Chapter 34

The capital peculiarity of the eloquence of all times of revolution, is that the actions it persuades to are the highest and most heroic which men can do, and the passions it would inspire, in order to persuade to them, are the most lofty which man can feel. "High actions and high passions"--such are Milton's words, high actions through and by high passions; these are the end and these the means of the orator of the revolution. Hence are his topics large, simple, intelligible, affecting. Hence are his views broad, impressive, popular; no trivial details, no wire-woven developments, no subtle distinctions and drawing of fine lines about the boundaries of ideas, no speculation, no ingenuity; all is elemental, comprehensive, intense, practical, unqualified, undoubting. It is not of the small things of minor and instrumental politics he comes to speak, or men come to hear. It is not to speak or to hear about permitting an Athenian citizen to change his tribe; about permitting the Roman knights to have jurisdiction of trials equally with the Senate; it is not about allowing a £10 householder to vote for a member of Parliament; about duties on indigo, or onion-seed, or even tea.

"That strain you hear is of an higher mood."

It is the rallying-cry of patriotism, of liberty, in the sublimest crisis of the State,--of man. It is a deliberation of empire, of glory, of existence, on which they come together. To be or not to be, that is the question. Shall the children of the men of Marathon become slaves of Philip? Shall the majesty of the Senate and people of Rome stoop to wear the chains forging by the military executors of the will of Julius Cæsar? Shall the assembled representatives of France, just waking from her sleep of ages to claim the rights of man,--shall they disperse, their work undone, their work just commencing; and shall they disperse at the order of the king? or shall the messenger be bid to go, in the thunder-tones of Mirabeau,--and tell his master that "we sit here to do the will of our constituents, and that we will not be moved from those seats but by the point of the bayonet?" Shall Ireland bound upward from her long prostration, and cast from her the last links of the British chain, and shall she advance "from injuries to arms, from arms to liberty," from liberty to glory? Shall the thirteen Colonies become, and be free and independent States, and come unabashed, unterrified, an equal, into the majestic assembly of the nations?

These are the thoughts with which all bosoms are distended and oppressed. Filled with these, and with these flashing in every eye, swelling every heart, pervading electric all ages, all orders, like a visitation, "an unquenchable public fire," men come together,--the thousands of Athens around the Bema, or in the Temple of Dionysus,--the people of Rome in the forum, the Senate in that council-chamber of the world,--the masses of France, as the spring-tide, into her gardens of the Tuileries, her club-rooms, her hall of the convention,--the representatives, the genius, the grace, the beauty of Ireland into the Tuscan Gallery of her House of Commons,--the delegates of the Colonies into the Hall of Independence at Philadelphia,--thus men come in an hour of revolution, to hang upon the lips from which they hope, they need, they demand, to hear the things which belong to their national salvation, hungering for the bread of life. R. Choate.

CCLII.

AMERICAN NATIONALITY.

By the side of all antagonisms, higher than they, stronger than they, there rises colossal the fine sweet spirit of nationality, the nationality of America! See there the pillar of fire which God has kindled and lifted and moved for our hosts and our ages. Gaze on that, worship that, worship the highest in that. Between that light and our eyes a cloud for a time may seem to gather; chariots, armed men on foot, the troops of kings may march on us, and our fears may make us for a moment turn from it; a sea may spread before us, and waves seem to hedge us up; dark idolatries may alienate some hearts for a season from that worship; revolt, rebellion, may break out in the camp, and the waters of our springs may run bitter to the taste and mock it; between us and that Canaan a great river may seem to be rolling; but beneath that high guidance our way is onward, ever onward; those waters shall part, and stand on either hand in heaps; that idolatry shall repent; that rebellion shall be crushed; that stream shall be sweetened; that overflowing river shall be passed on foot dryshod, in harvest time; and from that promised land of flocks, fields, tents, mountains, coasts, and ships, from north and south, and east and west, there shall swell one cry yet, of victory, peace, and thanksgiving! R. Choate.

CCLII.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

Think of this nationality first as a state of consciousness, as a spring of feeling, as a motive to exertion, as blessing your country, and as reacting on you. Think of it as it fills your mind and quickens your heart, and as it fills the mind and quickens the heart of millions around you. Instantly, under such an influence, you ascend above the smoke and stir of this small local strife; you tread upon the high places of the earth and of history; you think and feel as an American for America; her power, her eminence, her consideration, her honor, are yours; your competitors, like hers, are kings; your home, like hers, is the world; your path, like hers, is on the highway of empires; our charge, her charge, is of generations and ages; your record, her record, is of treaties, battles, voyages, beneath all the constellations; her image, one, immortal, golden, rises on your eye as our western star at evening rises on the traveller from his home; no lowering cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken crevasse, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promiser of love, hope, and a brighter day!

But if you would contemplate nationality as an active virtue, look around you. Is not our own history one witness and one record of what it can do? This day and all which it stands for,--did it not give us these? This glory of the fields of that war, this eloquence of that revolution, this one wide sheet of flame which wrapped tyrant and tyranny and swept all that escaped from it away, forever and forever; the courage to fight, to retreat, to rally, to advance, to guard the young flag by the young arm and the young heart's blood, to hold up and hold on till the magnificent consummation crowned the work,--were not all these imparted or inspired by this imperial sentiment? Has it not here begun the master-work of man, the creation of a national life? Did it not call out that prodigious development of wisdom, the wisdom of constructiveness which illustrated the years after the war, and the framing and adopting of the Constitution? Has it not, in general, contributed to the administering of that government wisely and well since? R. Choate.

CCLIV.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

Look at it! It has kindled us to no aims of conquest. It has involved us in no entangling alliances. It has kept our neutrality dignified and just. The victories of peace have been our prized victories. But the larger and truer grandeur of the nations, for which they are created, and for which they must one day, before some tribunal, give an account, what a measure of these it has enabled us already to fulfil! It has lifted us to the throne, and has set on our brow the name of the Great Republic. It has taught us to demand nothing wrong, and to submit to nothing wrong; it has made our diplomacy sagacious, wary, accomplished; it has opened the iron gate of the mountains and planted our ensign on the great, tranquil sea.

It has made the desert to bud and blossom as the rose; it has quickened to life the giant brood of useful arts; it has whitened lake and ocean with the sails of a daring, new, and lawful trade; it has extended to exiles, flying as clouds, the asylum of our better liberty.

It has kept us at rest within all our borders; it has repressed without blood the intemperance of local insubordination; it has scattered the seeds of liberty, under law and under order, broadcast; it has seen and helped American feeling to swell into a fuller flood; from many a field and many a deck, though it seeks not war, makes not war, and fears not war, it has borne the radiant flag, all unstained; it has opened our age of lettered glory; it has opened and honored the age of the industry of the people! R. Choate.

CCLV.

THE NATIONAL ENSIGN.

Sir, I must detain you no longer. I have said enough, and more than enough, to manifest the spirit in which this flag is now committed to your charge. It is the national ensign, pure and simple; dearer to all our hearts at this moment, as we lift it to the gale, and see no other sign of hope upon the storm-cloud which rolls and rattles above it, save that which is reflected from its own radiant hues; dearer, a thousand-fold dearer to us all, than ever it was before, while gilded by the sunshine of prosperity and playing with the zephyrs of peace. It will speak for itself far more eloquently than I can speak for it.

Behold it! Listen to it! Every star has a tongue; every stripe is articulate. There is no language or speech where their voices are not heard. There's magic in the web of it. It has an answer for every question of duty. It has a solution for every doubt and perplexity. It has a word of good cheer for every hour of gloom or of despondency.

Behold it! Listen to it! It speaks of earlier and of later struggles. It speaks of victories, and sometimes of reverses, on the sea and on the land. It speaks of patriots and heroes among the living and the dead: and of him, the first and greatest of them all, around whose consecrated ashes this unnatural and abhorrent strife has so long been raging--"the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not." But before all and above all other associations and memories--whether of glorious men, or glorious deeds, or glorious places--its voice is ever of Union and Liberty, of the Constitution and the Laws.

Behold it! Listen to it! Let it tell the story of its birth to these gallant volunteers, as they march beneath its folds by day, or repose beneath its sentinel stars by night. Let it recall to them the strange, eventful history of its rise and progress; let it rehearse to them the wondrous tale of its trials and its triumphs, in peace as well as in war; and, whatever else may happen to it or to them, it will never be surrendered to rebels; never be ignominiously struck to treason; nor be prostituted to any unworthy or unchristian purpose of revenge, depredation, or rapine. And may a merciful God cover the head of each one of its brave defenders in the hour of battle. R. C. Winthrop.

CCLVI.

THE CAUSE.

"Union for the sake of the Union"; "our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country";--these are the mottoes, old, stale, hackneyed, and threadbare as they may have seemed when employed as the watchwords of an electioneering campaign, but clothed with a new power, a new significance, a new gloss, and a new glory, when uttered as the battlecries of a nation struggling for existence; these are the mottoes which can give a just and adequate expression to the Cause in which you have enlisted. Sir, I thank Heaven that the trumpet has given no uncertain sound, while you have been preparing yourselves for the battle.

This is the Cause which has been solemnly proclaimed by both branches of Congress, in resolutions passed at the instance of those true-hearted sons of Tennessee and Kentucky--Johnson and Crittenden--and which, I rejoice to remember at this hour, received your own official sanction as a Senator of the United States.

This is the Cause which has been recognized and avowed by the President of the United States, with a frankness and fearlessness which have won the respect and admiration of all.

This is the Cause which has been so fervently commended to us from the dying lips of a Douglas, and by the matchless living voices of a Holt and an Everett.

This is the Cause in which the heroic Anderson, lifting his banner upon the wings of prayer,--and looking to the guidance and guardianship of the God in whom he trusted, went through that fiery furnace unharmed, and came forth, not indeed without the smell of fire and smoke upon his garments, but with an undimmed and undying lustre of piety and patriotism on his brow.

This is the Cause in which the lamented Lyon bequeathed all that he had of earthly treasure to his country, and then laid down a life in her defense, whose value no millions could measure.

This is the Cause in which the veteran chief of our armies crowned with the laurels which Washington alone had worn before him, and renouncing all inferior allegiance at the loss of fortune and of friends, has tasked, and is still tasking to the utmost the energies of a soul whose patriotism no age could chill. This is the Cause to which the young and noble McClellan, under whose lead it is your privilege to serve, has brought that matchless combination of sagacity and science, of endurance modesty, caution, and courage, which have made him the hope of the hour, the bright particular star of our immediate destiny.

And this, finally, is the Cause which has obliterated, as no other cause could have done, all divisions and distinction of party, nationality, and creed; which has appealed alike to Republican, Democrat, and Union Whig, to native citizen and to adopted citizen; and in which not the sons of Massachusetts or of New England or of the North alone, not the dwellers on the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna only, but so many of those, also, on the Potomac and the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri, on all the lakes, and in all the vast Mesopotamia of the mighty West--yes, and strangers from beyond the seas, Irish and Scotch, German, Italian, and French--the common emigrant and those who have stood nearest to a throne--brave and devoted men from almost every nation under heaven--men who have measured the value of our country to the world by a nobler standard than the cotton crop; and who realize that other and momentous destinies are at stake upon our struggle than such as can be wrought upon any mere material looms and shuttles--all, all are seen rallying beneath a common flag, and, exclaiming with one heart and voice: "The American Union--it must be, and shall be preserved." R. C. Winthrop.

CCLVII.

THE ASSAULT ON CHARLES SUMNER.

On the 22d of May, when the Senate and House had clothed themselves in mourning for a brother fallen in the battle of life, in the distant State of Missouri, the Senator from Massachusetts sat in the silence of the Senate chamber, engaged in employments appertaining to his office, when a member from this House, who had taken an oath to sustain the Constitution, stole into the Senate, that place which had hitherto been held sacred against violence, and smote him as Cain smote his brother. One blow was enough; but it did not satiate the wrath of that spirit which had pursued him through two days. Again, and again, and again, quicker and faster fell the leaden blows, until he was torn away from his victim, when the Senator from Massachusetts fell into the arms of his friends, and his blood ran down the floor of the Senate.

Sir, the act was brief and my comments on it shall be brief also. I denounce it in the name of the Constitution which it violated. I denounce it in the name of the sovereignty of Massachusetts, which was stricken down by the blow. I denounce it in the name of humanity. I denounce it in the name of civilization, which it outraged. I denounce it in the name of that fair play, which bullies and prize-fighters respect. What, strike a man when he is pinioned, when he cannot respond to a blow! Call you that chivalry? In what code of honor did you get your authority for that? God knows my heart. I desire to speak with kindness. I speak in no spirit of revenge. I do not believe the member has a friend who must not in his heart of hearts condemn the act. Even the member himself--if he has left a spark of that chivalry and gallantry attributed to him--must loathe and scorn the act. But much as I reprobate the act, much more do I reprobate the conduct of those who stood by and saw the outrage perpetrated. O, magnanimous Slidell! O, prudent Douglas! O, audacious Toombs!

Sir, there are questions arising out of this, which are far more important than those of a mere personal nature. Of these personal considerations I shall speak when the question comes properly before us, if I am permitted to do so. The higher question involves the very existence of the government itself. If, sir, freedom of speech is not to remain to us, what is the government worth? If we from Massachusetts, or any other State,--senators or members of the House, are to be called to account by some "gallant uncle," when we utter something which does not suit their sensitive nature, we desire to know it.

