Chapter 40

The amendments to the Constitution which constitute the Bill of Rights, declare that "a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Our people are denied this right secured to them in their own constitution and the constitution of the United States; yet we hear no complaints here of violations of the Constitution in this respect. We ask the Government to interpose to secure us this constitutional right. We want the passes in our mountains opened, we want deliverance and protection for a down-trodden and oppressed people who are struggling for their independence without arms. If we had had ten thousand stand of arms and ammunition when the contest commenced, we should have asked no further assistance. We have not got them. We are a rural people; we have villages and small towns--no large cities. Our population is homogeneous, industrious, frugal, brave, independent; but now harmless and powerless, and oppressed by usurpers. You may be too late in coming to our relief or you may not come at all though I do not doubt you will come--and they may trample us under foot; they may convert our plains into graveyards, and the caves of our mountains into sepulchers; but they will never take us out of this Union, or make us a land of slaves--no, never! We intend to stand as firm as adamant, and as unyielding as our own majestic mountains that surround us. Yes, we will be as fixed and as immovable as are they upon their bases. We will stand as long as we can; and if we are overpowered and Liberty shall be driven from the land, we intend before she departs to take the flag of our country with a stalwart arm, a patriotic heart, and an honest tread, and place it upon the summit of the loftiest and most majestic mountain. We intend to plant it there, and leave it, to indicate to the inquirer who may come in after times, the spot where the Goddess of Liberty lingered and wept for the last time, before she took her flight from a people once prosperous, free, and happy.

We ask the Government to come to our aid. We love the Constitution as made by our fathers. We have confidence in the integrity and capacity of the people to govern themselves. We have lived entertaining these opinions; we intend to die entertaining them. We may meet with impediments, and may meet with disasters, and here and there a defeat; but ultimately freedom's cause must triumph, for--

"Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft, is ever won."

Yes, we must triumph. My faith is strong, based on the eternal principles of right that a thing so monstrously wrong as this rebellion cannot triumph. I say, let the battle go on--it is freedom's cause--until the Stars and Stripes ( God bless them!) shall again be unfurled upon every cross-road, and from every house-top throughout the Confederacy North and South. Let the Union be reinstated; let tie law be enforced; let the Constitution be supreme. A. Johnson.

CCXCVI.

THE SUBMISSIONISTS.

With the curled lip of scorn we are told by the disunionists that, in thus supporting a Republican Administration in its endeavors to uphold the Constitution and the laws, we are "submissionists," and when they have pronounced this word, they suppose they have imputed to us the sum of all human abasement. Well, let it be confessed, we are "submissionists," and weak and spiritless as it may be deemed by some, we glory in the position we occupy. The law says, "Thou shalt not swear falsely;" we submit to this law, and while in the civil or military service of the country, with an oath to support the Constitution of the United States resting upon our consciences, we would not, for any earthly consideration, engage in the formation or execution of a conspiracy to subvert that very Constitution and with it the Government to which it has given birth. Write us down, therefore, "submissionists."

Nor are we at all disturbed by the flippant taunt that, in thus submitting to the authority of our Government, we are necessarily cowards. We know whence this taunt comes, and we estimate it at its true value. We hold that there is a higher courage in the performance of duty than in the commission of crime. The tiger of the jungle and the cannibal of the South Sea Islands have that courage in which the revolutionists of the day make their especial boast; the angels of God and the spirits of just men made perfect have had, and have that courage which submits to the law. Lucifer was a non-submissionist, and the first secessionist of whom history has given us any account, and the chains which he wears fitly express the fate due to all who openly defy the laws of their Creator and of their country. He rebelled because the Almighty would not yield to him the throne of heaven. The principle of the Southern rebellion is the same. Indeed, in this submission to the laws, is found the chief distinction between good men and devils. A good man obeys the laws of truth, of honesty, of morality, and all those laws which have been enacted by competent authority for the government and protection of the country in which he lives; a devil obeys only his own ferocious and profligate passions.

The principle on which this rebellion proceeds, that laws have in themselves no sanctions, no binding force upon the conscience, and that every man, under the promptings of interest, or passion, or caprice, may at will, and honorably, too, strike at the government that shelters him, is one of utter demoralization, and should be trodden out as you would tread out a spark that has fallen on the roof of your dwelling. Its unchecked prevalence would resolve society into chaos, and leave you without the slightest guarantee for life, liberty, or property. It is time, that, in their majesty, the people of the United States should make known to the world that this Government, in its dignity and power, is something more than a moot court, and that the citizen who makes war upon it is a traitor, not only in theory but in fact, and should have meted out to him a traitor's doom. The country wants no bloody sacrifice, but it must and will have peace, cost what it may. J. Holt.

CCXCVII.

ADDRESS TO KENTUCKY VOLUNTEERS.

Soldiers, next to the worship of the Father of us all, the deepest and grandest of human emotions is the love of the land that gave us birth. It is an enlargement and exaltation of all the tenderest and strongest sympathies of kindred and of home. In all centuries and climes it has lived and has defied chains and dungeons and racks to crush it. It has strewed the earth with its monuments, and has shed undying lustre on a thousand fields on which it has battled. Through the night of ages, Thermopylæ glows like some mountain peak on which the morning sun has risen, because twenty-three hundred years ago, this hallowing passion touched its mural precipices and its crowning crags.

It is easy, however, to be patriotic in piping times of peace, and in the sunny hour of prosperity. It is national sorrow, it is war, with its attendant perils and horrors, that tests this passion, and winnows from the masses those who, with all their love of life, still love their country more. While your present position is a most vivid and impressive illustration of patriotism, it has a glory peculiar and altogether its own.

The mercenary armies which have swept victoriously over the world, and have gathered so many of the laurels that history has embalmed, were but machines drafted into the service of ambitious spirits whom they obeyed, and little understood or appreciated the problems their blood was poured out to solve. But while you have all the dauntless physical courage which they displayed, you add to it a thorough knowledge of the argument on which this mighty movement proceeds, and a moral heroism which, breaking away from the entanglements of kindred, and friends, and State policy enables you to follow your convictions of duty, even though they should lead you up to the cannon's mouth. It must, however, be added, that with elevation of position come corresponding responsibilities. Alike in the inaction of the camp, and amid the fatigues of the march, and the charge and shouts of battle, you will remember that you have in your keeping not only your own personal reputation, but the honor of your native State, and, what is infinitely more inspiring, the honor of that blood-bought and beneficent Republic whose children you are. Any irregularity on your part would sadden the land that loves you; any faltering in the presence of the foe would cover it with immeasurable humiliation.

Soldiers, when Napoleon was about to spur on his legions to combat on the sands of an African desert, pointing them to the Egyptian pyramids that loomed up against the far-off horizon, he exclaimed, "From yonder summits forty centuries look down upon you." The thought was sublime and electric; but you have even more than this. When you shall confront those infuriated hosts, whose battle-cry is, "Down with the government of the United States," let your answering shout be, "The Government as our fathers made it;" and when you strike, remember that not only do the good and the great of the past look down upon you from heights infinitely above those of Egyptian pyramids, but that uncounted generations yet to come are looking up to you, and claiming at your hands the unimpaired transmission to them of that priceless heritage which has been committed to our keeping. I say its unimpaired transmission--in all the amplitude of its outlines, in all the symmetry of its matchless proportions, in all the palpitating fulness of its blessings; not a miserably shrivelled and shattered thing, charred by the fires and torn by the tempests of revolution, and all over polluted and scarred by the bloody poniards of traitors. J. Holt.

CCXCVIII.

THE AMERICAN QUESTION IN ENGLAND.

Citizens of Carlyle, I have endeavored to present to your view a faithful picture of the religion and politics, the objects and the aims, of the rebel confederate States of America; of those States that at this moment, through their commissioned emissaries on this side the Atlantic, are seeking admission into the Commonwealth of Christian nations! One of these accredited representatives is, while I am speaking, upon our shores; and on the behalf of the object of these men some of our leading journals are daily writing laborious articles; for them our shipbuilders are constructing warlike vessels, not to meet an equal foe in fair fight, but to plunder and destroy defenseless merchantmen, engaged in the lawful and laudable trade of carrying the legitimate products of one country to the markets of another; for these men our capitalists are raising money, that, if possible, they may render successful a rebel slaveholders' revolt--a revolt which for wickedness and infamy has no parallel save in the impious rebellion of Lucifer and his compeers.

Yonder, across the wide waste of waters, four millions of helpless slaves--the victims of the cruelty and lust of Southern men-stealers--raise their fettered hands and imploringly inquire what part you will take in the conflict which involves their fate and that of their posterity; whether you will give aid and comfort to their oppressors, or whether you will send them words of sympathy and hope, and give encouragement and support to the friends of freedom in the North, who are nobly sacrificing property and life for their redemption. What answer will you return to this appeal? What think you is the duty of England in this life-or-death contest between the North and the South? Of England, whose heart was with the cause of the heroic black population of Hayti, when, under the leadership of the immortal Toussaint l'Ouverture, they were resisting unto blood, in the cause of liberty, the mercenary hordes of Napoleon? Of England who, with disinterested ardor, fought the battle of the Greeks against the Turks? Of England, who has so often raised her voice on behalf of bleeding, crusaded, denationalized Poland? Who has welcomed in her cities, and cherished in her homes, the illustrious patriot Louis Kossuth? Whose best wishes and earnest prayers have ever attended the efforts in the cause of freedom of Mazzini and Garibaldi?

In what do the struggles in which England has heretofore sympathized, differ from that which is now convulsing America? Is it not a contest between a vile slaveholding oligarchy on the one hand, and the upholders of free democratic institutions and the friends of emancipation on the other? The only difference, if difference there be, is this, that the conspirators against human rights in the South are fighting for objects immeasurably more base and more deeply stained with guilt than any which were ever sought by the crowned kings and despots of the Old World. The confederate banditti of the South are fighting for what their Vice-president avows is a new idea--a government based upon the perpetual enslavement of the laboring class. In a conflict between liberty and slavery between a free democratic government and the foulest despotism which the enemies of mankind ever conspired together to establish, where should England stand? On the side of two hundred and fifty thousand traitors and tyrants, or on the side of four millions of slaves? England with her past history and glorious traditions, England that extinguished the accursed slave trade, and abolished colonial slavery, whose cathedrals and council chamfers and market places are adorned with the statues of Howard and Wilberforce, and Clarkson, and Buxton, and Sturge?

It may be granted that, when the Government of the North first armed for the defence of the national life, it did not at once decree the universal abolition of slavery; and I have given, as I think, good and sufficient reasons why it did not and could not. The action of the President at the beginning was restricted to constitutional objects. Those objects were--the enforcement of the laws; the suppression of a local insurrection; the reintegration of the disputed territory; the protection of the Capitol and its archives from the spoliating hands of traitors. But the seat of government saved; the President seated firmly in the chair; the Congress duly assembled; and the machinery of the Constitution set to work; and then commenced, and were carried out, a series of measures such as were never before accomplished in the same space of time by any government in the world. First we saw the National District purged from the pollution and shame of slavery; then, the prohibition of slavery forever in the vast Territories of the Northwest; then, the enforcement of the laws against the slave trade, and the execution of Gordon the slave trader; then, an offer of compensation to such slave States as would adopt measures of emancipation; then, the recognition of the independence of the black republics of Hayti and Liberia; and finally, a proclamation of freedom to all the slaves within the rebel States.

It was said of Napoleon that he would go down to posterity with the code which bears his name, in his hand. It may be said of Abraham Lincoln, that he will descend to future time, holding in his hand the Great Charter of the Negro's rights his Emancipation Proclamation of January, 1863. With such a President, at the head of such a people, engaged in such a cause, need I answer the questions I have so often put to you, on which side should England be found in the great American struggle? G. Thompson.

CCXCIX.

PATRIOTISM.

Right and wrong, justice and crime, exist independently of our country. A public wrong is not a private right for any citizen. The citizen is a man bound to know and do the right, and the nation is but an aggregation of citizens. If a man should shout, in the delirium of his dinner, "My country, by whatever means extended and bounded: my country, right or wrong;" he merely repeats the words of the thief who steals in the streets or of the trader who swears falsely at the Custom-House, both of them chuckling "My fortune, however acquired." Thus, gentlemen, we see that a man's country is not a certain area of land--of mountains, rivers, and woods--but it is principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.

In poetic minds and in popular enthusiasm this feeling becomes closely associated with the soil and symbols of the country. But the secret sanctification of the soil and the symbol is the idea which they represent, and this idea the patriot worships through the name and the symbol, as a lover kisses with rapture the glove of his mistress and wears a lock of her hair upon his heart.

So, with passionate heroism, of which tradition is never weary of tenderly telling, Arnold Von Winkelreid gathers into his bosom the sheaf of foreign spears, that his death may give life to his country. So Nathan Hale, disdaining no service that his country demands, perishes untimely, with no other friend than God and the satisfied sense of duty. So George Washington, at once comprehending the scope of the destiny to which his country was devoted, with one hand put aside the crown, and with the other sets his slaves free. So, through all history from the beginning, a noble army of martyrs has fought fiercely and fallen bravely for that unseen mistress, their country. So, through all history to the end, as long as men believe in God, that army must still march and fight and fall--recruited only from the flower of mankind--cheered only by their own hope of humanity, strong only in their confidence in their cause. G. W. Curtis.

CCC.

POLITICAL MORALITY.

Have we no interest that the controlling force in this country shall be a moral force?--that it shall conspire with the great idea of Liberty, and not degrade and destroy it? The theory of our institutions is our pride. But it is a pitiful truth that our public life has become synonymous with knavery. If a politician is introduced, you feel of your pockets. It is shameful that it is universally conceded that the best men, the men of intelligence and probity, generally avoid politics, and that the word itself has come to mean something not to be touched without defilement. Consequently, what good men will not touch, bad men will. It is understood that bribery carries the election; and the Presidency is the result of an adroit process of financial engineering. I have myself been shown a handful of bank-notes publicly displayed in the ante-room of a Legislature, and sagaciously told: "That is the logic for legislators." Men think they cannot afford to go to Congress, and send other men to do their duties to the State--forgetting that we can have nothing without paying for it, and that if we hope to enjoy the best government in the world we must give time and labor, each one of us, and not suppose that the country will govern itself nor bad men govern it well.

Remember that the greatness of our country is not in its achievement, but in its promise--a promise which cannot be fulfilled without that sovereign moral sense--without a sensitive national conscience. If it were a question of the mere daily pleasure of living, the gratification of taste, opportunity of access to the great intellectual and æsthetic results of human genius, and whatever embellishes human life, no man could hesitate for a moment between the fulness of foreign lands in these respects, and the conspicuous poverty of our own. What have we done? We have subdued and settled a vast domain. We have made every inland river turn a mill, and wherever, on the dim rim of the globe, there is a harbor, we have lighted it with an American sail. We have bound the Atlantic to the Mississippi, so that we drift from the sea to the prairie upon a cloud of vapor; and we are stretching one hand across the continent to fulfil the hope of Columbus in a shorter way to Cathay, and with the other we are grasping under the sea to clasp there the hand of the old continent, that so the throbbing of the ocean may not toss us further apart, but be as the beating of one common pulse of the world.

Yet these are the results common to all national enterprise, and different with us only in degree, not in kind. These are but the tools with which to shape a destiny. Commercial prosperity is only a curse, if it be not subservient to moral and intellectual progress; and our prosperity will conquer us, if we do not conquer our prosperity. G. W. Curtis.

CCCI.

IDEAS THE LIFE OF A PEOPLE.