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^onalsecularsociety
ABRAHAM
LINCOLN
AN ORATION
BY
COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL.
Price Threepence.
LONDON:
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.O.
1893.
�LONDON .*
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. FOOTE,
AT 14 CLERKENWELL GREEN, E.C.
�N) 3
4
ORATION ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
EiGHTY-FOUR years ago to-day, two babes were born—
one in the woods of Kentucky, amid the hardships and
poverty of pioneers ; one in England, surrounded by
wealth and culture. One was educated in the University
of N ature, the other at Oxford.
One associated his name with the enfranchisement
of labor, with the emancipation of millions, with the
salvation of the Republic. He is known to us as
Abraham Lincoln.
The other broke the chains of superstition and filled
the world with intellectual light, and he is known as
Charles Darwin.
Because of these two men the nineteenth century is
illustrious.
A few men and women make a nation glorious—
Shakespeare made England immortal ; Voltaire civilised
and humanised France ; Goethe, Schiller, apd Hum
boldt lifted Germany into the light ; Angelo, Raphael,
Galileo, and Bruno crowned with fadeless laurel the
Italian brow ; and now the most precious treasure of
the Great Republic is the memory of Abraham Lincoln.
Every generation has its heroes, its iconoclasts, its
pioneers, its ideals. The people always have been and
still are divided, at least into two classes—the many,
who with their backs to the sunrise worship the past ;
and the few, who keep their faces towards the dawn—
the many, who are satisfied with the world as it is ;
the Jew, who labor and suffer for the future, for those
�( 4 )
to be, and who seek to rescue the oppressed, to destroy
the cruel distinctions of caste, and to civilise mankind.
Yet it sometimes happens that the liberator of one
age becomes the oppressor of the next. His reputation
becomes so great, he is so revered and worshipped»
that his followers, in his name, attack the hero who
endeavors to take another step in advance.
The heroes of the Revolution, forgetting the justice
for which they fought, put chains upon the limbs of
others, and in their names the lovers of liberty were
denounced as ingrates and traitors.
In our country there were for many years two great
political parties, and each of these parties had con
servatives and extremists. The extremists of the
Democratic party were in the rear and wished to go
back; the extremists of the Republican were in the
front and wished to go forward. The extreme Democrat
was willing to destroy the Union for the sake of
slavery, and the extreme Republican was willing to
destroy the Union for the sake of liberty.
Neither party could succeed without the votes of its
extremists.
This was the political situation in 1860.
The extreme Democrats would not vote for Douglas,
but the extreme Republicans did vote for Lincoln.
Lincoln occupied the middle ground, and was the
compromise candidate of his own party. He had
lived for many years in the intellectual territory of
compromise—in a part of our country settled by
Northern and Southern men—where Northern and
Southern ideas met, and the ideas of the two sections
were brought together and compared.
The sympathies of Lincoln, his ties of kindred, were
with the South. His convictions, his sense of justice,
and his ideals, were with the North. He knew the
horrors of slavery, and he felt the unspeakable
�(5 )
ecstacies and glories of freedom. He had the kind
ness, the gentleness, of true greatness, and he could not
have been a master; he had the manhood and
independence of true greatness, and he could not have
been a slave. He was just, and incapable of putting a
burden upon others that he himself would not
willingly bear.
He was merciful and profound, and it was not
necessary for him to read the history of the world to
know that liberty and slavery could not live in the
same nation, or in the same brain. Lincoln was a
statesman. And there is this difference between a
politician and a statesman. A politician schemes and
works in every way to make the people do something
for him. The statesman wishes to do something for
the people. With him place and power are means to
an end, and the end is the good of his country.
The Republic had reached a crisis.
The conflict between liberty and slavery could no
longer be delayed. For three-quarters of a century
the forces had been gathering for the battle.
After the Revolution, principle was sacrificed for the
sake of gain. The Constitution contradicted the
Declaration. Liberty as a principle was held in
contempt. Slavery took possession of the Government.
Slavery made the laws, corrupted courts, dominated
presidents and demoralised the people.
In 1840, when Harrison and Van Buren were candi
dates for the Presidency, the Whigs of Indiana issued
a circular giving reasons for the election of Harrison
and the defeat of Van Buren. The people of Indiana
were advised to vote against Van Buren because he,
when a member of the New York Legislature, had
voted to enfranchise colored men who had property to
the extent of two hundred and fifty dollars. This was
the crime of Van Buren.
�( 6)
The reason why the people should support Harrison
was that he had signed eleven petitions to make
Indiana a slave State.
Mr. Douglas voiced the feeling of the majority when
he declared that he did not care whether slavery was
voted up or down.
From the heights of philosophy—standing above the
contending hosts, above the prejudices, the senti
mentalities of the day—Lincoln was great enough and
brave enough and wise enough to utter these prophetic
words : “A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this Government cannot permanently endure
half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union
to be dissolved ; I do not expect the house to fall; but
I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become
all the one thing or the other. Either the opponents
of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and
place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief
that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its
advocates will push it further until it becomes alike
lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as
well as South.”
This declaration was the standard around which
gathered the grandest political party the world has
ever seen, and this declaration made Lincoln the leader
of that vast host.
In this, the first great crisis, Lincoln uttered the
victorious truth that made him the foremost man in
the Republic.
The people decided at the polls that a house divided
against itself could not stand, and that slavery had
cursed soul and soil enough.
It is not a common thing to elect a really great man
to fill the highest official position. I do not say that
the great presidents have been chosen by accident.
�( 7 )
Probably it would be better to say that they were the
favorites of a happy chance.
The average man is afraid of genius. He feels as
an awkward man feels in the presence of a sleight-ofhand performer. He admires and suspects. Genius
appears to carry too much sail—lacks prudence,
has too much courage. The ballast of dullness inspires
confidence.
By a happy chance Lincoln was nominated and
elected in spite of his fitness—and the patient, gentle,
and just and loving man was called upon to bear as
great a burden as man has ever borne.
II.
Then came another crisis—the crisis of Secession,
and Civil War.
Again Lincoln spoke the deepest feeling and the
highest thought of the Nation. In his first message
he said : “ The central idea of secession is the essence
of anarchy.”
He also showed conclusively that the North and
South, in spite of secession, must remain face to face
—that physically they could not separate—that they
must have more or less commerce, and that this com
merce must be carried on, either between the two
sections as friends, or as aliens.
This situation and its consequences he pointed out
to absolute perfection in these words : “ Can aliens
make treaties easier than friends can make laws ? Can
treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens
than laws among other friends ?”
After having stated fully and fairly the philosophy
of the conflict, after having said enough to satisfy any
calm and thoughtful mind, he addressed himself to the
hearts of America. Probably there are few finer
passages in literature than the close of Lincoln’s
inaugural address : “ I am loth to close. We are not
�(«)
enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.
Though passion may have strained, it must not break,
our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory
stretching from every battle-field and patriotic grave
to every loving heart and hearthstone all over this
broad land, will swell the chorus of the Union when
again touched, as surely they will be, by the better
angels of our nature.”
These noble, these touching, these pathetic words,
were delivered in the presence of rebellion, in the
midst of spies and conspirators—surrounded by but
few friends, most of whom were unknown, and some
of whom were wavering in their fidelity—at a time
when secession was arrogant and organised, when
patriotism was silent, and when, to quote the expres
sive words of Lincoln himself, “ Sinners were calling
the righteous to repentance.”
When Lincoln became President, he was held in
contempt by the South—underrated by the North and
East—not appreciated even by his cabinet—and yet he
was not only one of the wisest, but one of the shrewdest
of mankind. Knowing that he had the right to enforce
the laws of the United States and Territories—knowing,
as he did, that the secessionists were in the wrong, he
also knew that they had sympathisers not only in the
North but in other lands.
Consequently he felt that it was of the utmost
importance that the South should fire the first shot,
should do some act that would solidify the North and
gain for us the justification of the civilised world. He
so managed affairs that while he was attempting simply
to give food to our soldiers, the South commenced hos
tilities and fired on Sumter.
This course was pursued by Lincoln in spite of the
advice of many friends, and yet a wiser thing was
never done.
�( 9 )
At that time Lincoln appreciated the scope and con
sequences of the impending conflict. Above all other
thoughts in his mind was this : “ This conflict will
settle the question, at least for centuries to come,
whether man is capable of governing himself, and con
sequently is of greater importance to the free than to
the enslaved.’*
He knew what depended on the issue and he said :
“ We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best
hope of earth.”
III.
Then came a crisis in the North.
It became clearer and clearer to Lincoln’s mind, day
by day, that the rebellion was slavery, and that it was
necessary to keep the border States on the side of the
Union. For this purpose he proposed a scheme of
emancipation and colonisation—a scheme by which the
owners of slaves should be paid the full value of what
they called their “ property.” He called attention to
the fact that he had adhered to the Act of Congress to
confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes
—that the Union must be preserved, and that, there
fore, all indispensable means must be employed to
that end.
If, in war, a nation has the right to take the property
of its citizens—of its friends—certainly it has the
right to take the property of those it has the right to
kill.
He knew that if the border States agreed to gradual
emancipation, and received compensation for their
slaves, they would be for ever lost to the Confederacy,
whether secession succeeded or not. It was objected
at the time, by some, that the scheme was far too
expensive ; but Lincoln, wiser than his advisers—far
wiser than his enemies—demonstrated that from an
economical point of view, his course was best.
�( 10 )
He proposed that 400 dols. be paid for slaves,
including men, women, and children. This was a
large price, and yet he showed how much cheaper it
was to purchase than to carry on the war.
At that time, at the price mentioned, there were
about 750,000 dols. worth of slaves in Delaware. The
cost of carrying on the war was at least two millions
of dollars a day, and for one-third of one day’s expenses
all the slaves in Delaware could be purchased. He
also showed that all the slaves in Delaware, Kentucky,
and Missouri could be bought at the same price for
less than the expense of carrying on the war for eighty
seven days.
This was the wisest thing that could have been pro
posed, and yet such was the madness of the South,
such the indignation of the North, that the advice was
unheeded.
Again, in July, 1862, he urged on the Representa
tives of the border States a scheme of gradual com
pensated emancipation ; but the Representatives were
too deaf to hear, too blind to see.
Lincoln always hated slavery, and yet he felt the
obligations and duties of his position. In his first
message he assured the South that the laws, including
the most odious of all—the law for the return of
fugitive slaves—would be enforced. The South would
not hear. Afterwards he proposed to purchase the
slaves of the border States ; but the proposition was
hardly discussed, hardly heard. Events came thick
and fast; theories gave way to facts, and everything
was left to force.
The extreme Democrat of the North was fearful that
slavery might be destroyed, that the Constitution
might be broken, and that Lincoln, after all, could not
be trusted; and at the same time the radical Repub-
�(11)
lican feared that Lincoln loved the Union more than
he did liberty.
The fact is that he tried to discharge the obligations
of his great office, knowing from the first that slavery
must perish. The course pursued by Lincoln was so
gentle, so kind and persistent, so wise and logical, that
millions of Northern Democrats sprang to the defence,
not only of the Union, but of his administration.
Lincoln refused to be led or hurried by Fremont or
Hunter, by Greeley or Sumner. From first to last he
was the real leader, and he kept step with events.
IV.
On July 22, 1862, Lincoln called together his cabinet
for the purpose of showing the draft of a Proclamation
of Emancipation, stating to them|that he did not wish
their advice, as he had made up his mind.
After the Proclamation was signed Lincoln held it,
waiting for some great victory before giving it to the
world, so that it might appear to be the child of
strength.
This was on July 22, 1862. On August 22 of the
same year Lincoln wrote his celebrated letter to Horace
Greeley, in which he stated that his object was to save
the Union ; that he would save it with slavery if he
could; that if it was necessary to destroy slavery in
order to save the Union, he would; in other words, he
would do what was necessary to save the Union.
This letter disheartened, to a great degree, thousands
and millions of the friends of freedom. They felt
that Mr. Lincoln had not attained the moral height
upon which they supposed he stood. And yet, when
this letter was written, the Emancipation Proclamation
was in his hands, and had been for thirty days,
waiting only an opportunity to give it to the world.
Some two weeks after the letter to Greeley, Lincoln
was waited on by a committee of clergymen, and was
�( 12 )
by them informed that it was God’s will that he should
issue a Proclamation of Emancipation. He replied to
them, in substance, that the day of miracles had passed.
He also mildly and kindly suggested that if it were
God’s will this Proclamation should be issued, certainly
God would have made known that will to him—to the
person whose duty it was to issue it.
On September 22, 1862, the most glorious date in
the history of the Republic, the Proclamation of
Emancipation was issued.
Lincoln had reached the generalisation of all argu
ments upon the question of slavery and freedom—a
generalisation that never has been, and probably never
will be, excelled : In giving freedom to the slave, we
assure freedom to the free.
This is absolutely true. Liberty can be retained,
can be enjoyed, only by giving it to others. The
spendthrift saves, the miser is prodigal. In the realm
of Freedom, waste is husbandry. He who puts chains
upon the body of another shackles his own soul. The
moment the Proclamation was issued, the cause of the
Republic became sacred.
From that moment the
North fought for the human race. From that moment
the North stood under the blue and stars, the flag of
Nature—sublime and free.
In 1831 Lincoln saw in New Orleans a colored girl
sold at auction. The scene filled his soul with
ndignation and horror.
Turning to his companion, he said, “ Boys, if I ever
get a chance to hit slavery, by God I’ll hit it hard I ”
The helpless girl, unconsciously, had planted in a
great heart the seeds of the Proclamation.
Thirty-one years afterwards the chance came, the
oath was kept, and to four millions of slaves, of men,
women, and children, was restored liberty, the jewel
of the soul.
�( 13 )
In the history, in the fiction of the world, there
is nothing more intensely dramatic than this.
Lincoln held within his brain the grandest truths,
and he held them as unconsciously, as easily, as
naturally as a waveless pool holds within its stainless
breast a thousand stars.
Let us think for one moment of the distance
travelled from the first ordinance of secession to the
Proclamation of Emancipation.
In 1861 a thirteenth amendment to the Constitution
was offered to the South. By this proposed amend
ment slavery was to be made perpetual. This com
promise was refused, and in its stead came the
Proclamation. Let us take another step.
In 1865 the thirteenth^ amendment was adopted.
The one proposed made slavery perpetual. The one
adopted in 1865 abolished slavery and made the great
Republic free forever.
The first state to ratify this amendment was Illinois.
v.
We were surrounded by enemies. Many of the
so-called great in Europe and England were against us.
They hated the Republic, despised our institutions,
and sought in many ways to aid the South.
Mr. Gladstone announced that Jefferson Davis had
made a nation and he did not believe the restoration of
the American Union by force attainable.
From the Vatican came words of encourgement for
the South.
It was declared that the North was fighting for
empire and the South for independence.
The Marquis of Salisbury said : “ The people of the
South are the natural allies of England. The North
keeps an opposition shop in the same department of
trade as ourselves.”
�( 14 )
Some of their statesmen declared that the subjuga
tion of the South by the North would be a calamity to
the world.
Louis Napoleon was another enemy, and he endea
vored to establish a monarchy in Mexico to the end
that the great North might be destroyed. But the
patience, the uncommon common sense, the statesman
ship of Lincoln—in spite of foreign hate and Northern
division—triumphed over all. And now we forgive
all foes. Victory makes forgiveness easy.
Lincoln was, by nature, a diplomat. He knew the
art of sailing against the wind. He had as much
shrewdness as is consistent with honesty. He under
stood, not only the rights of individuals, but of nations.
In all his correspodence with other governments he
neither wrote nor sanctioned a line which afterwards
was used to tie his hands. In the use of perfect
English he easily rose above his advisers and all his
fellows.
No one claims that Lincoln did all. He could have
done nothing without the great and splendid generals
in the field ; and the generals could have done
nothing without their armies. The praise is due
to all—to the private as much as to the officer ; to the
lowest who did his duty, as much as to the highest.
My heart goes out to the brave private as much as
to the leader of the host.
But Lincoln stood at the centre and with infinite
patience, with consummate skill, with the genius of
goodness directed, cheered, consoled, and conquered.
VI.
Slavery was the cause of the war, and slavery was
the perpetual stumbling-block. As the war went on
question after question arose—questions that could not
be answered by theories. Should we hand back the
�( 15 )
slave to his master, when the master was using his
slave to destroy the Union? If the South was right
slaves were property, and by the laws of war anything
that might be used to the advantage of the enemy
might be confiscated by us. Events did not wait for
discussion. General Butler denominated the negro as
a “ contraband.” Congress provided that the property
of the rebels might be confiscated.
Lincoln moved along this line.
Each step was delayed by Northern division, but
every step was taken in the same direction.
First, Lincoln offered to execute every law, including
the most infamous of all ; second, to buy the slaves of
the border states ; third, to confiscate the property of
rebels ; fourth, to treat slaves as contraband of war ;
fifth, to use slaves for the purpose of putting down the
rebellion ; sixth, to arm these slaves and clothe them
in the uniform of the Republic ; seventh, to make them
citizens, and allow them to stand on an equality with
their white brethren under the flag of the Republic.
During all these years, Lincoln moved with the
people—with the masses, and every step he took has
been justified by the considerate judgment of mankind.
VII.
Lincoln not only watched the war, but kept his hand
on the political pulse. In 1863 a tide set in against the
administration. A Republican meeting was to be held
in Springfield, Illinois, and Lincoln wrote a letter to
be read at this convention. It was in his happiest vein.
It was a perfect defence of his administration, including
the Proclamation of Emancipation. Among other
things he said: “ But the proclamation, as law, either
is valid or it is not valid. If it is not valid it needs no
retraction, but if it is valid it cannot be retracted, any
more than the dead can be brought to life.”
�( 16 )
To the Northern Democrats who said they would not
fight for negroes, Lincoln replied: “ Some of them
seem willing to fight for you—but no matter.”
Of negro soldiers : “ But negroes, like other people,
act upon motives. Why should they do anything for
us if we will do nothing for them? If they stake
their lives for us they must be prompted by the
strongest motive—even by the promise of freedom.
And the promise, being made, must be kept.”
There is one line in this letter that will give it
immortality: “The Father of waters again goes un
vexed to the sea.” This line is worthy of Shakespeare.
Another: “ Among freemen there can be no suc
cessful appeal from the ballot to the bullet.”
He draws a comparison between the white men
against us and the black men for'Us : “And then there
will be some black men who can remember that with
silent tongue and clenched teeth and steady eye and
well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to
this great consummation ; while I fear there will be
some white ones unable to forget that with malignant
heart and deceitful speech they strove to hinder it.”
Under the influence of this letter, the love of
country, of the Union, and above all the love of liberty,
took possession of the heroic North.
The Republican party became the noblest organisa
tion the world has ever seen.
There was the greatest moral exaltation ever known.
The spirit of liberty took possession of the people.
The masses became sublime.
To fight for yourself is good.
To fight for others is grand.
To fight for your country is noble.
To fight for the human race, for the liberty of land
and brain, is nobler still.
�( 17 )
As a matter of fact, the defenders of slavery had
sown the seeds of their own defeat. They dug the pit
in which they fell. Clay and Webster and thousands
of others had by their eloquence made the Union
almost sacred. The Union was the very tree of life,
the source and stream and sea of liberty and law.
For the sake of slavery millions stood by the Union,
for the sake of liberty millions knelt at the altar of the
Union ; and this love of the Union is what, at last,
overwhelmed the Confederate hosts.
It does not seem possible that only a few years ago
our Constitution, our laws, our Courts, the Pulpit and
the Press defended and upheld the institution of
slavery—that it was a- crime to feed the hungry, to give
water to the lips of thirst, shelter to a woman flying
from the whip and chain !
The old flag still flies, the stars are there—the stains
have gone.
VIII.
Lincoln always saw the end. He was unmoved by
the storms and currents of the times. He advanced
too rapidly for the conservative politicians, too slowly
for the radical enthusiasts. He occupied the line of
safety, and held by his personality—by the force of
his great character, by his charming candor—the
masses on his side.
The soldiers thought of him as a father.
All who had lost their sons in battle felt that they
had his sympathy—felt that his face was as sad as
theirs. They knew that Lincoln was actuated by one
motive, and that his energies were bent to the attain
ment of one end—the salvation of the Republic.
Success produces envy, and envy often ends in
conspiracy.
In 1864 many politicians united against him. It is
not for me to criticise their motive or their actions®
�.
( 18 )
It is enough to say that the magnanimity of Lincoln
towards those who had deserted and endeavored to
destroy him, is without parallel in the political history
of the world. This magnanimity made his success not
only possible, but certain.
During all the years of war Lincoln stood, the
embodiment of mercy, between discipline and death.
He pitied the imprisoned and condemned. He took
the unfortunate in his arms, and was the friend even
of the convict. He knew temptation’s strength—the
weakness of the will—and how in fury’s sudden flame
the judgment drops the scales, and passion—blind and
deaf—usurps the throne.
Through all the years Lincoln will be known as
Lincoln the Loving, Lincoln the Merciful.
Lincoln had the keenest sense of humor, and always
saw the laughable side even of disaster. In his humor
there was logic and the best of sense. No matter how
complicated the question, or how embarrassing the
situation, his humor furnished an answer, and a door
of escape.
Vallandingham was a friend of the South, and did
what he could to sow the seeds of failure. In his
opinion everything, except rebellion, was unconstitu
tional.
He was arrested, convicted by a court martial, and
sentenced to imprisonment in Fort Warren.
There was doubt about the legality of the trial, and
thousands in the North denounced the whole proceed
ings as tyrannical and infamous. At the same time
millions demanded that Vallandingham should be
punished.
Lincoln’s humor came to the rescue. He disapproved
of the findings of the court, changed the punishment,
and ordered that Mr. Vallandingham should be sent to
his friends in the South.
�( 19 )
Those who regarded the act as unconstitutional
almost forgave it for the sake of its humor.
Horace Greeley always had the idea that he was
greatly superior to Lincoln, and for a long time he
insisted that the people of the North and the people of
the South desired peace. He took it upon himself to
lecture Lincoln, and felt that he in some way was
responsible for the conduct of the war. Lincoln, with
that wonderful sense of humor, united with shrewd
ness and profound wisdom, told Greeley that, if the
South really wanted peace, he (Lincoln) desired the
same thing, and was doing all he could to bring it
about. Greeley insisted that a commissioner should
be appointed, with authority to negotiate with the
representatives of the Confederacy. This was Lincoln’s
opportunity. He authorised Greeley to act as such
commissioner. The great editor felt that he was
caught. For a time he hesitated, but finally went, and
found that the Southern commissioners were willing
to take into consideration any offers of peace that
Lincoln might make. The failure of Greeley was
humiliating, and the position in which he was left
absurd.
Again the humor of Lincoln had triumphed.
Lincoln always tried to do things in the easiest way.
He did not waste his strength. He was not particular
about moving along straight lines. He did not tunnel
the mountains. He was willing to go around, and he
reached the end desired as a river reaches the sea.
IX.
One of the most wonderful things ever done by
Lincoln was the promotion of General Hooker. After
the battle of Fredericksburg, General Burnside found
great fault with Hooker, and wished to have him
removed from the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln
disapproved of Burnside’s order, and gave Hooker the
�( 20 )
command of the Army of the Potomac. He then wrote
Hooker this memorable letter : “ I have placed you at
the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I
have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient
reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that
there are some things in regard to which I am not quite
and ^175
L0U*
1 b61ieVe
t0 b* a brave
and skilful soldier—which, of course, I like. I
a so. believe you do not mix politics with your profession-m which you are right. You have confidence
which is a valuable, if not an indispensable, quality.
You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds
does good rather than harm; but I think that during
General Burnside’s command of the army you have
taken counsel of your ambition to thwart him as much
as you could in which you did a great wrong to the
country and to a most meritorious and honorable
brother, officer. I have heard, in such a way as to
believe
of your recently saying that both the army
and the Government needed a dictator. Of course it
was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given
you command. Only those generals who gain
successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you
is military successes, and I will risk the dictatorship.
The Government will support you to the best of its
ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done
and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the
spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army
of criticising their commander and withholding con
fidence in him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist
you, so far as I can, to put it down. Neither you, nor
Napoleon, if he were alive, can get any good out of
an army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now
beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with
energy and sleepless vigilence go forward and give us
victories.”
�( 21 )
This letter has—in my judgment, no parallel. The
mistaken magnanimity is almost equal to the pro
phecy t “ I much fear that the spirit which you have
aided to infuse into the army of criticising their com
mander and withholding confidence in him, will now
turn upon you.”
Chancellorsville was the fulfilment.
Mr. Lincoln was a statesman.
The great stumbling-block—the great obstruction
in Lincoln’s way, and in the way of thousands, was
the old doctrine of States Rights.
This doctrine was first established to protect slavery.
It was clung to to protect the iner-State slave trade.
It became sacred in connection with the Fugitive
Slave Law, and it was finally used as the corner-stone
of Secession.
This doctrine was never appealed to m defence of
the right—always in support of the wrong. For many
years politicians upon both sides of these questions
endeavored to express the exact relations existing
between the Federal Government and the States, and I
know of no one who succeeded, except Lincoln. In
his message of 1861, delivered on July 4, the definition
is given, and it is perfect: “Whatever concerns the
whole should be confined to the whole—to the General
Government. Whatever concerns only the State should
be left exclusively to the State.”
When that definition is realised in practice, this
country becomes a Nation. Then we shall know
that the first allegiance of the citizen is not to hi&
State, but to the Republic, and that the first duty of
the Republic is to protect the citizen, not only when in
other lands, but at home, and that this duty cannot be
discharged by delegating it to the States.
�( 22 )
„ Lincoln believed in the sovereignty of the people_
in the supremacy of the nation—in the territorial
integrity of the Republic.
XI.
A great actor can be known only when he has
assumed the principal character in a great drama,
ossibly the greatest actors have never appeared, and
it may be that the greatest soldiers have lived the lives
of perfect peace. Lincoln assumed the leading part
m the greatest drama ever acted upon the stage of a
continent.
His criticism of military movements, his correspon
dence with his generals and others on the conduct of
the war, show that he was at all times master of the
situation—that he was a natural strategist, that he
appreciated the difficulties and advantages of every
kind, and that in “ the still and mental ” field of
war he stood the peer of any man beneath the flag.
Had McClellan followed his advice, he would have
taken Richmond.
# Had Hooker acted in accordance with his sugges
tions, Chancellorsville would have been a victory for
the Nation.
Lincoln’s political prophecies were all fulfilled.
We know now that he not only stood at the top,
but that he occupied the centre, from the first to the
last, and that he did this by reason of his intelli
gence, his humor, his philosophy, his courage, and
his patriotism.
In passion s storm he stood unmoved, patient, just
and candid. In his brain there was no cloud, and
in his heart no hate. He longed to save the South
as well as the North, to see the Nation one and
free.
He lived until the end was known.
�( 23 )
He lived until the Confederacy was dead until
Lee surrendered, until Davis fled, until the doors of
Libby Prison were opened, until the Republic was
supreme.
A
He lived until Lincoln and Liberty were united
for ever.
n
.
He lived to cross the desert—to reach the palms
of victory—to hear the murmured music of the wel
come waves.
He lived until all loyal hearts were his—until the
history of his deeds made music in the soul of men
—until he knew that on Columbia’s Calendar of
worth and fame his name stood first.
He lived until there remained nothing for him to
to do as great as he had done.
What he did was worth living for, worth dying
for.
.
He lived until he stood in the midst of universa
Joy, beneath the outstretched wings of Peace the
foremost man in all the world.
And then the horror came. Night fell on noon. The
Savior of the Republic, the breaker of chains, the
liberator of millions, he who had “ assured freedom to
the free,” was dead.
Upon his brow Fame placed the immortal wreath.
For the first time in the history of the world a Nation
bowed and wept.
The memory of Lincoln is the strongest, tenderest
tie that binds all hearts together now, and holds all
States beneath a Nation’s flag.
XII.
Strange mingling of mirth and tears, of the tragic
and grotesque, of cap and crown, of Socrates and
Democritus, of ^Esop and Marcus Aurelius, of all that
is gentle and just, humorous and honest, merciful,
�( 24 )
wise, laughable, lovable and divine, and all consecrated
to the use of man ; while through all, and over all
were an overwhelming sense of obligation, of chivalric
loyalty to truth, and upon all, the shadow of the tragic
Nearly all the great historic characters are impossible
monsters disproportioned by flattery, or by calumny
deformed. We know nothing of their peculiarities, or
nothing but their peculiarities. About these oaks there
clings none of the earth of humanity.
