ORATION, UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE YOUNG MEN’S REPUBLICAN UNION OF NEW
YORK, AT COOPER INSTITUTE, NOVEMBER 27, 1861. WITH APPENDIX.
_Cassius._ Some to the common pulpits, and cry out,
_Liberty, Freedom, and Enfranchisement!_
SHAKESPEARE, _Julius Cæsar_, Act III. Scene 1.
The natural strength of the country, in point of numbers,
appears to me to consist _much more in the blacks than in
the whites_. Could they be incorporated and employed for
its defence, it would afford you double security. That they
would make good soldiers I have not the least doubt; and I am
persuaded the State has it not in its power to give sufficient
reinforcements, without incorporating them, either to secure
the country, if the enemy mean to act vigorously upon an
offensive plan, or furnish a force sufficient to dispossess
them of Charleston, should it be defensive.--MAJOR-GENERAL
NATHANIEL GREENE, _Letter to Governor Rutledge of South
Carolina_. Life and Correspondence, by William Johnson, Vol.
II. p. 274.
* * * * *
The assemblage before which this oration was delivered was
remarkable in numbers and in character.[204] Long before
the hour for the meeting, the immense hall was crowded; and
notwithstanding the stormy evening, the proportion of ladies
present was larger than ever before seen in New York on such an
occasion.
Upon the platform were seated many distinguished citizens,
among whom may be named Hon. William Pennington, ex-Governor
of New Jersey and ex-Speaker of the House of Representatives,
Hon. Schuyler Colfax of Indiana, Hon. Lot M. Morrill of Maine,
Charles King, LL. D., President of Columbia College, Professor
Francis Lieber, David Dudley Field, Esq., William M. Evarts,
Esq., John Jay, Esq., Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, D. D., Rev. William
Hague, D. D., Rev. George B. Cheever, D. D., Rev. Theodore L.
Cuyler, Rev. Alfred Cookman, John H. Griscom, M. D., Hon. John
W. Edmonds, General Prosper M. Wetmore, Lewis Tappan, Esq.,
Rev. William Goodell, Hon. Charles A. Peabody, Rev. Roswell D.
Hitchcock, D. D., Rev. Henry M. Field, Hon. Thomas B. Stillman,
Hon. Benjamin F. Manierré, R. M. Blatchford, Esq., William
Pitt Palmer, Esq., D. A. Harsha, Esq., George P. Putnam, Esq.,
Elliot C. Cowdin, Esq., Hon. William B. Taylor, Postmaster of
New York, Hon. Rufus F. Andrews, Surveyor of the Port, Hon. H.
B. Stanton, Deputy Collector, Hon. Joseph Hoxie, Major A. A.
Selover, U. S. Army, Oliver Johnson, Esq.
Charles T. Rodgers, Esq., President of the “Union,” introduced
William Curtis Noyes, Esq., as presiding officer of the
meeting, and a list of Vice-Presidents and Secretaries was
unanimously adopted.
Mr. Noyes, upon taking the chair, delivered the following
address.
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--Thanking you, as I do, gratefully,
for the kindness which has called me to preside over this
meeting, let me remind you that within the modest chapel
which impresses with devotional emotions every visitor to
Mount Auburn, that most beautiful of American cemeteries,
stands a marble statue of one of the patriot leaders of the
American Revolution. Its simple dignity arrests attention
and commands admiration and respect. Stern resolve and
unflinching courage are depicted in lineament and attitude.
We see him voluntarily renouncing a high professional
office under the crown to take his place in the forum as
a private citizen, to oppose, without reward, the odious
violations of the liberties of the people by means of
Writs of Assistance. His exordium startles the prejudiced
judges:--
“‘Let the consequences be what they will, I am
determined to proceed. The only principles of public
conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to
sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even
life, to the sacred calls of country. These principles,
in private life, make the good citizen,--in public
life, the patriot and the hero.’
“Then, rising with the progress of his great theme, he
continues:--
“‘Every man in a state of Nature is an independent
sovereign, subject to no law but the law written upon
his heart and revealed to him by his Maker. His right
to his life, his liberty, and his property no created
being can rightfully contest; these rights are inherent
and inalienable.’
