hearts
to the great sources and divine methods of consolation. “The nearer our
thoughts come to the infinite and the divine the more power have we over
our troubles. The act of consolation is, to a great degree, the act of
inspiration.”
The raising, equipping, and feeding such vast armies as, it was now
seen, would be required for the prosecution of the war, awakened in the
minds of thoughtful men a question scarcely second in importance to any.
By what plan or on what system shall the money required for these large
and expensive enterprises be secured? His second editorial upon this
page takes up this matter under the head of “A Word from the People to
Congress,” in which he urges the fearless imposition of taxes sufficient
to carry on the war, and justifies such a course upon the simple basis
of honesty. The article opens with this sentence, “Taxation and national
honesty are now synonymous,” and closes with this, “Every honest man in
America ought to send to Washington one message in two words, _Fight_,
_Tax_.”
How to treat the black men that came into our lines, or were liberated
by the advance of our armies, was another of the pressing questions at
this time, and one concerning which there was a great difference of
opinion. He treated this subject in a column article on this page,
entitled “_Men_, not _Slaves_.” The position which he held, and
advocated with great force and clearness, is given in this sentence:
“One thing is plain—one thing as a starting-point admits of no doubt,
needs no hesitation: let us forget that these blacks ever were _slaves_,
and remember only that they are _men_. With this as our first principle
we cannot go far wrong.”
This money-raising was a matter of so great importance that he devoted
another column to it on this same page, on the “Duty of the Hour.” In
the first article he sent a message to Congress; in this he speaks to
the Christian public: “Whether the great impending patriotic tax shall
be a moral triumph and a testimony to the religious life of this people
will depend largely upon the conduct of Christian men and the action of
Christian teachers.... There seems to have been very _little education
of the consciences of Christian men to the duty of a cheerful support of
government by their property_. Even Christian men are tempted to give
grudgingly, selfishly, meanly. The nobler sentiments of the heart have
been allowed but little scope in this part of citizen duty.
“Is the Gospel worn out? Are ministers of the Gospel less manly and
Christian than in the days of the fathers? Has the American pulpit
forgotten that its place is in the van—that it leads, not follows, the
camp?
“Every church should have a public sentiment developed within it which
shall make this national tax almost a free-will offering. Let Christian
laymen take counsel together. Let the leading men of towns and
neighborhoods not only set a good example, but make it their duty to
cheer and inspirit the slow and reluctant. Let Christian men everywhere,
and in all things, seek to inspire the public mind with an earnest
willingness to discharge this great debt which we are called to pay for
_national unity, national safety, and national glory_.”
In those days of dress-parades in our largest army, and “all quiet on
the Potomac,” men chafed continually over what appeared to be inaction
and timidity on the part of the government at Washington. This found
expression in still another article by this same pen upon this same
page, “Courage and Enterprise”:
“There was never a time when timidity was so nearly allied to rashness,
and courage to the highest prudence, as now. We have every element of
national prosperity except the courage to use our power. Standing on a
centre and whirling around with sound and celerity may make a _top_, but
never an administration. Courage to see and accept the whole national
danger; courage to see and to accept the thoroughest remedy; courage to
ask the people for all that is needed, without a thought of refusal;
courage to use the means, willingly afforded, so as to put the whole
strength of this nation into every blow; courage to dash in pieces every
enemy, without stopping to consider just how we shall mend the pieces
afterward—this is the very critical prudence of good administration.
“Since war is upon us, let us have courage to make war.
“There is no money needed, there are no men wanted, there is no
enthusiasm that the North will not give with eager gladness, if only
SOMEBODY will speak to the nation such words as the fathers spoke! Then
men LOVED liberty! The nation suffered for a principle! What are we
doing now? Are we raising moss on cannon-wheels, or are we fighting? Is
it husbandry or war that is going on? Are we to starve Southern armies
or conquer them? Do we mean to put down rebellion by _soldiers_ or
_ferrets_?”
