him! But mark him! Let him live! But let him live The last four years have been a daily issue of life and death for our country, the most momentous, perilous, and costly struggle ever made for a nation's life. The scale has turned for life. The clouds of war are clearing away, but the civil dangers are imminent. Among the last words of Mr. Lincoln, I find a true statement of the great principle which must guide us, and which at this hour we may lay to heart. He declared that this Rebellion is the act of individuals, and return to allegiance must be the act of individuals; that there is no public body to be dealt with. If that simple, homely principle is adhered to, the Republic will come out a Government, — in the strict sense of the term, a State. If it is not adhered to, we permit ourselves to be resolved into a Confederation. He clearly understood that the Republic was a sovereignty, to which each citizen owed a direct and paramount allegiance, from which no State could absolve him, and consequently that in return to allegiance and in the restoration of peace, no State could be a party to a transaction with the Republic. In war with a recognized nation, there is a power with which you can make a treaty of peace, and a moment up to which lawful war exists, and after which peace begins. But in this Rebellion, peace must come as fair weather comes after a tempest, as general health comes after the plague or the cholera. But who ever heard of health established by a compact to which the public were one party and the epidemic another? Yet, how near some ill-instructed men came to sacrificing this vital principle the other day at Richmond! Thank God, the President lived long enough, with his Cabinet, to set it right! No State can be permitted to repeal its ordinance of secession. No State Legislature can be permitted to deliberate upon the question of coming back into the Union. The authority of the Republic over every foot of its soil and every one of its citizens has never ceased. It must go on as of right, and not by the consent of any body natural, or any body political. Mr. Lincoln, from the beginning of his public life until war changed the face of the question, contented himself with resisting the advance of Slavery. Had the country resisted it as he did, the war might never have begun. At last, he would be content with nothing less than its total extinction. This lesson his death must consecrate. To this covenant of freedom the seal of his blood is set. There is but one more lesson which at this moment I seem to read through the gloomy air. It is the lesson of forgiveness and conciliation. But when and how? They are neither wise nor humane who are inexorable as to persons, but cloudy and temporizing on the vital principle. Let us be inflexible on the principle. When that has triumphed, when the Republic is recognized as paramount by its own power and right, when all citizens have submitted as individuals, and the course of civil law runs smooth through the country, then the lesson of conciliation and pardon is to be put in practice. Then, not till then, has the war ceased. A trial of strength or skill, a boxingmatch, ends when one party ceases to fight. But war is not a trial of strength. It is a resort to force, to secure a of public object. You may hold your enemy in the grasp war, until your just objects are secured. We will then practise conciliation and forgiveness to the full measure of Mr. Lincoln's kind and generous heart. In vast political rebellions, which have taken the dimensions of war, and have been treated as belligerent for the time, at home and abroad, it is justifiable to punish as traitors a few who originated and concocted the treason. Yet, after security is obtained, it is not in accordance with Christian civilization or the dignity and best interests of a people, to pursue whole communities with criminal or penal consequences. God grant the time may come, and that speedily, when a conciliation and peace may exist over the land, which would satisfy the kindest wishes of this our chief martyr, ever hereafter to be called- of blessed memory! The meeting closed with a Benediction, pronounced by Rev. Dr. Lothrop. |