Wendell Cannon Souths Gonna Rise Again
Speech communication OF WENDELL PHILLIPS,; AT THE ANTI-SLAVERY Commemoration AT FRAMINGHAM, JULY 4, 1861.
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FRIENDS: What can I say to y'all to-day? No man can feel himself peculiarly competent to brand a speech on the Anti-Slavery question merely now. It is all judge-work. The only question is, whether it is probable one human will gauge a little meliorate than some other. It seems to me that we are all afloat. Events, not men, are the swell objects of interest. War between two great ideas has commenced. About all we can do is to watch the gradual progress of that conflict. You will not, therefore, await from me a speech. All I, will attempt is but to requite you, in a friendly mode, my impression of men and thing'south, as we stand; merely to state, informally, as i does to another on the sidewalk, how I look at things just at present.
In the start place, I feel satisfied that the cease of the slave organisation has come. [Applause.] I have no doubt that nosotros brainstorm to touch the end. My reason is this. The age of discussion is over. We have had fifty years, more or less, of what is called agitation, discussion and party divisions. Now, a new act has opened. It is the hour of fight -- the age of bullets. That never lasts very long. It does non take as much time for a nation to fight itself clear every bit information technology does to talk itself articulate, only it is necessary that the talk; should precede such a tight. Information technology is only necessary that the listen, the substratum of purpose, should exist deliberately formed. I think it has been. I do not mean to say that the whole Due north is Anti-Slavery, much less for abolition; but I do hateful to say this, that the S has fully come up to the conviction, that unless she can utilise the Marriage to support Slavery, the system is gone; and I call back the North has come to this conviction, that the Union never shall be used to sustain Slavery. I remember, so far, the public mind is fabricated up. I do not mean that the popular mind objects specifically to certain Constitutional provisions, that men have made up their minds non to return fugitive slaves; but I think there is a prevailing and unconscious, perhaps, only assured sentiment and purpose at the North, that the Wedlock either does or shall mean liberty in the stop. Those two ideas conflict -- hence the war. We are in it; how shall we got out of it?
There are merely two ways past which a nation is molded. I is by its great men; the other is by its masses. We have not been brought to this spot by what we called our groovy men; we take been brought hither by our masses. The state of war was raised past the masses, not by statesmen, and the war volition exist concluded by the masses, not by statesmen. This is the reason why I accost you to-day. Mr. SEWARD is not honest enough to manage this war; Mr. LINCOLN is not bold enough yet. We are to curb the one, and spur the other; and that is the object of such meetings every bit this. In other words, neither political party -- neither the Due north nor the South -- has shown any statesmanship. The South thought she had humbled the North so completely, in long, dismal years, that the threat of secession would bring us to our knees. JEFFERSON DAVIS never meant to pass this concluding last Winter out of Washington; STEPHENS never meant that a session of Congress should exist held to which he should not be summoned. They both thought that the South, with sixty years of sovereignty behind information technology, could once again whip the North into the traces. They were mistaken. To-day convicts them of utter lack of statesmanship; for if statesmanship means anything, information technology means knowing one's times. The Due north, also, has shown no statesmanship; for Mr. LINCOLN idea, and Mr. Hunt thought, and Mr. CAMERON idea, that the South would never dare to secede; that South Carolina was not mad enough to effort the gulf on the border of which she stood. We thought and then; and it only shows we all miscalculated our times in a most important point and degree. Over our heads, the Divine Providence of the hour, and beneath the states the unconquerable volition of both sections, take brought u.s.a. confront to face in battle. God exist praised for information technology! [Applause.] Cannon are to sound the jubilee of the slave. Every bit neither party has shown statesmanship hitherto, we have no right to expect it futurity. We are to guess the future by weighing the elements that have formed the present, and that is the deep-seated will, the enlightened conscience, and the bodacious purpose of the people.
Some friends criticize me considering I seem to them to accept surrendered my favorite plea of disunion, and welcomed this war. Merely let such remember, that no man should flatter himself he can mold the earth exactly in his method. He must consider it rare success if his cotemporaries adopt substantially his purpose. I have advocated disunion for fifteen years, because I idea information technology a practicable and peaceable method of freeing the North from the guilt of Slavery, and of planting at the S the seeds of early and entire emancipation -- wringing justice from a weak and broke South. But it has pleased the Nation to seek that consequence in a dissimilar way. The majority most us, starting with the principle that this was a Nation, not a partnership, have constantly claimed that the corner-stone of our Government, the spirit of '76, was the total liberty of each and every homo. They waited with what they thought brotherly patience, with what the South fancied was selfish fear, for the whole Nation to acknowledge this theory. The one-half-success of FREMONT, the election of LINCOLN, were the hand-writing on the wall. It was in vain that the leaders of the three parties bound the Constitution on their brows, and swore they should never dream of changing its stipulations. The S is too wary to approximate of the future by dough-faces or part-seekers, by self-elected or real leaders. They knew that the fathers of '76 assured King GEORGE, and believed, that in that location was no dream of independence, only a few months before they alleged it. They knew that the people, once in hostage, care as little for history or parchments as a growing oak for rotten cords. They say Dr. CHALMERS, baffled once in unharnessing his equus caballus, led him into a garden walk, and left him to await the ostler's coming. When his sister remonstrated, that the brute would non heed the tiny hedges, just eat them and trample the flowers, "he'll exist a very unaccommodating creature, and then," said the doctor. The Southward knew the people, likewise, were "a very unaccommodating beast," spite of Mr. EVERETT'due south faith in their respect for historical hedges -- and that LINCOLN, even if he brought his favorite subpoena to the Avoiding Slave neb in his correct mitt, and vociferated his pledge of slave-hunting afresh at Cleveland, was really the picket and outpost of the great Abolition regular army, taking quarters in the Capitol. "Crush the viper in his egg" was their war-cry. The argument of the free men had gone against them. They fell back on the last resort of kings -- cannon. The Due north replies, "Nosotros should take preferred contend -- a costless Press -- teaching -- ballots; but if you choose bullets, agreed! The Stars and Stripes meant Liberty in 1776, and shall now." I myself should have preferred peace and argument, but the twenty millions accept chosen otherwise. I have only to accept the Blood-red Sea through which God wills to lead his people, and I rejoice still that Canaan is across. If we are to serve our historic period, we must serve information technology in the way it chooses. When the people, thoroughly awake, and too taught as the times allow, deliberately cull whatever honorable way of reaching an object of pressing importance, the duty of an honest man is to help them all he can in their effort. Hence I bow to the masses, and welcome emancipation by war.
The South is in earnest. I practice non say she is unanimous. I think that the Gulf States are every bit unanimous to-solar day as the thirteen States were in '76. The Secessionists of the Southward are proportionally stronger than the Whigs of the thirteen Colonies were when they strangled the Tories with i hand and GEORGE Three, with the other. In that location is every bit much unanimity at that place to-solar day every bit there was throughout the Colonies during the Revolution. It is idle, therefore, to talk virtually unanimity. A large and agile number holding the wealth, and almost all the education of the Gulf States in their own hands -- mark you! non the mob, merely the men of property, the men of idea, the men of influence -- and having half the mob with them, are the State, to all intents and purposes. I dismiss, therefore, utterly, the question, whether the numerical majority of the Gulf States wishes to secede. Whether they wish to or non, they cannot help themselves; for the ruling elements of the Gulf States have seceded, and mean to secede.
I say, therefore, the South, properly speaking, is in earnest. She has been considering for thirty years -- at present she begins to human activity. She acts harmoniously, earnestly. The N is only awake. She is not in earnest. The Southward knows what she wants; the Northward struggles and gropes her mode with a one-half-formed purpose, half understood method. But this is the weakness I discover in the Assistants. That is the reason why I say the masses have got to determine this boxing. I concord a statesman to be 1 who is fix to exercise all the people allow. He is one who drags public sentiment upward to its utmost possible efficiency. That is a statesman. I hold a politician to be one who does all the people demand. He yields, he does not atomic number 82. He submits, he does not initiate. The Administration is ready. Information technology stands looking to the North and the West, and proverb, "What shall I exercise?" Y'all retrieve the modest swain in DICKENS' story, who could not muster courage to offer to his lady love, but getting into conversation with her favorite, said, "Tell her Barkis is willing." The Administration is willing. [Laughter.] We want more. We desire an indication that shall ripen public sentiment. We want a proposal -- an opening of the channel that shall guide the public thought. The Administration propose nothing. They simply cry with the people, "The Stars and Stripes!" They simply respond to this war-cry of an insulted nation. It seems to me that we take a correct to ask of them that they should bear witness usa how we are to be got out of this difficulty. Here are xv States in arms against the other half of the nation. Ten million of men against xx. A statesman should boldly probe the wound, scan the crusade of the disease, and point the remedy. In this historic period, after two hundred years of Union, of pulpits and schools, of common tongue and organized religion, war, except there exist momentous crusade, shows our pulpit and school to be failures. "Excuse us to ourselves, and save us from such an another 60 minutes, if you claim to lead."
Does whatever man dream, that within an assignable fourth dimension, we can conquer the Southern States by the nowadays means? Will an army of 200,000, or 500,000, subdue the Gulf States, on our present programme? When they take done it, does the history of the terminal lx years render it probable that the Carolinas or Mississippi volition stay subdued? Take nosotros a correct to found our future on the supposition that the white race of that half of the nation are not every bit desperate every bit Poland, every bit bravo as Hungary, as determined equally Italia? Nosotros may defeat them on a dozen fields of boxing, but until nosotros depopulate the State, we never shall have subdued it. It seems to me that there is but one way of developing a Matrimony sentiment in those Southern States, and of subduing the secession sentiment every bit, and that is, past arraying a might of ability, and putting behind it a purpose, that shall remove the crusade that makes us two people. That is, not until you phone call four million of blacks into liberty, and on our side [applause] -- not until y'all say to the South, "The Stars and Stripes hateful liberty to every man -- twenty million of men at the North, and iv meg at the South have said it: if, in striking downwardly a vile system on the battle-field, whatever loyal man suffers loss, the nation shall share it with him" -- not until we say this tin can we awaken the Union sentiment of the South, and array all that is loyal on our side, and annihilate the rest. At present, half of the Southward clings to Slavery, and means to fight for it to the decease. Pride of race, family pride, old associations, and often sincere convictions of the value of Slavery, produce this determination. The other half would gladly be rid of a organization they thoroughly know and hate; but they dread pecuniary ruin in the change. Both halves believe the North, spite of its protestations, ways, in the finish, abolitionism, immediate and unconditional. And they are right. Left to itself, that is our future, equally sure as the Rapids end in Niagara. Assure this half of the South that the nation which decrees freedom will shield them from ruin, and we have, at once with us the Northward, the slave, and one-half the Southward -- the world over the water, and God in a higher place; success then is speedy and sure.
Outside of that is the war, two years long, four years long -- costing a million a day, developing the courage, the beloved of country, the character of the North. Yes; but when it has lasted 2 years, and the unsubdued Due south yet stretches her hands to Europe, Europe volition acknowledge her independence, and ought to do so; and and then the divided nation will nowadays a new policy to the free Northward, and a bankrupt S, sure to emancipate, considering she is too poor to proceed the slaves in their chains. On one side or the other of that line rests the only effective boxing. I hate war. I think the present civil state of war the bloodiest stain on the century, if it means only "stars and stripes" -- if it means just the Union as it was. But every thinking man sees that, no matter what men wish, it cannot hateful the Union every bit information technology was. Permit this war go on twelve months, and the old Wedlock never can exist rebuilt. It was built on compromise. Such a state of war as this, the biting fruits of years of angry give-and-take, of proud contempt on ane side, and submission on the other, which the hounds knew meant cowardice and infamy -- such a war may take truces, merely in the end the only peace will be unconditional submission of one or the other side. We must change the elements which take created this quarrel, if we would end it. They are just to be changed past emancipation or division.
What do I inquire of the Government? I do not ask them to announce that policy of emancipation now; they are not strong enough to do it. We can announce it; the people can talk over it; the Administration are not strong enough to announce information technology. I exercise non care whether they hateful it or non; information technology were utter ruin to announce it now. But I do claim this, that the Assistants shall signal, shall manifest its character. It has not done information technology. Its friends say, "We shall be called an Abolition Administration if we favor the Anti-Slavery sentiment; we want to exist known as a constitutional Administration." There is the fault. There is the fundamental error. Gen. PATTERSON, Gen. CADWALLADER, are using the shoes Gen. BUTLER has thrown away, and promising to put downwardly servile insurrections. By the Constitution they accept no right to lift a little finger confronting a servile insurrection until the Governor of a Land asks information technology. When they brand such a annunciation information technology is alike uncalled for, illegal and unconstitutional. What I call on Gen. SCOTT and President LINCOLN to do is, that they shall rebuke their Major-Generals when they go outside of the law to propitiate the Slave Ability. I want the scales held even. For lx years that of Freedom has kicked the axle. I call on LINCOLN and his Cabinet at least to hold them even. Even fair play to Freedom, nether the old Constitution, will be such a modify every bit will quell the Due south and educate the North. If Gen. PATTERSON knows no meliorate than to suppress servile insurrections, cashier him on this side the Potomac. The Administration can, should, ought, if it means liberty, indicate its purpose by these legal, constitutional and imperative measures. Why do they not? I will tell you. Lieut.-Gen. SCOTT is a Southerner. He is 75 years sometime. He is a loyal, honest, devoted friend of the Union, and the ablest soldier we have. He means to go along his oath to the alphabetic character. But he has a natural and unavoidable tenderness towards the department from which he sprang. He has an old man's fondness for the associations of the past. He hopes and trusts that, by moderate measures, by waiting, by patience, by blockades, by starvation, he tin avoid exasperating the sections, and bring them together once again in a harmonious Marriage. Mr. SEWARD would sacrifice everything for that Union. He has not the beginning nor the finish of a principle. His own colleagues know he is a traitor; and the fault I find with the Administration is, that while honest men recognize the honest elements independent in it, those honest elements endure themselves to be compromised, balanced, by i powerful, but, at the same time, known to exist treacherous. I am merely saying of SEWARD what every man says in Washington; what every honest man says all over the country, and especially in New-York State.
With such a human at the head of the Administration, and those willing to be his comrades in it, I believe that nosotros owe the absence of compromise this hour to CHARLES SUMNER in the Senate, and the New-York Tribune in the state. [Adulation.] I mean exactly what I say. An honest Administration, an honest President, who, hesitating, distrusting the strength of the popular feeling behind him, awed past the Senator of New-York, to-twenty-four hour period, that we take not been compromised into disgraceful and ruinous peace is due, more than than to any other single homo, to the neat Senator of Massachusetts, and, more than than to any other Printing, or hundred Presses, to the Tribune of New-York City.
What take we to exercise, nether these circumstances? We are to practice this: We are to merits of the Assistants the indication, the manifestation of a purpose. They ask our back up. We will requite information technology, if they will give the states a twig or a twine thread on which to take hold. But nosotros must have something. And yet, Assistants, or no Administration, Liberty waits on the horizon, ready to descend, like a guardian angel, on this distracted and cute country. For when was in that location always a more glorious sight than twenty millions of people set to risk their institutions and their wealth in a struggle which every man in his hush-hush heart -- no thing what his lips say -- knows means freedom -- the freedom of the haled, the friendless, the odious, by race and condition. I say, Administration or no Administration, events, the masses, have decided that these meetings need not be held many years to come, without being turned into meetings to gloat the liberty of four million blacks between here and the Gulf of Mexico.
I will tell you lot what I do promise and expect: they say Pennsylvania wants a black law -- ways to pass a blackness police, in club to shut out of her territory those fugitives who have made Fortress Monroe their refuge, or who, deserted past their masters, are living lonely upon Virginia plantations, ready to come up North whenever the render of the white man or the rigor of Winter forces them to it. There will grow ane expert, however unintended, from that negrophobia of Pennsylvania. When the first frosts come up, there will be x g men, women and children, blacks, taking refuge in Fortress Monroe. The friends of the Authorities are asking what the Abolitionists mean to do with them. Nada. We leave them on your easily. Yous dare not, in the confront of the civilized world, return them to their masters. More than than that, you do not want to. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, SALMON P. CHASE, MONTGOMERY BLAIR, take non the heart nor the wish to put back into the hell of Virginia Slavery 1 single contraband article in Fortress Monroe. They never volition practise it. And when twenty,000, 40,000, 100,000 are within the lines of Gen. SCOTT'due south Army, the Government must indicate its purpose. If we cannot clutch it out of them, the slaves will smother it out. When the fourth dimension comes, it cannot exist that, we shall export them to Jamaica, nosotros take not the shipping; that we will forcefulness them to Hayti, we have no right; that we will send them to die in Republic of liberia, we cannot afford it. To export the working class is suicide. We cannot take them N; Pennsylvania has built her wall, tall as the Alleghanies, and forbids it. God grant that the offset frost may find 500,000 arguments within our lines -- arguments for the Assistants to declare itself; for, hemmed in on the due north by Pennsylvania, on the bandage past the sea, on the West by the Mississippi, and to a higher place past the loyalty of God, ABRAHAM LINCOLN can say nothing else but this: "The Stars and Stripes shall bladder over Virginia, and every black homo that sees them may alive where he was born, certain that while twenty million of men breathe in the North, he never shall find or fear a master." [Loud applause.] You perceive that the Government will be shut up to emancipation on the soil. Send LANE or MONTGOMERY to Memphis, and the black men in their ranks volition be double the whites. The decision what to do with those allies settles the slave question. Slavery will never exist over again in Virginia, unless the United states of america Government brings it back. Allow the Administration hogtie every General'south actions to consume his bad words and fulfil his skilful ones, as thoroughly as BUTLER'due south have done, and nosotros volition wait their further conversion, trusting events a while. Just we need the rigor of all the law left the states. And then yous and I must gear up the public stance behind these politicians. Nosotros must prepare a public opinion that by the quaternary day of December, will be gear up to sustain Congress in meeting the ultimate effect of this quarrel.
Suppose you are as brave, equally rich, every bit strong, every bit persistent, equally you suppose yourselves to be, while nosotros fight, nosotros have cipher but Mexican wars and Due south American civilisation before us; a disharmonize of States; perpetual war; the South fighting desperately, on the mountains, ambuscades, guerilla warfare, but fighting. Is that the country we look frontwards to? Is that the civilisation which the Due north would accept? Never! If our statesmen cannot give us annihilation better, marking me! if Europe does not recognize in two years, the North will compromise. Northern merchandise, Northern industry, Northern common sense volition never suffer such a time to come for years. The North will compromise before she will endure it. Save us from long years of war. Save us, either by emancipation or division. Zero can exist worse than years of civil war, demoralizing, weakening, destroying the ultimate hope of either a peaceful or a successful dealing with the slave question.
And yet, I run across the value of this war. I am glad Gen. SCOTT has 200,000 men. I only hope that when Congress is adjourned, he will accelerate into Virginia, and fight. I do not believe there are l,000 soldiers on the other side. I believe BEAUREGARD lives, spite of the telegraph, and I believe at that place are some forty,000 or 50,000 men with artillery of some sort, in the State of Virginia -- the residual is bravado. Just it won't do to rely wholly on occludent, to starve them out; information technology won't do to wait till they disperse. The worth of this war is to redeem the grapheme of the Northward. No Southern man believes that the Northerner has any courage. I exercise not mean that the S affects to believe this -- she does believe it; and but for the deport of CHARLES SUMNER, and a dozen similar him, she has a right in believe it. She has never met in that Senate or House of Representatives, for sixty years, more than half a score of men who take dared to look her in the face up. She had a correct, therefore, to believe that the North was chicken, or peddler; for what she could not bully, she could always buy. Now, the do good of this war -- the approval of it -- which we shall buy at a million of dollars a day, and inexpensive at that, is, that we shall beat this saucy Virginia, some half dozen times, into skillful behavior. Nosotros shall convince these incredulous Carolinians that the North tin fight when she thinks information technology worth while; and then, either in the Union, or alongside of information technology, they volition live in peace, and treat us properly. They never will until so. Gen. SCOTT may starve the Gulf States; he never will starve them out of the conviction that New-England is coward. That tin merely be cannonaded out of them, on the sacred soil of Virginia, [adulation;] and the lesson which JOHN BROWN gear up the text for, it is for us to write in characters visible from Harper's Ferry to New-Orleans.
My policy, therefore, is, give the Administration generous sympathy; give it all the confidence for honesty of purpose yous tin can. They mean now only the Marriage. That is all they hateful at present; but they are "willing" we should brand them mean anything more than we please. They are not similar SEWARD -- slippery, equivocal, false. You know the old problem which disturbed the wits of the schoolmen for a yard years. It was, whether, when a homo said, "I lie," he lied or told the truth; for if he uttered the truth, he lied, and if he lied, he told the truth. [Laughter.] It is exactly and then in regard to SEWARD. In that location is no making anything but a parallel problem out of his life and speeches. [Adulation.] Just the rest of the Chiffonier are honest men. ABRAHAM LINCOLN means to do his constitutional duty in the crunch. I think Mr. CHASE means to. I trust them every bit individuals to that extent. Their party I practise not trust at all. Come across how information technology has bartered the 20 years of devotion and energy in the person of CLAFLIN, for the unrecorded and untried virtue of THOMAS! And I consider Massachusetts as good a specimen of the Republican Party as exists in the country. But I consider it expressionless, and am thankful it is dead, [applause,] because it leaves u.s.a. costless now to discriminate as to individuals; and the present crunch demands that nosotros should make that discrimination. At that place is no organized religion, no trust to be placed on party organization in such an hour as this. They have failed us the whole Winter. That free speech exists in this Republic is attributable to no single word or finger of aid from the Republican Party. The Massachusetts Republican Political party has shown itself, in its ranks and in its caput, recreant to the most sacred duty of the Wintertime, and recreant by system, by intention, by dictation from Washington, or submission to its known policy and wish. I hateful what I say. If I had time, I should get over the tape, every bit I shall do before the first day of January next; just y'all know, as well as I do, that the Republican Party placed in the Governor's chair of this State 1 whom they considered the best representative of their principles. Yous know that he went to Washington, and was baptized into the policy of the Cabinet that was to be. You know that he returned to the Upper-case letter of the Democracy, and saw a mob, in the pay and service of secession, trampling nether foot the very sentiments which placed him in his Chair of State, and he cannot be fairly said to accept lifted a finger for the well-nigh sacred of all rights -- that of liberty of discussion. Yous know that, afterwards writing a letter of the alphabet on the value of free speech communication, of which I said (and said information technology fittingly) that it was the noblest discussion a Massachusetts Governor had spoken since the days of JOHN WINTHROP, on that mad week in January, he violated every principle appear in his letter to KIMBALL, bankrupt his hope every bit a gentleman, failed in his duty as an officeholder, aided his subordinates to confute the Abolitionists in the public journals, and when, afterwards, the House of Representatives passed, and the Senate was ready to laissez passer, a bill offering him that power, the lack of which he had fabricated a pretext for inaction, he personally intrigued to prevent its enactment, ["shame."]
I know five months, crowded with great events, take passed since. But such treachery no events are large enough to hide. Free voice communication is the germ of our history, the corner-rock of our ability. Whoever, in Massachusetts, trespasses on gratuitous oral communication, declares war with all our past, and endangers all our hereafter? EVERETT, in 1835, had the alibi of a stronger temptation for less infamy. Let no sheen of military efficiency bullheaded us to the danger of such an human action from i whom the masses trust. Terminal March, before a Legislative Committee, I bore my testimony on this indicate. I do non mean to forfeit the character of twenty years of impartial vigilance by silence now. I feel with SOUTHEY, speaking of an deed not so dangerous: "To palliate it would be vain; to justify it would be wicked. There is no culling for one who will not make himself a participator in the guilt, but to record the disgraceful story with sorrow and shame."
Why do I mention this? Is a recreant Governor of Massachusetts of so much event? No. But in this he was the oral fissure-piece of the Cabinet at Washington -- of the men, I mean, who were marked for the Cabinet, when the quaternary of March opened. They did what they thought necessary for the welfare of the Republican political party. They wrecked it. Your Governor placed himself among these men -- fix to do anything to save the party. I said, just now, that CHARLES SUMNER and his like, with the Tribune, had saved the land. Information technology is considering I believe of him (and I know merely of some one-half-dozen others of whom I should dare to say information technology,) that while he would do anything to serve his country, he would non do a dishonorable act to save it. When, on the contrary, a man writes himself downward in the other category, when he shows himself willing to employ means he knows to be base, for an terminate he thinks good, his usefulness is gone. I place no confidence, therefore, in the action of that political organization which failed us in the trial-hour. I put my faith in the honesty of ABRAHAM LINCOLN equally an individual, in the pledge which a long life has given of CHASE's beloved for the anti-slavery cause; merely I practise non believe either of them, nor all of them, nor all their comrades, accept the boldness to declare an emancipation policy, until, past a force per unit area which we are to create, the state forces them to it. We are on the one side; the enrolled ground forces of Virginia on the other. A defeat, bloody and roughshod, volition anger the Northward into emancipation. A victory, that throws the South into madness, and makes her seek whatever means, in her desperation, may force the Government on to emancipation. Let united states of america pray for the life of JEFFERSON DAVIS! [Laughter.] God grant him long life, and something of an regular army! [Renewed laughter.] Allow united states pray that Heaven, or some other power, will put into his heart courage, then that he may not run away as well soon; [laugher] so that out of the contest may come emancipation. A northeaster, that sweeps the bounding main clear of every sail, is one thing; the pattering storm that only makes every man feel uncomfortable, is another. I recall, of late, nosotros have seen the latter kind of warfare, and non the best sort.
What we are to inquire for is a decisive policy, or the starting time of it. I believe that Wall-street wants information technology; State-street wants it. The merchants of fifty and sixty years former, who meet their property melting away, who count their losses by hundreds of thousands, have no wish to be in a Slave Union again. We accept come to a moment when the selfishness of wealth is on our side. Rich men, or those lately so, cannot afford to have this war smothered upwards by compromise or half-way peace; that were to risk another defalcation four years hence. The center of the masses and bank vaults are equally one. At a fitting moment, the Government has but to decree justice, and it volition run across the nation take its place among honorable States, with an uprising every bit proud and glorious, as hearty and unanimous, as that which awed Europe into sympathy and respect two months ago. This Assistants holds in its manus the seed of the mightiest change of our age -- the change of the dandy Republic from hypocrisy into honour. Information technology lies with them to clinch the success of this experiment and brand the world our debtors. So far, the people accept washed their total share, rebuking distrust from the elevation of a sublime virtue. Lot statesmen fitly use the noble weapons which a great people have forced into their reluctant hands. Woe to whatever homo who balks the hr, or fails to seize the golden opportunity! The curses of ane race left in chains -- of another mocked in its purpose -- of the globe, distressing from the failure of its great free model, shall load their memory.
I wait at this question only as an Abolitionist. If I stood hither on other grounds, I should have a great deal to say. If I stood here as a denizen, I should protest against the criticism by the Press of our generals and colonels -- upon the hasty rebuke of a unmarried error, mischance or mistake, of what are called "civil" generals. I take no such mistake to find. Our army, hitherto, has been officered -- how? Out of every ten, eight were Southerners. Of these eight, 4 were traitors and two were imbeciles; so we had almost ii out of ten worth anything. We take now civilians; unpracticed men, to be certain, just they are "smart" men, cunning New-Englanders. They could build a ship on ten days' notice, and translate the New-Testament out of the original Greek with a month's schooling. It does non need long to make anything out of a Yankee; and in ten such Yankees, you will find five that think, each one of them, they shall be President; such volition face ambuscades or open batteries for a take chances. [Laughter and applause.] Those men volition fight boldly, at least. The other 5 have reputation, a purpose, and an intention to do their duty. You will get two-thirds of the ten decent officers in the end. Await awhile: we can afford to teach such men their fine art on the "sacred soil of Virginia." An army, raised at a bound from 25,000 to 250,000 -- where, but among civilians, shall it find new officers? I see no errors in the last two months which the history of the great FREDERICK and of WELLINGTON does not parallel. I have, therefore, no criticism of the Army. I think, if it was not held back, it would accept bivouacked at Richmond, and not met a Southern soldier, either. [Applause.] So that, if I were speaking as a citizen, I should have no fault to observe "with our levies, with our generals, with the general mechanism. They want only a head. They want just a purpose, and that the masses are to give to them, non the statesmen. You and I are to begin it. And as I and so seldom praise anybody, I certainly may be allowed to say of the New-York Tribune, which we so often discover fault with, that it has done yeomanly service in the last half-dozen months. We desire a Press equally energetic, equally exacting, all over the country; and we want a public stance here in Massachusetts that shall forget party lines, not for the purpose of welcoming Bong-Everett or broken down Autonomous statesmen into their ranks; but shall forget Party lines in club to rise to the requisitions of the hour, and tell the open up undercover on every human being's lips -- merchant, farmer, politician, clergyman -- that which no man dares print, and no political leader avow, just which flashes from every centre, and nestles in every eye. It is, that every human being belives this a fight for and against Slavery, and intends to strangle it. Why should they not say it? It ought to be said in our Legislature -- ought to be said in Congress -- ought to be said very soon past the Administration.
I could talk a groovy deal longer, if it were necessary, [many voices: "Continue!"] but of what utilise were it? We are all, as I said, afloat. The expert God takes the helm out of man'southward hands, and we have only to be faithful, each in our piffling place, and let the not bad spirit of the century lift up our practice to our platonic. These days of Anti-Slavery gatherings for the purpose of emancipation, I believe, volition presently exist over. By the Constitution, or over it, liberty is sure to come. Our part will shortly exist to spotter for the welfare of this, victim race, guard information technology during its pupilage, shelter it by patronage, by protection, by privilege, by recognizing its claim to an equal manhood. Sooner than we expected, sooner than the most sanguine of united states of america dreamed, this problem is to be decided. How often have we stood under these trees, and sometimes talked despondingly of the future! Mr. GARRISON once burned the Constitution on this platform. Information technology is now indeed a blurred and tattered parchment, between the cannon of Due south Carolina and the sides of Fort Sumter. It is gone; the nation survives. The parchment is rent in twain; the people be. That people are to shape their Authorities afresh. You and I are to take a voice in the molding. The office which HENRY and MADISON, which HANCOCK and ADAMS, played in '87, we are to play to-twenty-four hours. They yielded to the recollection of past suffering, to the fear of present evil, to the prestige of peachy names, and made an musical instrument out of which have" grown sixty years of infamy, and at present civil war. They planted the dragon'south teeth, and, to-twenty-four hours, Boston and Southward Carolina hold each other by the throat. This is the starting time-born child, of 1787. To-mean solar day we plant fresh seed. Mr. LINCOLN and the Administration are pausing, waiting. The furrow is opened. The guns are shotted to the lips. They are to be pointed -- where? At a miserable rattlesnake flag! At a bankrupt and fugitive Cabinet, at present at Montgomery and now in Richmond! At a General, of whom half the earth doubts his existence! No! Your 250,000 muskets, shotted by xxx years of Anti-Slavery agitation, are to be pointed at the Slave Power. [Applause.] Demolish it! [Renewed applause.] Shame England -- waken France -- summon Europe to our side, by proclaiming that the cause of the North is liberty, and our end justice -- that no flag, no parchment, is worth shedding a drop of blood, but that four millions of slaves, whom we have outraged for seventy years, claim of us this atonement -- and, whether in money or in blood, it is to exist laid cheerfully on the altar. Prove the globe that twenty million of freemen, the ripe fruit of two hundred years of self-government and Puritanism, are in a higher place wars waged for the bauble of a crown, the etiquette of a boundary, or the honor of a flag -- that they take the thunderbolt, as God does, only to lift up the humble and abase the proud, and execute justice [???] and human being.
I want to accept dorsum that proper noun which I endeavored to write on the brow of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, of Springfield -- " the slave-hound of Illinois;" and, instead of information technology, before the first mean solar day of January, 1862, I desire to write on that aforementioned honored brow, "Liberator of four million bondmen; kickoff President of the gratuitous Usa of America." [Loud apslause.] Help him to that fame. The Western lawyer is "willing," just he has not the courage to offer. [Laughter.] We tin help him. Assist him by the Printing. Why, the Boston Atlas has recovered its soul! It speaks dauntless words. Soon they will lot usa stand by the left fly of the party. We can save it from beingness devoured by the Leverett Saltonstalls and George T. Curtises of a defunct dynasty. And it must be saved, non the party lines, but the centre of it. Massachusetts must, ship out, not but men; as usual, she must send out ideas. I take from your Governor no jot of his merit. I tear from his brow no leaf of his laurel. Prompt, efficient, sagacious, foresighted, exact in routine -- I grant it all. He has done well with the armed services arm of Massachusetts. Only creature forcefulness, muskets, Minie rifles, are not the real arguments of the former Commonwealth. Virginia can burn down a gun -- from an ambuscade -- and Illinois tin muster a regiment; but it is just the Bay Country that tin can remodel an age. Information technology is only the conscience and the encephalon of Yankees that can upset and set up nations. That was what nosotros were to have done during the Winter, and what nosotros are to do for the hereafter.
A momentous hour this. It is a dangerous thing to make speeches in these days. Nosotros stand at the parting of two roads. A great policy is to be decided this year. It is easy to say that emancipation lies at the end of both roads. No doubtfulness of information technology. As certain as God reigns, the slaves, or about of them, in 10 years or five, will be complimentary. But that is sorry consolation for 20 millions of educated, Christian, Republican citizens. We ought to exist able to handle this problem as a tried Full general handles his troops on the field of battle -- to secure the result with the least possible suffering. We ought to exist able to secure it without one-half a dozen years of warfare, without a cleaved Union, without exasperated States; and we tin can so manage information technology if we will.
For myself, I put no value on the Matrimony. It is a name -- goose egg more than. It is a parchment, stained and bloody. It were enough for me to damn it forever, that THOMAS SIMS and ANTHONY BURNS behave witness against it on the pavements of Boston. Merely there are men -- some of yous -- who still linger in your prejudices for the Union. If then, up! gird yourselves! demand of the Administration that they proclaim emancipation. There is no other way to salve the Matrimony -- none. If, xviii months hence, Gen. SCOTT is encamped, with Gen. DAVIS confronting him, in whatever such shape as now, (as I believe they possibly volition, unless emancipation intervene.) England and France will acknowledge the Confederacy -- we shall acknowledge it; and then, ten or twenty years will elapse before the exasperated States coalesce a 2nd time. Now, seize time by the forelock; telephone call dorsum to reason the madness of Louisiana and Georgia; announce that the stars and stripes bear liberty with them. [Applause.] Mr. CAMERON says, "Wherever the flag goes, trade follows." Oh, amend that maxim! Wherever the flag goes, Freedom goes with information technology, and let trade take care of itself. [Applause.] Denote it, and soon, if there is a bulk for the Union, they will show themselves. Say to the slaveholders, "The Union shares the loss with you, if it takes your slaves from you by a military necessity." No matter what information technology costs. Better pay the coin to save the sinner from his sin, than spend a million a twenty-four hour period, for v years, in a cruel, useless and brutal state of war. 1 year is enough for manhood; enough to show the character and purpose of the North; anything more than is savage. The Authorities tin prevent it past a word. Call on the honesty of the Cabinet, and bid them blackball traitors. If that ways the Empire State, blackball it. Put into the office of Secretary of State a human being whom LINCOLN will not have to watch. One one-half of the clerks of the departments are traitors. Empty them! Mr. Hunt knows, in the northern half of Ohio, men who, for cipher, rather than the places should be filled by traitors, would serve the Government. I go for determination. Adjourn Congress, and SCOTT will be decisive. I concede gladly, proudly, fully, the fame of the Lieutenant-General. I do not want him to die or be superseded. Only curb Congress; tell him that all promise for the nowadays Union is over; but that his fame every bit a General, before he dies, rests on his crushing the viper inside six months; and the old human being will practise information technology. [Adulation.] It is not loyalty, information technology is non ability, information technology is a nation behind him that he needs. You and I tin can begin that voice which shall exist echoed from the Mississippi, and hogtie the Regime to speak. Men whisper to us in the streets, in our chambers, what Gen. BUTLER ways here, and Mr. CAMERON at that place, and Mr. Hunt elsewhere: we want information technology proclaimed. Nosotros want it known to you, voted on, enforced; and the adjacent fourth dimension nosotros meet here, you volition not need me to make a speech. BUTLER will exist here, with a proclamation of emancipation in his hand, as an introduction to y'all -- [loud applause] -- asking your votes, perhaps, as Governor of Massachusetts -- [laughter] -- and thinking that there is no pedestal merely this which surely leads to the gubernatorial chair. Yes, I congratulate you that you will presently, take a new batch of speakers. The old worn and scarred baby-sit tin can retire to the rear rank, and the new Major-Generals and civilians, who have invented "contrabands," and lawyers who take turned their ingenuity into the channel of statesmanship, volition be here to cracking our jubilee of gratitude; and we volition not be careful, so, to dissever the degrees of merit, merely cheerfully let the terminal comer take the best prize. [Loud applause.]
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1861/07/13/archives/speech-of-wendell-phillips-at-the-antislavery-celebration-at.html
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