Washington is now only a steel engraving. About
the real man who lived and loved and hated and
schemed, we know but little. The glass through which
we look at him is of such high magnifying power that
the features are exceedingly indistinct.
Hundreds of people are now engaged in smoothing
out the lines of Lincoln’s face—forcing all features to
the common mould-so that he may be known, not as
he really was, but, according to their poor standard, as
he should have been.
Lincoln was not a type. He stands alone-no
ancestors, no fellows, and no successors.
He had the advantage of living in a new country of
social equality, of personal freedom, of seeing in the
horizon of his future the perpetual star of hope He
preserved his individuality and his self-respect* He
knew and mingled with men of every kind ; and, after
all, men are the best books. He became acquainted
with the ambitions and hopes of the heart, the means
used to accomplish ends, the springs of action and the
seeds of thought. He was familiar with nature, with
actual. things, with common facts. He loved and
appreciated the poem of the year, the drama of the
seasons.
In a new country a man must possess at least three
virtues—honesty, courage, and generosity. In culti-
�( 25 )
vated society, cultivation is often more important than
soil. A well-executed counterfeit passes more readily
than a blurred genuine. It is necessary only to observe
the unwritten laws of society—to be honest enough to
keep out of prison, and generous enough to subscribe
in public—where the subscription can be defended as
an investment.
In a new country, character is essential : in the old,
reputation is sufficient. In the new they find what a
man really is ; in the old, he generally passes for what
he resembles. People separated only by distance are
much nearer together than those divided by the walls
of caste.
It is no advantage to live in a great city, where
poverty degrades and failure brings despair. The
fields are lovelier than paved streets, and the great
forests than walls of brick. Oaks and elms are more
poetic than steeples and chimneys.
In the country is the idea of home. There you see
the rising and setting sun; you 1 become acquainted
with the stars and clouds. The constellations are your
friends. You hear the rain on the roof and listen to
the rhythmic sighing of the winds. You are thrilled
by the resurrection called Spring, touched and sad
dened by Autumn—the grace and poetry of death.
Every field is a picture, a landscape ; every landscape
a poem ; every flower a tender thought, and every
forest a fairyland. In the country you preserve your
identity—your personality. There you are an aggre
gation of atoms ; but in the city you are only an atom
of an aggregation.
In the country you keep your cheek close to the
breast of Nature. You are calmed and ennobled by
the space, the amplitude and scope of earth and sky—
by the constancy of the stars.
�(
)
Lincoln never finished his education. To the night
■of his death he was a pupil, a learner, an inquirer,
a seeker after knowledge. You have no idea how
many men are spoiled by what is called education.
For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles
are polished and diamonds are dimmed. If Shake
speare had graduated at Oxford, he might have been a
quibbling attorney, or a hypocritical parson.
Lincoln was a great lawyer. There is nothing
shrewder in the world than intelligent honesty.
Perfect candor is sword and shield.
He understood the nature of man. As a lawyer
he endeavored to get at the truth, at the very heart of a
case. He was not willing even to deceive himself.
No matter what his interest said, what his passion
demanded, he was great enough to find the truth and
strong enough to pronounce judgment against his own
desires.
Lincoln was a many-sided man, acquainted with
smiles and tears, complex in brain, single in heart,
direct as light; and his words, candid as mirrors^ gave
the perfect image of his thought. He was never
afraid to ask—never too dignified to admit that he did
not know. No man had keener wit, or kinder humor,
It may be that humor is the pilot of reason. People
without humor drift unconsciously into absurdity.
Humor sees the other side—stands in the mind like a
spectator, a good-natured critic, and gives its opinion
before judgment is reached. Humor goes with good
nature, and good nature is the climate of reason.
In anger, reason abdicates and malice extinguishes the
torch. Such was the humor of Lincoln that he could
tell even unpleasant truths as charmingly as most men
can tell the things we wish to hear.
He was not solemn. Solemnity is a mask worn by
�( 27 )
ignorance and hypocrisy—is is the preface, prologue,
and index to the cunning or the stupid.
He was natural in his life and thought—master
of the story-teller’s art, in illustration apt, in application
perfect, liberal in speech, shocking Pharisees and
prudes, using any word that wit could disinfect.
He was a logician. His logic shed light. In its
presence the obscure became luminous, and the most
complex and intricate political and metaphysical knots
seemed to untie themselves. Logic is the necessary
product of intelligence and sincerity. It cannot be
learned. It is the child of a clear head and a good
heart.
Lincoln was candid, and with candor often deceived
the deceitful. He had intellect without arrogance,
genius without pride, and religion without cant—that
is to say, without bigotry and without deceit.
He was an orator—clear, sincere, natural. He did
not pretend. He did not say what he thought others
thought, but what he thought.
If you wish to be sublime you must be natural—you
must keep close to the grass. You must sit by the
fireside of the heart : above the clouds it is too cold.
You must be simple in your speech : too much polish
suggests insincerity.
The great orator idealises the real, transfigures the
common, makes even the inanimate throb and thrill,
fills the gallery of the imagination with statues and
pictures perfect in form and color, brings to light the
gold hoarded by memory the miser, shows the glittering
coin to the spendthrift hope, enriches the brain,
ennobles the heart, and quickens the conscience.
Between his lips words bud and blossom.
If you wish to know the difference between an
orator and an elocutionist—between what is felt and
what is said—between what the heart and brain can
�( 28 )
do together and what the brain can do alone—read
Lincoln’s wondrous speech at Gettysburg, and then the
speech of Edward Everett.
The oration of Lincoln will never be forgotten. It
will live until languages are dead and lips are dust.
The speech of Everett will never be read.
The elocutionists believe in the virtue of voice, the
sublimity of syntax, the majesty of long sentences,
and the genius of gesture.
The orator loves the real, the simple, the natural.
He places the thought above all. He knows that the
greatest ideas should be expressed in shortest words_
that the greatest statues need the least drapery.
Lincoln was an immense personality—firm but not
obstinate. Obstinacy is egotism—firmness, heroism.
He influenced others without effort, unconsciously;
and they submitted to him as men submit to nature—
unconsciously. He was severe with himself, and for
that reason lenient with others.
He appeared to apologise for being kinder than his
fellows.
He did merciful things as stealthily as others com
mitted crimes.
Almost ashamed of tenderness, he said and did the
noblest words and deeds with that charming con
usion, that awkwardness, that is the perfect grace of
fmodesty.
As a noble man wishing to pay a small debt to a
poor neighbor, reluctantly offers a hundred dollar bill
and asks for change, fearing that he may be suspected
either of making a display of wealth or a pretence of
payment, so Lincoln hesitated to show his wealth of
goodness, even to the best he knew.
A great man stooping, not wishing to make his
fellows feel that they were small or mean.
�( 29 )
By his candor, by his kindness, by his perfect free
dom from restraint, by saying what he thought, and
saying it absolutely in his own way, he made it not
only possible, but popular, to be natural. He was the
■enemy of mock solemnity, of the stupidly respectable,
of the cold and formal.
He wore no official robes either on his body or his
soul. He never pretended to be more or less, or other,
or different, from what he really was.
He had the unconscious naturalness of Nature's self.
He built upon the rock. The foundation was secure
and broad. The structure was a pyramid, narrowing
as it rose. Through days and nights of sorrow, through
years of grief and pain, with unswerving purpose,
‘ with malice towards none, with charity for all,” with
infinite patience, with unclouded vision, he hoped and
toiled. Stone after stone was laid, until at last the
Proclamation found its place. On that the goddess
stands.
He knew others, because perfectly acquainted with
himself. He cared nothing for place, but everything
for principle ; nothing for money, but everything for
independence. Where no principle was involved,
easily swayed ; willing to go slowly, if in the right
direction ; sometimes willing to stop ; but he would not
go back, and he would not go wrong.
He was willing to wait ; he knew that the event was
not waiting, and that fate was not the fool of chance.
He knew that slavery had defenders, but no defence,
and that they who attack the right must wound them
selves.
He was neither tyrant nor slave ; he neither knelt
nor scorned.
With him, men were neither great nor small—they
were right or wrong.
�( 30 )
Through manners, clothes, titles, rags and race he
saw the real—that which is. Beyond accident, policy,
compromise and war he saw the end.
He was patient as Destiny, whose undecipherable
hieroglyphs were so deeply graven’on his sad and
tragic fate.
Nothing discloses real character like the use of
power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most
people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know
what a man really is, give him power. This is the
supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having
almost absolute power, he never abused it, except on
the side of mercy.
Wealth could not purchase, power could not awe
this divine, this loving man.
He knew no fear except the fear of doing wrong.
Hating slavery, pitying the master—seeking to conquer,
not persons, but prejudices—he was the embodiment of
the self-denial, the courage, the hope, and the nobility
of a Nation.
He spoke not to inflame, not to upbraid, but tn
convince.
He raised his hands, not to strike, but in benediction.
He longed to pardon.
He loved to see the pearls of joy on the cheeks of a
wife whose husband he had rescued from death.
Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil
war. He is the gentlest memory of oui* world.
��WROKS BY COL. R. G. INGERSOLL.
s. d.
MISTAKES OF MOSES
1 0
Superior edition, in cloth
1 6
DEFENCE OF FREETHOUGHT
0 6
Five Hours’ Speech at the Triai of C. B.
Reynolds for Blasphemy.
REPLY TO GLADSTONE. With a Biography by
J. M. Wheeler
0 4
ROME OR REASON ? Reply to Cardinal Manning 0 4
CRIMES AGAINST CRIMINALS
0 3
AN ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN d
0 3
ORATION ON VOLTAIRE
..
0 3
THE THREE PHILANTHROPISTS
0 2
TRUE RELIGION ...
0 2
FAITH AND FACT. Reply to Rev. Dr. Field
0 2
GOD AND MAN. Second Reply to Dr Field
0 2
THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH
...
0 2
LOVE THE REDEEMER. Reply to Count Tolstoi 0 2
THE LIMITS OF TOLERATION
0 2
A Discussion with Hon. F. D. Ooudert and
Gov. S. L. Woodford
THE DYING CREED
0 2
DO I BLASPHEME ?
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THE CLERGY AND COMMON SENSE "
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SOCIAL SALVATION
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MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE ...
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GOD AND THE STATE
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WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC?
0 2
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC? Part II”'
0 2
ART AND MORALITY
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CREEDS AND SPIRITUALITY
0 1
CHRIST AND MIRACLES
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THE GREAT MISTAKE
0 1
LIVE TOPICS
0 1
MYTH AND MIRACLE
0 1
REAL BLASPHEMY
0 1
REPAIRING THE IDOLS
0 1
Read THE FREETHINKER, edited by G.W. Foote.
Sixteen Pages.
Price One Penny.
Published every Thursday.
R. Forder, 28 Stonecutter-street, London, E.C.
�
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Abraham Lincoln : an oration
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Place of publication: London
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Notes: "Wroks [sic] by Col. R.G. Ingersoll" listed on back cover. No. 3a in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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1893
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Abraham Lincoln
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Text
SECOND EDITION. SIXTH THOUSAND.________
------ =—7—-
=
MR. CHAS. BRADLAUGH, referring to this Orat.icrth. ¿fy
says in the National Reformer of J uly 2nd, 1882 ¡-MJ». "L
“As a sample of eloquence it should be read by evRf^.. <4 •.
admirer of fine clear oratory.
*
<$
<0 ¿X. •
NATIONALSECtJLARSOCIETY
nJ
COL. INGERSOLL’S
LONDON:
Printed at the Paine Press, 8, Finsbury-street, e.c.
1882
Price One Penny.
i
�( 2 )
-Ht IJ'i’FRODUC’FISjV.
ECORATION DAY, the occasion upon which the following
Oration was delivered in June, 1882, is a national commemora
tion of the dead heroes of America, of the men who fought and died
for the great republic. It is observed throughout the country, and
the tombs of the departed great ones are decked with flowers and
other symbols of remembrance and respect. Col. Ingersoll, whose
fame as an orator is world-wide, was requested to deliver the com
memorative discourse. The Colonel accepted the honorable post, and
the oration given below was the result. The Academy of Music was
thronged on the evening of Decoration Day. The gay dresses of the
ladies and the bright uniforms of military men gave the audience a
brilliant appearance. The Academy was profusely decorated with
flags. Amidst thunders of applause, Colonel Ingersoll advanced to
the reading desk, and delivered the
ORATION.
'T'IIIS day is sacred to our heroes dead. Upon their tombs we hav
A lovingly laid the wealth of spring.
This is a day for memory and tears. A mighty nation bends above
its honored grave and pays to noble dust the tribute of its love.
Gratitude is the fairest flower that sheds its perfume in the heart.
To-day we tell the history of oui' country’s life—-recount the lofty
deeds, of vanished years—the toil and suffering, the defeats and
victories of heroic men—of men who made our nation great and free.
We see the first ships whose prows were gilded by the Western
sun. We feel the thrill of discovery when the new world was found.
We see the oppressed, the serf, the peasant, and the slavemen whose
flesh had known the chill of chains—the adventurous, the proud, the
brave, sailing an unknown sea, seeking homes in unknown lands.
We see the settlements, the little clearings, the block-house, and
the fort, the rude and lonely huts. Brave men, true women, builders
of homes, fellers of forests, founders of states !
Separated from the Old World—away from the heartless distinctions
of caste—away from sceptres, and titles, and crowns, they governed
themselves. They defended their homes, they earned them bread.
Each citizen had a voice, and the little villages became almost
republics.
Slowly the savage was driven, foot by foot, back in the dim forest.
The days and nights were filled with fear, and the slow years with
massacre and war, and cabins' earthen floors were wet with blood of
mothers and their babes.
But the savages of the New World were kinder than the kings and
nobles of the Old ; and so the human tide kept coming, and the
places of the dead were filled.
�( 3 )
Amid common dangers and common hopes, the prejudices and
feuds of Europe faded slowly from their hearts. From every land,
of every speech, driven by want and lured by hope, exiles and
emigrants sought the mysterious continent of the West.
Year after year the colonists fought and toiled, and suffered and
increased.
They began to talk about liberty—to reason of the rights of man.
They asked no help from distant kings, and they began to doubt the
use of paying tribute to the useless. They lost respects for dukes
and lords, and held in high esteem all honest men.
There was the dawn of a new day. They began to dream of in
dependence. They found that they could make and execute the laws.
They had tried the experiment of self-government. They had
succeeded. The Old World wished to dominate the New. In the
care and keeping of the colonists was the destiny of this continent—
of half the world.
On this day the story of the great struggle between colonists and
kings should be told. We should tell our children of the contest—
first for justice, then for freedom. We should tell them the history
of the Declaration of Independence—the chart and compass of all
human rights—that all men are equal, and have the right of life,
liberty, and joy.
This Declaration uncrowned kings, and wrested from the hands of
titled tyranny the sceptre of usurped and arbitrary power. It super
seded royal grants, and repealed the cruel statutes of a thousand
years. It gave the peasant a career; it knighted all the sons of toil;
it opened all the paths to fame, and put the star of hope above the
cradle of the poor man’s babe.
England was then the mightiest of nations—mistress of every sea—
and yet our fathers, poor and few, defied her power.
To-day we remember the defeats, the victories, the disasters, the
weary marches, the poverty, the hunger, the sufferings, the agonies,
and, above all, the glories of the Revolution. We remember all—
from Lexington to Valley Forge, and from that midnight of despair
to Yorktown's cloudless day.
We remember the soldiers and thinkers—the heroes of the sword
and pen. They had the brain and heart, the wisdom and the courage
to utter and defend these words, “Governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed.”
In defence of this sublime and self-evident truth the war was waged
and won.
To-day we remember all the heroes, all the generous and chivalric
men who came from other lands to make ours free.
Of the many thousands who shared the gloom and glory of the
seven sacred years, not one remains. The last has mingled with the
earth, and nearly all are sleeping now in unmarked graves, and some
beneath the leaning, crumbling stones, from which their names have
been effaced by Time’s irreverent and relentless hands.
But the nation they founded remains. The United States are still
free and independent. The “government derives its just powers
�( 4 )
from the consent of the governed,” and fifty millions of free people
remember with gratitude the heroes of the Revolution.
Let us be truthful; let us be kind. When peace came, when the
independence of a new nation was acknowledged, the great truth for
which our fathers fought was half denied, and the Constitution was
inconsistent with the Declaration. The war was waged for liberty,
and yet the victors forged new fetters for their fellow-men. The
chains our fathers broke were put by them upon the limbs of others.
Freedom for all was the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night,
through seven years of want and war. In peace the cloud was for
gotten and the pillar blazed unseen.
Let us be truthful; all of our fathers were not true to themselves.
In war, they had been generous, noble, and self-sacrificing ; with
peace came selfishness and greed. They were not great enough to
appreciate the grandeur of the principles for which they fought.
They ceased to regard the great truths as having universal applica
tion. “ Liberty for all ” included only themselves. They qualified
the Declaration. They interpolated the word “ white; ” they obliter
ated the world “all.”
Let us be kind. We will remember the ag-e in which they lived.
We will compare them with the citizens of other nations.
They made merchandise of men. They legalized a crime. They
sowed the seeds of war. But they founded this nation.
Let us gratefully remember.
Let us gratefully forget.
To-day we remember the heroes of the second war with England—
in which our fathers fought for the freedom of the seas, for the rights
of the American sailor.
We remember with pride the splendid victories of Erie and Champ
lain, and the wondrous achievements upon the sea—achievements
that covered our navy with glory that neither the victories nor defeats
of the future can dim.
We remember the heroic services and sufferings of those who
fought the merciless savage of the frontier. We see the midnight
massacre, and hear the war-cries of the allies of England. We see
the flames climb round the happy homes, and in the charred and
blackened ruins we see the mutilated bodies of wives and children.
Peace came at last, crowned with the victory of New Orleans—a
victory that “ did redeem all sorrows ” and all defeats.
The Revolution gave our fathers a free land—the war of 1812 a
free sea.
To-day we remember the gallant men who bore our flag in tri
umph from the Rio Grande to the heights of Chatultepec.
Leaving out of question the justice of our cause—the necessity for
war—we are yet compelled to applaud the marvellous courage of our
troops. A handful of men—brave, impetuous determined, irresist
ible—conquered a nation. Our history has no record of more daring
deeds.
Again peace came, and the nation hoped and thought that strife
was at an end.
oi
�( 5 )
We had grown too powerful to be attacked. Our resources were
boundless, ^and the future seemed secured. The hardy pioneers
moved to the great West. Beneath their ringing strokes the forests
disappeared, and on the prairies waved the billowed.seas of wheat
and corn. The great plains were crossed, the mountains were con
quered, and the foot of victorious adventure pressed the shore of the
Pacific.
In the great north, all the streams went singing to the sea, turning
wheels and spindles, and casting shuttles back and forth. Inventions
were springing like magic from a thousand brains. From laboi s
holy altars rose and leaped the smoke and flame, and from the count
less forges rang the chant of the rhythmic stroke.
But in the South the negro toiled unpaid, and mothers wept while
babes were sold, and at the auction black husbands and wives speech
lessly looked the last good-bye. Fugitives, lighted by the Northern
star, sought liberty on English soil, and were by northern men thrust
back to whip and chain.
The great statesmen, the successful politicians, announced that law
had compromised with crime, that justice had been bribed, and that
time had barred appeal. A race was left without a right, without a
hope. The future had no dawn, no star—nothing but ignorance and
fear, nothing but work and want. This was the conclusion of the
statesman, the philosophy of the politicians—of constitutional ex
pounders. This was decided by courts and ratified by the nation.
We had been successful in three wars. We had wrested thirteen
colonies from Great Britain. We had conquered our place upon the
high seas. We had added more than two millions of square miles to
the national domain. We had increased in population from three to
thirty-one millions. We were in the midst of plenty. We were rich
and free. Ours appeared to be the most prosperous of nations. •
But it was only appearance. The statesmen and the politicians
were deceived. Real victories can be won only for the right. .The
triumph of justice is the only peace. Such is the nature of things.
He who enslaves another cannot be free. He who attacks the right
assaults himself.
The mistake our fathers made had not been corrected. The found
ations of the republic were insecure. The great dome of the temple
was bathed in the light of prosperity, but the corner-stones were
crumbling. Four millions of human beings were enslaved. . Party
cries had been mistaken for principles—partisanship for patriotism,
success for justice.
But pity pointed to the scarred and bleeding backs of slaves;
mercy heard the sobs of mothers reft of babes, and justice held aloft
the scales, in which one drop of blood, shed by a master’s lash out
weighed a nation’s gold.
There were a few men, a few women, who had the courage to. at
tack this monstrous crime. They found it entrenched in constitu
tions, statutes, and decisions, barricaded and bastioned by every
department and by every party. Politicians were its servants, states
men its attorneys, judges its menials, presidents its puppets, and upon
�( 6 )
its cruel altar had been sacrificed our country’s honor.
It was the crime of the nation—of the whole country—North and
South responsible alike.
To-day we reverently thank the abolitionists. Earth has produced
no grander men, no nobler women. They were the real philanthrop
ists, the true patriots.
When the will defies fear, when the heart- applauds the brain, when
duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to com
promise with death—this is heroism.
The abolitionists were heroes. He loves his country best who
strives to make it best. The bravest men are those who have the
greatest fear of doing wrong.
Mere politicians wish the country to do something for them, true
patriots desire to do something for their country.
Courage without conscience is a wild beast; patriotism without
principle is the prejudice of birth—the animal attachment to place.
These men, these women, had courage and conscience, patriotism
and principle, heart and brain.
The South relied upon the bond—upon a barbarous clause that
stained, disfigured, and defiled the Federal pact—and made the mon
strous claim that- slavery was the nation’s ward. The spot of shame
grew red in Northern cheeks, and Northern men declared that slavery
had poisoned, cursed, and blighted soul and soil enough, and that the
territories must be free.
The radicals of the South cried, “No Union without slavery!”
The radicals of the North replied, “No Union without- liberty!”
The Northern radicals were right. Upon the great issue of free
homes for free men a president was elected by the free states. The
South appealed to the sword, and raised the standard of revolt. For
the first time in history the oppressors rebelled.
But let us to-day be great enough to forget individuals—great
enough to know that slavery was treason, that slavery was rebellion,
that slavery fired upon our flag, and sought to wreck and strand the
mighty ship that bears the hope and fortune of this world.
The first shot liberated the North. Constitutions, statutes, and
decisions, compromises, platforms, and resolutions, made, passed, and
ratified in the interest of slavery, became mere legal lies, mean and
meaningless, base and baseless.
Parchment and paper could no longer stop or stay the onward
march of man. Tire North was free. Millions instantly resolved
that the nation should not die—that freedom should not perish, and
that slavery should not live. Millions of our brothers, our sons, our
fathers, our husbands, answered to the nation’s call.
The great armies have desolated the earth; the greatest soldiers
have been ambition’s dupes. They waged war for the sake of place
and pillage, pomp and power, for the ignorant applause of vulgar
millions, for the flattery of parasites, and t-he adulation of sycophants
and slaves.
Let us proudly remember that in our time the greatest, the
grandest, the noblest army of the world fought—not to enslave, but
�( 7 )
to free ; not to destroy, but to save ; not simply for themselves, but
for others; not for conquest, but for conscience ; not only for us, but
for every land and every race.
With courage, with enthusiasm, with devotion never excelled, with
an exaltation and purity of purpose never equalled, this grand army
fought the battles of the republic. For the preservation of this
nation, for the destruction of slavery, these soldiers, these sailors—on
land and sea-—disheartened by no defeat, discouraged by no obstacle,
appalled by no danger, neither paused nor swerved until a stainless
flag, without a rival, floated over all our wide domain, and until every
human being beneath its folds was absolutely free.
The great victory for human rights-—the greatest of all the years—
had been won ; won by the Union men of the North, by the Union
men of the South, and by those who had been slaves. Liberty was
national—slavery was dead.
The flag for which the heroes fought, for which they died, is the
symbol of all we are, of all we hope to be.
It is the emblem of equal rights.
It means free hands, free lips, self-government, and the sovereign
ty of the individual.
It means that this continent has been dedicated to freedom.
It means universal education—light for every mind, knowledge for
every child.
It means that the school-house is the fortress of liberty.
It means that “ governments derive their just powers from the con
sent of the governed ”—that each man is accountable to and for the
government—-that- responsibility goes hand in hand with liberty.
It means that it is the duty of every citizen to bear his share of the
public burden—to take part in the affairs of his town, his county, his
state, and his country.
It means that the ballot-box is the ark of the covenant—that the
source of authority must not be poisoned.
It means the perpetual right of peaceful revolution.
It means that every citizen of the republic—native or naturalised
—must be protected; at home, in every state ; abroad, in every land,
on every sea.
It means that all distinctions based on birth or blood have perished
from our laws—that our government shall stand between labor and
capital, between the weak and the strong, between the individual and
the corporation, between want and wealth—and give and guarantee
simple justice to each and all.
It means that there shall be a legal remedy for every wrong.
It means national hospitality—that we must welcome to our shores
the exiles of the world, and that we may not drive them back. Some
may be deformed by labor, dwarfed by hunger, broken in spirit, vic
tims of tyranny and caste, in whose sad faces may be read the touch
ing record of a weary life ; and yet their children, born of liberty and
love, will be symmetrical and fair, intelligent and free.
That flag is the emblem of a supreme will-—of a nation’s power.
Beneath its folds the weakest must be protected, and the strongest
must obey.
�It shields and canopies alike the loftiest mansion and the rudest
hut.
That flag was given to the air in the Revolution’s darkest days.
It represents the sufferings of the past, the glories yet to be ; and like
the bow of heaven, it is the child of storm and sun.
This day is sacred to the great heroic host who kept this flag above
our heads—sacred to the living and the dead—sacred to the scarred
and the maimed—sacred to the wives who gave their husbands, to the
mothers who gave their sons.
Here in this peaceful land of ours—here where the sun shmes,
where flowers grow, where children play, millions of armed men
battled for the right, and breasted on a thousand fields the iron storms
of war.
These brave, these incomparable men founded the first republic.
They fulfilled the prophecies; they brought to pass the dreams;
they realized the hopes that all the great and good and wise and just
have made and had since man was man.
But what of those who fell?
There is no language to express the debt we owe, the love we bear,
to all the dead who died for us. Words are but barren sounds. We
can but stand beside their graves, and, in the hush and silence, feel
what speech has never told.
They fought, they died, and for the first time since man has kept
a record of events the heavens bent above and domed a land without
a serf, a servant, or a slave.
NOTICE.
*
*
Read THE REPUBLICAN, Id. monthly, each number containing
Portrait and biography of some well-known reformer.
By G.
a^URT FLUNKEYS: Their “Work” and Wages.
W Standring. An exposure of aristocratic sinecures. Id. 4-. .. „
BiFE of C. BRADLAUGH, M.P., 12 pages, with Portrait &
* autograph. By G. Standring. Id.
LIFE of^tL. INGERSOLL, with Portrait, Autograph, and Extracts
froworks. In neat wrapper, Id.
By orderlhroug^uy nmAvnt; or by post from 8, Finsbury-st., London.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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Col. Ingersoll's Decoration Day oration, June 1882
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "Printed at the Paine Press, 8 Finsbury-street, E.C." Stamp on front cover: Freethought Publishing Co., Printing Office, 68 Fleet Street, E.C., A. Bonner, Manager. Publisher's advertisements on back cover include The Republican [periodical] and other republican works. Not in Stein checklist, but cf his No. 155. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Publisher
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Paine Press
Date
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1882
Identifier
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N336
Subject
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USA
Memorial Day
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Col. Ingersoll's Decoration Day oration, June 1882), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Memorial Addresses
NSS
United States-History
-
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PDF Text
Text
�����
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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The tragedy at Mohawk Station
Creator
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Clifford, Josephine
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [California]
Collation: 203-207 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publication information from KVK. Marks from adhesive tape on p.3.
Please note that this pamphlet contains language and ideas that may be upsetting to readers. These reflect the time in which the pamphlet was written and the ideologies of the author.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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1870
Identifier
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G5734
Subject
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Literature
USA
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The tragedy at Mohawk Station), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
United States-History
-
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PDF Text
Text
DISCOURSE
UPON
CAUSES FOR THANKSGIVING:
PREACHED AT
WATERTOWN, NOV. 30, 1862.
By JOHN WEISS.
BOSTON:
WRIGHT & POTTER, PRINTERS, 4 SPRING LANE.
1 8 6 2.
�J
�DISCOURSE.
Make: iv: 28.
FIRST THE BLADE, THEN THE EAR, AFTER THAT- THE FULL CORN IN THE EAR.
The content and thankfulness of New England are committed
every spring to her soil by fee hand! oft farmers, who find it
again spreading the color of California gold over their autumn
fields. And what an alchemist is a former, to get that color out
of land so poor and climate so harshgwhefe, what with the
prices of labor, the expense of implements;,;' of draining, manur
ing, keeping of stock and buildings,; and a comfortable life
through a tedious winter not a great deal of feat color finds its
way into his pockety however much he may store in his bins
or send to market. And W;herever.,a ploughmans, from the
Kennebec to the Mississippi, turniiig^fat or meagre soils to the
sun of a temperate summer^ there springs the beautiful thanks
giving harvest of New England# and of the North. Manufac
tures, shoe and leather dealing, all. the trades and inventions,
eat the pumpkins and the corn of fee farmer. And the pursuits
which are closely allied to^agideulture,such as, the breeding
of cattle and the growing of wool, foelp the farmer to create
and feed a North. Lawrence# and Lowell can consume all the
cotton they get, when the farmer of the East and West dumps
his potatoes at the ^factory door. ■ When the great arm of the
engine vibrates, and a million spindles and the hearts of those
who tend them sing, see how fee sJendentferead goes up from
the ball, carrying all the. crops of the year wife it to spin them
into Wamsutta or Merrimac, or other famous brands. The morn
ing tattoo which the Lynn shoemakers beat on their lap-stones
is the echo of flails in a thousand barns. Genesis says, that the
Lord God took a little earth to make the first man ; now man
�4
breathes his own breath of life into the earth again, and it
makes him and sustains him every day.
There is not much land, even among the rich river-bottoms
and prairies of the West, so genial that man has “ only to tickle
it with a hoe to make it laugh with a harvest.” What would
our farmers think of that great tract of black earth in the
empire of Russia, “ lying between the fifty-first and fifty-seventh
parallels of latitude, comprising about 247,000,000 acres, so rich
that if manured the first years of culture, the crops often prove
abortive from excessive vegetation. The thickness of this deposit
varies from three to six feet, and in many places it runs to an
unknown depth.”* But how hard it is to evoke civilization and
knowledge out of that depth, because neither of them cultivate
it. Yet it is in that great temperate plateau of Russia, called
“ The Industrial Region,” that freedom and religion when
planted may be expected to subdue the rankness of the soil.
Here freedom and religion coax and flatter sterility till it fairly
forgets itself and smiles.
In a still autumn morning, when the brown roads have
drift-heaps of red and yellow leaves, and the air seems to be
nothing but a mingling of shine and warmth, what a ride
it is to take up and down the valleys here, through the north
part of Watertown, where the first farmers of New England
sowed their English grass, and across Beaver brook through
the uplands of Waltham, and behind Prospect-hill, where
the farms and wood-lots stretch pleasantly away. Perhaps you
turn off towards Lexington, and cross the famous turnpike
down which the farmers “fired the first shot heard round
the world,” when, as minute-men, they top-dressed their
fields with English blood, and were not chary of their own.
Religion and liberty have grown well ever since. You ride past
their manifest tokens; you pause at their memorial when you
hitch your horse at a farmer’s door, and ask the price of his
potatoes and pumpkins which lie there, great heaps of plenty,
before barns bursting with corn-shucks and upland grass, the
sinews of war and of peace. No sharp-shooting behind the stone
fences now, nor irregular firing up and down the road. The
cricket chirps from the door-step a tranquil song, whose burden
Patent Office Report, 1861. Agricultural.
�5
’seems to be that Nature is laying in sunshine, with good hus
bandry, for another spring. The children break out of the little
primary school-house, where New England planting is carried
on too,—boys and girls trained to grow straight and sturdy, to
handle some day the plough, the loom, or the musket, as the
country needs. Now they are the finest of all the crops on the
slopes which they shall one day inherit. What a ride you can
take through the country lanes, bordered with nothing finer
than the pendent barberry and the purpling sumach, unless you
have an eye for the comfort, and thanksgiving, and popular
Liberty, whose stateliness lines all the road, and stretches far
away between the hills.
When a people own the land, wd own themselves, and conse
quently do not depend upon oiid product and one employment
for their means of intelligence and happiness, they are superior
to bad luck, and know little of the discomforts of a crisis. In
this respect what a different sight meets the traveller who is
passing to-day through the cotton districts of Lancashire,
England, where a population offl nearly three millions have
their welfare entangled in the will-machinery, and cease to
hope as the factory ©fiimnies Q,ease to smoke. They are as
piuch the slaves of thll cotton-plant as the negroes who hoe it
and gin its blossoms. They belong to a style of civilization
*
which thinks little of man, but a great deal of trade ; which
dooms a man all his life, and his? children after him, to make
the head of a pin, to pick under grouffl. at a stratum of coal, to
pull and ripple flaxjfe1 tend a machine in a mill. Take away
his pin-head, his pick-axe, or fail to. feed his machine with
cotton, and he is a p^w^ef| he,,comes upon the parish for his
daily support, or has a^frowl of soup ladled out to him at the
door of some charity. In Manchester, which has a population
of 357,604, the pauperism is-Bow 10f per cent., and out-door
relief is distributed to 16,334 persons at the rate of Is. 4d. per
head per week—about two shillings of ©Mr money. Out of
eighty-four cotton mills, twenty-two
are
**
stopped, and thirty are
working short time. But Manchester is comparatively well off.
The town of Stockport, about six miles from Manchester, has,
out of a population of 54,681, 18,000 engaged in the factories,
in good times; but now there are only 4,000 working on full
�6
time, 7,283 are wholly unemployed, and 7,000 are working on
short time. Then 1,000 people belonging to other trades
depend upon the staple trade, thrown out of work. 30,000
people in Stockport receive relief. But what an amount of
misery do those figures represent. The more able-bodied men
go tramping over the country to seek work, but spinners and
weavers are not able-bodied, and a day’s march often lays them
up. Some of them who can sing form a little company, and
go singing glees, “ with nobody minding,” and few farthings for
their half-starved music. The women also try to win a’bitter
meal with the sweetness of their voice. A spectator describes
a scene of this kind : “ One young woman, about thirty years of
age, with a child in her arms, was standing in a by-street,
singing in a sweet, plaintive voice, a Lancashire song. It was
her first song in public ; and the tremulous voice and downcast
look, as she hugged with nervous grasp her little one, was very
touching. When the song was over, the poor creature looked
round with a timid air to the bystanders ; but she had miscalcu
lated her strength—the occasion was beyond her power of
endurance—and she burst into a passionate flood of tears.”*
I see m that womaU, the patient England held in slavery by a
selfish Toryism, which would be. glad to-morrow to recognize
another slavery in order to keep its own fed and quiet. A
relieving officer in Stockport, says : “ I have gone into the
rooms of the English operatives when they have not had a
mouthful of bread under the roof, and perhaps not had what
you may call a meal the whole $ay, and nothing but shavings to
sleep on through the night, yet they talked as cheerfully and
resignedly as if there was every prospect of employment on the
morrow.” These are subjects of a government which has
trained their bodies and souls to do only one thing, to mind the
brutifying monotony of one machine, and is now exulting over
what it calls the failure of a Democracy, as it lets arms and
steamers for a Southern aristocracy slip through one hand, and
a little soup for its starving poor through the other. This,
then, is the largess of a constitutional monarchy,—piratical
cannon and comfort for slave-drivers abroad, and the great
institution of Soup for slaves at home I
* A Visit to the Cotton Districts, 1862, p. 4.
�7
Even this latter is grudgingly bestowed. Many of the richest
mill-owners have not yet subscribed a farthing to the relief
funds, so that it is a difficult matter to secure a shilling a head
per week to the poor applicants. Yet who subscribed to the
“Alabama?” Whose money fits out steamer after steamer with
munitions to keep the life in Southern slavery ? What capital
is it that buys Confederate bonds at eighty-four cents, and that
is willing to take the risks of sea and a blockade to help in
undermining the great Republic whose manifold prosperity it
dreads ? Thank God, the elements of an American Thanks
giving, material and spiritual, are, and forever will be, beyond
the reach of open levy dr secret m^lfe'e of itsjiearty haters.
In Ashton-under-eLyne, whose population is 36,791, there are
10,933 hands employed tdfi^^MH^^^iting a population of
nearly 22,000. The existing means Of relief reach only 9,000
of these; that is, there are moi^thanb 10,000 dependent on
private charity, or their own eesoffm^ The 9,000 cost <£480
per week. The mill-owners in this place have been disposed to
help the operativestfff'Someof thdm have allowed their unem
ployed hands as much as two^and^shipen'c’e a week, some lend
them money, others maintain a daily distribution of food.
In Preston the progress of the distress is shown by the fol
lowing figures : in August of this year fehe number of poor
relieved by the rates was fe,2'0l| and by' the Public Relief
Committee, 21,616 ; but in September the number had swelled
to 14,289 relieved by the rates, and 23,932 by the Committee.
“ During the week ending September 13, the Relief Committee
distributed 16,832 loaves, weighing;, 601:6 lbs.; 11,301 quarts
of soup, and 4,820 qaaafts' of coffee.” There are seventy-one
firms owning mills imPr^stbff ^ ofthese,. forty-eight contributed
the pitiful sum of :£l,9f8
a re^ifwd of £12,000. Yet
there are 27,600 factory operatives; whose actual financial loss
per week amounts to mop® than £11,00'0. This happens every
week, and one in every seveii and a half of the entire popula
*
tion of Preston become entirely pauperized. To counterbalance
this, forty-eight rich mill-owners contributed less than £2,000,
not per week, but their definitive subscription for the year !
See how these poor men were obliged to take their money
out of the savings banks. In the single town of Blackburn
�8
the annual deposits, from 1855 to 1861, “ had risen from
£18,118 to £49,943, or more than £30,000.” But what was
that sum to the working classes who had lost since August,
1861, at least £350,000 in wages, “ and that amount is now
being increased at the rate of £12,000 per week.” During six
months, down to last May, the withdrawals from the banks were
£10,000 in excess of the usual amount. These savings have
been all swallowed up by this time. “ A lass, thinly clad, but
bearing evidence of better days, saw a dog with a bone. She
tried to take it away. The dog snarled—would not give it up ;
and she stood foiled, in hungry attitude. A tradesman seeing
her said, £ What did you want with that bone ? ’ c I could have
swapped it for salt,’ she replied, £ and the salt I might have
swapped for a bit of bread.’ As she said this she burst into
tears.”
In the midst of this distress, the painful and touching
instances of which need not be repeated, the Boards of Guard
ians in many places have established what is called the ££ Labor
Test,” to protect the parish funds from the poaching of profes
sional paupers and vagabonds. They commence an excavation,
or provide work in stone-yards and on the roads, where every
unemployed man must do his choice in order to draw his relief.
These honest and unfortunate operatives are reduced to labor
at these aimless tasks by the side of vagrants, ragamuffins, gam
blers, “ and corrupt old hucksters,” to get a miserable dole of
parish bread. Whiat a poisoned mess is this which the proud old
monarchy tosses jealously to her plain, straightforward children,
who have woven, spun, carded,, drawn and pieced her million
bales of goods, which stock the markets of the world !
The resort to Indian cotton, which is carelessly gathered and
imperfectly cleaned, appears only to have aggravated the pre
vailing wretchedness. Overseers and ££ managers report the
most harrowing scenes in the factories,
o
*wing
to the exhaustion
of the patience of the men and the women who £ cannot go on
with their work, owing to constant breakages.’ The machines
which they tend stand idle, whilst innumerable threads break
rom sheer rottenness, and almost before the wheels are again
in motion the work is again required to be suspended, from a
cause which had but the moment before been remedied. The
�9
worry of such work is exhausting; it depresses the physical
energies and wears the heart. Some give up in despair, and
leave the factory to beg or work on the moor or in the stone
yard ; others grow haggard or pale under the trial; the strong
men grow weak,—the weak, ill. The men curse, and the
women sit down and cry bitterly. A manufacturer resident in
Manchester, who is by no means a tender-hearted gentleman,
said, that instances of the kind were of daily occurrence in his
factory, and that he had ceased to go into most of the rooms,
4 for the women were all crying over their work.’ ”*
The London 44 Times” informs jks, tl«from the first of Sep
tember to the twenty-fifth of October, the number of persons
receiving parochial relief in all the cotton districts had increased
by 68,456, and that there <ere in ^11
^
*08,621.
In addition to
this, there are 143,870 persons who receive their aid from local
committees. Total, 352,491. jfTJie weekly loss of wages is
estimated at ^136,094,- and th^amou^at^to <^7,000,000 a year.
44 Nor does this prodigious sunu| says the 44 Times,” 44 represent
the whole loss incurred by, these districts, for the ordinary
*
receipts of a manufacturer mutst be such as to cover not only
wages, but the expense of machine^, and the interest of capital
sunk in buildings and land, besides a^handsome^ofit.” It is the
loss of this handsome, profit wshich, more than all the suffering of
the men and women who used to egtrn it, inspires the 44Times”
to unroll its columns of appalling figures in the interest of inter
vention and Southern slavery. The l$ss5..of this profit, and the
discomfort of having- 40.0.,000 gjesh (paupers added in one year
to its list of vagabonds, isthe on® .d^w^ack to English satisfac
tion at seeing the great Republic ,shrivelling from loss of blood,
and sinking from the menace of^its, former estate to insignifi
cance beneath debt, dismembermenti. ^nd national disgrace.
But it reminds me of. .the. principaL.cause for thanksgiving
which we have to-day. J>i;^rea.dmgt;.b,efQye you a few facts in
relation to the distress o%ihe^ng^jwofci^n, my object was
not only to contrast it with the suhgtap^al comfort which the
institutions of a Democracy sustain, at the same time that it
can wage war at the rate of $2,000,000 a day, and deaths and
* Visit to the Cotton Districts, p. 75.
2
�10
wounds incomputable, but to bring that rebellious aristocracy,
to whose bad cause this distress is incidental, before the tribunal
of our grateful thoughts.
Men of New England never had such a reason for returning
thanks as to-day, when they can perceive so clearly that the
whole history of their country has inevitably led to this death
struggle between two ideas as incompatible in the same civil
society as deceit and sincerity in the same heart; an Aristocracy
founded upon depriving men of natural rights, and a Democracy
founded upon securing them to men. We are thankful that
the issue is honestly and squarely made at last, and lurks no
longer behind politics and compromises, and that every measure
of the past which expected to stifle it has distinctly led, by the
logic of a God who cannot bear iniquity, to a great historical
situation, which tears the mask from the evil tendency, and bids
a good tendency assume its grand proportions. The first Revo
lution of ’76 was only a graft upon the rugged American stock,
which blossomed in these latter years, and is now maturing
its fruit. It will be the task of some future pen to show how
the divine thought has picked its way through the political
confusion and disgraces of a generation, to finish its work of
founding a Republic.
How premature were all our notions that we were citizens
of an America. We have been in our minority all the time
—a lusty, passionate and unsettled one, out of which we are
stepping now, to the rights and privileges of an honest demo
cratic manhood. To show how we grew to this, will one
day be the task of some man who will devote to it the flower
and prudence of his life. He will have to divide it into three
epochs—the first comprising the establishment of the Constitu
tion, and the subsequent years to the abolition of the slavetrade. This was the epoch when the rights of man were the
accepted theory of the country, slavery was supposed to be a
self-limited disease, and the Revolution slumbered after resisting
one aristocracy, till it was awakened by another. The second
epoch will tell the great material and political story of the
growth of slavery, in a generation which forgot the feeling of
the fathers from interest and ambition. It will show how
adroitly the new aristocratic ideas helped themselves to power
�11
witir the country’s great watchword—Democracy—by relating
the successive encroachments of an unconstitutional tendency
1 in the name of the Constitution, in each of which free-labor
voted to extend and protect slave-labor, and our mother, with
the Revolution’s blood yet hallowing her starry garments, was
scorned and almost turned out of her own children’s house.
This epoch, with its three sub-divisions of nullification, the
territorial questions, and the reaction of Republicanism, will
extend to the election of Abraham Lincoln. The third epoch
will open with secession, and tell the story of the reappearance
of the rights of man in the reawakening of the Revolution, *
1
when the Democrat and the Aristocrat see each other clearly at
last, only a bayonet’s length
as they did at Bunker’s
Hill and Yorktown. And as-it 4s •jushjis impossible to write
history without idea® as it iatqinake nations and epochs without
them, so the idea of thist, history will be to show how provi
dential and inevitable was the -rise of thisparistocracy and the
resistance of this democracy, with all the triumphs, disgraces,
defeats and miseries qf their irrepressible conflict, with all the
accidents, treasons, indecisions and weaknesses of the people’s
war ; and that these things were for the sake of having a People
at last to illustrate, uphold, and organize.the rights of mankind,
first for America, but no less for th©wo$id^ It will be a history
of two necessities born^of ,£ws> incompatible tendencies: the
necessity of aristocracy, born of slavery, and the necessity of
democracy born of freqdqm. Those, two necessities not only
account for all that ha$ happened, but show how nothing could
*
have happened otherwise^ not eyen military disappointments,
delays and imbecilities;, how, in short, slavery would never
have been destroyed by freedom in any other way, or upon other
terms, or at any other period.
We never believed thi®, and yet we see that it comes true,
and every fresh bulletin ‘^nfirms it; for if, out of all the
crowd of events which makes the history of a country, a few
of them happened by chance alone, the whole series of events
would be vitiated, and the divine intentions, if there are any
such, would be spoiled. If even one event occurred by chance,
that is, illogically, shoved in, on slovenly, like the dropping
of a stitch, the splendid web which we call history would
.1
�12
be shoddy. All the great forces of the world make all their
slightest movements in obedience to law. The only mistake
which slavery makes is in being slavery; that will destroy it,
but in the meantime it is consistent and fatal as consumption.
And God means that it shall be, for consistency’s sake, to
show the necessity of health and freedom. Therefore, we
shall find that there was never a moment previous to the war
when slavery could have been overcome by freedom, and never
a moment during the war. We return thanks for the presence
of God in every disappointment of our history.
Let us look at this point a little closer. When the Constitu
tion became the charter of a Federal Union, slavery had just
strength enough to prevent freedom from destroying it, and not
strength enough to pique freedom in making the attempt. The
two tendencies were neutral, but it was because one tendency
was felt to be evil and unrepublican, and short-lived. In 1790,
’91 and ’92, only 733,044 pounds of cotton were exported from
the United States, a great deal of which was foreign cotton which
had been previously imported.
*
The total value of this export
was only $137,737 ; an amount that would not keep an aristoc
racy in tobacco. But the development of the cotton-crop has
been unchecked and regular ever since, excepting in the year
of the embargo, 1808, and the three years of war, 1812, ’13 and
’14. In 1805, the value of the export was $32,004,005; in
1821, it was $64,638,062; and in 1850, it was $118,393,952.
The “ cotton zone ” extended from the Atlantic to the Rio del
Norte, including the States and portions of States lying between
the 27th and 35th parallels of latitude, “and all of the State
of Texas between the Gulf of Mexico, and the 34th parallel of
* Before the Revolution, hemp and silk competed with cotton for preponder
ance. In a copy of Nathaniel Ames’s Almanac for 1765, I find the following
item : “March 14; above 20,000 cwt. of|iemp has been exported from South
Carolina since Nov. 1. Several stalks measured 17 feet long and 2 inches
diameter at the base.” Thus hemp was exported while foreign cotton was
imported, and more pounds of hemp were raised than of cotton. In a copy of
the Almanac for 1766, is another item: “June 30. Last Triday voted by ye
House of Commons of ye Province (S. Carolina) £1,000 towards establishing a
Silk Filature in this town under the direction of Rev’d Mr. Gilbert. Mrs.
Pinckney of Belmont Plantation, within four miles of Charleston, has made
near 50 bushels of Cocoons this season, which are esteemed of the best kind.”
�13
North latitude.” In this vast area of upwards of 450,000 square
miles, nearly a third is adapted to the growing of cotton.
*
Here,
if any where, was the development of a geographical party with
sectional politics. But at the same period, in 1850, the value
of the crop of Indian corn was $456,091,491; of wheat, $156,786,068 ; and of hay, $254,334,316.f Cotton was smaller than
each of these great staples, being only one hundred and eighteen
millions. Why did no aristocracy spring from those enormous
figures, whose growth is maifilylNorthern ? Because the men
who owned the crops raised them^ and therein lies the difference
between a sectional party and tw national life.
At what period during tliS’ great development of the cotton
staple would yoUr-haw expected ’slavery to come to an end by
the operation of natural laws ?' Wei
®
* sbd
to hear a good deal
about letting slavery alone Mhat it might die out. Why, the
operation of natural laws-was faWrafole ‘to slavery—to the
protection both of slaves and cotton. We might have expected
to see Northern agriculture die out as soon.
The abolition of the slave-trade, in 1808, which the South
regarded at the timAas' a hostile mewurwhas proved immensely
favorable to slavery. It was indeed the first act of positive
legislation with a tendency to ncMrish and protect that institu
tion. For when artohial cargoes of half-barbarous Africans are
introduced into a eoiaAffy, local ' disturbances occur more
frequently, the- mortalitynin'ong' the sWbi W greater, and their
increase comparativelyTeebl'S. t The abolition of the trade gave
•t «
* Andrews’ Report on Colonial, and Lake Trade... 1852.
f These figures, taken from the Agricultural Report, 1861, vary from those
which had been previously given in the Census for 1850. Of wheat alone, the
two States of Pennsylvania! and New York, raised of course more bushels than
the aggregate of all the Southern and Middle Slave States.
t In 1714, the number of slaves; was 55,850; and 30,000 of these had been
brought from Africa,
Between 1715 and 1750 there were imported 90,000 slaves.
cc
6t
■ CC
1751
1760 CC
35,000 11
Cl
Ct
1761 “ 1770 CC
74,000 “
CC
CC
CC 1
1771 “ 1790 CC
34,000 “
CC
CC
1790 “ 1808 CC
70,000 “
These amount to 303,000; but the total number of native and imported slaves
in 1808, was only 1,100,000, showing a feeble increase for a century. But from
1808 to 1850 the number leaped to 3,204,373. The slave-ships always landed
more men than women.
�14
to Southern slavery all those peculiarities which the masters
are pleased to call patriarchal. Plantation life has reared two
generations of American slaves, in a climate comparatively
temperate, where they have preserved and propagated all
their native excellencies undisturbed by the annual relays
of native vices which the slave-ship brought. A good many
savage habits have dropped away from them. Fetichism
and serpent-worship lingers only in a few places in Mississippi,
and perhaps in Louisiana, where the slave-trade lasted longer.
The natural religiousness of the negro is more healthily devel
oped by Methodism aiid the Baptist sects, as in Jamaica, than
by Catholicism, as in Hayti, or by the half-savage rites of
Africa. When the “ Wanderer,” in 1858, landed a cargo of
native negroes on the coast of 'Georgia, the better portion of the
Southern press and people were alarmed and indignant; many
disliked the violation of law; the rest felt that it was an infrac
tion of law which brought harm instead of benefit to the insti
tution. A few papers were clamorous with approbation, but the
more influential recorded their disgust at the sight of the sickly
and savage cargo.
*
In 1850 it was calculated that not more
than eight or ten thousand of originally imported Africans were
yet alive.
It was not long before the polities of the South represented
its controlling interest, in the doctrine of State rights, the
interpretation of the Constitution, the jealous safeguards thrown
around the property in man, the absolute necessity to encroach
and domineer, to invent new compromises, to abolish old ones,
to thrust the fatal tendency into the courts and every depart
ment of government. The South never did a single act that
was not strictly in harmony with the exigencies of its position.
It had recovered from the amiable expectation of the fathers,
that slavery would disappear. Figures, which are said to never
lie, began to prove slavery a divine institution. It was the
cotton crop which sent Southerners to the Old Testament after
a divine sanction for slavery, and to the New, to applaud Paul
for remanding Onesimus to his master. Washington, Jefferson,
Lee, and Lowndes and Mason never cared to build a hedge of
* See Charleston and Savannah papers of that date.
�15
texts around the institution. If they thought there was no
attribute of God that could take the part of the slaveholder, they
would not dare to search their Bibles for slaveholding texts.
But their sons of the next generation saw an undoubted law of
God whitening all their fields with the cotton-bloom. Then the
Bible texts became pods that burst with the doctrines of Cal
houn and his descendants ; for men search the Scriptures to
justify their interest as often as to control their passions *
There was an anti-slavery party in Virginia as late as 1832.
Worn out tobacco-fields helped it to chew the cud of bitter
fancy, as it revolved the sentiments of Jefferson and Mason. An
act of emancipation narrowly escaped passing the legislature of
that State. Why did it not pass,
the prosecution of slave
labor was hostile to the interest of Virginia? We have heard
that the efforts of anti-slavery men in that State were paralyzed
by the commencement, of an anti-slavery agitation at the North.
Slavery was just on the point of dying out, when the publica
tion of the “Liberator,” infused a new and antagonistic life into
its decrepit frame. How farmen have to go for nothing, when
their prejudices, drive! That publication heralded a great
awakening of the republican. tendency, but the Southern
tendency was already pledge^ to its own laws and obedient to
their direction; a “ Liberator < in ^verytown and village of the
North could have neither accelerated nor retarded the march of
natural laws. Just look at ..the facts. In 1832, while the legis
lature of Virginia was discussing, laws relative to emancipation,
the slaves rose immensely ^.pripe- They should have fallen.
The discussion itself was in conseqpence ,of their being worth so
little. Why did they rise ? Did slaveholders give three or four
times as much for able-bodied negroes,- against their own
interest, and to spite the “ Liberatoy
It was the increasing
demand for slaves, the growing activity of the internal slavetrade, the imperious necessity of slave labor, the prospect of new
territory and an expansion of the cottorf zone, that caused the
* Descourtilz, a French. Naturalist, was in Charleston in 1798, and heard a
Quaker declaiming in the square, to quite a gathering of people, against the
enormity of separating and selling some slaves who were exposed there on a
platform. The sale went on, and so did the Quaker. But the snake had a full
equipment of rattles by the time of Mr. Hoar’s mission.
�16
price to rise and emancipation to be shelved as a Virginia
abstraction. It was found to be against nature, and against the
dreadful fatality of Southern wants. An act of emancipation
would have been as much waste paper in Virginia, as if it had
been passed in Massachusetts. The “ corner-stone ” would have
fallen upon it and ground it to powder. It was not the aboli
tionist alone who was antagonistic to slavery, but the spirit of
the age itself.
*
The savage instinct of slavery divined this
enmity which pervaded the air; steadily but resolutely, because
pushed on by the necessity of self-defence, and the necessity of
working out its bitter problem, it sought for guarantees and
for expansion, and stuck at nothing to attain its end. Only
revolution can bleed and pacify such passion ; its logic will not
come to the ground until i bipod does. The whole long story of
*
Southern aggression is a story of Southern self-defence, from the
expulsion of Mr. Hoar, through the annexation of Texas, Fugitive
Slave bills, Kansas-Nebraska, bills, border and senatorial ruffian
ism, Ostend conferences, Illlibusterfsm, to the secret treason
which armed and comforted" secessabSa.
Slavery gradually dying out! Slavery was a system which
decreed its own expansion. It was mightier than 350,000 slave
holders. Do we suppose1 it is that insignificant body of men
which has controlled the politics of this country for fifty years,
and is now dashing its arahed' columns against the bosses of the
shield of Liberty ? It ds a naturafl»8brce hidden in slave-labor,
and enslaving the slaveholder. It ensnared him through his
lust, his pride, his political ambition, his tocal prejudices, and
his pocket. It invigorates his arm, and employs all his gifts to
enforce the extremity of its passion against the vigor of liberty.
The moment when slavery can Jbe artestecl is the moment when
it bleeds to death, and not before.
*How clearly this is shown 'by the scorn and contempt with which for
twenty years the prominent men and journals of the South met the most con
servative advice which its own Northern friends ventured to offer. The vitriol
dashed into the face of the abolitionist was not diluted before being used to
asperse the genteelest remonstrants. The Southern exigency was long ago
betrayed by the passionate tone of able editors. For specimens of rhetoric
hitherto unequalled at the North, see the Richmond “Examiner,” 1853, “The
Paramount Question; ” March 7 and 31, 1854; May 19, “ Every Northern Man
a Swindler;” July 4, 1854; October 16, 1855, etc.
�What moment of the past would you select now, upon delibe
rate afterthought, when, if things had turned out differently,
you can imagine that the Southern tendency would have been
checked ? When great natural elements are at their work of
making history, things happen naturally, and could never
happen differently ; they express with mathematical accuracy
the state of the elements. To suppose a change in the circum
stances you must previously suppose a change in the forces that
are at work, including the mental and spiritual condition of the
people. Sometimes men speculate that if the events of a period
had been different the results would have been different.”*
There is but little virtu© in that “ If,” for an event, by occur
ring, shows that it could not have been different. Events are
always the products of all the forces at the period of their occur
rence. While one force checks, and another force propels, still
another must lie dormant? and others do little but appear upon
the field. And masses of men are butw®§ embodiments of the
forces, which they help at every moment to create, and which
illustrate their period. It is as absurd to wonder what would
have happened if William the Conqueror had not invaded
England, or Washington had not organized the spirit of ’76, or if
Daniel Webster had made a different speech on the 7th of March,
1850, or if Fremont had been elected'President six years ago, or if
Buchanan had garrisoned the Southern forts, as to wonder what
*
the movements of the solar system would have been if the
planets had no moons, or if the sun were half its present bulk.
The good and ill of history combine to repeat the wondrous tale
of the divine necessities. England was invaded, Washington
arose, Webster fell back before advancing slavery, Fremont
lacked three hundred thousand votes, and Buchanan loaded the
first gun and trained it on Fort Sumter, from combinations and
foregoing influences and momentary moods that expressed
themselves thus, in scorn of all ifs and buts, and leaving the
future to explain them. Even the disgraceful things which men
do at critical moments are nice expressions of an evil tendency,
show how far it is disposed to go at every point where a good
tendency does not yet suflice, and are the unconscious menials
* See, for instance, Niebuhr’s Lectures, ii. 59.
�18
of goodness. The vices of men finish up a great deal of
scavenger-work in the housekeeping of God.
Examine any political moment of the past thirty years, when,
if there had been a united and indignant North, you think that
the career of slavery would have been checked, and you will
find nothing out of which to make your supposition. Such a
North was an impossibility. Examine the same period of time
for the moment when the natural decay of slavery might have
commenced, and you will find that the natural growth of slavery
forbade that supposition also. When the Republican party
triumphed in 1860, its leaders thought that slavery was hemmed
in. by a permanent change in Northern sentiment, expressed by
a majority of votes, and that the time had at last arrived when
we should see slavery commencing its decline. This shallow
expectation was soon corrected, because it underrated the logical
necessities of slavery, and overrated the vitality of republicanism.
The triumph of the latter was a moment most dangerous for
real democracy, because the North proposed to be content with
the election of a president. The danger was that republicanism
would have burnt itself out in four years with making a Cabinet
pot to boil. Any Secretary of State might keep that fire well
fed with old speeches that were once plump with generous
abstractions, but served at last only for a crackling of thorns.
After the pot had boiled itself dry, and republicanism had
shrivelled all up inside and scorched sadly to the bottom, it
would have been lifted off the political crane, and a new demo
cratic pot hung in its place, with the South to blow up a fresh
fire of cotton-waste and bagasse, and the North to watch and
stir the new pottage of compromise for the the homely Esau of
liberty. It was a dangerous and almost fatal moment, not only
because the North was disposed to be content, but because a
large portion of the South was disposed to wait for the reaction
in its favor which would have certainly taken place. But
slavery is stronger than the -South, just as liberty is stronger
than the North. And there is always one place where a tendency
comes to its focus of white heat which shrivels up reserve, pru
dential consideration, and all respect: a moment and a place
where a domineering passion breaks through every restraint to
ravish its object. The focus of slavery was in South Carolina.
�19
FEvery channel in her body sent the black blood rushing to her
brain, and congested it with fatal suggestions. How plain it is
now that the temporizing policy, which was always the trait of
half-living republicanism, was the instrument in the hands of
Mr. Buchanan to conjure liberty out of republicanism, decision
out of uncertainty, and draw the bolt out of the gates of the
great North-wind. History will return thanks that the Southern
forts were left without their garrisons, seeing that God meant to
garrison them with liberty. At first it seems clear that there
was a moment when the whole Revolution was in the power of a
few hundred men to be judiciously posted where slavery under
stood itself the best, and was thwbbing with evil purposes. No,
we do wrong to say there was iSBCh a moment. If such a
moment had been essential or possible, it would have become
actual. But the strength of slavery appeared just as much in
the weakness of Mr. Buchanan as in the determination of
Jefferson Davis; it was , against the divine logic that a few
hundred men should tear a glorious page of history.
Seeds are not ready to germinate in April, but after the first
thunder how they swell and burst their flinty husks and send
up shoots like sword-blades over all -the . soil I Liberty was
waiting for the thunder. The awful-looking cloud that blotted
out half her sky and the stars whieh ought to shine there,
gathered and gloomed continually, rolling in upon itself as if
to concentrate and fiercely hearten,
till!
*
the passion that red
dened its great edges could not, bide there another moment, and
forth it sprung. The lightning, Was. neither premature nor
disastrous. It sub^yed the needs/.of liberty, which had lain
frost-bound through a long northern winter, waiting for a genial
hour.
But green shoots do not make a.harvest. There is never a
moment in the summer when the corn might stop growing, with
the delusion that it was ready to furnish food for man. What
moment would you select to break off your corn-tops, expecting
to leave full ears upon the stumps.to ripen in the sun,—when the
joints send forth their ribands, or when the mealy tassels come,
or when the first silk is spun out of the future husk ? Sum
mer’s sun is a growing sun, fierce and almost intolerable.
Autumn points with long shadows to the ripening hours.
�20
Was the corn ripe in the early July sun of the first Manassas;
was it ripe at New Orleans, or ready to be picked at Shiloh ?
Was it mildewed at Ball’s Bluff, or blasted on the Peninsula, or
did the husbandry of God come to nought in the sunless and
chilly days of the second Manassas ?
You cannot mention a single moment in this thunderous
war-summer when liberty could have found her crop. If the
war had closed with early successes, the cause of the war would
have been preserved. Every mistake that we have made,
especially the mistake of underrating the power of slavery,
every lukewarm general who has been commissioned for the
field, every traitor in the cabinet or the camp, every check
experienced by our arms, every example of mediocrity holding
critical command, has precisely represented our immature and
growing condition, and was its logical necessity.
Beauregard hammering at Sumter nailed a flag to the mast
in every village of the North. But though a Republic ran up
all its bunting and had none to spare, it was not till summer
and winter had weather-stained those brave flags and almost
fretted them from the poles, that they began to signalize the
rights of man to every portion of the country, and to stream
like a torn aurora with true American influence from the lakes
to the gulf. Death and sorrow pry up the lids of the heaviest
sleepers; we are all awake now; but when General Banks said
to the North, “ Rais® fl©0,000 men and hold the South as a
conquered province till she is regenerated,” we were astonished
at his exaggeration. And when, still later, General Fremont
said, “ The strength of slavery is in slave-labor, and the sinews
of war are concealed beneath black skins,” the North shuddered
at the bold invasion of property in man, and was not prepared
to see the country itself th© sole owner of its men and women.
So that if a Wellington had gained a complete and subjugating
victory at any of the points where we fondly expected one, he
would have subjugated liberty, and clapped the North again into
the harness of compromises and adjustments. The dreariest
moments have seemed to me the lightest, because I heard the
corn filling with milk under the shadow of the cloud. The
bloodiest days have yielded the finest growing weather to
liberty.
�21
“ Then,” you say to me, “ you do not care for the loss of men
and the anguish of women ? Your liberty is a hyena which
snatches a loathsome feast from lost fields of battle ? ” No
more than she was when Washington seized her hand as he
retreated, and nourished her in his winter-tent upon the gloom
and foreboding of America. No—I am so little careless about
the bloQd which has been shed, that I want to see for what use •
it has gone forever out of the dear hearts of Northern homes.
It is not enough for me that you repeat the hackneyed senti
ment that it is beautiful to die for one’s country. There must
be use as well as beauty, or there is no such thing as a country
to die for. Things that are useful lay the corner-stones of a
great Commonwealth, and build the shafts around which beauties
cluster. If you wish to see thernen who care nothing for the
blood of your kindred, look at those who shout how beautiful it
is to die to keep the cause of death alive, the men who could
stretch a hand to slavery across; three hundred thousand graves,
with a welcome back into a country full of the widows and
orphans she has made. We thank God that His thoughts are
not as such thoughts. A balance in His hand has held a scale
weighted with the glorious truths of this Republic; into it He
has thrown free-labor, knowledge, art and beauty, the common
school, the pulpit and. the plough^ all of these moulded into
liberty in the shape of a winged victory. Into the other scale
the lacerated days of two campaigns! have dripped with blood ;
every precious drop has been marked by that unslumbering
eye to be heavy with New England and Western homes, and
rich with privileges dearly bought y the scale sinks slowly—they
are almost even—the winged victory rises to its equivalent of
blood.
And what thought of the most.ardent worshipper of the liberty
that costs so much can embrace the future which waits at the
outposts of this emancipating "war! After every field-battery
has rolled away into the distance of peace, and the bayonet
hides a strange blush within its sheath, and the last tent is
folded, that future shall step from grave to grave, bringing new
life, new duties, great trials and appropriate joys into the heart
of America. Nations who have been astonished to see how a
free people can organize war by sea and land, will admire its
�22
greater victories over the embarrassments and trials which must
still dispute its path to the highest glory.
When peace returns, it will prove to be a heavy assessor of
our common sense and patience. The problem of self-govern
ment will include the governing and rearing of four millions of
people, richly endowed with affection, veneration and docility,
• but ignorant and awkward, superstitious, full of childish tricks,
and unconscious of the duties of a freeman. Their feeble
ambition has been hitherto one of the advantages of the slave
holder in perpetuating their servile state. But it is also
fostered by the tone of religious instruction among their own
preachers, who represent and confirm the gentle tendencies of
the African. Mr. Pierce describes, in his first report to Secre
tary Chase, a sermon which he hea^d at Port Royal, from the
text, “ Blessed are the meek.” The slaveholder may well
tremble for his acres when he recalls the promise of that text.
It was characteristic of the American slave that the preacher
urged upon his hearers not to try to be “ stout-minded.” How
congenial this advice is to the average negro is shown by the
infrequency and feebleness of all insurrectionary movements. It
was not possible for the slave to organize a formidable insurrection
while the South was in full strength, nor will he ever be disposed
to hazard the attempt, except, perhaps, in case the Proclama
tion of Emancipation is recalled, or hampered with gradualism,
or local efforts are made to reestablish or continue the status
of slavery. Then their scattered condition and the geography
of the country would be less unfavorable to a successful rising
than the slave’s inborn predisposition for bloodless and pacific
ways. Not that the negro dreads death: his mobile and flutter
ing imagination becomes fixed in the presence of a real danger.
He is impassive or frenzied^ and will charge up to the very
mouths of cannon and coil about them. He is singularly cool
to meet what he cannot avoid, but night-fears and fancied
terrors make a child of him. The threat of a novel mode of
torture is too much for him. It is imagination only that makes
a coward of a negro.
If the Proclamation wins, we shall find among the slaves a
general deference to the plans of Government for confirming
their freedom, to make it useful to themselves and to the
country.
�23
And mixed with these four millions of children are the poor
whites, a great horde of immature and stupid boys instead
of men, who never sat at the forms of liberty nor worked out
one of her sums. The North must call its master-builders
together, and those whose business it is to raise and trans
port habitations, for the primary school-house must be shifted
South, and in the little wake which it creates the people’s
chapels must follow, till along that highway of our God, the
court and the jury, the ballot-box and printing-press can safely
pass to disinfect all half-civilized neighborhoods. And wherever
a plough can run, the power-wheel shall follow, and its band
shall turn new wants and enterprises, and hum worthy ambi
tions into ears that have been tuned only to slavery’s lash. And
the great turbine shall go down to put to perpetual labor the
streams that have carried so much of our blood into the sea.
Everywhere the North shall take its revenge, deep, thorough, to
the uttermost farthingJby imposing all the firm and gentle arts
of liberty, with the uplifted ferule of the school-master, at the
edges of reaping-blades, and beneath the weight of every
material and mental instrument that can crush clods, pulverize
a soil, And scatter seed.
There will be a new meaning for. the phrase “ a geographical
party,” for the new Union will circulate by all the great chan
nels of internal navigation, arteries which God opened for
distributing the red blood of an undivided heart. Geography
itself, with mountains, streams, lakes, prairies and defiles, shall
write a people’s creed; and all platforms, whether made at
Buffalo, Chicago, Baltimore or Charleston, shall be supplanted
by the square miles of the national domain. And it seems as if
nature, foreseeing that not cotton but man would be king of this
domain, had sealed up craters, cleared out earthquakes, warned
off the hurricane, and spread a firm soil for every product, from
kitchen comforts to sovereign luxuries—a zone for the orange
and the fig, a zone for cotton, rice and sugar, for flax, for wool,
for wheat, for cattle ; districts for grapes, for the silk-worm and
the cochineal, so that the democrat can dress for dinner and
dine in his own house, if he will; and when he wants to ship his
surplus to feed and clothe the English pauper, every spar that
the wind can stretch without breaking grows, from the live oak
�24
to the mountain pine. Florida and Georgia will lay the ribs
and knees, North Carolina will careen and caulk the democrat’s
vessel, Lake Superior mines will bolt and sheathe it, Maine will
send its suit of spars, and Kentucky strain them with her hemp.
Pennsylvania shall build the boiler and feed the fires beneath it,
and the Great West shall victual New England sailors as they
go floating round the world with a cargo of Rights, Intelligence
and Freedom, samples of the failure of a Democracy.
What a house this is to build, furnish and stock with com
forts, to set wide open to starving spinners and weavers, colliers,
peat-burners, all the landless and the hopeless, where they can
come to hear our mother’s daily lessors of thrift, usefulness and
the true dignity of man, as she goes in and out of all her rooms,
cleanly, cheerily, helpfully, with fends whose touch is order,
with a shape whose noble lines are full of grace, with a counte
nance that can leap from serenity to power, and unchain pure
lightnings at those eyes. She is the mother of us all, Thanks
giving America, divorced from hideous wedlock with slavery, all
her beauty coming back to her, all her gifts enhanced, and with
a deeper meaning in her I-ace than ever when she bids all her
children again to the glittering board which she spreads between
the Atlantic and Pacific seas..
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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A discourse upon causes for Thanksgiving: preached at Watertown, Nov. 30, 1862
Creator
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Weiss, John [1832-1907.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Boston
Collation: 24 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Includes bibliographical references. Sermon taken from the Bible. Mark, IV,28
Publisher
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Wright & Potter, printers
Date
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1862
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G5352
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A discourse upon causes for Thanksgiving: preached at Watertown, Nov. 30, 1862), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
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Sermons
Slavery
USA
Conway Tracts
Sermons
Slavery-United States
Thanksgiving Day
United States-History
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Text
I873-J
SCRAPS OF MODOC HISTORY.
21
SCRAPS OF MODOC HISTORY.
YING between the 121st and I22d leys and plateaus were dotted with an
degrees of west longitude, and telope; the timbered ridges sheltered
large herds of deer; the Klamath River
crossed by the boundary-line between
the States of California and Oregon, is —theirs to where it breaks through the
the water-shed that supplies the sources Siskiyou range to the westward — and
of the Sacramento and Klamath rivers. Lost River, connecting Clear and Rhett
Traversed by irregular and broken ridges lakes, were teeming with fish. The kaof basalt, evidently torn asunder by vio mas-root, an exceedingly nutritious ar
lent natural convulsions, and abounding ticle of food, was found everywhere.
in volcanic scoria, this region is, gener The marshes around the lakes produced
ally, inhospitable and sterile. Between tons of ivocas, the seed of the water
the broken mountain ranges are exten lily ; and their waters were alive with
sive plateaus covered with wild sage and wild-fowl of every description. Like the
chemisal, a little bunch and rye grass, nomads of the East, the habitations of
and having all the characteristics of this people were anywhere in the vi
the sage-plains of western Nevada. cinity of water; for the raids of their
Throughout this region are numerous equally warlike neighbors had taught
lakes; among which, and lying east and them the folly of wasting labor on per
west along the forty-second parallel, manent abiding-places. They are usu
are Little Klamath, Rhett, and Clear ally made by the erection of willow
lakes. This is the home of the Modoc poles, gathered together at the top, like
Indians, whose bold deeds and defiant the skeleton frame of an inverted bas
attitude to the military forces of the ket, and covered with matting woven
Government have attracted so much at with the tule of the marshes. The earth
in the centre scooped out, and thrown
tention.
Physically, and in point of intelli up in a low, circular embankment, pro
gence, this tribe are superior to the tects the family from the winds; and,
average American Indian. Subsisting while readily built and easily taken down,
almost entirely by the chase, the men are these frail dwellings are comparatively
lithe and enduring, courageous and in comfortable.
dependent— some of them really hand
It is difficult even to approximate the
some types of humanity; and their probable number of this people, when
recent decided repulse of a force of reg in their undisturbed aboriginal glory, and
ulars and volunteers, five times their before their contact with the superior
number, shows that they must not be civilization, whose vices, only, seem to
confounded with the Diggers of the Pa be attractive to the savage nature. In
cific slope. Once a numerous, powerful, dians have no Census Bureau; and, in
and warlike people, like the tribe of Ish deed, nearly all tribes have a supersti
mael, their hands were ever raised against tious aversion to answering any ques
all others, and their aggressive spirit tions as to their numbers. The Modocs
kept them in continual warfare. Their are like all others, and, when questioned
country was rich in everything necessary on the subject, only point to their coun
to sustain aboriginal life. The little val try, and say, that “once it was full of
L
�22
SCRAPS OF MODOC HISTORY.
people.” The remains of their ancient
villages, found along the shores of the
lakes, on the streams, and in the vicin
ity of springs, seem to corroborate this
statement; and one ranch alone, the re
mains of which are found on the western
shore of Little Klamath Lake, must
have contained more souls than are now
numbered in the whole Modoc nation.
Only 400, by official count, left of a tribe
that must have numbered thousands!
Some of the causes of the immense de
crease of this people can be traced to
their deadly conflicts with the early set
tlers of northern California and southern
Oregon. They were in open and un
compromising hostility to the Whites,
stubbornly resisting the passage of emi
grant trains through their country; and
the bloody atrocities of these Arabs of
the West are still too well remembered.
As early as 1847, following the route
taken by Fremont the previous year, a
large portion of the Oregon immigration
passed through the heart of the Modoc
country. From the moment they left
the Pit River Mountains, their travel
was one of watchful fear and difficulty,
the road winding through dangerous
canons, and passing under precipitous
cliffs that afforded secure and impene
trable ambush. Bands of mounted war
riors hovered near them by day, watch
ing favorable opportunities to stampede
their cattle, or pick off any stray or un
wary traveler. Nor were the emigrants
safe by night. The camping-places were
anticipated by the enemy — dark shad
ows crept among the sage and tall rye
grass, and, when least expecting it, ev
ery bush would seem to harbor a dusky
foe, and the air be full of flying arrows.
If the train were small, or weak in num
bers, the Indians would be bolder, and
not satisfied with shooting or stamped
ing cattle, but would waylay and attack
it in open daylight.
In 1852, a small train, comprising only
eighteen souls — men, women, and chil
[July,
dren—attempted to reach Oregon by the
Rhett Lake route. For several days,
after leaving the valley of Pit River,
they had traveled without molestation,
not having seen a single Indian; when,
about midday, they struck the eastern
shore of Rhett Lake, and imprudently
camped under a bluff, now known as
“ Bloody Point,” for dinner. These poor
people felt rejoiced to think that they
had so nearly reached their destination
in safety; nor dreamed that they had
reached their final resting-place, and
that soon the gray old rocks above them
were to receive a baptism that would
associate them for ever with a cruel and
wanton massacre. Their tired cattle were
quietly grazing, and the little party were
eating their meal in fancied security,
when suddenly the dry sage-brush was
fired, the air rang with demoniac yells, and
swarthy and painted savages poured by
the score from the rocks overhead. In
a few moments the camp was filled with
them, and their bloody work was soon
ended. Only one of that ill-fated party es
caped. Happening to be out, picketing
his horse, when the attack was made, he
sprang upon it, bare-backed, and never
drew rein until he had reached Yreka, a
distance of sixty miles.
The men of early times in these mount
ains were brave and chivalrous men. In
less than twenty-four hours, a mounted
force of miners, packers, and prospect
ors— men who feared no living thing —
were at the scene of the massacre. The
remains of the victims were found, shock
ingly mutilated, lying in a pile with their
broken wagons, and half charred; but
not an Indian could be found.
It was not until the next year that the
Modocs were punished for this cruel
deed. An old mountaineer, named Ben
Wright — one of those strange beings
who imagine that they are born as in
struments for the fulfillment of the Red
man’s destiny—organized an independ
ent company at Yreka, in 1853, and went
�1873-1
SCRAPS OF MODOC HISTORY.
into the Modoc country. The Indians
were wary, but Ben was patient and en
during. Meeting with poor success, and
accomplishing nothing except protection
for incoming emigrants, he improvised
an “emigranttrain” with ^ich to decoy
the enemy from the cover of the hills
and ravines. Winding slowly among the
hills and through the sage-plains, Ben’s
canvas-covered wagons rolled quietly
along, camping at the usual wateringplaces, and apparently in a careless and
unguarded way. Every wagon was filled
with armed men, anxious and willing to
be attacked. The ruse failed, however;
for the keen-sighted Indians soon per
ceived that there were no women or
children with the train, and its careless
movements were suspicious. After sev
eral months of unsatisfactory skirmish
ing, Ben resolved on a change of tactics.
Surprising a small party of Modocs, in
stead of scalping them, he took them to
his camp, treated them kindly, and mak
ing them a sort of Peace Commission,
sent them with olive-branches, in the
shape of calico and tobacco, back to
their people. Negotiations for a general
council to arrange a treaty were opened.
Others visited the White camp; and
soon the Modocs, who had but a faint
appreciation of the tortuous ways of
White diplomacy, began to think that
Ben was a very harmless and respect
able gentleman. A spot on the north
bank of Lost River, a few hundred yards
from the Natural Bridge, was selected
for the council. On the appointed day,
fifty-one Indians (about equal in number
to Wright’s company) attended, and, as
agreed upon by both parties, no weap
ons were brought to the ground. A
number of beeves had been killed, pres
ents were distributed, and the day pass
ed in mutual professions of friendship;
when Wright—whose quick, restless eye
had been busy — quietly filled his pipe,
drew a match, and lit it. This was the
23
pre-concerted signal. As the first little
curling wreath of smoke went up, fifty
revolvers were drawn from their places
of concealment by Wright’s men, who
were now scattered among their intend
ed victims ; a few moments of rapid and
deadly firing, and only two of the Mo
docs escaped to warn their people !
The Scotch have given us a proverb,
that “He maun hae a lang spoon wha
sups wi’ the deiland it may be Wright
thought so. Perhaps the cruel and mer
ciless character of these Indians justi
fied an act of treachery, now passed
into the history of the country; but,
certainly, the deed was not calculated to
inspire the savage heart with a high re
spect for the professed good faith and
fair-dealing of the superior race. Ben
Wright is gone now—killed by an Indian
bullet, while standing in the door of his
cabin, at the mouth of Rogue River.
No man may judge him; but, to this
hour, his name is used by Modoc moth
ers to terrify their refractory children
into obedience. The Modocs were now
filled with revenge, and their depreda
tions continued, till it became absolutely
necessary for the Territorial Governor
of Oregon to send armed expeditions
against them. For several years, they
were pursued by volunteer forces through
their rugged mountains,.where they con
tinued the unequal warfare with a daunt
less spirit; but, year after year, the num
ber of their warriors was diminishing.
In 1864, when old Sconchin buried
the hatchet and agreed to war with the
pale-faces no more, he said, mournfully:
“ Once my people were like the sand
along yon shore. Now I call to them,
and only the wind answers. Four hun
dred strong young men went with me to
war with the Whites; only eighty are
left. We will be good, if the White
man will let us, and be friends forever.”
And this old Chief has kept his word —
better, perhaps, than his conquerors have
�24
SCRAPS OF MODOC HISTORY.
theirs. The Modocs themselves offer a
better reason for the great decrease of
their people. They say that within the
memory of many of this generation, the
tribe were overtaken by a famine that
swept off whole ranches, and they speak
of it as if remembered like a fearful
dream. As is usual with savages, the
chief labor of gathering supplies of all
kinds, except those procured by fishing
and the chase, devolved upon the Mo
doc women. Large quantities of kamas
and wocas were always harvested, but
the predatory character of the surround
ing tribes made it dangerous to store
their food in the villages, and it was cus
tomary to caché it among the sage-brush
and rocks, which was done so cunning
ly that an enemy might walk over the
hiding-places without suspicion. Snow
rarely fell in this region sufficiently deep
to prevent access to the cachés; but the
Modocs tell of one winter when they
were caught by a terrible storm, that
continued until the snow was more than
seven feet in depth over the whole coun
try, and access to their winter stores im
possible. The Modocs, like all other
Indians, have no chronology; they do
not count the years, and only reckon
their changes by the seasons of summer
and winter. Remarkable events are re
membered only as coincident with the
marked periods of life; and, judging
from the probable age of the survivors
of that terrible famine, it must have oc
curred over forty years ago, long before
any of the tribe had ever looked upon
the face of a White stranger. These
wild people generally regard such oc
currences with superstitious horror; they
rarely speak of the dead, and even long
residence among the Whites does not
remove a superstition that forbids them
to mention even a dead relative by name.
From those who have lived among the
Whites since early childhood, the par
ticulars of this season of suffering and
desolation are obtained; and they say
that their parents who survived it still
speak of that dreadful winter in shud
dering whispers.
It seems that the young men of the
tribe had regirned, late in the-season,
from a successful hunt, wherf'-a.heavy
snow-storm set in; but these people
like children, in many thingshad no<<-\
apprehension, as their present
were supplied. But the storm increas
ed in fury and strength; the snow fell in
blinding sheets, for days and days, till it
had covered bush, and stunted tree, and
plain, and rock, and mountain, and ev
ery landmark was obliterated. The sur
vivors tell of frantic efforts to reach the
caches; how strong men returned to their
villages, weak and weary with tramping
through the yielding snow in search of;
the hidden stores. They tell how the?*
little brown faces of the children, pinch
ed with hunger, drove the men out again
and again in search of food, only to re
turn, empty-handed and hopeless; how
everything that would sustain life—deer
and antelope skins, their favorite dogs
—even the skins of wild fowl, used as
bedding, were devoured; how, when ev
erything that could be used as. food-was- ■
gone, famine made women put of strong,,
brave warriors, and a dreadful .stillfiess '
fell upon all the villages. They tell how
death crept into every house, till the-hving lay down beside the dead and wait
ed. After weeks of pinching hunger,
and when in the last extremity, an op
portune accident saved the largest vil
lage, on the south-eastern extremity of
Rhett Lake, from complete extinction.
A large band of antelope, moving down
from the hills, probably in search of food,
attempted to cross an arm of the lake
only a short distance from the village^
and were caught in the breaking ice and’r:
drowned. Those who had sufficient strength left, distributed antelope meajt
among the families, and it was then that
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Scraps of Modoc history
Creator
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Turner, William M.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [California]
Collation: 21-24 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Overland Monthly. Author and publication information from https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/ahj1472.1-11.001/17:5?rgn=main;view=image. This is an incomplete copy - p.24 ends mid-way through a sentence.
Please note that this pamphlet contains language and ideas that may be upsetting to readers. These reflect the time in which the pamphlet was written and the ideologies of the author.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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1873
Identifier
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G5733
Subject
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Indigenous peoples
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Scraps of Modoc history), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Native American Indians
United States-History