_My Fellow Countrymen:_--Upon what manner of times have we fallen? Is
our supposed experiment of self-government about to prove a failure?
Are we so blind as not to see the abyss into which we are about to
plunge? Section hostile against section; States arrayed against the
Constitution; Churches sundered; the springs of intelligence poisoned
at their source; treason stalking at noonday; insurrection rife; the
equality of States and citizens denied, and derided; justice rebuked;
treachery applauded; traitors canonized; anarchy inaugurated; monarchy
calculating the end of republicanism; and the wheels of government
clogged by the minions of despotism! All this, my Countrymen, and you
passive, silent, sightless; reckless of your own and your children's
doom? And while all this is true, you go about your usual avocations,
as though the eyes of the civilized world were not upon you; as though
the great, the good, the magnanimous of all lands were not breathless,
and spell-bound, and appalled at the spectacle; as though the
prophetic admonitions of the Father of our Country were forgotten, and
nature, with an ominous silence, conspired to lull you into
forgetfulness, the more to astound you with the wonders and the woes
of an approaching catastrophe!
What fatal error is there in our Republican principle? What virus
sickens our body politic? What fascination lures us from the shrine of
freedom? What infatuation hath seized the American people, that they
should put to hazard this priceless inheritance,--the home, and
refuge, and hope, of the down-trodden nations?
I aver there is a fatal fallacy adopted by a large number of the
American people, which, if not rejected, will lead us down to national
oblivion. That fallacy is exposed in the following pages, by showing
what is right, and what is wrong, and explaining the fundamental error
by which our public opinion is divided, and the way of a reunion
pointed out. No one can desire to remain in error. It is the desire to
do right which animates the great mass of the American people. It was,
perhaps, the _desire_ to do right, that made John Brown a rebel and a
traitor, and which consigned him to a traitor's doom. There is no
safety, then, in _desiring_ to do right; but to KNOW what is right,
and to DO it. The time has now arrived when the American people must
do right, or suffer the penalty of doing wrong.
Good _intentions_ will not do. Good DEEDS are demanded,--actions
founded upon truth and justice, and in accordance with nature's
irrevocable laws. We boast of our greatness, and power, and
intelligence. Of what avail are all these, if they will not save us
from national ruin? What boots it that a slumbering giant dreams of
his strength while he is falling upon the bosom of a burning lake? The
mightiest empires have sunk to oblivion. Are we soon to follow them?
Our material greatness and vigor seem to forbid the idea of premature
decay; but let us not be blind to the delusive dream of an immortality
springing from mental imbecility, nor the chimera of a political
finality in governmental system which establishes and tolerates
INJUSTICE, nor the permanence of a State in the midst of
preponderating elements of fluctuating popular delusion.
Either the institutions under which we live are founded in truth, or
they are founded in error. Our constitution is the work of wisdom, or
of folly. It is founded in justice, or injustice; in RIGHT, or
_wrong_. Shall we honor the astuteness of its founders, and
perpetuate these institutions to remotest ages? or shall we prove
recreant to this trust, unworthy of these manifold blessings, and in
our mental blindness and moral imbecility invoke the scorn of future
ages, and the just execrations of all mankind?
The _material_ elements of greatness of the Great American Republic,
must be vivified and enlivened by a corresponding degree of INTELLECT;
they must be permeated by an adequate element of illuminating soul, or
they will fall, a lifeless mass, into chaotic ruin. Let us remember
"That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the labored mote away;
Whilst self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky."