"THE first to join the patriot band,
The last bright star to fade and die,”
Oh, first-born daughter of the land,

Wilt thou thy sacred vow deny ?
By all the lofty memories bright

That crown with light thy glorious past,
Oh, speak again those words of might-
"The first to come, to leave, the last!"

The land for which our fathers fought,
The glorious heritage they gave,
The just and equal laws they wrought-
Rise, in thy might, that land to save.
No parricidal daughter thou,

No stain be on thy fealty cast,

Be faithful to thy boast and vow

"The first to come, to leave, the last!"

And, land of high, unsullied fame,

Hast thou no grievous wrongs to right?
Thy hero, wrapped in Sumter's flame,
And conquered in unequal fight!
Thy banner trampled in the dust-
Hark! shouts of freemen swell the blast,
"We will defend our flag! we must
Be first to come, to leave, the last ! "

Land of my birth! how dear to me
Has ever been thy spotless fame!
Oh, may I never, never see

The brand of traitor on thy name!
Go-gird thee in thy armor bright;
Be faithful to thy glorious past;
And in the battle for the right,

Be first to come, to leave, the last!

*The words inscribed on the stone contributed by Kentucky to be placed in the Washington Monument, are these: "Kentucky-she was the first State to enter the Union after the adoption of the Constitution; she will be the last to leave it."

Ex. CLXXXII.—CONSEQUENCES OF SECESSION.*

EDWARD EVERETT.

"WHY should we not," it is asked, "admit the claims of the seceding States, acknowledge their independence, and put an end at once to the war?" Why should we not? I answer the question by asking another: "Why should we?" What have we to gain, what to hope, from the pursuit of that course? Peace? But we were at peace before. Why are we not at peace now? The North did not begin the war, it has been forced upon us in self-defence; and if, while they had the Constitution and the Laws, the Executive, Congress, and the Courts all controlled by themselves, the South, dissatisfied with legal protections and Constitutional remedies, has grasped the sword, can North and South hope to live in peace when the bonds of Union are broken, and amicable means of adjustment are repudiated? Peace is the very last thing which Secession, if recognized, will give us; it will give us nothing but a hollow truce,-time to prepare the means of new outrages. It is in its very nature a perpetual cause of hostility; an eternal, never-cancelled letter of marque and reprisal, an everlasting proclamation of border-war. How can peace exist, when all the causes of dissension shall be indefinitely multiplied; when unequal revenue laws shall have led to a gigantic system of smuggling; when a general stampede of slaves shall take place along the border, with no thought of rendition, and all the thousand causes of mutual irritation shall be called into action, on a frontier of fifteen hundred miles not marked by natural boundaries and not subject to a common jurisdiction or a mediating power? We did believe in peace, fondly, credulously, believed that, cemented by the mild umpirage of the Federal Union, it might dwell forever beneath the folds of the star-spangled banner, and the sacred shield of a common nationality. That was the great arcanum of policy; that was the State mystery into which men and angels desired to look; hidden from ages, but revealed to us :—

As

*This, and the two following extracts, are taken from Mr. Everett's address delivered at the Academy of Music, in New York, July 4th, 1861. a whole, the address is a most masterly and logical statement of the origin and tendency of the Rebellion, and is equally valuable for its close reasoning and the polished elegance of its style.

THE MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEERS.

Which Kings and Prophets waited for,
And sought, but never found:

277

a family of States independent of each other for local concerns, united under one government for the management of common interests and the prevention of internal feuds. There was no limit to the possible extension of such a system. It had already comprehended half of North America, and it might, in the course of time, have folded the continent in its peaceful, beneficent embrace. We fondly dreamed that, in the lapse of ages, it would have extended till half the Western hemisphere had realized the vision of universal, perpetual peace. From that dream we have been rudely startled by the array of ten thousand armed men in Charleston Harbor, and the glare of eleven batteries bursting on the torn sky of the Union, like the comet which, at this very moment, burns "in the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair shakes pestilence and war." These batteries rained their storm of iron hail on one poor siege-worn company, because, in obedience to lawful authority, in the performance of sworn duty, the gallant Anderson resolved to keep his oath. Are no rights sacred but those of rebellion; no oaths binding but those taken by men already forsworn; are liberty of thought, and speech, and action nowhere to be tolerated except on the part of those by whom the laws are trampled under foot, arsenals and mints plundered, governments warred against, and their patriotic defenders assailed by ferocious and murderous mobs?

Ex. CLXXXIII.-THE MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEERS.

To the sound of martial music,

W. S. NEWELL.

And the war-drum's measured beat,

The sons of Massachusetts

File along the crowded street;

And a look of solemn meaning
Is on every face I meet.

And I see on every feature

The marks of honest toil;

The giant from the smithy,

And the tiller of the soil,

Who have left the quiet hearth-stone
For the thunders of the broil.

And their nerves are knit by labor
At the furnace and the flume;
At the turning of the furrow,
At the anvil and the loom,
'Mid the crash of whirling axles
And the mill-wheel's sullen boom.

It was thus when Britain's tyrant,
In the folly of his wrath,
Coming with his high-born prowess,
Like the mighty man of Gath,
Found the simple son of nature
Was the lion in his path.

Even so the heights of Bunker,
Like the field where David stood,
Unto us have taught a lesson

That the hand of toil is good;
And the nerves of work are better

Than the nerves of birth and blood.

And I feel it as they pass me,

These swarthy sons of might,—

These men of iron purpose

To do battle for the right,

That the hands which swung the hammer Will be dreadful in the fight.

And I know that God is with them,
When, reposing in his grace,
They shall lift the scale of Justice
To its long-deserted place,

And proclaim the law of Heaven-
The Democracy of Race.

SECESSION OF LOUISIANA.

279

Ex. CLXXXIV.—MARCHING ON.

GEORGE W. BUNGAY.

THE day our fathers waited for is dawning on us now;
I see the mantle falling on the prophet at the plough;
I hear the trumpet ringing where the victors strike the blow-
Our men are marching on.

Niagara shouts the chorus of the rivers to the sea,
Each wave swells like the bosom that is panting to be free,
The stars are lit in heaven for the nation's jubilee-
Our men are marching on.

Sweet promises are written on the soft leaves of the flowers,
The birds of spring are jubilant within their leafy towers;
A rainbow has been woven in the shuttles of the showers-
Our men are marching on.

God bless our gallant President, and grant him length of days;

Let all the people crown him with fame's unfading lays,

And generations yet unborn perpetuate his praise

Our men are marching on.

Ex. CLXXXV.—SECESSION OF LOUISIANA CONSIDERED.

EDWARD EVERETT.

NAPOLEON, in the vast recesses of his Titanic ambition, had cherished as a leading object of his policy the acquisition for France of a colonial empire which should balance that of England. In pursuit of this policy, he tempted Spain, by the paltry bribe of creating a kingdom of Etruria for a Bourbon prince, to give back to France the then boundless waste of the territory of Louisiana. If successful, this project would have established the French power on the mouth and on the right bank of the Mississippi, and would have opposed the most formidable barrier to the expansion of the United States. But in another moment the aspect of affairs was changed, by a stroke of policy grand, unexpected, and