WASHINGTON, July 14, 1862.
DEAR SIR,--I welcome and honor your patriotic efforts to arouse
the country to a generous, determined, irresistible unity in
support of the National Government; but the Senate is still in
session, and my post of duty is here. A Senator cannot leave his
post, more than a soldier.
But, absent or present, the cause in which the people are to
assemble has my God-speed, earnest, devoted, affectionate, and
from the heart. What I can do let me do. There is no work I will
not undertake, there is nothing I will not renounce, if so I may
serve my country.
There must be unity of hands, and of hearts too, that the
Republic may be elevated to the sublime idea of a true
commonwealth, which we are told “ought to be but as one huge
Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest
man, as big and compact in virtue as in body.”[103] Oh, Sir, if
my feeble voice could reach my fellow-countrymen, in workshops,
streets, fields, and wherever they meet together, if for one
moment I could take to my lips that silver trumpet with tones to
sound and reverberate throughout the land, I would summon all,
forgetting prejudice and turning away from error, to help unite,
quicken, and invigorate our common country--most beloved now that
it is most imperilled--to a compactness and bigness of virtue in
just proportion to its extended dominion, so that it should be as
one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an
honest man, instinct with all the concentration of unity. Thus
inspired, the gates of Hell cannot prevail against us.
To this end the cries of faction must be silenced, and the
wickedness of sedition, whether in print or public speech, must
be suppressed. These are the Northern allies of the Rebellion. An
aroused and indignant people, with iron heel, must tread them out
forever, as men tread out the serpent so that it can neither hiss
nor sting.
With such concord God will be pleased, and He will fight for us.
He will give quickness to our armies, so that the hosts of the
Rebellion will be broken and scattered as by the thunderbolt;
and He will give to our beneficent government that blessed
inspiration, better than newly raised levies, by which the
Rebellion shall be struck in its single vulnerable part, by which
that colossal abomination, its original mainspring and present
motive power, shall be overthrown, while the cause of the Union
is linked with that divine justice whose weapons are of celestial
temper.
God bless our country! and God bless all who now serve it with
singleness of heart!