Our rebellion is the most stupendous in history. It absorbs the
attention and affects the material interests of the world. The armies
engaged outnumber those of Napoleon. Death never had such a carnival,
and each day consumes millions of treasure. Great is the sacrifice, but
the cause is peerless and sublime. If God has placed us, as in 1776, in
the van of the great contest for the rights and liberties of man; if he
has again assigned us the post of danger and of suffering, it is that of
unfading glory and of imperishable renown. The question with us is that
of national unity and existence, and compromise is treason. To
acknowledge the doctrine of secession, to abdicate the power of
self-preservation, and permit the Union to be dissolved or
disintegrated, is ruin, disgrace, and suicide. We must fight it out to
the last. If necessity requires, we can live at home, and reverses or
intervention should only increase our efforts. If need be, all--_all_
who can bear arms, must take the field, and leave to those who can not,
the pursuits of industry. If we count not the cost of the struggle in
men or means, it is because the value of the Union can not be estimated.
If martyrs from every State, and from nearly every nation of
Christendom, have fallen in our defense, never, in humble faith, we
trust, has any blood, since that of Calvary, been shed in a cause more
holy.
Our armies, eventually, must triumph, but to restore, throughout the
revolted States, the supremacy of the Constitution, we must continue to
maintain the just distinction between the loyal and disloyal; the
deluded masses and the rebel leaders. We must also remember, that the
reign of terror has long been supreme in the South, and that thousands
have been forced into apparent support of the rebellion by threats, by
spoliation, by conscription, by the ruin of their homes, and the loss of
their means of subsistence.
With the exception of South-Carolina, whose normal condition for more
than thirty years before she struck down our flag at Sumter, was that of
incipient treason and revolt, no other State really desired to destroy
the Union. A secret association and active armed conspiracy, and an
organized system of falsehood and misrepresentation, drove the masses,
by sudden action, violence, and terror, into this rebellion; but a large
majority of the aggregate popular vote of the South was against
secession.
It was a Northern President, yielding to secession leaders, in
opposition to the patriots of the South, who, by the whole power of
Executive influence and patronage, attempted to force slavery into
Kansas, by the crime, heretofore without a name or an example, the
FORGERY OF A CONSTITUTION. This was the tolling of the first bell,
alarming to patriots, but the concerted signal for the grand movement of
the assassins, then conspiring the death of the Union. It was also a
Northern President who urged the Lecompton forgery upon Congress, thus
mainly contributing to the downfall of the Union; yet, when the vote was
taken in the fall of 1860, a majority of the popular suffrage of the
South was given to those candidates for the Presidency who had denounced
and opposed this measure, over the candidate, (now in the traitor army,)
who gave it his support. Thus, on this, as on every other occasion,
where the people of the South have not been overborne by violence and
terror, they have rejected at the polls the action of the secession
leaders.
But the disaster was precipitated, when the same President, rejecting
the advice of the patriot Scott, refused to reinforce our forts, when
menaced or beleaguered by traitors, and announced, in his messages, to
our country and all the world, the secession heresy, fatal to all
government, that we had no right to repel force by force, on the part of
a State seeking, by armed secession, to destroy the Union. The absurd
political paradox was then announced by the President, that a State has
no right to secede, but that the Government has no right to prevent its
secession. It was this wretched dogma, that paralyzed our energies when
they were most needed, gave immunity to treason, and invited rebellion,
rendered our stocks unsalable, and induced thousands, at home and
abroad, to believe that the Federal Government was a phantom, which
existed only in name.
If Andrew Jackson had then been President, the rebellion would have been
crushed by him in embryo, as it was in 1833, without expenditure of
blood or treasure.
Surely, it is some palliation of the course of the deluded masses of the
South, that they heard such pernicious counsels, and from such a source.
If, as our army advances, there has not been an open, general return of
the masses to the Union, we must recollect, that when we did occupy
parts of the South, and then withdrew, how soon the resurging tide of
the rebellion swept over the devoted region, what scenes of horror and
desolation ensued, how the homes of those who had welcomed our flag were
given to the flames, whilst death was the portion of others. But let us
crush out the very embers of this rebellion, cherish the devoted
patriots of the South, drive out to other lands the rebel leaders, give
to the ruined and deluded masses ample assurance of permanent
protection, and they will resume their allegiance to the Union.
As a final result, we should not desire to hold the Southern States as
provinces, for that would fatally exasperate, and tend to perpetuate the
contest, increase our expenses, destroy our wealth and revenue, render
our taxes intolerable, and endanger our free institutions. When the
rebellion is crushed, we should seek a real pacification, the close of
the war and its expenses, a cordial restoration of the Union, and return
of that fraternal feeling, which marked the first half century of our
wonderful progress. To insure these great results, the policy of the
Government must be _firm_, _clear_, _unwavering_, and marked by
discriminating justice and perfect candor. The country is in imminent
peril, and nothing but the truth will avail us. _The North and South
must understand each other._ The South must know that we realize the
evident truth, that slavery caused the rebellion. Efforts were made on
other questions to shake the Union, but all had proved impotent in the
past, as they must in the future, until we were divided by slavery, the
only issue which could produce a great rebellion. Nor will angry
denunciations of the discordant elements of slavery and abolition now
save us, for still the fact recurs, that without slavery there would
have been no abolition, and, consequently, no secession. Slavery,
therefore, was the cause, the _causa causans_, and whilst we should use
all wise and _constitutional_ means to secure its gradual disappearance,
yet we should act justly, remembering how, when, and under what flag
slavery was forced upon the protesting and opposing South, then feeble
colonies of England. And yet, for nearly thirty years past, England has
constantly agitated this question here, with a view to dissolve our
Union, and has thus been mainly instrumental in sowing here the seeds of
discord, which fructified in the rebellion.
And then, when the tide of battle seemed adverse, England, giving her
whole moral aid to the rebellion, demanded from us restitution and
apology in the case of the Trent, for an act, which had received the
repeated sanction of her own example. Her press then teemed with
atrocious falsehoods, insulting threats, and exulting annunciations of
our downfall. Her imperious _ultimatum_, excluding arbitrament, was
accompanied by fleets and armies, her cannon thundered on our coast, and
she became the moral ally of that very slavery which she had forced
upon the South, but which, for nearly thirty years past, she made the
theme of fierce denunciation of our country, and constant agitation
here, with one ever-present purpose, _the destruction of this Union_.
And now let not England suppose, that there is an American, who does not
feel the insult and understand the motive. England beheld, in our
wonderful progress, the ocean's scepter slipping from her grasp, our
grain and cotton almost feeding and clothing the world, our augmenting
skill and capital, our inventive genius, and ever-improving machinery,
our educated, intelligent, untaxed labor, the marvelous increase of our
revenue, tonnage, and manufactures, and our stupendous internal
communications, natural and artificial, by land and water. The last
census exhibited to her, our numbers increasing in a ratio, making the
mere _addition_, in the next twenty-five years, equal to her whole
population, and our wealth augmenting in a far greater proportion. She
saw our mines and mountains of coal and iron, (her own great element of
progress,) exceed hers nearly twenty times, our hydraulic power,
incalculably greater than that of Great Britain; a single American
river, with its tributaries, long enough to encircle the globe, and that
England might be anchored as an island in our inland seas. She witnessed
Connecticut, smaller than many English counties, and with but one sixth
the population of some of them, appropriating more money for education
in that State, than the British Parliament for the whole realm; that we
had more heads at work among our laboring classes than all Europe, and
she realized the great truth, that knowledge is power, reposing on
common schools for the whole people. She measured our continental area,
laved by two oceans, as also by the lakes and the gulf, with a more
genial sun, and a soil far more fertile and productive than that of
England, and nearly thirty times greater in extent. She saw us raise
within the loyal States a _volunteer_ army of three fourths of a
million, without a conscript, the largest, and far the most intelligent
and effective force in the world, and millions more ready, whenever
called, to rush to the defense of the Union, whilst a great and gallant
navy rose, as if by enchantment, from the ocean. She marked the rapid
transfer of the command of the commerce of the world from London to
New-York. She observed the transcendent success of our free
institutions, and with that 'fear of change, perplexing monarchs,' she
dreaded the moral influence of our republican system. But why should any
friend of his country, or of mankind, object to this, if it promoted the
welfare of the people? We reject all force or intervention. Our only
influence is that of our example. If our system was a failure, the
institutions of England were not endangered, but strengthened by such a
result. It was their success only that made them dangerous, not to the
people of England, but to dynastic ambition, to aristocratic rule, and
to selfish interests. To insure our permanent division, was to destroy
us. Hence, she encouraged the South, acknowledged her as a belligerent,
welcomed the rebel flag and war vessels into her ports, protected them
there, enabled them to elude our cruisers, and prepared to aid and
sustain slavery. For a time, with the exception of Cobden and Bright, we
seemed to have had scarcely an influential friend in England. Her masses
favored us, but five sixths of them are excluded from the polls by
restricted suffrage. For a time, King Cotton never had more loyal
subjects, than those who then controlled the press and government of
England. Our Union was to be severed, the Southern confederacy
acknowledged, the blockade broken, free trade between the South and
England established, cotton given her, and refused us; we were to be
forever cut off from the gulf and the lower Mississippi; Portland (the
star of the East) was to become a British city, and Maine, always loyal
and patriotic, was to be wrested from us, and reannexed to the British
crown. It was the carnival of despots, exulting over our anticipated
ruin, in our death-struggle in the great cause of human liberty and
human progress.
And yet it was England that forced slavery upon the South against its
earnest protest, and colonial acts vetoed by the British crown. Then,
during our colonial weakness and dependence, the kings, and queens, and
parliaments of England, not only legalized and encouraged the African
slave-trade, but gave charters and monopolies for the wretched traffic.
Then the lords and noble ladies, the blood royal, the merchant-princes,
and even the mitred prelates of England, engaged most extensively in
this accursed commerce, and thousands of the rich and noble of England
enjoy now, by inheritance, fortunes thus accumulated. British vessels,
sailing from British ports, openly displayed there upon their decks the
shackles that were to bind the victims, thousands of whom, in the
horrors of the middle passage, found unshrouded in an ocean grave, a
happy escape from sufferings and misery indescribable. It was to these,
our then infant, feeble, and dependent, but protesting colonies of the
South, most of these slaves were forced by British avarice, and royal
vetoes on colonial acts of the South prohibiting the traffic. Most
justly then did Mr. Jefferson, in the original of our Declaration of
Independence, announce the terrible truth as follows:
'He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most
sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who
never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in
another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation
thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobium of INFIDEL powers, is the
warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open
a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his
negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or
restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors
might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very
people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which
he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded
them, thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of
one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES
of another.'
The flag of England was then the flag of slavery, and not of slavery
only, but of the African slave-trade; and wherever slavery now exists,
England may look upon it and say, This is the work of my hands--mine was
the price of blood, and mine all the anguish and despair of centuries of
bondage.
This war, then, is mainly the work of England. She forced slavery here,
and then commenced and inflamed here the anti-slavery agitation,
assailing the Constitution and the Union, arresting the progress of
manumission in the Border States, and finally culminating in the
rebellion. Here, then, in the South are slavery and rebellion, branches
of that Upas tree, whose seeds were planted in our soil by England.
England, then, should never have reproached us with slavery. The work
was hers, and hers may yet be the dread retribution of avenging justice.
Had the contest she provoked in the Trent affair then happened, the
result might have been very different from her expectations. Instead of
a ruined country, and divided Union, and God save the King played under
the cross of St. George in Boston, New-York, and Philadelphia, she might
have heard the music of Yankee Doodle, Hail Columbia, and the
Star-Spangled Banner on the heights of Quebec, reëchoed in fraternal
chorus over the Union intended by God, under one government, of the
valley of the lakes and the St. Lawrence. Looking nearer home, she might
have beheld that banner, whose stars she would have extinguished in
blood, floating triumphantly, in union with the Shamrock, over that
glorious Emerald Isle, whose generous heart beats with love of the
American Union, and whose blood, now as ever heretofore, is poured out
in copious libations in its defense. Indeed, but for the forbearance of
our Government, and the judgment and good sense of Lord Lyons, the
conflict was inevitable.
The hope was expressed by me in England that 'those glorious isles would
become the breakwater of liberty, against which the surges of European
despotism would dash in vain.' This was her true policy, justice to
Ireland, successive reforms in her system, a further wise extension of
the suffrage, with the vote by ballot, a cordial moral alliance with her
kindred race in America, and a full participation, mutually beneficial,
in our ever enlarging commerce. But her oligarchy has chosen coalition
with the South and slavery, and war upon our Union and the republican
principle. _Divide and conquer_ is their motto, SUICIDE will be their
epitaph.
England is now playing her part in the fourth act of the drama of
slavery. During the first act, for more than a century, she was actively
engaged in the African slave-trade, and in forcing the victims, as
slaves, upon the colonies, against their protest.
With the close of the first act came the American Revolution, when, in
the truthful language of Mr. Jefferson, before quoted, England 'excited
the slaves to rise in arms among us, and to purchase the liberty of
which she had deprived them, by murdering the people on whom she had
obtruded them.'
The third act, from 1834 to 1861, presented England engaged in fierce
denunciations of American slavery. The British pulpit, press, and
hustings, her universities, literature, courts, bar, statesmen, and
orators, were all devoted to assaults on American slavery, and upon our
Constitution, for tolerating the system, even for a moment. Her
Parliament most graciously favored us with one of its own members, to
denounce in the _North_, the slavery of the _South_, inflaming sectional
passions and hatred, with the fixed purpose of dissolving the Union. As
all the slaves whom England had sent to Boston, had been manumitted in
1780, and there was no slavery there, the object was, not to abolish
slavery, or the mission would have been to the South, where the
institution and the power over it existed, but the movement was made in
the North, not to destroy slavery, but to dissolve the Union. England
having failed to accomplish our overthrow in the two great wars of 1776
and 1812, she commenced the third war upon us, not from the mouths of
her cannon, but in zealous efforts, continued now for more than a fourth
of a century, to divide the Union, by the agitation of this question. We
are indebted to England for the curse of slavery, and then for the
slavery agitation. In this she has been but too successful North and
South; but if slavery should perish in the conflict, she will mourn the
result, because it removes our only dangerous element of discord.
And now the curtain has risen on the fourth act, and England, as always
heretofore, is the chief actor. And where now is the great anti-slavery
agitator? Why, England has reversed her position, and suddenly
discovered the surpassing beauty and perfection of secession and
slavery. Secession, an anarchical absurdity, destructive of all law, and
all government, she kindly adopts as the true theory of our system. This
heresy was discarded by Washington, Madison, Hamilton, and all the
illustrious founders of the Constitution. It was exposed, in all its
deformity, by Jackson, Clay, and Webster, in 1833, when it was rejected
by _every State_, except South-Carolina. But England repudiates the
doctrine at home, and abroad also, except for our country. Substituting
her wishes for the fact, she declares we are not a nation, and that any
State has a legal and moral right to secede and dissolve the Union.
Deplorable would have been the folly of such a system, and well then
might England have exulted over the failure of republics. Nothing but
her intense desire for this failure could have induced England to adopt
this absurd doctrine. The whole world perceives the motive for so false
a pretense, and history will expose and denounce it.
And now, as to slavery, let us compare the England of 1834 and 1860, and
all the intermediate period, with the England of 1861 and 1862. What a
revolution? Where now are her daily denunciations of slavery? Where now
is Exeter Hall, so lately teeming with anti slavery harangues, but now
cheering the slavery rebellion? Where are the abolition lords and ladies
of England; where the reverend clergy; where the public press, and
Parliament? Has England been struck dumb in a moment, that she can no
longer denounce a system which, up to the hour of pro-slavery secession,
she had, from day to day, during more than a fourth of a century,
declared to combine all the crimes of the decalogue? Where now are the
compliments that were lavished upon _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and its gifted
writer? Where are the notices in England, of our recent great
anti-slavery work, _Among the Pines_, by the celebrated Edmund Kirke,
'who awoke one morning and found himself famous'? The book is read and
circulated here by thousands, but none will notice or take it now in
England.
But England is not silent. Her press, her statesmen, and even members of
her cabinet, declare that the rebellion has dissolved our Union, and
destroyed our Government. They say we can never conquer the rebellion;
that we should abandon the contest, acknowledge the South as an
independent power, give it all the Gulf, two thirds of the Atlantic, all
the Chesapeake, half the Ohio, all the lower Mississippi and its mouth,
cut our territory into two parts, acknowledge the right of secession,
and the absolute dissolution of the Union. Such is the assurance of
rightful and certain success by which England encourages the rebels,
while _surrender_, is the advice she gratuitously urges upon us, from
day to day. But England is not the only false prophet whose predictions
were based only on her wishes. Indeed, many of her presses and statesmen
openly avow their belief and desire that the Union should be overthrown.
Our area, they say, is too large, although all compact and connected by
the greatest arterial river-system of the globe. But England is not
large enough, and new possessions are constantly added by the sword,
although her territory is double our own, and scattered over all the
continents, and many of the isles of the world. If, before or shortly
after this struggle began, England had spoken a word of friendship and
sympathy for us--if she had but repeated her former denunciations of
slavery, and given us the moral weight of her opinion--the rebellion
would have been crushed long since. If--claiming to be our mother--she
had only, in this crisis, acted as such, in her hour of need a kindred
race would have rallied to her rescue. But now, so long as this wicked
oligarchy rules her destiny never--never! It was England forced slavery
upon us. It was England fastened upon our feeble, youthful limbs, this
poisoned shirt of Nessus, and then, when we were tearing it from us,
even though the vitals and the life-blood might follow, England exulted
in what she believed to be our dying agonies.
This is no fancy sketch, but a dread reality. It has filled our cup with
sorrow; it is mingled with every tear that falls upon the dying
patriot's couch; it is wafted with every agonizing sigh that follows the
departed spirit; it is felt in every house of mourning, and is seared,
in letters of fire and blood, upon the memory of every American.
But England now says that Slavery was not the cause of the war. Yet it
was so avowed in every secession ordinance, and in the confederate
constitution. None but a slave State revolted; none but a slave State
can be admitted into the rebel confederacy; and slavery is extended by
their constitution over all existing or after-acquired territory. If
England should ever form a part of slavedom, slavery would be extended
there, and slaves could be bought and sold in London. Other revolts have
been against tyranny, but this is a rebellion of slavery against
freedom, of the few against the many, of the bayonet against the ballot,
of capital invested in man as a chattel, against free labor and free
men. The tariff was scarcely referred to in the contest at the South.
The tariff then existing was a free-trade measure, prepared by the
leaders of this rebellion, and passed in 1856, by the aid of their
votes. That tariff was twenty per cent lower than the revenue act of
1846. The tariff of 1846 was proposed in the Treasury Report of
December, 1845, which report was quoted by Sir Robert Peel in his speech
of January, 1846, and made the basis of his motion to repeal the corn
laws. But the free-trade bill of 1856 (duties on exports being
prohibited) was _the law of the land_ when the Cotton States seceded in
December, 1860, and January and February, 1861, and inaugurated the
rebel government. It was not until _after_ all this, that this measure
was repealed, in March, 1861. This repeal could never have occurred but
for the prior withdrawal of the Cotton States from Congress. The great
agricultural and exporting North-west was opposed to high tariffs; so
also was New-York, the great mart of foreign commerce. The South has
always been greatly divided on this question, and, since the act of
1846, the aggregate popular vote of the North has always been nearly
double that of the South against high tariffs. The author of the tariff
of 1846, is now, as always heretofore, devoting all his energies to the
support of the Union. So is the distinguished Republican Senator from
Pennsylvania, the author of the celebrated anti-slavery Wilmot Proviso,
who, with many other Republican Senators and members supported the
tariff of 1846. So is the eminent ex-Vice-President, (who gave the
celebrated casting vote for the tariff of 1846,) supporting the Union.
But it is enough that a majority of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet supported the
tariff of 1846. No, the tariff had nothing to do with the rebellion. It
was slavery alone that produced the revolt. There are, however,
thousands who favored the act of 1846, and even of 1856, desiring
enlarged trade between _friendly_ nations, who regard England now, as
the enemy of our Union, the champion of secession, and the friend of
this infernal pro-slavery rebellion.
I have stated that the South must know what course we intend to pursue
in regard to slavery. But not only the South, but our friends and
enemies, and _all the world_ must also know, that the AMERICAN UNION
SHALL NEVER BE DISMEMBERED. It is the great citadel of self-government,
intrusted to our charge by Providence, and we will defend it against all
assailants until our last man has fallen. The lakes can never be
separated from the Gulf, nor the Eastern from the Western Ocean. As the
sun high advanced in the heavens illumes our flag on the Atlantic, its
first morning beams shall salute our kindred banner-stars on the shores
of the Pacific, the present western limit of this great republic.