If the conflict is to be transferred from the peaceful, intellectual field to one where, it is said, "honors are easy and responsibilities equal," then we desire to know it. Massachusetts, if her sons and representatives are to have the rod held over them,--though she utters no threats,--may be called upon to withdraw them to her own bosom, where she can furnish to them that protection which is not vouchsafed to them under the flag of their common country. But while she permits us to remain, we shall do our duty; we shall speak whatever we choose to speak, whatever we will, and however we will, regardless of the consequences.

Sir, the sons of Massachusetts are educated, at the knees of their mothers, in the doctrines of peace and good-will, and God knows we desire to cultivate those feelings,--feelings of social kindness, and public kindness.

The House will bear witness that we have not violated or trespassed upon any of them; but, sir, if we are pushed too long and too far, there are men from the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts who will not shrink from a defence of freedom of speech, and the State they represent: in any field where they may be assailed. A. Burlingame.

CCLVIII.

STRENGTH OF THE GOVERNMENT.

I know that I may be met at once by the objection that our general government is, after all, but a qualified and imperfect government. I may be reminded that it was from Massachusetts that the amendment came which expressly declares that all powers not given, are withheld. And then it may be asked, is there not here a manifest division of sovereignty and of power, and does not this show that much is wanting--that all which is retained at home is wanting--to constitute the full strength of a national government? My answer is twofold. First, I say, the national government has at this moment, by force of the Constitution, all the strength--absolutely all--which it needs, or could profitably use, as a central national government. I answer next, that by the admirable provisions of our Constitution, the reserved powers of every State may be, and, so far as that State does its duty, will be, prepared and developed to their utmost efficiency, and then imparted to the nation in its need.

Do we want a proof and illustration of all this? Very recent events have supplied one, which history will not forget, if we do. How happened it that, a few weeks since, when the general government seemed to be feeble, and was in peril, and the demand--I may as well say the cry for help came forth--why was it that Massachusetts was the first to spring to the rescue? Why was it that she was able, in four days from that in which this cry reached her, to add a new glory to the day of Lexington? Why was it that she could begin that offering of needed aid which has since poured itself in a full, and swollen, and rushing stream, into the war power of the national government? Even as I ask the question, the answer is in all your minds. It is, that Massachusetts could do this because she had done her own duty beforehand. She could do this because, within her own bounds, she had prepared and organized her own strength, and stood ready for the moment when she could place it in the outstretched hands of the government. And other States followed, offering their contributions with no interval--with almost too little of delay; with a haste which was sometimes precipitation; with an importunate begging for acceptance--all of it yet far behind the earnest desire and demand of the people of these States, until at length we stood before an astonished world the strongest government on the face of the earth.

Stronger, therefore, for all the purposes to which our national government should apply its strengths stronger for all the good it can do and all the harm it can prevent, that government is, as it is now constructed, and because it is so constructed, than it could be if it were the single, central, consolidated power of other nations. And it will show its strength, not by preventing all checks and reverses, for that is impossible; but, as I believe, in prompt and thorough recovery from them. T. Parsons.

CCLIX.

THE HIGHER LAW.

In the whole political history of our own country, there has been no sin so atrocious as the repudiation of a higher than human law. It is stark atheism; for, with the law, this position virtually denies also the providence of God, and makes men and nations sole arbiters of their own fortunes. But "the Heavens do rule." If there be institutions or measures inconsistent with immutable rectitude, they are fostered only under the ban of a righteous God; they inwrap the germs of their own harvest of shame, disorder, vice, and wretchedness; nay, their very prosperity is but the verdure and blossoming which shall mature the apples of Sodom. O, how often have our legislators had reason to recall those pregnant words of Jefferson,--sad indeed is it that they should have become almost too trite for repetition, without having worked their way into the national conscience,--"I tremble for my country, when I consider that God is just!" The nations that have passed away, the decaying nations, the convulsed thrones, the smouldering rebellion-fires of the Old World, reveal the elements of national decline and ruin, and hold out baleful signals over the career on which our republic is hurrying; assuring us, by the experience of all climes and ages, that slavery, the unprincipled lust of power and territory official corruption and venality, aggressive war, partisan legislation, are but "sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind."

Our statesmen of the "manifest destiny" type seem to imagine oar country necessary to the designs of Providence. So thought the Hebrews, and on far more plausible grounds, of their commonwealth; but, rather than fulfil to such degenerate descendants the promise made to their great ancestor, "God is able," said the divine Teacher. "of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham."