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by this war, but I think that no reasonable and candid man can be in doubt as to the purpose of the Government. Those who misrepresent this purpose do not state the truth, and some of them are justly chargeable with a willful falsehood.

But has not the Government resorted to the principle of emancipation in application to rebels, as one of the measures of this war? It has done so, and on the same theory that it has raised an army and built a navy. It has done so for the purpose of breaking down the rebellion, and restoring the Union. This is the express and only doctrine of the President. You may think it unwise; you may doubt its constitutionality; as individuals, we are of course entitled to our own opinions; but let us not forget that the Constitution makes the President the judge on both points. His judgment is final; certainly so until some competent court shall pronounce it unconstitutional. "We had better leave military matters" and military necessities "in the hands of those to whom they belong." Above all, we had better not make our individual opinions, without the means of an enlarged judgment, the rule of either supporting or opposing the Government, in this dreadful struggle for national life. We had better not let our pro-slavery or our anti-slavery affinities, whether gratified or not, become the law of our allegiance or the measure of our devotion to the public authority, in this hour of peril. I for one do not like the prevalent idea of the recent speeches of Wendell Phillips. I am an anti-slavery man through and through; I want to see slavery removed from this land, and will do all that I can righteously do to secure this end. But I am for the Union, slavery or no slavery; and this I do not understand to be the position of Mr. Phillips. I hope that I do not misrepre sent him. I think I do not. I want to add that I have as little sympathy with those men whose only god is slavery, who would rather see the Union perish than saved if slavery is to be touched, who shout abolition from sunrise to sunset, as if the word itself were the end of all argument, and who clamor against the Government and seek to weaken the confidence of the public in it, because it has adopted emancipation as a war measure. Who are these men, and what are their antecedents? Some of them are unmistakably in sympathy with the rebels; and some of them use language absolutely treasonable-language which, if they were at the South and applied the same to the rebel authorities at Richmond, would cost them their lives. Claiming the right of free speech, they most sadly abuse it to their country's peril. I am sorry to say such things; I do not charge them upon any one of my hearers; yet the hour has come for plain talking. There is no disguising the fact that we have traitors at the North-men who are heart and soul with the rebellion. The fact is so, and we may as well say it.

Has not the Government, by military arrests and confinement, interfered with the liberty of some of the people in the loyal States? It has done so; and perhaps in this it has made a mistake, and perhaps it has not. At any rate, the object was to prevent traitors from ruining the country. The thing was done when the land was heaving with the spirit of revolution, and the fate of the nation hanging upon a hair; and moreover, when it was done, public sentiment approved of it as a just and necessary measure to save the nation. Now I will suppose that the Government misjudged as to these

military arrests, either as to the entire principle itself, or in some cases as to the persons arrested; and then I respectfully ask, are we going to be so foolish, so narrow-minded, so blind to our duties, and so insensible of our perils, as for this reason to decline giving to the Government our earnest support in the prosecution of this war for the conquest of the rebellion and the restoration of the Union? Are we going to divide and contend among ourselves, and thus destroy our own power, with the enemy before us and the life of the nation committed to our charge? Are we going to paralyze the energies of the Government, and practically desert the army in the field, while we stop to debate the undecided question whether the President has or has not the right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in a time of rebellion? No, my hearers, I do not think we shall. I think the sober second thoughts of the American people, if not their first thoughts, will lead to better counsels.

I appeal to you as the lovers of the Union; such I believe you honestly to be; and if I had the ear of the nation, I would appeal to that; and I would say to every man who loves the Union, that the object of this war, as declared by the Government, is to save the Union, and for this reason I would ask every man to put his shoulder to the wheel, whatever may be his private opinions about this or that measure. This argument, I know, will find a response in all loyal hearts. I do not expect that it will have weight with those who are willing to make peace on any terms, even at the price of disunion.

I URGE YOU, IN THE FOURTH PLACE, TO SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT, BECAUSE SUCCESS ON OUR PART IS OUR ONLY NATIONAL SALVATION. I have always believed that we can succeed. I believe so now. Give us time enough-the question of time is a large element in war; and we can certainly triumph in the end. We can solve the problems of finance and the problems of the battle-field, and at last exhaust the foe and bring him to terms. We have the power. All we want is the will and the endurance.

How shall we succeed? I need not tell you that it must be through the public authorities at Washington, and that these authorities are absolutely powerless unless sustained by the people. I need not tell you that we must conquer a peace, or surrender to the enemy. Peace on any other basis is now utterly out of the question. Successful war is now the only peacemaker. Anglo-Saxon blood is pitted against Anglo-Saxon blood, and one or the other party must at last yield. If we yield, the nation is lost. If we persevere, as we can, the rebellion is crushed, and the nation saved. There is before us no other way of salvation. We are absolutely shut up to successful war, or disunion. To make any terms with an armed rebellion till it either submits or achieves its own triumph, is positively fatal. Mr. Barnes well remarks: "God treats with men in rebellion only when they submit to authority and law; and a government that recognizes a conspiracy and a rebellion, and which treats with it as such, is already at an end." Those who want the Government to treat with the rebels, are very wide of the mark. In the first place, they will not treat with us on any basis but disunion; and in the second place, if they would, we can not treat with them till they lay down their arms. We must fight them, and that, too, success

fully, or die. It is a question of life or death on their part, and equally so on our part.

What, then, will you do? Will you stand back and simply look on? Will you spend your breath in criticising the Government? Will you be mainly occupied in laying plans for the next Presidential election? Will you foster the spirit of faction? Will you plot in secret places to distract the public mind? Will you encourage the rebels to hold on in this struggle? Are you going to give countenance and comfort to those who are doing all that they can to weaken the energies of the Government? In such an hour, in such a crisis, is it possible that newspapers and politicians will “persist, at all hazards, in spreading discord, bitterness, and strife among the people and in the army"? Is it possible that the people themselves will consent to be made the victims of such an awful folly? Let the people take this course, and the nation is ruined. Our destruction is sure. Fate is then at our very doors; and unless we arouse ourselves, and correct so great a mistake, the angel of death will pierce the very soul of our national life. I can not think-no, I can not think, that the great body of the people in the loyal States can be persuaded to deliver themselves up to such evil counsels. They are patriots; they love their country; and they will fight for it to the very death. They will not, they can not, consent to the dismemberment of this nation; and since success in war is the only method of averting this result, they will fight it through to the end. The peace men on any terms, the anti-war men, those who would sell out their country, the sympathizers with rebellion, those who spend a large part of their time in croaking, those who vilify and slander the Government, will either change their position or lose all influence over the public mind. There is intelligence in this country; there is virtue here; and, as I believe, enough of both to save the nation, notwithstanding the clouds that now darken the sky. Let England or France forcibly intervene, and let the President call the nation to arms, and you would soon see of what stuff the American people are made. You would see an exhibition of the character that is in them, and which being in them, will, with the blessing of God, carry them victoriously through this struggle. They are bound to go through. They can not avoid it if they would, and they would not if they could. The necessity is upon them. And this is true, whether the Government at Washington be Republican or Democratic. No party can administer this Government, or terminate this war, against the overwhelming sentiment of the people, that the nation must and shall be preserved. We may be delayed by our divisions on minor questions; we may prolong the war; we may, by the contests of party, put our country to great trial and even jeopardy; but we shall come to this at last. This is the position of the Northern people; and they never will forsake it, because in the very nature of things they can not. On this point I advise you to be of good cheer, and look hopefully into the future. Stand by the Government of your country, which is now your only salvation; and all things will come out right.

As to the fanatics and political lunatics, who look at this war exclusively from the anti-slavery stand-point, you need not trouble yourselves. They are not the Government, and never will be.

As to Northern traitors, I advise you not to be deceived by their treache ry, or frightened by their bluster. Some of them are bankrupt politicians; and some of them never knew what the word honesty means. Some of them shout liberty when they mean slavery. All of them are the enemies of their country. Their creed consists in opposing every thing done by the Government to conquer the rebellion. Do yourselves the justice to understand them, and them the justice to despise them, and then have the candor to tell them so. "Such persons," says Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, "should at least be marked and avoided. All political support or encouragement should be withheld from them." I think they will be marked. In the public esteem they will at last go to their own place, and then they will stay there. True men, honest men, real patriots, men that have not played into the hands of the rebels, men who have devoted themselves to the salvation of their country, are the men whom the people will delight to honor. They will have a place in history, while the traitors will either be forgotten or remembered only to be detested.

I ASK YOU, IN THE LAST PLACE, TO SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT IN THE PROSECUTION OF THIS WAR, AS A DUTY WHICH YOU OWE TO THE LOYAL PEOPLE OF THE

SOUTHERN STATES. There are some loyal people in these States; and they have suffered, and are suffering, at the hands of the rebel authorities at Richmond, to an extent that is perfectly appalling. They have been driven from their homes. They have been persecuted. They have been imprisoned. They have been murdered by hundreds. They have been forced by thousands into the rebel army. They have been hunted in the mountains, and dragged from their hiding-places, and compelled to fight against the flag of their country. A more atrocious despotism than that which Jefferson Davis now wields against Union men in the South, never disgraced any age. It is unpitying and remorseless. It is no injustice to say that it is set on fire of hell. We had supposed, that, at least in this country, the age of martyrdom was passed; but it seems that we were mistaken. There have been martyrs at the South-men who by ruthless and wicked hands have gone up to glory and to God, guilty of no other crime than allegiancé to the supreme Government of this land. When the inside history of this rebellion shall be fully written, as in due time it will be, the civilized world will see what slavery is, and how it is fatal alike to the liberties of the white man and the black. Read the recently published volume of the Rev. Mr. Aughey, a Southern minister, entitled The Iron Furnace, giving an account of the sufferings and outrages inflicted upon Union men in Northern Mississippi; and your spirits will burn with unwonted fires. Other equally credible witnesses have testified to similar facts in other parts of the South. In one of the prisons of North-Carolina, according to a statement recently made, there are between three and four hundred Southern men shut up, simply because they believe in the old flag. This is their only crime. EastTennessee has been ravaged, and her faithful sons persecuted to death. She has implored the Federal troops to come to her help. A gentleman last week returned to this city from one of the prisons in Richmond, about one hundred feet in length and thirty-five feet in width, and containing in a single room some two hundred and thirty men, some of them Federal pri

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soners, and some of them Union Southern men. The prisoners are furnished with no beds or blankets, and live on a pint of soup salted with saltpetre and a small piece of bread, supplied twice a day. The prison is literally alive with vermin. Every man has to lie down among them, and to be almost eaten up by them. This gentleman upon whose authority I make these statements, narrates the case of a Baptist minister from East-Tennessee, sixty years of age, who has been in this prison for more than a year. He was suspected of not being in sympathy with the rebellion; and to test him he was required to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate Government; and this he would not do, and because he would not, he was instantly arrested, and has ever since been incarcerated in Richmond. He states many other cases of a like nature. One man was dragged from his home in Virginia, without his coat on, without his boots on, without the permission to go into his own house and bid farewell to his family. Another, a comparatively young man, has been repeatedly visited by his brother, and urged to take the oath of allegiance. But he will not. He is determined to rot there rather than violate his conscience.

Such facts stir my blood. They arouse my indignation against this wicked rebellion, and against the men who are its leaders. I have no rose-water diction for such things. I pity these martyrs. I honor them. History will honor them. They are among the very truest men in this land. They know what the rebellion is; and this is the reason why they speak of it so strongly. Thinking of them and feeling for them, I see one reason why I should earnestly support the Government of the United States. I want to see that great Moloch of death crushed, which crushes them; and this, I know, can only be done by successful war conducted by the national authorities.

What say you, my friends, in regard to this point? Are we at the North, who have had no such bitter experience, the men to look on with indifference? Are we going to divide our strength in useless debate, when our friends and brethren bleeding at the South are beseeching heaven and earth that we should be united? Have we lost our souls, our reason, our moral natures, our patriotism, in one general wreck of all that makes a man, pitching and diving upon the angry seas of party politics, the sport of our own selfish passions, and that, too, when the groans and shrieks of suffering patriots are calling us to the rescue? Shame on the man! Eternal shame upon the man who in such a crisis is unfaithful to his country and to the Government which is its only protection! Who seeks not to strengthen, but to weaken the national arm! Whose policy, plans, and words palpably betray his sympathies with the rebellion! Who has no earnest words of cheer for the soldier! Who would demoralize the army, if he could! Who would destroy its confidence in the Government! Who riots in the divisions of public sentiment! Who makes it his business to sow discord! Who under the deceptive cry of peace, is ready to welcome the dishonor and even the death of the nation! That man is my enemy, and your enemy - the enemy of the country as truly as was Benedict Arnold. He is no patriot; and to denounce him as a traitor is simply to speak justly of him. It is a virtue to abhor him.

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