“We watch the effect of his indignant words. They convince
and awe, and yet the royal tribunal dare not decide. It
prevaricates and postpones; but the victory is won, the
odious measure is abandoned forever, and the orator’s
utterances have lighted up a flame which Independence alone
can ever quench.
“We go with him from this first theatre of triumph, through
many long years of toil and anxiety in shaping the measures
which led to the great conflict with the mother country,
to the General Court guided by his skill and political
sagacity, to the popular assembly alike aroused to
turbulence and hushed to repose by his burning eloquence.
We see him hurling defiance at the minions of power who
with secret malevolence assailed his reputation. We witness
their malignant hatred, and their deadly assault upon his
person, when alone and unarmed. We see him fall, covered
with wounds, and carried bleeding to his home.
“Thenceforward, to the actual opening of the Revolutionary
drama, and during its progress, this act of regal barbarism
obscured, but did not wholly extinguish, the light of the
great intellect which it sought to destroy; but all that
remained was a wreck, reminding only of the glories of the
past. The crime against the person added to its atrocity a
greater crime against the soul, dooming it to pursue its
earthly career in sadness and gloom. Conscious of being
only a monument of decay, well might the gradually expiring
patriot wish, that, when God, in his righteous Providence,
should call him from time into eternity, it might be by
a flash of lightning. We may rejoice that his prayer was
answered, and that, too noble to be permitted to die a
common death, in a manner equally affecting and sublime,
JAMES OTIS [_applause_] was removed to the mansions of
eternal felicity.
“It is the necessary result of barbarism, in all its
phases, to furnish historic parallels by reproducing itself
in viler forms. Not a century elapsed, and a similar
atrocity is enacted in the Senate Chamber of the United
States. The ruffians were actuated by as deadly a hate,
their malice was as foul and murderous, their defiance of
law was as manifest, their victim was also the friend and
advocate of universal freedom, and as much distinguished
and feared, and he also fell beneath the blows of
assassins in heart and conduct.
“But here the parallel ends. This outrage did not impair
the intellect which it sought to destroy; that survived the
trial, enlarged, strengthened, purified, to set forward in
a new and more glorious career in the cause of Freedom and
Humanity. Instead of the lightning’s flash to remove it to
heaven, a divine influence, equal in potency, has emanated
thence, inspiring it with a larger love of freedom, more
zeal in the cause of the oppressed, and a more earnest
conviction that human slavery produces only evil, and that
it should be forever eradicated. [_Enthusiastic applause._]
“Happy, then, for us, and for our country, has been the
suffering of these martyrs in the cause of Freedom. The
name of James Otis has descended to posterity on the
brightest pages of our history, associated with those of
Hancock, and Adams, and Jay, and Jefferson, and Henry, and
Rutledge, and there it will remain forever.
“The name of that other martyr in the cause of Truth and
Justice will find equal distinction, in future ages, on the
roll of philanthropists, with those of Howard and Clarkson
and Wilberforce, and others of that glorious company, ‘of
whom the world was not worthy.’
“But history has also its retributions. The infamous actors
in these tragedies passed away under the scorn and contempt
of mankind, their names only searched for and remembered
among the persecutors and slayers of their race. They who
countenanced and approved the last, by a fitting gradation,
became the betrayers and assassins of their country, and
two of these, the highest in station and basest in conduct,
are now awaiting the punishment due to their crimes in
a prison within the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument,
[_applause_,] which indignantly frowns upon them from base
to summit.
“In the reality of the present behold the promise of the
future, when all traitors like them shall meet a similar
doom. Still devoting himself to the cause of his country
and to the freedom of the oppressed, the advocate and
friend of all, of whatever rank or condition or color, the
scholar, the philanthropist, the martyr, the statesman
has come again among us, and it is with equal pride and
pleasure that I present to you the Hon. Charles Sumner, not
of Massachusetts, but of the United States of America, one
and indivisible.”
Mr. Sumner then came forward, and was received by the vast
audience with tumultuous applause, in which the ladies joined
with every manifestation of delight. The cheers, and waving of
hats and handkerchiefs, lasted several minutes.