Where of old the Indian strayed,
Where of old the Pilgrim prayed,
Where the Patriot drew his blade,
Eighty years ago!

Should again the war trump peal,
There shall Indian firmness seal
Pilgrim faith and patriot zeal,
Prompt to strike the blow;

There shall Valor's work be done;
Like the sire shall be the son,
Where the fight was waged and won,
Eighty years ago!

Ex. CLXIX.-REASONS FOR CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY.

From an address delivered at Chicago, July 10, 1858.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

WE are now a mighty nation; we are thirty or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about onefifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eightytwo years, and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly smaller extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened a long way back as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principle they were contending for; and we understand that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity we now enjoy has come to us. We hold an annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time; of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it, and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves; we feel more attached the one to the

THE FOURTH OF JULY.

261.

other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men for these celebrations. But after we have done all this, we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these, men among us descended by blood from our ancestors, who are not descendants of these men of the Revolution, they are men who have come from EuropeGerman, Irish, French and Scandinavian-who have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none; they can not carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;" and then they feel that the moral sentiment taught in that day evinces their relation to those men; that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. electric cord in our Declaration which links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together; that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.

That is the

CLXX. THE FOURTH OF JULY.

DAY of glory! welcome day!
Freedom's banners greet thy ray;
See how cheerfully they play
With thy morning breeze,

J. PIERPONT.

On the rocks where pilgrims kneeled,
On the heights where squadrons wheeled,
When a tyrant's thunder pealed

O'er the trembling seas.

God of armies! Did thy "stars
In their courses" smite his cars,

Blast his arms and wrest his bars
From the heaving tide?

On our standard, lo! they burn,
And when days like this return,
Sparkle o'er the soldier's urn
Who for freedom died.

God of peace! whose spirit fills
All the echoes of our hills,
All the murmurs of our rills,
Now the storm is o'er;
Oh, let freemen be our sons;
And let future WASHINGTONS
Rise, to lead their valiant ones,
Till there's war no more.

By the patriot's hallowed rest,
By the warrior's gory breast,
Never let our graves be pressed
By a despot's throne;

By the Pilgrims' toils and cares,
By their battles and their prayers,
By their ashes-let our heirs
Bow to Thee alone.

Ex. CLXXI.-THE CRISIS.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

THE crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands,
With solemn lips of question, like the Sphynx in Egypt's

sands!

This day we fashion Destiny; our web of fate we spin;
This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin;
Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown,
We call the dews of blessing, or the bolts of cursing down!

By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and shame; By all the warning words of truth with which the Prophets

came;

By the future which awaits us; by all the hopes which cast

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263.

Their faint and trembling beams across the blackness of the

Past,

And in the awful name of Him who for earth's freedom died; O, ye people! O, my brothers! let us choose the righteous side!

So shall the hardy pioneer go joyful on his way,

To wed Penobscot's waters to San Francisco's bay;

To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain,

And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train;
The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer

sea,

And mountain unto mountain call, PRAISE GOD, FOR WE ARE FREE!

Ex. CLXXII.-SECESSION AS VIEWED BY A VIRGINIAN.

Speech in the House of Delegates of Virginia, March 30th, 1861.

JOSEPH SEGAR.

FOR what, Mr. Speaker, are we plunging into the dark abyss of disunion? In God's name, tell me! I vow I do not know, nor have I ever heard one sensible or respectable reason assigned for this harsh resort. We shall lose everything; gain nothing but war, blood, carnage, famine, starvation, social desolation, wretchedness in all its aspects, ruin in all its forms. We shall gain a taxation, to be levied by the new government, that will eat out the substance of the people, and make them "poor indeed." We shall gain alienation and distrust in all the dear relations of life. We shall gain ill-blood between father and son, and brother and brother, and neighbor and neighbor. Bereaved widowhood and helpless orphanage we shall gain to our heart's content. Lamentation, and mourning, and agonized hearts we shall gain in every corner where "wild war's deadly blast" shall blow. We shall gain the prostration-most lamentable calamity will it be of that great system of internal development, which the statesmen of Virginia have looked to as the basis of all her future progress and grandeur, and the great hope of her speedy regeneration and redemption. We shall gain

repudiation, not that Virginia will ever be reluctant to redeem her engagements, but that she will be disabled by the heavy burdens of secession and war. We shall gain the blockade of our ports, and entire exclusion from the commerce, and markets, and storehouses of the world. We shall gain the hardest times the people of this once happy country have known since the War of Independence. I know not, indeed, of one single interest of Virginia that will not be wrecked by disunion. And, entertaining these views, I do shrink with horror from the very idea of the secession of the State. I can never assent to the fatal measure. No! I am for the Union yet. Call me submissionist, or traitor, or what else you will, I am for the Union while Hope's light flickers in the socket. In Daniel Webster's immortal words, give me "Liberty and Union-now and forever-one and inseparable."

Ex. CLXXIII.-FALSE PROPHETS.

EMELINE S. SMITH.

WHO said that the stars on our banner were dim-
That their glory had faded away?

Look up, and behold! how bright, through each fold,
They are flashing and smiling to-day.

Some wandering meteors only have paled—

They shot from their places on high;

But the fixed and the true still illumine the blue,
And will while the Ages go by!

Who said the fair temple, so patiently reared
By heroes, at Liberty's call,

Was built insecure-that it could not endure-
And was tott'ring e'en now to its fall?

False, false, every word; for that fame is upheld
By the stoutest of hearts and of hands;

Some columns unsound may have gone to the ground,
But proudly the temple yet stands.