I will read an extract from a speech of Wen
dell Phillips, delivered in Washington, on
the 14th of March, 1862. This pamphlet
says: "At a meeting which we believe Mr
Lincoln attended," but whether he was there
or not, the manner in which the speech was
received and indorsed by the Vice President
of the United States, will appear in the sequel
Wendell Phillips said:
" I have labored nineteen years to fake nine
teen States out of this Union, and if I have spent
any nineteen years to the satisfaction of my
Puritan conscience, it was those nineteen
years. The child of six generations of Puri-
tans, I was taught at a mother's knee to love
purity before peace, and when Daniel Webster
taught me that the Union meant making
white men hypocrites and black men slaves ;
that it meant Lynch law in the Carolinas, and
mob law in Massachusetts; that it meant lies
in the pulpit and gags in the Senate; when I
was told that the cementing of the Union was
returning slaves to their masters, in the name
of the God I loved and had been taught to
honor, I cursed the Constitution and the
Union, and endeavored to break it; and,
thank God, it is broken."
Who broke the Union? The next day Mr.
Wendell Phillips was received on the floor of
the Senate, the Vice President leaving his
chair to welcome him.
There are one or two other paragraphs here
that I must read. The following resolutions
were adopted by the American Anti-Slavery
Society, at its regular anniversary in 1844;
"Resolved, That a political union in any
form between a slaveholding and a. free com-
munity must necessarily involve the latter in
the gulf of slavery. Therefore—
" Resolved, That secession from the United
States Government is the duty of every abo-
litionist, since no one can take office, or de-
posit a vote under its Constitution without
violating his anti-slavery principles, and ren-
dering himself an abettor to the slaveholder
in his sin.
" Resolved, That fourteen years of war-
fare against the slave power have convinced
us that every act done in support of the
American Union rivets the chains of the
slave—that the only exodus of the slave to
freedom, unless it be one of blood, must be
over the remains of the present American
Church, and the grave of the present Union.
"Resolved, That the abolitionists of this
country should make it one of the primary
objects of this agitation, to dissolve the
American Union."
And the Tribune says what about that anti-
slavery society ?
"The organization of the American Anti-
Slavery Society, which has just been cele-
brating its anniversary in Philadelphia, is
said by the Tribune to bear to the election of
a Republican President in 1860 the relation
of remote cause and ultimate effect. The
39 |
Tribune is entirely right, but it does not state
the whole truth. The following extracts will
enable it to perceive what other effects sprang
from that same cause :
Resolution adopted on motion of Wendell
Phillips by the American Anti-Slavery So-
ciety, New York, May, 1848.
"Resolved, That recognizing as we do, with
profound gratitude, the wonderful progress
our cause has made during the last eighteen
years, and yet considering the effort now
making to impress the community with the
idea that the church and the land can and
will abolish slavery by its own virtue, and
that the parties are able and willing to
grapple with the evil, this society deems it
a duty to reiterate its convictions that the
only exodus for the slave out of his present
house of bondage is over the ruins of the
present American Church, and the present
American Union."
This demon of abolition had entered
into the fraternal conclave's of the churches
in the North when they were united with
the South, and bad snapped asunder the
cords which bound them in Christian ties
one to another, until there was as thorough
a separation upon that subject as ever ex-
isted between any two nations upon earth,
But I must not forget to read some ex-
tracts from another shining light in that
abolition school, the Rev. Theodore Parker.
And by way of showing his idea of divinity
and religion, I read an extract from a letter
addressed to the Hon. S. P. Chase in 1854,
and to be found in the second volume of his
biography, page 226. He there says :
"I have studied this matter of the divine
origin of the Bible, and the divine nature of
Jesus of Nazareth all my life. If I under-
stand anything, it is that I say there is no
evidence—external or internal—to show that
the Bible or Jesus had anything miraculous
in their origin or nature, or anything divine
in the sense that word is commonly used.
The common notion on the matter I regard
as an error—one, too, most fatal to the de-
velopment of mankind. Now, in all my la-
bors I look to the general development of
mankind, as well as to the removal of every
such special sin as American slavery, as war,
drunkenness, &c., therefore I introduce my
general principle along with my special
measures, I become personally unpopular,
hated even; but the special measures go
forward obviously; the general principle
enters into the public ear, the public mind,
and what is true of it will go into the heart
of mankind and do its work."
Then in a letter, dated June 27, 1856, to
Mr. Horace Mann, he says:
" What a state of things we have now in
politics ! The beginning of the end ! I take
it we can elect Fremont; if so, the battle is
fought and the worst part of the contest is
over. If Buchanan is chosen, see what fol- |
