HENRY WARD BEECHER (1813-1887)

A very great orator must be a thoroughly representative man,

sensitive enough to be moved to the depths of his nature by the

master-passions of his time. Henry Ward Beecher was a very great

orator,--one of the greatest the country has produced,--and in his

speeches and orations inspired by the feelings which evolved the

Civil War and were themselves exaggerated by it to tenfold strength,

we feel all the volcanic forces which buried the primitive political

conditions of the United States deep under the ashes and lava of

their eruption. Words are feeble in the presence of the facts of

such a war. But what more could words do to suggest its meaning than

they do in Mr. Beecher's oration on the raising of the flag at Fort

Sumter, April 14th, 1865:--

"The soil has drunk blood and is glutted. Millions mourn for myriads

slain, or, envying the dead, pray for oblivion. Towns and villages

have been razed. Fruitful fields have been turned back to

wilderness. It came to pass as the prophet had said: 'The sun was

turned to darkness and the moon to blood.' The course of the law was

ended. The sword sat chief magistrate in half the nation; industry

was paralyzed; morals corrupted; the public weal invaded by rapine

and anarchy; whole States were ravaged by avenging armies. The world

was amazed. The earth reeled."

In such passages, Mr. Beecher has something of the force which

immortalized the "Voluspa." The "bardic inspiration," which moved

the early Norse poets to sing the bloody results of the "Berserker

fury," peculiar to the Teutonic and Norse peoples, seems to control

him as he recounts the dreadful features of the war and reminds the

vanquished of the meaning of defeat.

In considering the oratory inspired by the passions which found

their climax in the destructiveness of civil war,--and especially in

considering such magnificent outbursts as Mr. Beecher's oration at

Fort Sumter, intelligence will seek to free itself alike from

sympathy and from prejudice that it may the better judge the effect

of the general mind of the people on the orator, and the extent to

which that general mind as he voiced it, was influenced by the

strength of his individuality. If when we ourselves are moved by no

passion we judge with critical calmness the impassioned utterances

of the orators of any great epoch of disturbance, we can hardly fail

to be repelled by much that the critical faculties will reject as

exaggeration. But taking into account the environment, the

traditions, the public opinion, the various general or individual

impulses which influenced the oratory of one side or the other, we

can the better determine its true relation to the history of the

human intellect and that forward movement of the world which is but

a manifestation of the education of intellect.

Mr. Beecher had the temperament, the habits, the physique of the

orator. His ancestry, his intellectual training, his surroundings,

fitted him to be a prophet of the crusade against slavery. Of those

names which for a time were bruited everywhere as a result of the

struggles of the three decades from 1850 to 1880, a majority are

already becoming obscure, and in another generation most of the rest

will be "names only" to all who are not students of history as a

specialty. But the mind in Henry Ward Beecher was so representative;

he was so fully mastered by the forces which sent Sherman on his

march to the sea and Grant to his triumph at Appomattox, that he

will always be remembered as one of the greatest orators of the

Civil War period. Perhaps when the events of the war are so far

removed in point of time as to make a critical judgment really

possible, he may even rank as the greatest.

RAISING THE FLAG OVER FORT SUMTER (Delivered April 14th, 1865, by

request of President Lincoln)

On this solemn and joyful day we again lift to the breeze our

fathers' flag, now again the banner of the United States, with the

fervent prayer that God will crown it with honor, protect it from

treason, and send it down to our children, with all the blessings of

civilization, liberty, and religion. Terrible in battle, may it be

beneficent in peace. Happily, no bird or beast of prey has been

inscribed upon it. The stars that redeem the night from darkness,

and the beams of red light that beautify the morning, have been

united upon its folds. As long as the sun endures, or the stars,

may it wave over a nation neither enslaved nor enslaving! Once, and

but once, has treason dishonored it. In that insane hour when the

guiltiest and bloodiest rebellion of all time hurled their fires

upon this fort, you, sir [turning to General Anderson], and a small,

heroic band, stood within these now crumbled walls, and did gallant

and just battle for the honor and defense of the nation's banner.

In that cope of fire, that glorious flag still peacefully waved to

the breeze above your head unconscious of harm as the stars and

skies above it. Once it was shot down. A gallant hand, in whose

care this day it has been, plucked it from the ground, and reared it

again--"cast down, but not destroyed." After a vain resistance,

with trembling hand and sad heart, you withdrew it from its height,

closed its wings, and bore it far away, sternly to sleep amid the

tumults of rebellion, and the thunder of battle. The first act of

war had begun. The long night of four years had set in. While the

giddy traitors whirled in a maze of exhilaration, dim horrors were

already advancing, that were ere long to fill the land with blood.

To-day you are returned again. We devoutly join with you in

thanksgiving to Almighty God that he has spared your honored life,

and vouchsafed to you the glory of this day. The heavens over you

are the same, the same shores are here, morning comes, and evening,

as they did. All else, how changed! What grim batteries crowd the

burdened shores! What scenes have filled this air, and disturbed

these waters! These shattered heaps of shapeless stone are all that

is left of Fort Sumter. Desolation broods in yonder city--solemn

retribution hath avenged our dishonored banner! You have come back

with honor, who departed hence four years ago, leaving the air

sultry with fanaticism. The surging crowds that rolled up their

frenzied shouts as the flag came down, are dead, or scattered, or

silent, and their habitations are desolate. Ruin sits in the cradle

of treason. Rebellion has perished. But there flies the same flag

that was insulted. With starry eyes it looks over this bay for the

banner that supplanted it, and sees it not. You that then, for the

day, were humbled, are here again, to triumph once and forever. In

the storm of that assault this glorious ensign was often struck;

but, memorable fact, not one of its stars was torn out by shot or

shell. It was a prophecy. It said: "Not a State shall be struck

from this nation by treason!" The fulfillment is at hand. Lifted

to the air to-day, it proclaims that after four years of war, "Not a

State is blotted out." Hail to the flag of our fathers, and our

flag! Glory to the banner that has gone through four years black

with tempests of war, to pilot the nation back to peace without

dismemberment! And glory be to God, who, above all hosts and

banners, hath ordained victory, and shall ordain peace. Wherefore

have we come hither, pilgrims from distant places? Are we come to

exult that Northern hands are stronger than Southern? No; but to

rejoice that the hands of those who defend a just and beneficent

government are mightier than the hands that assaulted it. Do we

exult over fallen cities? We exult that a nation has not fallen.

We sorrow with the sorrowful. We sympathize with the desolate. We

look upon this shattered fort and yonder dilapidated city with sad

eyes, grieved that men should have committed such treason, and glad

that God hath set such a mark upon treason that all ages shall dread

and abhor it. We exult, not for a passion gratified, but for a

sentiment victorious; not for temper, but for conscience; not, as we

devoutly believe, that our will is done, but that God's will hath

been done. We should be unworthy of that liberty intrusted to our

care, if, on such a day as this, we sullied our hearts by feelings

of aimless vengeance; and equally unworthy if we did not devoutly

thank him who hath said: "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the

Lord," that he hath set a mark upon arrogant rebellion, ineffaceable

while time lasts.

Since this flag went down on that dark day, who shall tell the

mighty woes that have made this land a spectacle to angels and men?

The soil has drunk blood and is glutted. Millions mourn for myriads

slain, or, envying the dead, pray for oblivion. Towns and villages

have been razed. Fruitful fields have been turned back to

wilderness. It came to pass, as the prophet said: "The sun was

turned to darkness and the moon to blood," The course of law was

ended. The sword sat chief magistrate in half the nation; industry

was paralyzed; morals corrupted; the public weal invaded by rapine

and anarchy; whole States ravaged by avenging armies. The world was

amazed. The earth reeled. When the flag sunk here, it was as if

political night had come, and all beasts of prey had come forth to

devour. That long night is ended. And for this returning day we

have come from afar to rejoice and give thanks. No more war. No

more accursed secession. No more slavery, that spawned them both.

Let no man misread the meaning of this unfolding flag! It says:

"Government has returned hither." It proclaims, in the name of

vindicated government, peace and protection to loyalty, humiliation

and pains to traitors. This is the flag of sovereignty. The

nation, not the States, is sovereign. Restored to authority, this

flag commands, not supplicates. There may be pardon, but no

concession. There may be amnesty and oblivion, but no honeyed

compromises. The nation to-day has peace for the peaceful, and war

for the turbulent. The only condition to submission is to submit!

There is the Constitution, there are the laws, there is the

government. They rise up like mountains of strength that shall not

be moved. They are the conditions of peace. One nation, under one

government, without slavery, has been ordained and shall stand.

There can be peace on no other basis. On this basis reconstruction

is easy, and needs neither architect nor engineer. Without this

basis no engineer nor architect shall ever reconstruct these

rebellious States. We do not want your cities or your fields. We

do not envy you your prolific soil, nor heavens full of perpetual

summer. Let agriculture revel here, let manufactures make every

stream twice musical, build fleets in every port, inspire the arts

of peace with genius second only to that of Athens, and we shall be

glad in your gladness, and rich in your wealth. All that we ask is

unswerving loyalty and universal liberty. And that, in the name of

this high sovereignty of the United States of America, we demand and

that, with the blessing of Almighty God, we will have! We raise our

fathers banner that it may bring back better blessings than those of

old; that it may cast out the devil of discord; that it may restore

lawful government, and a prosperity purer and more enduring than

that which it protected before; that it may win parted friends from

their alienation; that it may inspire hope, and inaugurate universal

liberty; that it may say to the sword, "Return to thy sheath"; and

to the plow and sickle, "Go forth"; that it may heal all jealousies,

unite all policies, inspire a new national life, compact our

strength, purify our principles, ennoble our national ambitions, and

make this people great and strong, not for agression and

quarrelsomeness, but for the peace of the world, giving to us the

glorious prerogative of leading all nations to juster laws, to more

humane policies, to sincerer friendship, to rational, instituted

civil liberty, and to universal Christian brotherhood. Reverently,

piously, in hopeful patriotism, we spread this banner on the sky, as

of old the bow was painted on the cloud and, with solemn fervor,

beseech God to look upon it, and make it a memorial of an

everlasting covenant and decree that never again on this fair land

shall a deluge of blood prevail. Why need any eye turn from this

spectacle? Are there not associations which, overleaping the recent

past, carry us back to times when, over North and South, this flag

was honored alike by all? In all our colonial days we were one, in

the long revolutionary struggle, and in the scores of prosperous

years succeeding, we were united. When the passage of the Stamp Act

in 1765 aroused the colonies, it was Gadsden, of South Carolina,

that cried, with prescient enthusiasm, "We stand on the broad common

ground of those natural rights that we all feel and know as men.

There ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on this

continent, but all of us," said he, "Americans." That was the voice

of South Carolina. That shall be the voice of South Carolina.

Faint is the echo; but it is coming. We now hear it sighing sadly

through the pines; but it shall yet break in thunder upon the shore.

No North, no West, no South, but the United States of America.

There is scarcely a man born in the South who has lifted his hand

against this banner but had a father who would have died for it. Is

memory dead? Is there no historic pride? Has a fatal fury struck

blindness or hate into eyes that used to look kindly towards each

other, that read the same Bible, that hung over the historic pages

of our national glory, that studied the same Constitution? Let this

uplifting bring back all of the past that was good, but leave in

darkness all that was bad. It was never before so wholly unspotted;

so clear of all wrong, so purely and simply the sign of justice and

liberty. Did I say that we brought back the same banner that you

bore away, noble and heroic sir? It is not the same. It is more

and better than it was. The land is free from slavery since that

banner fell.

When God would prepare Moses for emancipation, he overthrew his

first steps and drove him for forty years to brood in the

wilderness. When our flag came down, four years it lay brooding in

darkness. It cried to the Lord, "Wherefore am I deposed?" Then

arose before it a vision of its sin. It had strengthened the

strong, and forgotten the weak. It proclaimed liberty, but trod

upon slaves. In that seclusion it dedicated itself to liberty.

Behold, to-day, it fulfills its vows! When it went down four

million people had no flag. To-day it rises, and four million

people cry out, "Behold our flag!" Hark! they murmur. It is the

Gospel that they recite in sacred words: "It is a Gospel to the

poor, it heals our broken hearts, it preaches deliverance to

captives, it gives sight to the blind, it sets at liberty them that

are bruised." Rise up then, glorious Gospel banner, and roll out

these messages of God. Tell the air that not a spot now sullies thy

whiteness. Thy red is not the blush of shame, but the flush of joy.

Tell the dews that wash thee that thou art as pure as they. Say to

the night that thy stars lead toward the morning; and to the

morning, that a brighter day arises with healing in its wings. And

then, O glowing flag, bid the sun pour light on all thy folds with

double brightness while thou art bearing round and round the world

the solemn joy--a race set free! a nation redeemed! The mighty

hand of government, made strong in war by the favor of the God of

Battles, spreads wide to-day the banner of liberty that went down in

darkness, that arose in light; and there it streams, like the sun

above it, neither parceled out nor monopolized, but flooding the air

with light for all mankind. Ye scattered and broken, ye wounded and

dying, bitten by the fiery serpents of oppression, everywhere, in

all the world, look upon this sign, lifted up, and live! And ye

homeless and houseless slaves, look, and ye are free! At length

you, too, have part and lot in this glorious ensign that broods with

impartial love over small and great, the poor and the strong, the

bond and the free. In this solemn hour, let us pray for the quick

coming of reconciliation and happiness under this common flag. But

we must build again, from the foundations, in all these now free

Southern States. No cheap exhortations "to forgetfulness of the

past, to restore all things as they were," will do. God does not

stretch out his hand, as he has for four dreadful years, that men

may easily forget the might of his terrible acts. Restore things as

they were! What, the alienations and jealousies, the discords and

contentions, and the causes of them? No. In that solemn sacrifice

on which a nation has offered for its sins so many precious victims,

loved and lamented, let our sins and mistakes be consumed utterly

and forever. No, never again shall things be restored as before the

war. It is written in God's decree of events fulfilled, "Old things

are passed away." That new earth, in which dwelleth righteousness,

draws near. Things as they were! Who has an omnipotent hand to

restore a million dead, slain in battle or wasted by sickness, or

dying of grief, broken-hearted? Who has omniscience to search for

the scattered ones? Who shall restore the lost to broken families?

Who shall bring back the squandered treasure, the years of industry

wasted, and convince you that four years of guilty rebellion and

cruel war are no more than dirt upon the hand, which a moment's

washing removes and leaves the hand clean as before? Such a war

reaches down to the very vitals of society. Emerging from such a

prolonged rebellion, he is blind who tells you that the State, by a

mere amnesty and benevolence of government, can be put again, by a

mere decree, in its old place. It would not be honest, it would not

be kind or fraternal, for me to pretend that Southern revolution

against the Union has not reacted, and wrought revolution in the

Southern States themselves, and inaugurated a new dispensation.

Society here is like a broken loom, and the piece which Rebellion

put in, and was weaving, has been cut, and every thread broken. You

must put in new warp and new woof, and weaving anew, as the fabric

slowly unwinds we shall see in it no Gorgon figures, no hideous

grotesques of the old barbarism, but the figures of liberty, vines,

and golden grains, framing in the heads of justice, love, and

liberty. The august convention of 1787 formed the Constitution with

this memorable preamble: "We, the people of the United States, in

order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure

domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the

general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves

and our posterity, do ordain this Constitution for the United States

of America." Again, in the awful convention of war, the people of

the United States, for the very ends just recited, have debated,

settled, and ordained certain fundamental truths, which must

henceforth be accepted and obeyed. Nor is any State nor any

individual wise who shall disregard them. They are to civil affairs

what the natural laws are to health--indispensable conditions of

peace and happiness. What are the ordinances given by the people,

speaking out of fire and darkness of war, with authority inspired by

that same God who gave the law from Sinai amid thunders and trumpet

voices? 1. That these United States shall be one and indivisible.

2. That States have not absolute sovereignty, and have no right to

dismember the Republic. 3. That universal liberty is indispensable

to republican government, and that slavery shall be utterly and

forever abolished.

Such are the results of war! These are the best fruits of the war.

They are worth all they have cost. They are foundations of peace.

They will secure benefits to all nations as well as to ours. Our

highest wisdom and duty is to accept the facts as the decrees of

God. We are exhorted to forget all that has happened. Yes, the

wrath, the conflict, the cruelty, but not those overruling decrees

of God which this war has pronounced. As solemnly as on Mount

Sinai, God says, "Remember! remember!" Hear it to-day. Under this

sun, tinder that bright child of the sun, our banner, with the eyes

of this nation and of the world upon us, we repeat the syllables of

God's providence and recite the solemn decrees: No more Disunion!

No more Secession! No more Slavery! Why did this civil war begin?