Already the telegraphic lightning flashes intelligence from ocean to
ocean, and soon the iron horse, starting from the Atlantic on his
continental tour, shall announce his own advent on the shores of the
Pacific, The lakes of the North are united by railroads and canals with
the Atlantic, the Gulf, the Ohio, and Mississippi, and our iron gunboats,
bearing aloft in war and in peace the emblems of our country's glory,
are soon to perform their great circuit from the Albemarle, the Potomac,
the Chesapeake, the Susquehanna, the Delaware, and the Hudson, to the
Lakes and the Mississippi. Above all, the valley of the Mississippi was
ordained by God as the residence of a united people. Over every acre of
its soil must forever float the banner of the Union, and all its waters,
as they roll on together to the Gulf, proclaim that what 'God has joined
together, man shall never put asunder.' The nation's life-blood courses
this vast arterial system, and to sever it is death. No line of latitude
or longitude shall ever separate the mouth from the centre or sources
of the Mississippi. All the waters of the imperial river, from their
mountain springs and crystal fountains, shall ever flow in commingling
currents to the Gulf, uniting evermore in one undivided whole, the
blessed homes of a free and happy people. The Ohio and Missouri, the Red
River and the Arkansas, shall never be dissevered from the Mississippi.
Pittsburgh and Louisville, Cincinnati and St. Louis, shall never be
separated from New-Orleans, or mark the capitals of disunited and
discordant States. That glorious free-trade between all the States (the
great cause of our marvelous progress) shall in time, notwithstanding
the present suicidal folly of England, go on in its circuit among
accordant peoples throughout the globe, the precursor of that era of
universal and unrestricted commerce, whose sceptre is peace, and whose
reign the fusion and fraternity of nations, as foretold by the holy
prophets in the Scriptures of truth.
This great valley, one mighty plain, without an intervening mountain,
contains, west of the Mississippi, seven States and Territories of an
area sufficient for thirteen more of the size of New-York. East of the
Mississippi, it embraces all the remaining States except New-England,
New-Jersey, Delaware, South-Carolina, and Florida. New-York is connected
with the great valley by the Alleghany River; and Maryland by the
Castleman's River and the Youghiogany, and Alabama, North-Carolina, and
Georgia, by the Tennessee and its tributaries. Nearly one half the area
of Pennsylvania and Virginia is within its limits. Michigan is united
with it by the Wisconsin River, and Texas by the Red River; whilst Ohio,
Indiana, and Kentucky, Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee, and Mississippi,
Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Louisiana, and Arkansas own almost
exclusively its sway.
And who will dare erect the feeble barriers designed to seclude the
great valley and its products from either ocean, the Lakes, or the Gulf,
or persuade her to hold these essential rights and interests by the
wretched tenure of the will of any seceding State? No line but one of
blood, of military despotisms, and perpetual war, can ever separate this
great valley. The idea is sacrilege. It is the raving of a maniac.
Separation is death. Disunion is suicide. If the South presents the
issue that the Union or slavery must perish, the result is not doubtful.
Slavery will die. It will meet a traitor's doom, wherever it selects a
traitor's position. The Union will still live. It is written on the
scroll of destiny, by the finger of God, that 'neither principalities
nor powers' shall effect its overthrow, nor shall 'the gates of hell
prevail against it.'
Nor will we ever surrender the grave of Washington. There, upon the
Potomac, on whose banks he was born and died, the flag of the Union must
float over his sacred sepulchre, until the dead shall be summoned from
their graves by the trump of the resurrection.
The Fourth of July, 1776, when our name was first inscribed upon the
roll of nations, shall be forever commemorated under one flag, and as
the birthday of one undivided Union. The memorable declaration of
American Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution
of the United States, all subscribed upon that consecrated ground at
Independence Hall, Philadelphia, shall ever mark the noble commonwealth
of Pennsylvania as the keystone of the arch of a perpetual and unbroken
Union.
Nor shall any but the same banner be unfolded over the graves of the
patriots and statesmen of the Revolution, or the battle-fields of the
mighty conflict.
And around the graves of Washington and Jackson, and in memory of their
solemn farewell appeals in favor of the Union, how could Virginia or
Tennessee ever have been disloyal? No, they were not disloyal, but were
torn, by rebel fraud and violence, from that banner round which they
will again rejoice to rally.
We must not despair of the Republic. All is not lost. The Union yet
lives. Its restoration approaches. The calm will soon follow the storm.
The golden sunlight and the silver edging of the azure clouds will be
seen again in the horizon. The bow of promise will appear in the
heavens, to mark the retiring of the bitter waters, proclaiming from on
high, that now, henceforth, and forever, no second secession deluge
shall ever disturb the onward, united, and peaceful march of the
Republic.