LETTER TO A COMMITTEE OF THE BOSTON MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION,
FEBRUARY 19, 1856.
WASHINGTON, February 19, 1856.
DEAR SIR,--I have been honored by your invitation to be with the
Mercantile Library Association on the 22d instant. You know well
the happiness I find in any coöperation with the young men of
that Association, and I need not assure you of the gratification
with which I should participate in any services calculated to
exalt the example of Washington.
Particularly at this moment should it be invoked, when the
Republic, which he helped to found, seems to shake with the
first throes of civil war, engendered by an interest which was
condemned by him during life and formally abjured by him at his
death. His great name should now be employed for the suppression
of that Slave Power which is the fruitful mother of so much
wretchedness. It will not be enough to quote his paternal words
for Union: his example must be arrayed against the gigantic wrong
which now disturbs this Union to its centre, and, in the madness
of its tyranny, destroys the very objects of Union.
The play of Othello without the part of Othello would be a barren
spectacle; and the example of Washington, without his testimony
against the malevolent force which disturbs the Republic, would
be hardly less barren. Let the young men of Boston be encouraged
to dwell on those sentiments and acts which, while they elevate
his name, apply with prevailing power to the existing state of
things among us. Let them bear in mind that he declared it to
be “_among his first wishes_ to see some plan adopted by which
Slavery in this country may be _abolished by law_,”--that, to
promote this purpose, he expressed a desire, in a recorded
interview with a distinguished foreigner, for the formation of
an Antislavery Society,--that on many occasions he condemned
Slavery,--that, in congratulations to Lafayette on his purchase
of a plantation with a view of emancipating the slaves on it,
he exclaimed, “Would to God a like spirit might diffuse itself
generally into the minds of the people of this country!”--and
that, finally, by his last will and testament, written within six
months of his death, he bore his practical testimony to those
ideas and aspirations, by the emancipation of his slaves. With
these things taken to heart, the example of Washington will exert
its just conservative influence over the country, holding it back
from the extension of that evil against which he set himself, and
arousing the general sentiment to repulse the aggressions which
now threaten civil war. Then, indeed, will the Father of his
Country have a new birth and influence.
Believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours,