THE DEATH OF FREEDOM.* "THE BEAUTY OF ISRAEL IS SLAIN UPON THY HIGH PLACES.' 2 Samuel i. 19. "AND SAUL WAS CONSENTING UNTO HIS DEATH." Acts viii. 1. "THERE WAS DARKNESS OVER ALL THE LAND." 1 - Matt. xxviii. 45. E gather to-day around the corpse of Freedom. Our nation has given up the ghost. Her deadly sickness has met with but feeble resistance to its progress; and to-day it waves its black banner in acknowledged triumph over her prostrate, corrupting form. The beauty of Israel is slain upon her high places. As we bend over this fallen glory and strength, I shall try to speak of that vanished strength and glory, of the means and the foe that murdered it: "Show you sweet" Freedom's "wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths! And bid them speak for me." I ask you to consider your duty as Christians in this dreadful hour, and to see with the eye of prophecy either her resurrection in a greatness never before displayed, like that of her Divine Author on His reappearance from * A sermon preached at Wilbraham, Mass., May 28, 1854, on the occasion of the passage of the Nebraska Bill, by the Senate of the United States, on the midnight of Thursday, May 25, 1854. the grave "A curse shall light upon the limbs of men, Will cumber all the parts of this fair land." 'Is not You may say "This is a sick man's dream." this a free land? Has it not been consecrated by the prayers and sacred sufferings of the Pilgrims, honored by the patriotic valor of the revolutionary fathers, made illustrious by the wisdom of Washington and Jefferson, of Hamilton and Adams? Is it not a land whose institutions are based on the broadest principles of liberty—a land of wealth and enterprise, comfort and culture, churches and piety? And can this land be wrapped in its grave clothes, and be even now an offense and a loathing among the nations of the earth? Impossible! Does not trade rush through its crowded channels? Does not the earth bring forth abundantly, laughing ever with its munificent harvests? Does not labor strike with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the morning'? Does not steam toil in our factories, and whirl its products over all the land? Do not sweet bells call to church? Are we not the greatest, freest, happiest of nations?" Alas! "" Gray hairs were on him, and he knew it not." "When ye say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon him, and he cannot escape." Material life flows on after the spiritual has gone. Chemical laws keep the atoms of a dead body for a while as compact as when it tented a soul. There is no national life. tion, weakness, obscurity. What exists, exists in obstruc- all our glorious heritage. We gave up the Declaration of Independence, the revolutionary speeches, and battles of fire and blood, the Constitution of our country, the names of our Pilgrim and Puritan ancestry, our hopes and prospects, our morals and religion. We have laid them all at the feet of Slavery. We confess ourselves her slaves. We open our gates for her triumphal march to unquestioned, universal power. I ask no pardon for bringing this subject before you on this sacred day. I have waited till the strife raging at the seat of government should end, feeling that I had no need to stimulate you to your duty to pray for those there and then engaged in the contest, and that this word should be spoken when that battle was decided. I had hoped against hope that the right would triumph, and that I could have congratulated you on the first national step that liberty had taken towards a final victory. But that day is not yet, if ever. A far different task awaits me, and by God's grace I hope to discharge it. Let us, with sackcloth and ashes upon our souls, sit around this corpse of American Freedom; deliver its funeral sermon, and gather, if we can, some reasons for its resurrection, and of our part and lot in bringing about the glory of that distant hour. Let us try to answer the question, How can these things be? Does Five years ago, or fifty, any previous year since we became a nation, such a deed could not have happened. Southerner and Northerner would have responded in burning indignation to a charge of his devotion to such a crime, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing? not my belief that slavery is an evil, my sensitiveness to the honor of the country through its pledge faithfully made in the compromise agreement of 1820, show the injustice of your imputations?" And yet this act is a necessary result of all previous acts. It is the perfect fruit of germs long since planted, and constantly nurtured. It is a link in an iron chain of our whole national history. In the first concession made to the slave power, this monster was born. Though the letter of the Constitution does not use the word "slave," yet in its representative basis, if not in its fugitive clause, there is a recognition of its existence, a bowing to its behests. Two small States, by their firmness and vehemence, brought the other eleven to their feet, made them surrender their convictions, and obey the soft voice, but mailed arm, of Belial. What though Franklin and Jay organize abolition societies, and Washington and Jefferson favor emancipation, and Madison gets the word "slavery" excluded from the Constitution? What though every eminent man of the age is hostile to the iniquity? Still they let it find entrance into their Constitution. It is there, intrenched in the national fortress; it mocks at all objections and objectors, and commences its march to universal dominion. When the sons of God came together for their sublime deliberations, Satan came also; and though, as in the days. of Job, he gained not every point, yet, more than with him, he gained the chief, and, with the gleefulness of perdition, he snatched at his success, and plotted and waited, waited and plotted, year and year, for larger prizes. He won them. A law to execute more perfectly the Fugitive Slave clause followed within six years. A law which never could have passed the First Congress passed the Third. A law which would have been pronounced unconstitutional by the founders of the Constitution triumphed under the very eyes of those founders. And the hand of Washington signed his name as president to an edict which five years before he would have abhorred himself for approving. New territory is sought. Louisiana is purchased. She seeks erection into States. The strife commences afresh. Again the slave power gains all it wants by asking for more; and Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas wheel into line under its pirate flag, while the desert lands, which will not be needed for a generation, are professedly abandoned to freedom, then, as of old, driven into the wilderness; thence, also as of old, to be driven out when its enemy would make this desert his dwelling-plaee. In that controversy slavery triumphed. Many then saw that when those remoter regions became the seat of population, it would claim them as its own, would make them its own. But then it could not have been done. The spirit of the fathers was not yet utterly lost. One half only of the fair acres was given up to this ravenous beast. One half alone of its pure soil was to be wet with the blood of God's persecuted saints. One half of its air was to be filled with shrieks under the scourge, with moans over sold and stolen children, with the unutterable agony of that prison-house of humanity. The anaconda rested content with its gorged appetite, which two hundred thousand square miles had momentarily satisfied, assured that those who had granted him so much would bestow the balance when his appetite returned. His assurance was well grounded. But before that hour came, the old religious and philanthropic anti-slavery sentiment, which had glowed in the souls that burned with the revolutionary fires, was kindled afresh. A little, despised sect, their name a stench in the nostrils of the country and the Church, cast out of men as evil, lifted up their voice like a trumpet, and told the house of Israel its transgressions, and the house of Judah its sins. They started from the only Christian, the only true basissympathy with the slave as a son of man and a son of God, an heir of heaven, a joint heir with Jesus Christ. This was new doctrine to our degenerate fears a doctrine no Church in this land had ever fully and faithfully preached. We mocked at and reviled them. We drove them from our churches, halls, and homes. We haled them before our judgment-seats. We issued edicts against them from State and National Congresses, and executive speeches |