These editorials showed certain features which were as characteristic of
his work in the editor’s chair as they were in the pulpit and upon the
platform; the first of these was this: he chose his subjects from among
the things which at that time affected and interested the people. This
he did, not simply because he could then get the ear of the public, nor
because these were in themselves the largest or most important matters,
but from a deep religious conviction that these present questions and
present interests were a part of God’s providence, by which and through
which He was accomplishing His purposes; and that in treating these
matters he was working together with Him. He believed thoroughly in
God’s action in common affairs and through the impulses given to common
men. This conviction made him a leader of the people without bringing
him into bondage to them. It gave him the kind of leadership to which he
attained: not of the abstract thinker in the movements of a hundred
years hence, but of the practical man of affairs in the battles of
to-day. This gave him the boldness that he never failed to display.
Confident that he was moving in harmony with God’s purpose and at His
own appointed time, he waited for no gathering of numbers, but pushed on
alone, if necessary, with an assurance born of faith. Storms and
confusion did not daunt him, because he recognized in these but the
necessary methods by which the Almighty carries out His designs in the
moral and spiritual as in the material world.
Another characteristic feature was seen in his treatment of the subject
in hand. He uniformly regarded it from the standpoint of the law of
Christ’s kingdom on the earth—“Bear ye one another’s burdens.” This
insured harmony in his policy through all changes of events around him,
and ultimately secured success. All the forces of the universe, because
created and administered by the Saviour of mankind, were on the side not
only of justice and truth but of kindness, forbearance, and helpfulness,
and must in time prevail. So deep was his conviction of the direct and
universal application of the law of this kingdom that he instinctively
took this side, and linked his action and his destiny with its fortunes,
when prudence and policy would seem to dictate a different course, with
a sublime confidence in its final victory.
A third characteristic was this: He wrote so as to awaken inspiration,
to stir men’s hearts to feel. It was not enough that men believed a
truth; that was nothing unless they felt it. His words must take hold,
they must excite the emotions and move men to action, or they were a
failure.
Besides the editorial articles referred to on this one page, there was
his sermon in this same issue occupying more than four columns of the
second page of the paper. It was upon the Divine Government, and moved
along on these lofty heights: “We believe that God is in His own world
and that He governs it by His personal will; that this government
includes nations, families, and individuals; that it aims at the highest
good and the everlasting good of sentient and intelligent creatures;
that it is one which admits the action of our minds upon God’s and the
action of God’s upon ours; that it has in it a place for all human
yearnings and strivings and longings.” “I bring you a Gospel that will
never wear out, a Gospel which is for ever fresh, and that is,
Emmanuel—God with us: God with you, in you, around you, loving you,
bearing with you, forgiving you, helping you, watching over you, taking
you up and carrying you as the parent takes up and carries the little
child.”
The first anniversary Sunday of the attack on Fort Sumter was marked by
a sermon on the “Success of American Democracy,” the tone of which may
be judged by the following passage:
“‘We will give every dollar that we are worth, every child that we have,
and our own selves; we will bring all that we are and all that we have,
and offer them up freely—but this country shall be one and undivided. We
will have one Constitution and one liberty, and that universal.’ The
Atlantic shall sound it and the Pacific shall echo it back, deep
answering to deep, and it shall reverberate from the Lakes on the North
to the unfrozen Gulf on the South—‘One nation, one Constitution, one
starry banner!’ Hear it, England!—one country, and indivisible. Hear it,
Europe!—one people, and inseparable. One God; one hope; one baptism; one
Constitution; one government; one nation; one country; one people—cost
what it may, we will have it!”
The summer of 1862 was, perhaps, a period of as great discouragement to
the North as any during the war. After months of preparation and
wearisome delays, with the grandest army that had ever been gathered on
this continent, McClellan had made his advance against Richmond, only to
entrench, retreat, and at last to be hurled back defeated and shattered.
It was when these terrible disasters were beginning to be understood and
their true significance appreciated that Mr. Beecher’s editorials in the
_Independent_ rose to their highest point of power and influence. They
were directed to the people and to the government as occasion demanded,
but always with such a grouping of facts, with so clear an appreciation
of the situation, and with so great earnestness of appeal and power of
denunciation that they must be reckoned among the loyal forces. We give
the titles and a few sentences from several of that time, that their
general character may be understood. On July 3, 1862, we have one upon
“The Great Duty”:
“In another column will be found the President’s call for 300,000 more
soldiers. These, and as many more if needed, can be raised. The North
has not changed her mind. The integrity of this nation, the authority of
its Constitution over all its original territory, will be maintained at
every hazard and at whatever expense.
“It is our duty to the nation and to the family of nations to make a
slaveholders’ rebellion so odious and disastrous that it shall stand to
all ages like Sodom and Gomorrah. Whatever it may cost in men and money,
the North is fully assured that for nothing else can money be so well
spent, and for nothing nobler can men live, or, if need be, lay down
their lives!
“The great duty now is to maintain a united North. No event can be more
sure than the victory of this government over the slaveholders’
conspiracy, if the loyal States are united. But if secret feuds or open
factions shall divide and paralyze the popular feeling, the cause will
fail, or succeed only after long, wasting, and useless expenditures.”
In the next issue, July 10, he has an equally strong editorial upon “The
Country’s Need.” The suppression of news, the failure to trust the
people, the political intrigues at the capital, moved him to righteous
and sorrowful indignation:
“Did the government frankly say to this nation, We are defeated? To this
hour it has not trusted the people. It held back the news for days. Nor
was the truth honestly told when outside information compelled it to say
something. It is even to this hour permitting McClellan’s disaster to be
represented as a piece of skilfully planned strategy! After the labor of
two months, the horrible sickness of thousands of men poisoned in the
swamps of the Chickahominy, the loss of probably more than ten thousand
as noble fellows as ever lifted a hand to defend their country,
McClellan, who was four miles from Richmond, finds himself twenty-five
miles from the city, wagons burned, ammunition-trains blown up, parks of
artillery captured, no entrenchments, and with an army so small that it
is not pretended that he can reach Richmond! The public are infatuated.
The papers that regaled us two weeks ago with visions of a Fourth of
July in Richmond are now asking us to rejoice and acclaim—not at
victory—but that we have just saved the army! McClellan is safe!—and
Richmond too!
“The government, upon this disaster, procures the governors of the
States to _ask it_ to call for 300,000 more men. Why did not the
President take the responsibility, plainly confess our disaster, say
that we were within a hand-breadth of ruin, throw himself on the people?
No. The people pay taxes, give their sons and brothers—but that is all.
We are sick and weary of this conduct. We have a sacred cause, a noble
army, good officers, and a heroic common people. But we are like to be
ruined by an administration that will not tell the truth; that spends
precious time in playing at President-making; that is cutting and
shuffling the cards for the next great political campaign. Unless good
men awake, unless the accursed silence is broken that has fallen on the
people, unless the government is held sternly to its responsibility to
the people, we shall dally through the summer, make brigadier-generals
until autumn, build huge entrenchments, but fight no battles till they
are forced upon us, and then we shall be called upon to celebrate our
defeats or retreats as masterly strategies!
“We have a country. We have a cause. We have a people. Let all good men
pray that God would give us a government!”
This is followed by one, July 17, on the “Patriotism of the People.” Its
tone will be understood by these few sentences:
“There is no need of rousing the patriotism of the people. It is an
inexhaustible quality. It underlies their very life. The government
itself is buoyed up by it, and rides upon it, like a ship upon the
fathomless ocean.
“No. It is the government that needs rousing. We do not need meetings on
the Hudson, but motion on the Potomac. It is not in Boston, or Buffalo,
or Cincinnati, or New York that this case is to be settled, but in
Washington. There is no use of concealing it. The people are beginning
to distrust their rulers—not their good nature, their patriotism, their
honesty, but their capacity for the exigency of military affairs. They
know that in war an hour often carries a campaign in its hand. A day is
a year. The President seems to be a man without any sense of the value
of time. The people admire his disinterestedness. They believe him firm
when he reaches decisions. But they perceive how long a period he
requires to form judgments; how wide a circuit he takes of uncertainty
and vacillation before he determines. In civil affairs, that can bear to
wait, the people deem him among the best of our long line of Presidents.
But it is war! Armies are perishing. Months are wasting. We are in the
second year of rebellion. We have been just on the eve of doing
something for sixteen months!
“The nation rose up in its majesty to punish rebellion. It put a
magnificent army into the President’s hand. For one year that army was
_besieged_ in the capital!
“At length, this past spring, began the campaign in Virginia. The people
gloried in the belief that the majesty of the government would be
asserted. After four months’ campaign the armies of the United States
are on the _defensive_! Not less than a hundred thousand men have been
lost by death, wounds, sickness, and captivity; McClellan is cooped up
on James River; Pope is collecting an army; and the country is to-day
actually debating whether the enemy cannot strike a blow at Washington!
Is this such a management as will confirm the confidence of the country
in Mr. Lincoln’s conduct of the war? Do we need to ask why men are slow
to volunteer? Does any man need to be told what the end of such things
must be? This is not punishing rebellion; it is helping it....
“We speak plainly, sorrowfully, earnestly. An enemy of the
Administration would have no right to speak so. We are friends—all the
more because we speak out what millions think but do not utter, lest it
might hinder the cause. But, unless some one speaks, there will soon be
little cause left to hinder or to help.”
In the next issue, that of July 24, he has another two-column editorial
upon “The Duty of To-day”:
“In the beginning of this great struggle the question among loyal men
was, _How_ shall we save this nation? One year of fighting and the
question is, WHETHER we can save it? That is the question of to-day....
“The South has simplicity and unity of purpose. The North is uncertain
which she wishes most—to subdue the rebellion, to leave slavery
unharmed, or to have the right President at the next election!
“The South adjourns every question and postpones every interest in favor
of arms. The North is busy with conflicting schemes and interests—and is
also mildly carrying on war.
“Does anybody doubt the result of such a course? It is so certain that
it is not worth our while to waste another man or another dollar! Either
the Administration policy should instantly change or the war cease! It
is not more vigor so much as a different _internal idea_. If the
Administration cannot be disenchanted of the traditional policy that has
grown up during the heartless, timid, compromising era of the last
half-century, and adopt the simple and straightforward policy that
becomes a people striving for liberty and free institutions upon the
American continent, then we are doomed! It is war that we are making—war
first, war second, war wholly! It is not politics. It is not
Constitution-making. It is not the decision of legal niceties. These are
not the business of government, as toward the South. It is war,
absolute, terrible, and immeasurable war!
“The South has organized on the fact of slavery, and fights on that
issue, pure and simple. The North must organize on the doctrine of
liberty, and fight right through on that issue, pure and simple.
“The South sacrifices everything that conflicts with her central idea.
The North must do the same. The South is not ashamed of slavery. The
North must not be ashamed of liberty!
”... The government cannot any longer avoid choosing the issue that has
been made up and thrust upon it—_freedom or slavery_. The time has come.
So long as there was a chance of solving this question _as a civil
question_ it was wise to leave it, as far as possible, to the States
concerned, and to employ the moral influences which change men’s minds.
_But slavery has become a military question._ One year has changed all
things. A remiss and vacillating policy of the Administration; the
committing of the armies of the United States for a whole year to a man
who thought he was at West Point giving a four years’ course of
instruction to five hundred thousand men infinitely at leisure, has
changed the relations and possibilities of things. It has taken slavery
out of the realm of discussion and placed it in the arena of war. It
must be settled by force....
“Nothing will unite this people like a bold annunciation of a moral
principle. Let the American flag be lifted up by Mr. Lincoln, as was the
brazen serpent, and let it be known that every man who looks upon it on
this continent shall be free, and a tide of joy and irresistible
enthusiasm will sweep away every obstacle. Let Mr. Lincoln decree it.
The nation will do it!
“Such a policy would carry the conscience of the North; would kindle the
enthusiasm for liberty, which is always the most potent of influences;
would bring all the historic traditions of the old American struggle to
enkindle the ardor of the young, who are to form our armies. It would
brush away at one stroke a thousand hindrances, give simplicity and
unity to our plans, and distinctness to our policy. It would end all
threat of foreign intervention. Above all, it would give to the American
armies that pillar of smoke by day and fire by night by which God the
Emancipator led forth His people from bondage into liberty!”
In the next issue, July 31, he writes a two-column editorial upon “The
Root of the Matter”:
“It is not enough that we increase our men and means. We shall never
succeed until we accept the _idea_ latent in this conflict. Slavery must
be crushed. Liberty must have absolute and unquestioned dominion on this
continent. We will not have oppression under the symbol of a sceptre or
of a whip—neither exported from abroad nor sprouting from our own soil!
This continent is dedicated to Liberty. It is the mission of this
generation of men to establish free institutions from ocean to ocean. We
sought to do it in peace. Since war has come, we will seek to take from
its repulsiveness and horror by making it serve the noblest ends of
human liberty. If it is for liberty upon a whole continent that we
fight, then every son or brother that falls is a sacrificial victim. By
his blood we ransom generations of men!
“The way to make the Administration see this truth is to see it
ourselves. There is a kind of political mesmerism. Our rulers will
partake of our sensations. What the people see the President will see.
What the people taste will repeat itself on the President’s tongue.
“Let the sentence be spoken. Let all hindrances and hesitations end.
Lift up the banner! And as the winds of war roll out its folds, let
those letters shine out as if God had written them with heavenly light,
‘UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION.’”
The next editorial, August 7, is upon “A Leader for the People.” These
were the days of Pope and the disasters of the army, and the uncertainty
and terror at Washington. Two columns of argument and appeal for more
genuine enthusiasm for the great doctrines on which this government was
founded close with a prayer, the only relief of a heart bursting with a
mighty passion of sorrow and impatience:
“Great God, what a people hast Thou brought forth upon this continent!
What love of liberty; what heroic love of law and institution; what
courage, and constancy, and self-sacrifice hast Thou given them! And no
man is found to lead this so great a nation! Be Thou Leader! Lord God of
Hosts, hast Thou forgotten how to lead a people? There are no ages on
Thy head! Years make Thee neither old nor weary! Behind Thy unwrinkled
brow no care dwells! Teach this people to need no other leader but
Thyself! Then, led by Thee, teach them to be all-sufficient for every
deed of justice, and omnipotent for liberty!”
These are followed, August 14, by a three-column editorial upon “The
Time has Come”:
“We have been made irresolute, indecisive, and weak by the President’s
attempt to unite impossibilities; to make war and keep the peace; to
strike hard and not hurt; to invade sovereign States and not meddle with
their sovereignty; to put down rebellion without touching its cause; to
bring an infuriated people into enforced union with their enemies, and
to leave all their causes of quarrels unsettled and vigorous, and yet
hope for future concord.
“Thus far the conservative North has been striving to conduct this war
so as not to meddle with the so-called Southern right of slavery. But,
in spite of every scruple, events have crowded men to the necessity of
confiscation and emancipation. There is one more step. It is the last
sublime step toward national safety and national Christian glory. It is
_immediate and universal emancipation_!”
In the next issue, August 21, is another article, upon “The Only
Ground,” of the same temper, urging the same plea:
“The President has the right and power to destroy slavery. Let him
account to the civilized world for not doing it.”
And another August 28, upon “Reconstruction”:
“Since, then, the old Union is _de facto_ ceased, and all the local
rights lapsed by rebellion to the hands of the government, and it is to
reconstruct the Union, would it be a stretch of authority in the
government so to reconstruct it as to insure its perpetuity by purging
out all possible cause of future discord? The President has the
authority. He is exercising it every day. All that we ask is that he
will look _forward_ and not _backward_; that he will consider the nation
of the future, and not mere precedents in the past.... To put down
rebellion first, and attend to slavery afterwards, is letting two
serpents uncoil that may as well be stricken through with one blow.”
The preacher’s pulpit is in perfect accord with the editor’s chair. In a
sermon of July 27, 1862, he says: “God has been pleased to bring this
nation at this time into great trials that are to test the faith of all
true men. I think that we have not by a long way touched bottom yet. I
think that the wind has not yet blown its fiercest. There are blacker
clouds than those that have yet expended their fury. I cast no
confidence away. I do not know that we are to succeed to-day or
to-morrow; but we are going to succeed. I do not know that we are going
to succeed in Virginia for the present, but we are a-going to succeed in
America.
“When I die there will be a great many things that, if I have time to
think of them, I may be sorry for. After I die there may be a great many
inconsistencies, a great many sins, a great many unperformed duties
that, when I behold them in retrospect, I shall regret. But I tell you
that, whether in the passage of death, or at the gate of heaven, or
before God’s eternal throne, I never expect to be sorry that I have
preached so often and so strongly in behalf of those that were in bonds;
that I have spoken, as I have had opportunity, for those that could not
speak for themselves; that I have roused up, according to the measure of
my influence, the whole community to vindicate the cause of God toward
His oppressed ones. I shall not be sorry for that. I shall be sorry that
I have not done more; but I never shall be sorry that I have done so
much.
“And my faith in this cause was never so strong as it is now. I do not
throw it away. I feel certain that if the will of God is done in this
matter, though we may have to wait, we shall have great recompense of
reward in waiting.
“May God inspire the hearts of our rulers by the right things! May God
unite the hearts of this great people in right counsels and in right
feelings! May God accept the offerings that we make of our children, of
our brothers, of our neighbors, of everything that we have! Let us put
them all on the altar of patriotism, knowing that in this case the altar
of patriotism is the altar of God. He will accept the offering, and in
His own time, by tokens infallible, He will reward our faith and bring
us forth purged, purified, strengthened by the things which we have
suffered.”
With all his earnestness he must have his laugh at a contemporary, “A
Queer Pulpit”:
“We knew that the _Journal of Commerce_ was famous upon statistics and
prided itself upon its good literary taste. But we had no idea before of
the powers of its rhetoric. We extract a figure from its issue of August
27 that should be commended to the directors of the New York Hospital:
“‘It is the voice of a glorious past which speaks to him, in the tones
of the fathers whose graves are with us. It is the voice of the living
nation, millions on millions of whom utter the same words we utter
to-day. It is the _voice of posterity, speaking from the womb of time,
that calls on him to save the Constitution_, which was made, not for the
duration of a human life, but to be the blessing of all men and all
nations until the end of thrones and earthly powers. That he will be
faithful we do not for one instant doubt.’
“This is taking part in politics rather early. Constitutional studies
must be pursued under difficulties in this case. But if posterity are so
greatly stirred in their minds, there is nothing for it but for the
President to write them a letter. He answered Horace Greeley. Surely he
will heed the sufferings of posterity in such uncomfortable quarters.
“For ourselves, we cannot be too thankful that we are already born. We
prefer open-air speaking. If the President don’t save the Constitution
now, it is a hopeless case!”
In an editorial, September 11, upon “The Contrast,” he sums up the
difference in sentences like these:
“Richmond determines, Washington reasons; Richmond is inflexible,
Washington vacillates; Richmond knows what it wants to do, Washington
wishes that it knew; Richmond loves slavery and hates liberty,
Washington is somewhat partial to liberty and rather dislikes slavery;
Rebellion is wise and sinful, Government is foolish.”
Upon a report that a member of the Cabinet had said “that nations often
lose their institutions, their liberties, and yet preserve their
national life, and that in our case we must aim to preserve the national
life,” he writes an editorial (September 18, 1862) which he properly
entitled “The Trumpet”:
“... Let other people imagine as they may a national life, like a
disembodied spirit, wandering over the continent seeking rest and
finding none. We propose no such issue to this struggle. The nation must
emerge from war shorn of no attribute and mutilated in none of its
members. We claim this continent for liberty. We demand the execution of
slavery for treason. We arraign this arch-conspirator, arrested with a
dagger in its hand aimed at the life of this government and the
liberties of the people, and in the name of mankind and before Almighty
God we demand that its life be forfeited. Let the trumpet sound!”
These are but samples of the editorials that were sent out from his pen
through the columns of the _Independent_. Week after week they
continued, pleading for vigor, denouncing inaction, urging that liberty
be recognized as the great issue at stake, and demanding immediate
emancipation of the slave.
At last, after this long, weary, heart-breaking delay, he publishes,
September 25, “The Proclamation” of the President announcing “that on
the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or
any designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in
rebellion against the United States, shall be thenceforward and for ever
free.” Mr. Beecher says of it:
“We send forth to-day the most important paper ever published in the
_Independent_, the most extraordinary document ever proceeding from this
government....
“No more guises and veils. No more side-issues. No more deceitful
compromises. The government has taken ground, and every man in the
nation must take ground. You are for or against this government, and
this government is declared to mean liberty to the slave! There is no
neutral ground for traitors to hide in, playing wolf at night and sheep
by day. The President’s proclamation will sift the North, give unity to
its people, simplicity to its policy, liberty to its army! That whole
army is no longer a mongrel something between a police force and a
political caucus. It is an _army_ organized to strike where blows will
be most felt.
“The Proclamation emancipates slaves in thrice thirty days. But it
emancipates the government and the army to-day. The nation is freer than
it was on the 21st. We have a policy. The people will base it upon a
principle. It is the policy of liberty upon the principle of justice.
The future is before us! Through what dark days we must pass we know
not. What battles and what reverses are in store we do not inquire. At
last we have a right to believe that God is leading us. He who carried
His people from bondage through the wilderness, and established them in
the promised land, can surely guide us!
“Let sorrows fall fast; there is joy before us! We behold upon the
troubled sea a Christ coming to us, walking on the waves! In His hand
are winds and storms. Every hour now moves toward the great day of
Emancipation. At length the dawn shall bring that day most eminent in
our national calendar. Amid all the festivities that usher in the year,
there shall be a great joy, deeper, purer, holier than ever came to us
with the New Year—the joy of a nation that, after long sorrow and shame,
shall cast off from itself the guilt of slavery, and stand erect before
the world a consistent witness for liberty!”
He looks upon it as the beginning of the end, and is satisfied if it be
God’s will that his work should now cease. On the evening of the last
day of slavery in America—Wednesday evening, December 31—he says in his
lecture-room talk:
“As for myself, let come what will come, I care not. God may peel me,
and bark me, and strip me of my leaves, and do as He chooses with my
earthly estate. I have lived long enough; I have had a good time. You
cannot take back the blows I have given the devil right in the face. I
have uttered some words that will not die, because they are incorporated
into the lives of men that will not die. Through my instrumentality,
aided by God’s providence, many souls have been converted and gone
singing home to their eternal abode. I think I have a larger church in
heaven than I have on earth, and I think they love me and want me there.
I have no reason to ask for longer life. If my work is done, and God
does not want me here, and this is my last night of labor on earth,
ought I to be sorry? Ought I not to be the most grateful man that ever
lived that I have had such health, that I have had such an open field,
that I have had the privilege of speaking the truth right straight along
for fifteen years, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear,
and that I have been borne up, in doing this, by so large a church,
composed of such an enthusiastic body of God’s people?
“And to-night the shadows of the past come over me. I remember when I
first stood, in about this place, in the old church. I remember the
sermon that I preached to you on the first Sunday night after I came
among you, as if it were but an hour ago. I then declared to the
inchoate congregation gathered here that it was my purpose to preach the
Gospel in its applications to slavery, and peace, and war, and moral
purity, and every Christian reform, and that I would do it whether you
heard it or not, and whether you stood by me or forsook me. I recollect
those times perfectly well.
“Fifteen years have passed since then, and here we are talking about the
President of the United States emancipating four million slaves. Here we
are in the midst of a war whose inevitable outcome from this time must
be to make war on slavery. Mightier than Congress now is the arm for
emancipation—mightier than all things! In the providence of God what
wonderful revolutions and changes have taken place in fifteen years! I
am willing to live fifteen years more, if God wishes it, if I may renew
my youth and work on. I should dread to find now that there were no more
locks to get up, and that I must henceforth travel on a dead level. I
would try and pull with my freight-boat on a level, if God wished me to,
though I would like here and there to rise. It would be a pleasure to
live, if it were God’s will, till the day-star dawned, for I know it
will dawn, but I am willing to lay down my burden at any time, if it
please God. If He will accept the thanks that I give Him for all that He
has permitted me to do, to say, and experience in days past, then, as to
the future, let His will be done. I ask neither to live nor to die.”
This closes the third era of his work in the great anti-slavery contest.
We now turn back to glance over the same period and note some of the
more important events aside from this struggle, public, domestic, and
private, that marked the years from 1850 to January, 1863.