American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) by Various

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Now here are twelve million of people, and only one third of them are
customers that can afford to buy the kind of goods that you bring to
market. [Interruption and uproar.] My friends, I saw a man once, who was
a little late at a railway station, chase an express train. He did not
catch it. [Laughter.] If you are going to stop this meeting, you have
got to stop it before I speak; for after I have got the things out, you
may chase as long as you please--you would not catch them. [Laughter and
interruption.] But there is luck in leisure; I 'm going to take it easy.
[Laughter.] Two thirds of the population of the Southern States to-day
are non-purchasers of English goods. [A voice: "No, they are not"; "No,
no!" and uproar.] Now you must recollect another fact--namely, that this
is going on clear through to the Pacific Ocean; and if by sympathy or
help you establish a slave empire, you sagacious Britons--["Oh, oh!"
and hooting]--if you like it better, then, I will leave the adjective
out--[laughter, Hear! and applause]--are busy in favoring the
establishment of an empire from ocean to ocean that should have fewest
customers and the largest non-buying population. [Applause, "No, no!"
A voice: "I thought it was the happy people that populated fastest."] `

Now, what can England make for the poor white population of such a
future empire, and for her slave population? What carpets, what linens,
what cottons can you sell them? What machines, what looking-glasses,
what combs, what leather, what books, what pictures, what engravings? [A
voice: "We 'll sell them ships."] You may sell ships to a few, but what
ships can you sell to two thirds of the population of poor whites and
blacks? [Applause.] A little bagging and a little linsey-woolsey, a
few whips and manacles, are all that you can sell for the slave. [Great
applause and uproar.] This very day, in the slave States of America
there are eight millions out of twelve millions that are not, and cannot
be your customers from the very laws of trade. [A voice: "Then how are
they clothed?" and interruption.] * * *

But I know that you say, you cannot help sympathizing with a gallant
people. [Hear, hear!] They are the weaker people, the minority; and you
cannot help going with the minority who are struggling for their rights
against the majority. Nothing could be more generous, when a weak party
stands for its own legitimate rights against imperious pride and power,
than to sympathize with the weak. But who ever sympathized with a weak
thief, because three constables had got hold of him? [Hear, hear!] And
yet the one thief in three policemen's hands is the weaker party.
I suppose you would sympathize with him. [Hear, hear! laughter, and
applause.] Why, when that infamous king of Naples--Bomba, was driven
into Gaeta by Garibaldi with his immortal band of patriots, and Cavour
sent against him the army of Northern Italy, who was the weaker party
then? The tyrant and his minions; and the majority was with the noble
Italian patriots, struggling for liberty. I never heard that Old England
sent deputations to King Bomba, and yet his troops resisted bravely
there. [Laugh-ter and interruption.] To-day the majority of the people
of Rome is with Italy. Nothing but French bayonets keeps her from going
back to the kingdom of Italy, to which she belongs. Do you sympathize
with the minority in Rome or the majority in Italy? [A voice: "With
Italy."] To-day the South is the minority in America, and they are
fighting for independence! For what? [Uproar. A voice: "Three cheers
for independence!" and hisses.] I could wish so much bravery had a better
cause, and that so much self-denial had been less deluded; that the
poisonous and venomous doctrine of State rights might have been kept
aloof; that so many gallant spirits, such as Jackson, might still have
lived. [Great applause and loud cheers, again and again renewed.] The
force of these facts, historical and incontrovertible, cannot be broken,
except by diverting attention by an attack upon the North. It is said
that the North is fighting for Union, and not for emancipation. The
North is fighting for Union, for that ensures emancipation. [Loud
cheers, "Oh, oh!" "No, no!" and cheers.] A great many men say to
ministers of the Gospel: "You pretend to be preaching and working for
the love of the people. Why, you are all the time preaching for the
sake of the Church." What does the minister say? "It is by means of the
Church that we help the people," and when men say that we are fighting
for the Union, I too say we are fighting for the Union. [Hear, hear! and
a voice: "That 's right."] But the motive determines the value; and
why are we fighting for the Union? Because we never shall forget the
testimony of our enemies. They have gone off declaring that the Union in
the hands of the North was fatal to slavery. [Loud applause.] There is
testimony in court for you. [A voice: "See that," and laughter.] * * *

In the first place I am ashamed to confess that such was the
thoughtlessness--[interruption]--such was the stupor of the
North--[renewed interruption]--you will get a word at a time; to-morrow
will let folks see what it is you don't want to hear--that for a period
of twenty-five years she went to sleep, and permitted herself to be
drugged and poisoned with the Southern prejudice against black men.
[Applause and uproar.] The evil was made worse, because, when any
object whatever has caused anger between political parties, a political
animosity arises against that object, no matter how innocent in itself;
no matter what were the original influences which excited the quarrel.
Thus the colored man has been the football between the two parties in
the North, and has suffered accordingly. I confess it to my shame. But
I am speaking now on my own ground, for I began twenty-five years ago,
with a small party, to combat the unjust dislike of the colored man.
[Loud applause, dissension, and uproar. The interruption at this point
became so violent that the friends of Mr. Beecher throughout the hall
rose to their feet, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and renewing their
shouts of applause. The interruption lasted some minutes.] Well, I have
lived to see a total revolution in the Northern feeling--I stand here to
bear solemn witness of that. It is not my opinion; it is my knowledge.
[Great uproar.] Those men who undertook to stand up for the rights of
all men--black as well as white--have increased in number; and now what
party in the North represents those men that resist the evil prejudices
of past years? The Republicans are that party. [Loud applause.] And who
are those men in the North that have oppressed the negro? They are
the Peace Democrats; and the prejudice for which in England you are
attempting to punish me, is a prejudice raised by the men who have
opposed me all my life. These pro-slavery Democrats abuse the negro.
I defended him, and they mobbed me for doing it. Oh, justice! [Loud
laughter, applause, and hisses.] This is as if a man should commit an
assault, maim and wound a neighbor, and a surgeon being called in should
begin to dress his wounds, and by and by a policeman should come and
collar the surgeon and haul him off to prison on account of the wounds
which he was healing.

Now, I told you I would not flinch from any thing. I am going to read
you some questions that were sent after me from Glasgow, purporting
to be from a workingman. [Great interruption.] If those pro-slavery
interrupters think they will tire me out, they will do more than eight
millions in America could. [Applause and renewed interruption.] I was
reading a question on your side too. "Is it not a fact that in most of
the Northern States laws exist precluding negroes from equal civil and
political rights with the whites? That in the State of New York the
negro has to be the possessor of at least two hundred and fifty dollars'
worth of property to entitle him to the privileges of a white citizen?
That in some of the Northern States the colored man, whether bond or
free, is by law excluded altogether, and not suffered to enter the State
limits, under severe penalties? and is not Mr. Lincoln's own State one
of them? and in view of the fact that the $20,000,000 compensation which
was promised to Missouri in aid of emancipation was defeated in the last
Congress (the strongest Republican Congress that ever assembled), what
has the North done toward emancipation?" Now, then, there 's a dose for
you. [A voice: "Answer it."] And I will address myself to the answering
of it. And first, the bill for emancipation in Missouri, to which
this money was denied, was a bill which was drawn by what we call
"log-rollers," who inserted in it an enormously disproportioned price
for the slaves. The Republicans offered to give them $10,000,000 for
the slaves in Missouri, and they outvoted it because they could not
get $12,000,000. Already half the slave population had been "run" down
South, and yet they came up to Congress to get $12,000,000 for what was
not worth ten millions, nor even eight millions. Now as to those States
that had passed "black" laws, as we call them; they are filled with
Southern emigrants. The southern parts of Ohio, the southern part of
Indiana, where I myself lived for years, and which I knew like a
book, the southern part of Illinois, where Mr. Lincoln lives--[great
uproar]--these parts are largely settled by emigrants from Kentucky,
Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina, and it was their vote,
or the Northern votes pandering for political reasons to theirs, that
passed in those States the infamous "black" laws; and the Republicans
in these States have a record, clean and white, as having opposed these
laws in every instance as "infamous." Now as to the State of New York;
it is asked whether a negro is not obliged to have a certain freehold
property, or a certain amount of property, before he can vote. It is so
still in North Carolina and Rhode Island for white folks--it is so in
New York State. [Mr. Beecher's voice slightly failed him here, and
he was interrupted by a person who tried to imitate him. Cries of
"Shame!" and "Turn him out!"] I am not undertaking to say that these
faults of the North, which were brought upon them by the bad example
and influence of the South, are all cured; but I do say that they are
in process of cure which promises, if unimpeded by foreign influence, to
make all such odious distinctions vanish.

There is another fact that I wish to allude to--not for the sake
of reproach or blame, but by way of claiming your more lenient
consideration--and that is, that slavery was entailed upon us by your
action. [Hear, hear!] Against the earnest protests of the colonists the
then government of Great Britain--I will concede not knowing what were
the mischiefs--ignorantly, but in point of fact, forced slave traffic
on the unwilling colonists. [Great uproar, in the midst of which one
individual was lifted up and carried out of the room amidst cheers and
hisses.]

The CHAIRMAN: If you would only sit down no disturbance would take
place.

The disturbance having subsided,

MR. BEECHER said: I was going to ask you, suppose a child is born with
hereditary disease; suppose this disease was entailed upon him by
parents who had contracted it by their own misconduct, would it be fair
that those parents that had brought into the world the diseased child,
should rail at that child because it was diseased. ["No, no!"] Would not
the child have a right to turn round and say: "Father, it was your
fault that I had it, and you ought to be pleased to be patient with
my deficiencies." [Applause and hisses, and cries of "Order!" Great
interruption and great disturbance here took place on the right of
the platform; and the chairman said that if the persons around the
unfortunate individual who had caused the disturbance would allow him to
speak alone, but not assist him in making the disturbance, it might soon
be put an end to. The interruption continued until another person was
carried out of the hall.] Mr. Beecher continued: I do not ask that you
should justify slavery in us, because it was wrong in you two hundred
years ago; but having ignorantly been the means of fixing it upon us,
now that we are struggling with mortal struggles to free ourselves from
it, we have a right to your tolerance, your patience, and charitable
constructions.

No man can unveil the future; no man can tell what revolutions are about
to break upon the world; no man can tell what destiny belongs to France,
nor to any of the European powers; but one thing is certain, that in the
exigencies of the future there will be combinations and recombinations,
and that those nations that are of the same faith, the same blood, and
the same substantial interests, ought not to be alienated from each
other, but ought to stand together. [Immense cheering and hisses.] I
do not say that you ought not to be in the most friendly alliance
with France or with Germany; but I do say that your own children, the
offspring of England, ought to be nearer to you than any people of
strange tongue. [A voice: "Degenerate sons," applause and hisses;
another voice: "What about the Trent?"] If there had been any feelings
of bitterness in America, let me tell you that they had been excited,
rightly or wrongly, under the impression that Great Britain was going
to intervene between us and our own lawful struggle. [A voice: "No!" and
applause.] With the evidence that there is no such intention all bitter
feelings will pass away. [Applause.] We do not agree with the recent
doctrine of neutrality as a question of law. But it is past, and we are
not disposed to raise that question. We accept it now as a fact, and
we say that the utterance of Lord Russell at Blairgowrie--[Applause,
hisses, and a voice: "What about Lord Brougham?"]--together with the
declaration of the government in stopping war-steamers here--[great
uproar, and applause]--has gone far toward quieting every fear and
removing every apprehension from our minds. [Uproar and shouts of
applause.] And now in the future it is the work of every good man and
patriot not to create divisions, but to do the things that will make for
peace. ["Oh, oh!" and laughter.] On our part it shall be done. [Applause
and hisses, and "No, no!"] On your part it ought to be done; and when
in any of the convulsions that come upon the world, Great Britain finds
herself struggling single-handed against the gigantic powers that spread
oppression and darkness--[applause, hisses, and uproar]--there ought to
be such cordiality that she can turn and say to her first-born and most
illustrious child, "Come!" [Hear, hear! applause, tremendous cheers,
and uproar.] I will not say that England cannot again, as hitherto,
single-handed manage any power--[applause and uproar]--but I will say
that England and America together for religion and liberty--[A voice:
"Soap, soap," uproar, and great applause]--are a match for the world.
[Applause; a voice: "They don't want any more soft soap."] Now,
gentlemen and ladies--[A voice: "Sam Slick"; and another voice: "Ladies
and gentlemen, if you please,"]--when I came I was asked whether I would
answer questions, and I very readily consented to do so, as I had in
other places; but I will tell you it was because I expected to have the
opportunity of speaking with some sort of ease and quiet. [A voice: "So
you have."] I have for an hour and a half spoken against a storm--[Hear,
hear!]--and you yourselves are witnesses that, by the interruption, I
have been obliged to strive with my voice, so that I no longer have the
power to control this assembly. [Applause.] And although I am in spirit
perfectly willing to answer any question, and more than glad of
the chance, yet I am by this very unnecessary opposition to-night
incapacitated physically from doing it. Ladies and gentlemen, I bid you
good-evening.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

THE GETTYSBURGH ADDRESS,

NOVEMBER 19, 1863.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a
great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived
and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of
that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final
resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But
in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot
hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world
will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can
never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have
thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to
the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we
take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS,

MARCH 4, 1865.

FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office,
there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at first.
Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued seemed
very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during
which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every
point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention
and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be
presented.

The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as
well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably
satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no
prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were
anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought
to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this
place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent
agents were in the city seeking to destroy it with war--seeking to
dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties
deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the
nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it
perish, and the war came. One eighth of the whole population were
colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized
in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and
powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause
of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the
object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the
government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial
enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which
it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the
conflict might cease when, or even before the conflict itself should
cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental
and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and
each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men
should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from
the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not
judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has
been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the
world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come, but
woe to that man by whom the offence cometh. If we shall suppose that
American slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of
God, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed
time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South
this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came,
shall we discern there any departure from those Divine attributes which
the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope,
fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass
away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by
the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be
sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by
another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago,
so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are
in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may
achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with
all nations.

HENRY WINTER DAVIS,

OF MARYLAND. (BORN 1817, DIED 1865.)

ON RECONSTRUCTION; THE FIRST REPUBLICAN THEORY;

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 22, 1864.

MR. SPEAKER:

The bill which I am directed by the committee on the rebellious States
to report is one which provides for the restoration of civil government
in States whose governments have been overthrown. It prescribes such
conditions as will secure not only civil government to the people of
the rebellious States, but will also secure to the people of the United
States permanent peace after the suppression of the rebellion. The bill
challenges the support of all who consider slavery the cause of the
rebellion, and that in it the embers of rebellion will always smoulder;
of those who think that freedom and permanent peace are inseparable, and
who are determined, so far as their constitutional authority will
allow them, to secure these fruits by adequate legislation. * * * It is
entitled to the support of all gentlemen upon this side of the House,
whatever their views may be of the nature of the rebellion, and the
relation in which it has placed the people and States in rebellion
toward the United States; not less of those who think that the rebellion
has placed the citizens of the rebel States beyond the protection of the
Constitution, and that Congress, therefore, has supreme power over them
as conquered enemies, than of that other class who think that they
have not ceased to be citizens and States of the United States, though
incapable of exercising political privileges under the Constitution, but
that Congress is charged with a high political power by the Constitution
to guarantee republican governments in the States, and that this is the
proper time and the proper mode of exercising it. It is also entitled
to the favorable consideration of gentlemen upon the other side of the
House who honestly and deliberately express their judgment that slavery
is dead. To them it puts the question whether it is not advisable to
bury it out of sight, that its ghost may no longer stalk abroad to
frighten us from our propriety. * * *

What is the nature of this case with which we have to deal, the evil
we must remedy, the danger we must avert? In other words, what is that
monster of political wrong which is called secession? It is not, Mr.
Speaker, domestic violence, within the meaning of that clause of the
Constitution, for the violence was the act of the people of those States
through their governments, and was the offspring of their free and
unforced will. It is not invasion, in the meaning of the Constitution,
for no State has been invaded against the will of the government of the
State by any power except the United States marching to overthrow the
usurpers of its territory. It is, therefore, the act of the people of
the States, carrying with it all the consequences of such an act.
And therefore it must be either a legal revolution, which makes them
independent, and makes of the United States a foreign country, or it is
a usurpation against the authority of the United States, the erection
of governments which do not recognize the Constitution of the United
States, which the Constitution does not recognize, and, therefore, not
republican governments of the States in rebellion. The latter is
the view which all parties take of it. I do not understand that any
gentleman on the other side of the House says that any rebel government
which does not recognize the Constitution of the United States, and
which is not recognized by Congress, is a State government within the
meaning of the Constitution. Still less can it be said that there is a
State government, republican or unrepublican, in the State of Tennessee,
where there is no government of any kind, no civil authority, no
organized form of administration except that represented by the flag of
the United States, obeying the will and under the orders of the military
officer in command. * * *

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