We do not wonder that European statesmen failed to comprehend this

conflict, and that foreign philanthropists were shocked at a

murderous war that seemed to have no moral origin, but, like the

brutal fights of beasts of prey, to have sprung from ferocious

animalism. This great nation, filling all profitable latitudes,

cradled between two oceans, with inexhaustible resources, with

riches increasing in an unparalleled ratio, by agriculture, by

manufactures, by commerce, with schools and churches, with books and

newspapers thick as leaves in our own forests, with institutions

sprung from the people, and peculiarly adapted to their genius; a

nation not sluggish, but active, used to excitement, practiced in

political wisdom, and accustomed to self-government, and all its

vast outlying parts held together by the Federal government, mild in

temper, gentle in administration, and beneficent in results, seemed

to have been formed for peace. All at once, in this hemisphere of

happiness and hope, there came trooping clouds with fiery bolts,

full of death and desolation. At a cannon shot upon this fort, all

the nation, as if it had been a trained army lying on its arms,

awaiting a signal, rose up and began a war which, for awfulness,

rises into the front rank of bad eminence. The front of the battle,

going with the sun, was twelve hundred miles long; and the depth,

measured along a meridian, was a thousand miles. In this vast area

more than two million men, first and last, for four years, have, in

skirmish, fight, and battle, met in more than a thousand conflicts;

while a coast and river line, not less than four thousand miles in

length, has swarmed with fleets freighted with artillery. The very

industry of the country seemed to have been touched by some infernal

wand, and, with sudden wheel, changed its front from peace to war.

The anvils of the land beat like drums. As out of the ooze emerge

monsters, so from our mines and foundries uprose new and strange

machines of war, ironclad. And so, in a nation of peaceful habits,

without external provocation, there arose such a storm of war as

blackened the whole horizon and hemisphere. What wonder that

foreign observers stood amazed at this fanatical fury, that seemed

without Divine guidance, but inspired wholly with infernal frenzy.

The explosion was sudden, but the train had long been laid. We must

consider the condition of Southern society, if we would understand

the mystery of this iniquity. Society in the South resolves itself

into three divisions, more sharply distinguished than in any other

part of the nation. At the base is the laboring class, made up of

slaves. Next is the middle class, made up of traders, small

farmers, and poor men. The lower edge of this class touches the

slave, and the upper edge reaches up to the third and ruling class.

This class was a small minority in numbers, but in practical ability

they had centred in their hands the whole government of the South,

and had mainly governed the country. Upon this polished, cultured,

exceedingly capable, and wholly unprincipled class, rests the whole

burden of this war. Forced up by the bottom heat of slavery, the

ruling class in all the disloyal States arrogated to themselves a

superiority not compatible with republican equality, nor with just

morals. They claimed a right of pre-eminence. An evil prophet

arose who trained these wild and luxuriant shoots of ambition to the

shapely form of a political philosophy. By its reagents they

precipitated drudgery to the bottom of society, and left at the top

what they thought to be a clarified fluid. In their political

economy, labor was to be owned by capital; in their theory of

government, the few were to rule the many. They boldly avowed, not

the fact alone, that, under all forms of government, the few rule

the many, but their right and duty to do so. Set free from the

necessity of labor, they conceived a contempt for those who felt its

wholesome regimen. Believing themselves foreordained to supremacy,

they regarded the popular vote, when it failed to register their

wishes, as an intrusion and a nuisance. They were born in a garden,

and popular liberty, like freshets overswelling their banks, but

covered their dainty walks and flowers with slime and mud--of

democratic votes. When, with shrewd observation, they saw the

growth of the popular element in the Northern States, they

instinctively took in the inevitable events. It must be controlled

or cut off from a nation governed by gentlemen! Controlled, less

and less, could it be in every decade; and they prepared secretly,

earnestly, and with wide conference and mutual connivance, to

separate the South from the North. We are to distinguish between

the pretenses and means, and the real causes of this war. To

inflame and unite the great middle class of the South, who had no

interest in separation and no business with war, they alleged

grievances that never existed, and employed arguments which they,

better than all other men, knew to be specious and false.

Slavery itself was cared for only as an instrument of power or of

excitement. They had unalterably fixed their eye upon empire, and

all was good which would secure that, and bad which hindered it.

Thus, the ruling class of the South--an aristocracy as intense,

proud, and inflexible as ever existed--not limited either by

customs or institutions, not recognised and adjusted in the regular

order of society, playing a reciprocal part in its machinery, but

secret, disowning its own existence, baptized with ostentatious

names of democracy, obsequious to the people for the sake of

governing them; this nameless, lurking aristocracy, that ran in the

blood of society like a rash not yet come to the skin; this

political tapeworm, that produced nothing, but lay coiled in the

body, feeding on its nutriment, and holding the whole structure to

be but a servant set up to nourish it--this aristocracy of the

plantation, with firm and deliberate resolve, brought on the war,

that they might cut the land in two, and, clearing themselves from

an incorrigibly free society, set up a sterner, statelier empire,

where slaves worked that gentlemen might live at ease. Nor can

there be any doubt that though, at first, they meant to erect the

form of republican government, this was but a device, a step

necessary to the securing of that power by which they should be able

to change the whole economy of society. That they never dreamed of

such a war, we may well believe. That they would have accepted it,

though twice as bloody, if only thus they could rule, none can doubt

that knows the temper of these worst men of modern society. But

they miscalculated. They understood the people of the South; but

they were totally incapable of understanding the character of the

great working classes of the loyal States. That industry, which is

the foundation of independence, and so of equity, they stigmatized

as stupid drudgery, or as mean avarice. That general intelligence

and independence of thought which schools for the common people and

newspapers breed, they reviled as the incitement of unsettled zeal,

running easily into fanaticism. They more thoroughly misunderstood

the profound sentiment of loyality, the deep love of country, which

pervaded the common people. If those who knew them best had never

suspected the depth and power of that love of country which threw it

into an agony of grief when the flag was here humbled, how should

they conceive of it who were wholly disjoined from them in sympathy?

