Part 24

“Thenceforward, to the actual opening of the Revolutionary drama, and during its progress, this act of regal barbarism obscured, but did not wholly extinguish, the light of the great intellect which it sought to destroy; but all that remained was a wreck, reminding only of the glories of the past. The crime against the person added to its atrocity a greater crime against the soul, dooming it to pursue its earthly career in sadness and gloom. Conscious of being only a monument of decay, well might the gradually expiring patriot wish, that, when God, in his righteous Providence, should call him from time into eternity, it might be by a flash of lightning. We may rejoice that his prayer was answered, and that, too noble to be permitted to die a common death, in a manner equally affecting and sublime, JAMES OTIS [_applause_] was removed to the mansions of eternal felicity.

“It is the necessary result of barbarism, in all its phases, to furnish historic parallels by reproducing itself in viler forms. Not a century elapsed, and a similar atrocity is enacted in the Senate Chamber of the United States. The ruffians were actuated by as deadly a hate, their malice was as foul and murderous, their defiance of law was as manifest, their victim was also the friend and advocate of universal freedom, and as much distinguished and feared, and he also fell beneath the blows of assassins in heart and conduct.

“But here the parallel ends. This outrage did not impair the intellect which it sought to destroy; that survived the trial, enlarged, strengthened, purified, to set forward in a new and more glorious career in the cause of Freedom and Humanity. Instead of the lightning’s flash to remove it to heaven, a divine influence, equal in potency, has emanated thence, inspiring it with a larger love of freedom, more zeal in the cause of the oppressed, and a more earnest conviction that human slavery produces only evil, and that it should be forever eradicated. [_Enthusiastic applause._]

“Happy, then, for us, and for our country, has been the suffering of these martyrs in the cause of Freedom. The name of James Otis has descended to posterity on the brightest pages of our history, associated with those of Hancock, and Adams, and Jay, and Jefferson, and Henry, and Rutledge, and there it will remain forever.

“The name of that other martyr in the cause of Truth and Justice will find equal distinction, in future ages, on the roll of philanthropists, with those of Howard and Clarkson and Wilberforce, and others of that glorious company, ‘of whom the world was not worthy.’

“But history has also its retributions. The infamous actors in these tragedies passed away under the scorn and contempt of mankind, their names only searched for and remembered among the persecutors and slayers of their race. They who countenanced and approved the last, by a fitting gradation, became the betrayers and assassins of their country, and two of these, the highest in station and basest in conduct, are now awaiting the punishment due to their crimes in a prison within the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument, [_applause_,] which indignantly frowns upon them from base to summit.

“In the reality of the present behold the promise of the future, when all traitors like them shall meet a similar doom. Still devoting himself to the cause of his country and to the freedom of the oppressed, the advocate and friend of all, of whatever rank or condition or color, the scholar, the philanthropist, the martyr, the statesman has come again among us, and it is with equal pride and pleasure that I present to you the Hon. Charles Sumner, not of Massachusetts, but of the United States of America, one and indivisible.”

Mr. Sumner then came forward, and was received by the vast audience with tumultuous applause, in which the ladies joined with every manifestation of delight. The cheers, and waving of hats and handkerchiefs, lasted several minutes.

SPEECH.

MR. PRESIDENT,--It is my nature to be more touched by the kindness of friends than by the malignity of enemies; and I know something of both. You make me feel that I am among friends. Beyond this satisfaction, I have additional pleasure in being welcomed by the Republican Union: first, as you represent the young men, who are the hope and strength of the country; and, secondly, as you constitute an association which has rendered already signal service in saving the country from the rule of the Slave Oligarchy. I know well how you brought forward and supported Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency, and how you adopted and circulated that masterly speech, made in this very hall, which completed those titles to regard that caused his nomination at Chicago and his triumph with the people.

* * * * *

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW YORK:

In the presence of such an auditory, so genial and almost festive in character,--assembled for no purpose of party, or even of politics, in the ordinary sense of the term,--I incline naturally to some topic of literature, history, science, or art,--to something, at least, which accords with peace. But at this moment, when our whole continent is beginning to shake with the tread of mustering armies, the voice refuses any such theme. The ancient poet, longing to sing of Achilles and the house of Atreus, found that he could sing of love only; and he snatched from his lyre its bloody string. Alas! for me the case is all changed. I can speak to you of war only; but be assured, that, if I speak of war, it is because, unhappily, war has become to us the only way of peace.

* * * * *

The Present is apt to appear trivial and unimportant, while the Past and the Future are grand. Rarely do men know the full significance of the period in which they live, and we are inclined to sigh for something better in the way of opportunity,--such as was given to the hero of the Past, or as imagination allots to the better hero of the Future. But there is no occasion for this repining now. There is nothing in the Past, and it is difficult to imagine anything in the Future, more inspiring than our Present. Even with the curtain yet slightly lifted, it is easy to see that events are gathering, which, in their development, must constitute the third great epoch in the history of this Western Hemisphere,--the first being its discovery by Christopher Columbus, and the second the American Revolution. It remains to be seen if this epoch of ours may not surpass in grandeur either of its two predecessors, so that the fame of the Discoverer and the fame of the Liberator, of Columbus and of Washington, shall be eclipsed by the mild effulgence beaming from an act of godlike justice, creating within its immediate influence a new heaven and a new earth, and extending to other lands a life-giving example, so long as men struggle for rights denied, so long as any human being wears a chain. And this sublime act will be the present substitute for armies. The ancient Spartan, being asked, “Which is the greater virtue, justice or valor?” answered in memorable words, “Where justice is, there can be no need of valor.”

War is always an epoch. Unhappily, history counts by wars. Of these, some are wars of ideas,--like that between Catholics and Huguenots in France, between Catholics and Protestants in Germany, between the arbitrary crown of Charles the First and the Puritanism of Oliver Cromwell, and like that between our fathers and the mother country, when the Declaration of Independence was put in issue. Some originate in questions of form, some in the contentions of families, some in the fickleness of princes, and some in the machinations of politicians. England waged war on Holland, and one of the reasons openly assigned was an offensive picture in the Town-Hall of Amsterdam. France hurled armies across the Rhine, carrying fire and slaughter into the Palatinate, and involving great nations in most bloody conflict,--and all this wickedness is traced to the intrigue of a minister, to divert the attention of his sovereign. But we are now in the midst of a war which, whatever the reasons assigned by the unhappy men who began it, or by those who sympathize with them elsewhere, has an origin and mainspring so clear and definite as to be beyond question. Ideas are sometimes good and sometimes bad; and there may be a war for evil as well as for good. Such was that earliest rebellion waged by fallen spirits against the Almighty Throne; and such is that now waged by fallen slave-masters of our Republic against the National Government. I adopt the language of Milton, in his masterly prose, when I call it “a war fit for Cain to be the leader of,--an abhorred, a cursed, a fraternal war.”[205] Nor can any courage in Rebels give true honor. If victorious, they will be only Satanic saints of Slavery, with place in a most hateful hagiology.

If you will kindly listen, I shall endeavor to unmask this Rebellion in its Origin and Mainspring. Only when these are known can you determine how it is to be treated. Your efforts will be governed by the character of the adverse force,--whether regarded as motive power or as disease. A steam-engine is stopped at once by stopping the steam. A ghastly cancer, which has grappled the very fibres of the human frame, and shot its poison through every vein, will not yield to lip-salve or rosewater.

“Diseases desperate grown By desperate appliances are relieved, Or not at all.”

On the sixth of November last, the people of the United States, acting in pursuance of the Constitution and laws, chose Abraham Lincoln President. Of course this choice was in every particular perfectly constitutional and legal. As such, it was entitled to the respect and acquiescence of every good citizen. It is vain to say that the candidate represented opinions obnoxious to a considerable section of the country, or that he was chosen by votes confined to a special section. It is enough that he was duly chosen. You cannot set aside or deny such an election, without assailing not only the whole framework of the Constitution, but also the primal principle of American institutions. You become a traitor at once to the existing government and to the very idea of popular rule. You snatch a principle from the red book of despotism, and openly substitute the cartridge-box for the ballot-box.

And yet scarcely had this intelligence flashed across the country before the mutterings of sedition and treason began to reach us from an opposite quarter. The Union was menaced; and here the first distinct voice came from South Carolina. A Senator from that State, one of the largest slaveholders of the country, and a most strenuous partisan of Slavery, [Mr. HAMMOND,] openly declared, in language not easily forgotten, that before the 18th of December South Carolina would be “out of the Union, high and dry and forever.” These words heralded the outbreak. With the pertinacity of demons its leaders pushed forward. Their avowed object was the dismemberment of the Republic, by detaching State after State, in order to found a Slaveholding Confederacy. And here the clearest utterance came from a late Representative of Georgia [Mr. STEPHENS], now Vice-President of the Rebel States, who did not hesitate to proclaim that “the foundations of the new government are laid upon the great truth, that Slavery, subordination to the superior race, is the negro’s natural and moral condition,”--that “it is the first government in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth,”--and that “the stone which was rejected by the first builders is in the new edifice become _the chief stone of the corner_.”[206] Here is a savage frankness, with insensibility to shame. The object avowed is hideous in every aspect, whether we regard it as treason to our paternal government, as treason to the idea of American institutions, or as treason to those commanding principles of economy, morals, and Christianity, without which civilization is no better than barbarism.

And now we stand front to front in deadly conflict with this double-headed, triple-headed treason. Beginning with those States most peculiarly interested in Slavery, and operating always with intensity proportioned to the prevalence of Slavery, it fastens upon other States less interested,--Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia,--and with much difficulty is prevented from enveloping every State containing slaves, no matter how few: for such is the malignant poison of Slavery that only a few slaves constitute a Slave State with all the sympathies and animosities of Slavery. This is the Rebellion which I am to unmask. Bad as it is on its face, it becomes aggravated, when we consider its origin, and the agencies by which it is conducted. It is not merely a Rebellion, but it is a Rebellion begun in conspiracy; nor, in all history, ancient or modern, is there any record of conspiracy so vast and so wicked, ranging over such spaces both of time and territory, and forecasting such results. A conspiracy to seize a castle or to assassinate a prince is petty by the side of this enormous, protracted treason, where half a continent is seized, studded with castles, fortresses, and public edifices, where the Government itself is overthrown, and the President, on his way to the national capital, narrowly escapes most cruel assassination.

But no conspiracy could ripen such pernicious fruit, if not rooted in a soil of congenial malignity. To appreciate properly this influence, we must go back to the beginning of the Government.

* * * * *

South Carolina, which takes so forward a part in this treason, hesitated originally, as is well known, with regard to the Declaration of Independence. Once her vote was recorded against this act; and when it finally prevailed, her vote was given for it only formally and for the sake of seeming unanimity.[207] But so little was she inspired by the Declaration, that, in the contest which ensued, her commissioners made a proposition to the British commander which is properly characterized by an able historian as “equivalent to an offer from the State to return to its allegiance to the British crown.”[208] The hesitation with regard to the Declaration of Independence was renewed with regard to the National Constitution; and here it was shared by another State. Notoriously, both South Carolina and Georgia, which, with the States carved from their original territory, Alabama and Mississippi, constitute the chief seat of the conspiracy, hesitated in becoming parties to the Union, and stipulated expressly for recognition of the slave-trade in the National Constitution as an indispensable condition. In the Convention, Mr. Rutledge, of South Carolina, while opposing a tax on the importation of slaves, said: “The true question at present is, _whether the Southern States_ shall or shall not be parties to the Union.” Mr. Pinckney, also of South Carolina, followed with the unblushing declaration: “South Carolina can never receive the plan [of the Constitution], _if it prohibits the slave-trade_.” I quote now from Mr. Madison’s authentic report of these important debates.[209] With shame let it be confessed, that, instead of repelling this disgraceful overture, our fathers submitted to it, and in that submission you find the beginning of present sorrows. The slave-trade, whose annual iniquity no tongue can tell, was placed for twenty years under safeguard of the Constitution, thus giving sanction, support, and increase to Slavery itself. The language is modest, but the intent was complete. South Carolina and Georgia were pacified, and took their places in the Union, to which they were openly bound only by a most hateful tie. Regrets for the past are not entirely useless, if out of them we get wisdom for the future, and learn to be brave. It is easy to see now, that, had the unnatural pretensions of these States been originally encountered by stern resistance worthy of an honest people, the present conspiracy would have been crushed before it saw the light. Its whole success, from its distant beginning down to this hour, has been from our timidity.

There was also another sentiment, of kindred perversity, which prevailed in the same quarter. This is vividly portrayed by John Adams, in a letter to General Gates, dated at Philadelphia, 23d March, 1776:--

“However, my dear friend Gates, all our misfortunes arise from a single source: _the reluctance of the Southern Colonies to Republican Government_.”[210]

And he proceeds to declare in strong language that “popular principles and axioms are abhorrent to the inclinations of the barons of the South.” This letter was written in the early days of the Revolution. At a later date John Adams testifies again to the discord between the North and the South, and refers particularly to the period after the National Constitution, saying: “The Northern and the Southern States were immovably fixed in opposition to each other.”[211] This was before any question of Tariff or Free Trade, and before the growing fortunes of the North had awakened Southern jealousy. The whole opposition had its root in Slavery,--as also had the earlier resistance to Republican Government.

In the face of these influences the Union was formed, but the seeds of conspiracy were latent in its bosom. The spirit already revealed was scarcely silenced; it was not destroyed. It still existed, rankling, festering, burning to make itself manifest. At the mention of Slavery it always appeared full-armed with barbarous pretensions. Even in the first Congress under the Constitution, at the presentation of that famous petition where Benjamin Franklin simply called upon Congress to step to the verge of its power to discourage every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men, this spirit broke forth in violent threats. With kindred lawlessness it early embraced that extravagant dogma of State Rights which has been ever since the convenient cloak of treason and conspiracy. At the Missouri Question, in 1820, it openly menaced dissolution of the Union. Instead of throttling the monster, we submitted to feed it with new concessions. Meanwhile the conspiracy grew, until, at last, in 1830, under the influence of Mr. Calhoun, it assumed the defiant front of Nullification; nor did it yield to the irresistible logic of Webster or the stern will of Jackson without a compromise. The pretended ground of complaint was the Tariff; but Andrew Jackson, himself a patriot Slaveholder, at that time President, saw the hollowness of the complaint. In a confidential letter, only recently brought to light, dated at Washington, May 1, 1833, and which during the last winter I had the honor of reading and holding up before the Senatorial conspirators in the original autograph, he says:--

“The Tariff was only the _pretext_, and Disunion and a Southern Confederacy the real object. _The next pretext will be the Negro or Slavery Question._”[212]

Jackson was undoubtedly right; but the pretext which he denounced in advance was employed so constantly afterwards as to become threadbare. At the earliest presentation of Abolition petitions,--at the Texas Question,--at the Compromises of 1850,--at the Kansas Question,--at the possible election of Fremont,--on all these occasions, the Union was threatened by angry Slave-Masters.

The conspiracy is unblushingly confessed by recent parties to it. Especially was this done in the Rebel Convention of South Carolina, where, one after another, the witnesses testified all the same way.

Mr. Parker said: “Secession is no spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us. _It has been gradually culminating for a long period of thirty years._”

Mr. Inglis followed: “Most of us have had this matter under consideration for _the last twenty years_.”

Mr. Keitt, Representative in Congress, gloried in his work, saying: “I have been engaged in this movement _ever since I entered political life_.”

Mr. Rhett, who was in the Senate when I first entered that body, and did not hesitate then to avow himself a Disunionist, declared in the same Convention: “It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln’s election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law: _it is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years_.”[213]

The conspiracy, thus exposed by Jackson, and confessed by recent parties to it, was quickened by the growing passion for Slavery throughout the Slave States. The well-known opinions of the Fathers, the declared convictions of all most valued at the foundation of the Government, and the example of Washington were discarded, and it was recklessly avowed that Slavery is a divine institution, the highest type of civilization, a blessing to master and slave alike, and the very key-stone of our national arch. A generation has grown up with this teaching, so that it is now ready to say with Satan,--

“Evil, be thou my good! by thee at least Divided empire with Heaven’s King I hold; By thee, and more than half perhaps, will reign: As man, erelong, and this new world, shall know.”

It is natural that a people thus trained should listen to the voice of conspiracy. Slavery itself is a constant conspiracy; and its supporters, whether in the Slave States or elsewhere, easily become indifferent to all rights and principles by which it may be constrained.

This rage for Slavery was quickened by two influences, which have exhibited themselves since the formation of our Union,--one economical, and the other political. The first was the unexpected importance of the cotton crop, which, through the labor of slaves and the genius of a New England inventor, passed into an extraordinary element of wealth and of imagined strength, so that we have all been summoned to homage to cotton as king. The second was the temptation of political power, than which no influence is more potent,--for it became obvious that this could be assured to Slavery only through the permanent preponderance of its representatives in the Senate; so that the continued control of all offices and honors was made to depend upon the extension of Slavery. Thus, through two strong appetites, one for gain and the other for power, was Slavery stimulated; but the conspiracy was strong only through Slavery.

Even this conspiracy, thus supported and nurtured, would have been more wicked than strong, if it had not found perfidious aid in the very Cabinet of the President. The Secretary of the Treasury, a Slave-Master from Georgia, the Secretary of the Interior, a Slave-Master from Mississippi, the Secretary of War, the notorious Floyd, a Slave-Master from Virginia, and I fear also the Secretary of the Navy, who was a Northern man with Southern principles, lent their active exertions. Through these eminent functionaries the treason was organized and directed, while their important posts were prostituted to its infamy. Here again you see the extent of the conspiracy. Never before, in any country, was there a similar crime which embraced so many persons in the highest places of power, or took within its grasp so large a theatre of human action. Anticipating the election of Mr. Lincoln, the Cabinet conspirators prepared the way for rebellion.