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any public movement for secession had been made in New Orleans, and while the masses of the people there were still strongly attached to the Union, as is known by the Union meetings which were held long afterwards, Dr. Palmer threw himself into the van and made these bold utterances for treason. He mounted the very crest of the wave and became the king of the storm.

HE FURTHER VINDICATES SECESSION.

In April, 1861, Dr. Palmer published in the Southern Presbyterian (quarterly) Review his "Vindication of Secession and the South." In this article, as Dr. Thornwell had done before him in the same periodical, he argues at length in favor of the Constitutional right of secession, justifying it on the charge that the rights of slavery had been infringed and were in danger. Here, Dr. Palmer again strikes out boldly for secession, vindicating it in seven States which had already gone out, and indicating the hope and making the prophecy that all the remaining slave States would follow them. We give a brief extract from the article, where he speaks of the course of South Carolina, his native State:

When all hope of safety had died within her, she stood calmly under the shadow of the Capitol, before the clock which silently told the Nation's hours, and which would ere long sound the knell of its destiny. No sooner was this heard, in the shout of Black Republican success, than she leaped, feeble handed and alone, into the deadly breach. History has nowhere upon her records a more sublime example of moral heroism. Ignorant whether she would be supported, even by her sister across the Savannah, relying on nothing save the righteousness of her cause and the power of God, she took upon her shield and spear as desperate and as sacred a conflict as ever made a State immortal. * * * The Genius of history has already wreathed the garland with which her brow shall be decked. Long may she live, the mother of heroes who shall be worthy of their birth!

REV. THOS. SMYTH, D. D.

171

There is the same strain of eloquent treason all through the article. But we forbear further quotations, as we have given the same sentiments, at considerable length, in his earlier utterances.

REV. THOMAS SMYTH, D. D., STRIKES THE SAME CHORD.

Among many other examples of labored essays and discourses similar to the foregoing, we give but one. Dr. Thomas Smyth, of Charleston, S. C., a distinguished ecclesiastical author, has written one of the most earnest and passionate articles which the literature of the rebellion. has produced. It is found in the Southern Presbyterian Review for April, 1863, entitled, "The War of the South Vindicated," and is divided into four parts, as follows: "1. The war of the South is in self-defence; 2. The war of the South vindicated by the fundamental principles of American Liberty; 3. The war of the South is justified as a defensive war against fanatical abolition; 4. The Divine right of secession."

Like all Southern writers, he makes the dangers to be apprehended to slavery, the cause of secession and justifying resistance to the Government; and making slavery, in its preservation and extension, a religious duty, he thus justifies the war on their part:

*

*

We have taken up arms for the defence of our civil and religious rights, and God, our country, and the world at large, call upon us to acquit ourselves like men, for our wives and our little ones, for our homes, our sanctuaries, and even our religion itself. * The war now carried on by the North is a war against slavery, and is, therefore, treasonable rebellion against the Constitution of the United States, and against the word, providence, and government of God.

The groundless assertions of Dr. Smyth form a striking characteristic of the article:

The Missouri Compromise, forced upon the South by the North, only

to be immediately and constantly resisted and perverted, rung the death-knell of the Union. * 營 The North first entrapped the

*

South into the Union, under false pretences and hypocritical promises. * * * The sure beginning of the sad end was formally laid down in the platform of the Republican party, on whose basis the present abolition administration was clothed with power to rend the Union, and to involve in one common ruin the happiness of both North and South.

The total untruthfulness of what is here asserted about this "platform," we have demonstrated in previous pages.

JUDGMENT AND BLESSING.

Here is a contrast between the North and the South: This war is a judgment upon the North, for its persistent, perjured, abolition fanaticism. Nearly severing the Union in 1790, it rung its death-knell in 1820, and has since then inflamed an irrepressible conflict, which has now destroyed the Union, and is overwhelming the North in inextricable difficulties.

Dr. Smyth thus regards attempts to destroy the Union as wicked, bringing down Divine judgment. What, then, is the South to receive for her present attempt? Only blessing, in this way:

God is working out a problem in the physical, social, political, and world-wide beneficial character of slavery, as a great missionary agency, of unexampled prosperity and success, which He is now demonstrating to the family of nations. In this war the South, therefore, is on God's side. She has His word, and providence, and omnipotent government, with her. And if she is found faithful to Him, and to this institution, which He has put under her spiritual care, then the heavens and earth may pass away, but God will not fail to vindicate His eternal providence, and defend and deliver His people, who walk in His statutes and commandments blameless.

RESISTANCE UNIVERSALLY INSTILLED.

This whole article is very much of the character of the foregoing extracts. We give its closing paragraph, as an example to show how the Southern clergy, besides being

THE CLERGY OF ALL DENOMINATIONS.

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leaders in treason, have blown the rebel war-trumpet from first to last:

Let the spirit of resistance be infused, with its mother's milk, into the baby in its cradle. Let it mingle with the plays of childhood. Let it animate the boy in its mimic manhood; the maiden in the exercise of her magic, spell-binding influence; the betrothed in her soul-subduing trance of hope and memory; the bride at the altar; the wife in the arms of her rejoicing husband; the young mother amid her whirl of ecstatic joy; the matron in the bosom of her admiring children; and the father as he dreams fondly of the fortune and glory of his aspiring sons-let it fire the man of business at his place of merchandise; the lawyer among his briefs; the mechanic in his workshop: the planter in his fields; the laborer as he plies his pruning-hook and follows his plough;-let the trumpet blow in Zion, and let all her watchmen lift up their voice;-let all the people, everywhere, old and young, bond and free, take up the warcry, and say, each to his neighbor, "Gather ye together, and come against them, and rise up to the battle."

These extracts would seem to show that the fervency of the clergy of the South in the rebel cause advances with the progress of events. Dr. Smyth, if possible, is more intensified with the furor and frenzy of the strife than the other South Carolina Doctors. But these things from his pen were written at a later period. Nor have we given by any means the most glowing of his sentences, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, where we illustrate another phase of the subject.

THE CLERGY OF ALL DENOMINATIONS AID THE REBEL

LION.

Other ministers of every denomination all over the Sout! joined in urging on the rebellion, and some of the more distinguished of them were as early in the work as those we have mentioned. The course of the Right Reverend Leonidas Polk, D. D., Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Louisiana, early a Major-General in the rebel army (lately

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killed in battle in Georgia), is too well known to need any thing more than to be named. Bishop Elliott, of Georgia, Cobb, of Alabama, Green, of Mississippi, all of the same Church, and, indeed, nearly all the influential ministers of all the Protestant denominations in the South,-took early position and gave the whole weight of their social and official influence in direct aid of the rebellion. Names of the most distinguished could be given in great number if necessary. Drs. Mitchell, of Alabama, and Waddel, President of La Grange College, Tennessee, wrote elaborate articles in aid of the rebellion at a very early period.

Every religious newspaper of the rebel States,-and they were all edited by ministers of the Gospel,-located at Nashville, New Orleans, Columbia, Fayetteville, Richmond, and other cities, urged secession in most cases from the first step in the movement, and in all at a very early period. And the houses of worship of all denominations, from first to last, have echoed the utterances of treason and rebellion from the pulpit in all parts of the South.

LEADING CLERGYMEN IN THE REBEL ARMY.

Many distinguished ministers, after preparing those under their care for the terrible work of war in defence of the treason they had inspired, led them to the field in person. Dr. Atkinson, President of Hampden Sidney College, Virginia, became Captain of a company composed mostly of his College students, fought in the first battles of the war, was taken prisoner at Rich Mountain, Western Virginia, and was paroled. Dr. Dabney,* Professor in

* At the beginning of the movement for secession, Dr. Dabney took strong ground for peace, urging his brethren farther South to desist. In an Address to Christians "of the Southern country," dated, "Hampden Sidney, Nov. 24, 1860," he says: "Whence, too, is the great divisive question borrowed? Is it not from Christianity? Her sacred authority is the one which is invoked to sanctify the strife.” He here refers to that feature of Southern "Christianity,"-modern views of sla

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