The whole land rose up, you remember, when the flag came down, as if

inspired unconsciously by the breath of the Almighty, and the power

of omnipotence. It was as when one pierces the banks of the

Mississippi for a rivulet, and the whole raging stream plunges

through with headlong course. There they calculated, and

miscalculated! And more than all, they miscalculated the bravery of

men who have been trained under law, who are civilized and hate

personal brawls, who are so protected by society as to have

dismissed all thought of self-defense, the whole force of whose life

is turned to peaceful pursuits. These arrogant conspirators against

government, with Chinese vanity, believed that they could blow away

these self-respecting citizens as chaff from the battlefield. Few

of them are left alive to ponder their mistake! Here, then, are the

roots of this civil war. It was not a quarrel of wild beasts, it

was an inflection of the strife of ages, between power and right,

between ambition and equity. An armed band of pestilent

conspirators sought the nation's life. Her children rose up and

fought at every door and room and hall, to thrust out the murderers

and save the house and household. It was not legitimately a war

between the common people of the North and South. The war was set

on by the ruling class, the aristocratic conspirators of the South.

They suborned the common people with lies, with sophistries, with

cruel deceits and slanders, to fight for secret objects which they

abhorred, and against interests as dear to them as their own lives,

I charge the whole guilt of this war upon the ambitious, educated,

plotting, political leaders of the South. They have shed this ocean

of blood. They have desolated the South. They have poured poverty

through all her towns and cities. They have bewildered the

imagination of the people with phantasms, and led them to believe

that they were fighting for their homes and liberty, whose homes

were unthreatened, and whose liberty was in no jeopardy. These

arrogant instigators of civil war have renewed the plagues of Egypt,

not that the oppressed might go free, but that the free might be

oppressed. A day will come when God will reveal judgment, and

arraign at his bar these mighty miscreants; and then, every orphan

that their bloody game has made, and every widow that sits

sorrowing, and every maimed and wounded sufferer, and every bereaved

heart in all the wide regions of this land, will rise up and come

before the Lord to lay upon these chief culprits of modern history

their awful witness. And from a thousand battlefields shall rise up

armies of airy witnesses, who, with the memory of their awful

sufferings, shall confront the miscreants with shrieks of fierce

accusation; and every pale and starved prisoner shall raise his

skinny hand in judgment. Blood shall call out for vengeance, and

tears shall plead for justice, and grief shall silently beckon, and

love, heart-smitten, shall wail for justice. Good men and angels

will cry out: "How long, O Lord, how long, wilt thou not avenge?"

And, then, these guiltiest and most remorseless traitors, these high

and cultured men,--with might and wisdom, used for the destruction

of their country,--the most accursed and detested of all criminals,

that have drenched a continent in needless blood, and moved the

foundations of their times with hideous crimes and cruelty, caught

up in black clouds, full of voices of vengeance and lurid with

punishment, shall be whirled aloft and plunged downwards forever and

forever in an endless retribution; while God shall say, "Thus shall

it be to all who betray their country"; and all in heaven and upon

the earth will say "Amen!"

But for the people misled, for the multitudes drafted and driven

into this civil war, let not a trace of animosity remain. The

moment their willing hand drops the musket, and they return to their

allegiance, then stretch out your own honest right hand to greet

them. Recall to them the old days of kindness. Our hearts wait for

their redemption. All the resources of a renovated nation shall be

applied to rebuild their prosperity, and smooth down the furrows of

war. Has this long and weary period of strife been an unmingled

evil? Has nothing been gained? Yes, much. This nation has

attained to its manhood. Among Indian customs is one which admits

young men to the rank of warriors only after severe trials of

hunger, fatigue, pain, endurance. They reach their station, not

through years, but ordeals. Our nation has suffered, but now is

strong. The sentiment of loyalty and patriotism, next in importance

to religion, has been rooted and grounded. We have something to be

proud of, and pride helps love. Never so much as now did we love

our country. But four such years of education in ideas, in the

knowledge of political truth, in the love of history, in the

geography of our own country, almost every inch of which we have

probed with the bayonet, have never passed before. There is half a

hundred years' advance in four. We believed in our institutions and

principles before; but now we know their power. It is one thing to

look upon artillery, and be sure that it is loaded; it is another

thing to prove its power in battle! We believe in the hidden power

stored in our institutions; we had never before seen this nation

thundering like Mount Sinai at all those that worshiped the calf at

the base of the mountain. A people educated and moral are competent

to all the exigencies of national life. A vote can govern better

than a crown. We have proved it. A people intelligent and

religious are strong in all economic elements. They are fitted for

peace and competent to war. They are not easily inflamed, and, when

justly incensed, not easily extinguished. They are patient in

adversity, endure cheerfully needful burdens, tax themselves to meet

real wants more royally than any prince would dare to tax his

people. They pour forth without stint relief for the sufferings of

war, and raise charity out of the realm of a dole into a munificent

duty of beneficence. The habit of industry among free men prepares

them to meet the exhaustion of war with increase of productiveness

commensurate with the need that exists. Their habits of skill

enable them at once to supply such armies as only freedom can

muster, with arms and munitions such as only free industry can

create. Free society is terrible in war, and afterwards repairs the

mischief of war with celerity almost as great as that with which the

ocean heals the seams gashed in it by the keel of ploughing ships.

Free society is fruitful of military genius. It comes when called;

when no longer needed, it falls back as waves do to the level of the

common sea, that no wave may be greater than the undivided water.

With proof of strength so great, yet in its infancy, we stand up

among the nations of the world, asking no privileges, asserting no

rights, but quietly assuming our place, and determined to be second

to none in the race of civilization and religion. Of all nations we

are the most dangerous and the least to be feared. We need not

expound the perils that wait upon enemies that assault us. They are

sufficiently understood! But we are not a dangerous people because

we are warlike. All the arrogant attitudes of this nation, so

offensive to foreign governments, were inspired by slavery, and

under the administration of its minions. Our tastes, our habits,

our interests, and our principles, incline us to the arts of peace.

This nation was founded by the common people for the common people.

We are seeking to embody in public economy more liberty, with higher

justice and virtue, than have been organized before. By the

necessity of our doctrines, we are put in sympathy with the masses

of men in all nations. It is not our business to subdue nations,

but to augment the powers of the common people. The vulgar ambition

of mere domination, as it belongs to universal human nature, may

tempt us; but it is withstood by the whole force of our principles,

our habits, our precedents, and our legends. We acknowledge the

obligation which our better political principles lay upon us, to set

an example more temperate, humane, and just, than monarchical

governments can. We will not suffer wrong, and still less will we

inflict it upon other nations. Nor are we concerned that so many,

ignorant of our conflict, for the present, misconceive the reasons

of our invincible military zeal. "Why contend," say they, "for a

little territory that you do not need?" Because it is ours!

Because it is the interest of every citizen to save it from becoming

a fortress and refuge of iniquity. This nation is our house, and

our fathers' house; and accursed be the man who will not defend it

to the uttermost. More territory than we need! England, that is

not large enough to be our pocket, may think that it is more than we

need, because it is more than it needs; but we are better judges of

what we need than others are.

Shall a philanthropist say to a banker, who defends himself against

a robber, "Why do you need so much money?" But we will not reason

with such questions. When any foreign nation willingly will divide

its territory and give it cheerfully away, we will answer the

question why we are fighting for territory! At present--for I pass

to the consideration of benefits that accrue to the South in

distinction from the rest of the nation--the South reaps only

suffering; but good seed lies buried under the furrows of war, that

peace will bring to harvest, 1. Deadly doctrines have been purged

away in blood. The subtle poison of secession was a perpetual

threat of revolution. The sword has ended that danger. That which

reason had affirmed as a philosophy, that people have settled as a

fact. Theory pronounces, "There can be no permanent government

where each integral particle has liberty to fly off." Who would

venture upon a voyage in a ship each plank and timber of which might

withdraw at its pleasure? But the people have reasoned by the logic

of the sword and of the ballot, and they have declared that States

are inseparable parts of the national government. They are not

sovereign. State rights remain; but sovereignty is a right higher

than all others; and that has been made into a common stock for the

benefit of all. All further agitation is ended. This element must

be cast out of political problems. Henceforth that poison will not

rankle in the blood. 2. Another thing has been learned: the rights

and duties of minorities. The people of the whole nation are of

more authority than the people of any section. These United States

are supreme over Northern, Western, and Southern States. It ought

not to have required the awful chastisement of this war to teach

that a minority must submit the control of the nation's government

to a majority. The army and navy have been good political

schoolmasters. The lesson is learned. Not for many generations

will it require further illustration. 3. No other lesson will be

more fruitful of peace than the dispersion of those conceits of

vanity, which, on either side, have clouded the recognition of the

manly courage of all Americans. If it be a sign of manhood to be

able to fight, then Americans are men. The North certainly is in no

doubt whatever of the soldierly qualities of Southern men. Southern

soldiers have learned that all latitudes breed courage on this

continent. Courage is a passport to respect. The people of all the

regions of this nation are likely hereafter to cherish a generous

admiration of each other's prowess. The war has bred respect, and

respect will breed affection, and affection peace and unity. 4. No

other event of the war can fill an intelligent Southern man, of

candid nature, with more surprise than the revelation of the

capacity, moral and military, of the black race. It is a revelation

indeed. No people were ever less understood by those most familiar

with them. They were said to be lazy, lying, impudent, and cowardly

wretches, driven by the whip alone to the tasks needful to their own

support and the functions of civilization. They were said to be

dangerous, bloodthirsty, liable to insurrection; but four years of

tumultuous distress and war have rolled across the area inhabited by

them, and I have yet to hear of one authentic instance of the

misconduct of a colored man. They have been patient and gentle and

docile, and full of faith and hope and piety; and, when summoned to

freedom, they have emerged with all the signs and tokens that

freedom will be to them what it was to us, the swaddling-band that

shall bring them to manhood. And after the government, honoring

them as men summoned them to the field, when once they were

disciplined, and had learned the arts of war, they have proved

themselves to be not second to their white brethren in arms. And

when the roll of men that have shed their blood is called in the

other land, many and many a dusky face will rise, dark no more when

the light of eternal glory shall shine upon it from the throne of

God! 5. The industry of the Southern States is regenerated, and now

rests upon a basis that never fails to bring prosperity. Just now

industry is collapsed; but it is not dead; it sleepeth. It is vital

yet. It will spring like mown grass from the roots that need but

showers and heat and time to bring them forth. Though in many

districts not a generation will see wanton wastes of self-invoked

war repaired, and many portions may lapse again to wilderness, yet,

in our lifetime, we shall see States, as a whole, raised to a

prosperity, vital, wholesome, and immovable, 6. The destruction of

class interests, working with a religion which tends toward true

democracy, in proportion as it is pure and free, will create a new

era of prosperity for the common laboring people of the South, Upon

them have come the labor, the toil, and the loss of this war. They

have fought blindfolded. They have fought for a class that sought

their degradation, while they were made to believe that it was for

their own homes and altars. Their leaders meant a supremacy which

would not long have left them political liberty, save in name. But

their leaders are swept away. The sword has been hungry for the

ruling classes. It has sought them out with remorseless zeal. New

men are to rise up; new ideas are to bud and blossom; and there will

be men with different ambition and altered policy. 7, Meanwhile,

the South, no longer a land of plantations, but of farms; no longer

tilled by slaves, but by freedmen, will find no hindrance to the

spread of education. Schools will multiply. Books and papers will

spread. Churches will bless every hamlet. There is a good day

coming for the South. Through darkness and tears and blood she has

sought it. It has been an unconscious _via_ _dolorosa_. But in the

end it will be worth all that it has cost. Her institutions before

were deadly. She nourished death in her bosom. The greater her

secular prosperity, the more sure was her ruin. Every year of delay

but made the change more terrible. Now, by an earthquake, the evil

is shaken down. And her own historians, in a better day, shall

write, that from the day the sword cut off the cancer, she began to

find her health. What, then, shall hinder the rebuilding of the

Republic? The evil spirit is cast out: why should not this nation

cease to wander among tombs, cutting itself? Why should it not

come, clothed and in its right mind, to "sit at the feet of Jesus"?

Is it feared that the government will oppress the conquered States?

What possible motive has the government to narrow the base of that

pyramid on which its own permanence depends? Is it feared that the

rights of the States will be withheld? The South is not more

jealous of State rights than the North. State rights from the

earliest colonial days have been the peculiar pride and jealousy of

New England. In every stage of national formation, it was

peculiarly Northern, and not Southern, statesmen that guarded State

rights as we were forming the Constitution. But once united, the

loyal States gave up forever that which had been delegated to the

national government. And now, in the hour of victory, the loyal

States do not mean to trench upon Southern State rights. They will

not do it, nor suffer it to be done. There is not to be one rule

for high latitudes and another for low. We take nothing from the

Southern States that has not already been taken from the Northern.

The South shall have just those rights that every eastern, every

middle, every western State has--no more, no less. We are not

seeking our own aggrandizement by impoverishing the South. Its

prosperity is an indispensable element of our own.

We have shown, by all that we have suffered in war, how great is our

estimate of the Southern States of this Union; and we will measure

that estimate, now, in peace, by still greater exertions for their

rebuilding. Will reflecting men not perceive, then, the wisdom of

accepting established facts, and, with alacrity of enterprise, begin

to retrieve the past? Slavery cannot come back. It is the interest,

therefore, of every man to hasten its end. Do you want more war? Are

you not yet weary of contest? Will you gather up the unexploded

fragments of this prodigious magazine of all mischief, and heap them

up for continued explosions? Does not the South need peace? And,

since free labor is inevitable, will you have it in its worst forms

or in its best? Shall it be ignorant, impertinent, indolent, or

shall it be educated, self-respecting, moral, and self-supporting?

Will you have men as drudges, or will you have them as citizens?

Since they have vindicated the government, and cemented its

foundation stones with their blood, may they not offer the tribute

of their support to maintain its laws and its policy? It is better

for religion; it is better for political integrity; it is better for

industry; it is better for money--if you will have that ground

motive--that you should educate the black man, and, by education,

make him a citizen. They who refuse education to the black man would

turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum,

incessantly vibrating between poverty and indolence. From this

pulpit of broken stone we speak forth our earnest greeting to all

our land. We offer to the President of these United States our

solemn congratulations that God has sustained his life and health

under the unparalleled burdens and sufferings of four bloody years,

and permitted him to behold this auspicious consummation of that

national unity for which he has waited with so much patience and

fortitude, and for which he has labored with such disinterested

wisdom. To the members of the government associated with him in the

administration of perilous affairs in critical times; to the

senators and representatives of the United States, who have eagerly

fashioned the instruments by which the popular will might express

and enforce itself, we tender our grateful thanks. To the officers

and men of the army and navy, who have so faithfully, skillfully,

and gloriously upheld their country's authority, by suffering,

labor, and sublime courage, we offer a heart-tribute beyond the

compass of words. Upon those true and faithful citizens, men and

women, who have borne up with unflinching hope in the darkest hour,

and covered the land with their labor of love and charity, we invoke

the divinest blessing of him whom they have so truly imitated. But

chiefly to thee, God of our fathers, we render thanksgiving and

praise for that wondrous Providence that has brought forth from such

a harvest of war the seed of so much liberty and peace! We invoke

peace upon the North. Peace be to the West! Peace be upon the South!

In the name of God we lift up our banner, and dedicate it to peace,

union, and liberty, now and for evermore! Amen.

EFFECT OF THE DEATH OF LINCOLN (Delivered in Brooklyn, April

16th. 1865)

Again a great leader of the people has passed through toil, sorrow,

battle, and war, and come near to the promised land of peace, into

which he might not pass over. Who shall recount our martyr's

sufferings for this people? Since the November of 1860, his horizon

has been black with storms. By day and by night, he trod a way of

danger and darkness. On his shoulders rested a government dearer to

him than his own life. At its integrity millions of men were striking

at home. Upon this government foreign eyes lowered. It stood like a

lone island in a sea full of storms, and every tide and wave seemed

eager to devour it. Upon thousands of hearts great sorrows and

anxieties have rested, but not on one such, and in such measure, as

upon that simple, truthful, noble soul, our faithful and sainted

Lincoln. Never rising to the enthusiasm of more impassioned natures

in hours of hope, and never sinking with the mercurial in hours of

defeat to the depths of despondency, he held on with unmovable

patience and fortitude, putting caution against hope, that it might

not be premature, and hope against caution, that it might not yield

to dread and danger. He wrestled ceaselessly, through four black and

dreadful purgatorial years, wherein God was cleansing the sin of his

people as by fire.

At last, the watcher beheld the gray dawn for the country. The

mountains began to give forth their forms from out the darkness, and

the East came rushing toward us with arms full of joy for all our

sorrows. Then it was for him to be glad exceedingly that had

sorrowed immeasurably. Peace could bring to no other heart such joy,

such rest, such honor, such trust, such gratitude. But he looked

upon it as Moses looked upon the promised land. Then the wail of a

nation proclaimed that he had gone from among us. Not thine the

sorrow, but ours, sainted soul. Thou hast, indeed, entered the

promised land, while we are yet on the march. To us remains the

rocking of the deep, the storm upon the land, days of duty and

nights of watching; but thou art sphered high above all darkness and

fear, beyond all sorrow and weariness. Rest, O weary heart! Rejoice

exceedingly, thou that hast enough suffered! Thou hast beheld him

who invisibly led thee in this great wilderness. Thou standest

among the elect. Around thee are the royal men that have ennobled

human life in every age. Kingly art thou, with glory on thy brow as

a diadem. And joy is upon thee for evermore. Over all this land,

over all the little cloud of years that now from thine infinite

horizon moves back as a speck, thou art lifted up as high as the

star is above the clouds that bide us, but never reach it. In the

goodly company of Mount Zion thou shalt find that rest which thou

hast sorrowing sought in vain; and thy name, an everlasting name in

heaven, shall flourish in fragrance and beauty as long as men shall

last upon the earth, or hearts remain, to revere truth, fidelity,

and goodness.

Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one hemisphere, as the

joy and the sorrow of the same week in this land. The joy was as

sudden as if no man had expected it, and as entrancing as if it had

fallen a sphere from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept

business from its moorings, and ran down through the land in

irresistible course. Men embraced each other in brotherhood that

were strangers in the flesh. They sang, or prayed, or, deeper yet,

many could only think thanksgiving and weep gladness. That peace was

sure; that government was firmer than ever; that the land was

cleansed of plague; that the ages were opening to our footsteps, and

we were to begin a march of blessings; that blood was staunched, and

scowling enmities were sinking like storms beneath the horizon; that

the dear fatherland, nothing lost, much gained, was to rise up in

unexampled honor among the nations of the earth--these thoughts,

and that undistinguishable throng of fancies, and hopes, and

desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul with tremblings like

the heated air of midsummer days--all these kindled up such a

surge of joy as no words may describe.

In one hour joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam or breath. A

sorrow came that swept through the land as huge storms sweep through

the forest and field, rolling thunder along the sky, disheveling the

flowers, daunting every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring

blackness and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did

ever so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such boundless

feelings? It was the uttermost of joy; it was the uttermost of

sorrow--noon and midnight, without a space between.

The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at first

it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men awakened

at midnight by an earthquake and bewildered to find everything that

they were accustomed to trust wavering and falling. The very earth

was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to

get straight to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping

after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to

tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask

the other, "Am I awake, or do I dream?" There was a piteous

helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common

griefs belonged to some one in chief; this belonged to all. It was

each and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as

if its firstborn were gone. Men were bereaved and walked for days as

if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else

to think of. They could speak of nothing but that; and yet of that

they could speak only falteringly. All business was laid

aside. Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week ceased

to roar. The great Leviathan lay down, and was still. Even avarice

stood still, and greed was strangely moved to generous sympathy and

universal sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found charitable

institutions, and write his name above their lintels; but no

monument will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime

sorrow that in a moment swept down lines and parties, and covered up

animosities, and in an hour brought a divided people into unity of

grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish. ...

This nation has dissolved--but in tears only. It stands

foursquare, more solid to-day than any pyramid in Egypt. This people

are neither wasted, nor daunted, nor disordered. Men hate slavery

and love liberty with stronger hate and love to-day than ever

before. The government is not weakened, it is made stronger. How

naturally and easily were the ranks closed! Another steps forward,

in the hour that the one fell, to take his place and his mantle; and

I avow my belief that he will be found a man true to every instinct

of liberty; true to the whole trust that is reposed in him; vigilant

of the Constitution; careful of the laws; wise for liberty, in that

he himself, through his life, has known what it was to suffer from

the stings of slavery, and to prize liberty from bitter personal

experiences.

Where could the head of government in any monarchy be smitten down

by the hand of an assassin, and the funds not quiver or fall

one-half of one per cent? After a long period of national

disturbance, after four years of drastic war, after tremendous

drafts on the resources of the country, in the height and top of our

burdens, the heart of this people is such that now, when the head of

government is stricken down, the public funds do not waver, but

stand as the granite ribs in our mountains.

Republican institutions have been vindicated in this experience as

they never were before; and the whole history of the last four

years, rounded up by this cruel stroke, seems, in the providence of

God, to have been clothed, now, with an illustration, with a

sympathy, with an aptness, and with a significance, such as we never

could have expected nor imagined. God, I think, has said, by the

voice of this event, to all nations of the earth, "Republican

liberty, based upon true Christianity, is firm as the foundation of

the globe."

Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been clothed with new

influence. Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly hear what before

they refused to listen to. Now his simple and weighty words will be

gathered like those of Washington, and your children and your

children's children shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and

deep wisdom of utterances which, in their time, passed, in party

heat, as idle words. Men will receive a new impulse of patriotism

for his sake and will guard with zeal the whole country which he

loved so well. I swear you, on the altar of his memory, to be more

faithful to the country for which he has perished. They will, as

they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against

which he warred, and which, in vanquishing him, has made him a

martyr and a conqueror. I swear you, by the memory of this martyr,

to hate slavery with an unappeasable hatred. They will admire and

imitate the firmness of this man, his inflexible conscience for the

right, and yet his gentleness, as tender as a woman's, his

moderation of spirit, which not all the heat of party could inflame,

nor all the jars and disturbances of his country shake out of

place. I swear you to an emulation of his justice, his moderation,

and his mercy.

You I can comfort; but how can I speak to that twilight million to

whom his name was as the name of an angel of God? There will be

wailing in places which no minister shall be able to reach. When,

in hovel and in cot, in wood and in wilderness, in the field

throughout the South, the dusky children, who looked upon him as

that Moses whom God sent before them to lead them out of the land of

bondage, learn that he has fallen, who shall comfort them? O, thou

Shepherd of Israel, that didst comfort thy people of old, to thy

care we commit the helpless, the long-wronged, and grieved.

And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when

alive. The nation rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities and

States are his pallbearers, and the cannon beats the hours with

solemn progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh. Is Washington

dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David dead? Is any man that ever was fit

to live dead? Disenthralled of flesh, and risen in the unobstructed

sphere where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable

work. His life now is grafted upon the infinite, and will be

fruitful as no earthly life can be. Pass on, thou that hast

overcome. Your sorrows, O people, are his peace. Your bells and

bands and muffled drums sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep

here; God made it echo joy and triumph there. Pass on.

Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man

and from among the people. We return him to you a mighty

conqueror. Not thine any more, but the nation's; not ours, but the

world's. Give him place, O ye prairies. In the midst of this great

continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who

shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and

patriotism. Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West,

chant his requiem. Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood, as so

many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty.