of new outrages. It is in its very nature a perpetual cause of hostility; an eternal never-cancelled letter of marque and reprisal, an everlasting proclamation of border-war. How can peace exist, when all the causes of dissension shall be indefinitely multiplied; when unequal revenue laws shall have led to a gigantic system of smuggling; when a general stampede of slaves shall take place along the border, with no thought of rendition, and all the thousand causes of mutual irritation shall be called into action, on a frontier of 1,500 miles not marked by natural boundaries and not subject to a common jurisdiction or a mediating power? We did believe in peace, fondly, credulously, believed that, cemented by the mild umpirage of the Federal Union, it might dwell forever beneath the folds of the star-spangled banner, and the sacred shield of a common nationality. That was the great arcanum of policy; that was the state mystery into which men and angels desired to look; hidden from ages, but revealed to us: "Which kings and prophets waited for, a family of States independent of each other for local concerns, united under one Government for the management of common interests and the prevention of internal feuds. There was no limit to the possible extension of such a system. It had already comprehended half of North America, and it might, in the course of time, have folded the continent in its peaceful, beneficent embrace. We fondly dreamed that, in the lapse of ages, it would have been extended till half the western hemisphere had realized the vision of universal, perpetual peace. From that dream we have been rudely startled by the army of ten thousand armed men in Charleston Harbor, and the glare of eleven batteries bursting on the torn sky of the Union, like the comet which, at this very moment, burns "in the Arctic sky, and from his horrid lair shakes pestilence and war." If, for the frivolous reasons assigned, the seceding States have chosen to plunge into this gulf, while all the peaceful temperaments and constitutional remedies of the Union were within their reach, and offers of further compromise and additional guarantees were daily tendered them, what hope, what possibility of peace can there be, when the Union is broken up, when, in addition to all other sources of deadly quarrel, a general exodus of the slave population begins, (as, beyond all question, it will,) and nothing but war remains for the settlement of controversies? The Vice President of the new Confederacy states that it rests on slavery; but from its very nature it must rest equally on war; eternal war, first between North and South, and then between the smaller fragments into which some of the disintegrated parts may crumble. The work of demons has already begun. Besides the hosts mustered for the capture or destruction of Washington, Eastern Virginia has let loose. the dogs of war on the loyal citizens of Western Virginia; they are straining in the leash in Maryland and Kentucky; Tennessee threatens to set a price on the head of her noble Johnson and his friends; a civil war rages in Missouri. Why, in the name of heaven, has not Western Virginia, separated from Eastern Virginia by mountain ridges, by climate, by the course of her rivers, by the character of her population, and the nature of her industry, why has she not as good a right to stay in the Union, which she inherited from her Washington, as Eastern Virginia has to abandon it for the mushroom Confederacy forced upon her from Montgomery? Are no rights sacred but those of rebellion; no oaths binding but those taken by men already forsworn; are liberty of thought, and speech, and action nowhere to be tolerated except on the part of those by whom laws are trampled under foot, arsenals and mints plundered, governments warred against, and where their patriotic defenders are assailed by ferocious and murderous mobs ?-Edward Everett, 1861. SECESSION ESTABLISHING A FOREIGN POWER. CONSIDER the monstrous nature and reach of the pretensions of secession in which we are expected to acquiesce; nothing less than that the United States should allow a FOREIGN POWER, by surprise, treachery, and violence, to possess itself of one-half of their territory, and all the public property and public establishments contained in it; for if the Southern Confederacy is recognized, it becomes a foreign power, established along a curiously dove-tailed frontier of fifteen hundred miles, commanding some of the most impor tant commercial and military positions and lines of communication for travel and trade; half the sea coast of the Union; the navigation of our Mediterranean Sea, (the Gulf of Mexico, one-third as large as the Mediterranean of Europe,) and, above all, the great arterial inlet into the heart of the Continent, through which its very life-blood pours its impe rial tides. I say we are coldly summoned to surrender all this to a foreign power. Would we surrender it to England, to France, to Spain? Not an inch of it; why, then, to the Southern Confederacy? Would any other government on earth, unless compelled by the direst necessity, make such a surrender? Does not France keep an army of one hundred thousand men in Algeria to prevent a few wandering tribes of Arabs, a recent conquest, from asserting their independence? Did not England strain her resources to the utmost tension, to prevent the native kingdoms of Central India (civilized states two thousand years ago, while painted chieftains ruled the savage clans of ancient Briton) from reëstablishing their sovereignty; and shall we be expected, without a struggle, to abandon a great integral part of the United States to a foreign power? Let it be remembered, too, that in granting to the seceding States, jointly and severally, the right to leave the Union, we concede to them the right of resuming, if they please, their former allegiance to England, France and Spain. It rests with them, with any one of them, if the right of secession is admitted, again to plant a European government side by side with that of the United States on the soil of America; and it is by no means the most improbable upshot of this ill-starred rebellion, if allowed to prosper. Is this the Monroe doctrine, for which the United States have been contending? The disunion press in Virginia last year openly encouraged the idea of a French protectorate, and her legislature has, I believe, sold out the James River canal, the darling enterprise of Washington, to a company in France supposed to enjoy the countenance of the Emperor. The seceding patriots of South Carolina were understood by the correspondent of the London "Times" to admit that they would rather be subject to a British prince, than to the Government of the United States. Whether they desire it or not, the moment the seceders lose the protection of the United States, they hold their independence at the mercy of the powerful governments of Europe. If the navy of the North should withdraw its protection, there is not a southern State on the Atlantic or the Gulf, which might not be recolonized by Europe, in six months after the outbreak of a foreign war.-Edward Everett, 1861. THE GREAT ISSUE. SUCH, fellow-citizens, as I contemplate them, are the great issues before the country-nothing less, in a word, than whether the work of our noble fathers of the revolutionary and constitutional age shall perish or endure; whether this great experiment in national polity, which binds a family of free republics in one united government-the most hopeful plan for combining the home-bred blessings of a small state with the stability and power of great empire-shall be treacherously and shamefully stricken down, in the moment of its most successful operation, or whether it shall be bravely, patriotically, triumphantly maintained. We wage no war of conquest and subjugation; we aim at nothing but to protect our loyal fellow-citizens, who, against fearful odds, are fighting the battles of the Union in the disaffected States, and to reestablish, not for ourselves alone, but for our deluded fellow-citizens, the mild sway of the Constitution and the laws. The result cannot be doubted. Twenty millions of freemen, forgetting their divisions, are rallying as one man in support of the righteous cause-their willing hearts and their strong hands, their fortunes and their lives, are laid upon the altar of the country. We contend for the great inheritance of constitutional freedom transmitted from our revolutionary fathers. We engage in the struggle forced upon us, with sorrow, as against our misguided brethren, but with high heart and faith, as we war for that Union which our sainted Washington commended to our dearest affections. The sympathy of the civilized world is on our side, and will join us in prayers to Heaven for the success of our arms. Edward Everett, 1861. THE SHIP OF STATE. BREAK up the Union of these States, because there are acknowledged evils in our system? Is it so easy a matter, then, to make everything in the actual world conform exactly to the ideal pattern we have conceived in our minds of absolute right? Suppose the fatal blow were struck, and the bonds which fasten together these States were severed, would the evils and mischiefs that would be experienced by those who are actually members of this vast republican community be all that would ensue? Certainly not. We are connected with the several nations and races of the world as no other people has ever been connected. We have opened our doors and invited emigration to our soil from all lands. Our invitation has been accepted. Thousands have come at our bidding. Thousands more are on the way. Other thousands still are standing a-tiptoe on the shores of the old world, eager to find a passage to the land where bread may be had for labor, and where man is treated as man. In our political family almost all nations are represented. The several varieties of the race are here subjected to a social fusion, out of which Providence designs to form a new man." 66 We are in this way teaching the world a great lessonnamely, that men of different languages, habits, manners and creeds, can live together, and vote together, and, if not pray and worship together, yet in near vicinity, and do all in peace, and be, for certain purposes at least, one people. And is not this lesson of some value to the world, especially if we can teach it not by theory merely, but through a successful example? Has not this lesson, thus conveyed, some connection with the world's progress towards that far-off period to which the human mind looks for the fulfillment of its vision of a perfect social state? It may safely be asserted that this Union could not be dissolved without disarranging and convulsing every part of the globe. Not in the indulgence of a vain confidence did our fathers build the ship of State, and launch it upon the waters. We will exclaim, in the noble words of one of our poets: "Thou, too, sail on, O ship of State! With all the hopes of future years, Are all with thee-are all with thee!" Rev. Wm. P. Lunt, 1861. |