government. If loyal, as they generally pretend, they should be taught the propriety of a course of action in some degree consistent with such professions.

The canvass in which we are engaged is in itself of no national importance-the officers to be elected being all local to the State and yet it is of the highest consequence and significance that those who have in so many ways opposed the efforts of the government, and are identified with the grand idea of fighting the rebels with "liberal propositions of peace; that the party whose leaders and some of whose candidates are on terms of " friendship" with rioting and rebellion; which includes in its ranks every rebel sympathizer in the State, and every man who was engaged in the late brutal and bloody riots in your city, should not receive the endorsement of the people of the Empire State. The folly and blunder and disgrace, not to say crime, of last year must not be repeated. I have no fears that they will be. The value of professions, made for effect, only to be disregarded, has been proved, and the people here, no more than in other States, will wish to repeat the experiment. Look all over the land and see the cloud of witnesses which the elections of this year have produced in favor of the vigorous prosecution of the war. Commence with Connecticut; then cross the Rocky Mountains, if you have. time, to California; then go back to Maine; then to Ohio; and then to Pennsylvania, and sum up their thousands of majorities, all in support of the government. I was at one time really in fear for the result in the Keystone State. But when General McClellan, whom I have long regarded as a very able general, particularly for "stationary power," came late in the day, as is the habit with some people, to the aid of Judge Woodward, the opposition, anti-war candidate, I saw the Judge had the stationary quality, which recommended him to the General, and could by no means win the race. From that moment I had not a bit of doubt about the matter. But how grandly the returns came in from State after State in succession! It reminded me of an anecdote illustrating a New England boy's idea of the operation of firearms. He had been warned to serve in the general muster of militia, where was to be a sham fight, but was afraid to fire off his gun. His mother told him that his father was a Revolutionary soldier,

and it was a shame that he should not fire with the rest; so he split the difference, and loaded every time when the order came, but did not fire at all, and went home with eight charges in his musket. His mother upbraided him for his cowardice, and, taking position in the door, fired the gun; and the recoil kicked her across the room, and under the bed. "Lie still, mother," said the hopeful son, "there are seven more heavier than that to come yet."

The leaders of the democratic party, as they have it at present organized in this State, after trying numerous experiments upon the people to see how far they could go with safety, pretend to be for a vigorous prosecution of the war; but it turns out to be for a war against the administration, and not against the rebellion. But though in favor, as they pretend, of a vigorous prosecution of the war, they are very much afraid, among the many things they are in fear of, that slavery will be somewhat interfered with by the war; that it will not receive all the protection to which they conceive it is entitled under "the Constitution as it is." Now it must be within the briefest recollection, that the National Democrats planted themselves upon the ground that the Southern States and people should be protected in the full measure of their rights under the Constitution, and defended it without shadow of turning, while many of those now Democratic Conservative leaders were waging a bitter war against them and making political capital for themselves under the designation of "Freesoilers." As long as the South appealed to the Constitution, I stood for their protection under the Constitution; but when they trampled on the Constitution and took up arms against the government, I said they must be met and put down by arms. They have made slavery the corner-stone of a rebel confederacy; the foundation and the superstructure only to be maintained by the forcible disruption and destruction of this government and this glorious Union of our pride and our hopes. We might as well expect to preserve the frosts of winter through the dog-days as that slavery should be preserved under the test to which its votaries subject it. They have themselves, in their appeal to arms, discarded every legal and constitutional barrier from which it could claim protection; and the common judgment of mankind and of the age can now be executed upon it, if they fail to defend it and to

trample over the government by the strong hand. This is the plain and naked position of the question. Which shall be sustained and maintained, slavery or the government? I was in favor of non-interference on this question, trusting that, in the good time of Providence, slavery would be ultimately peacefully extirpated; but the rebels, yielding, for wise purposes, doubtless, in the great universal scheme, to the instigation of the devil, have fixed the time and vastly changed the manner of the accomplishment. I am now as much in favor of thoroughly and completely abolishing slavery as I have ever been for leaving it to the responsibility of those who had chosen the relation, and the operation of the great causes which influence the destinics of nations. My objection to the President's emancipation proclamation was that he did not give it effect at an earlier day. Slavery will now go out in a dispensation of blood. The struggle will be terrible to the nation, in its progress, but chastening, ennobling, reinvigorating in its effects-terrible without mitigation to the contrivers and promoters of the rebellion.

In such an ordeal of the national life, what is the duty of patriotic men; of men who love their country; who love the Union which has produced its greatness; who love the name and honor of the American nation, and would preserve them as beacons to the tempest-tossed mariner on the world's great political ocean? Clearly that all should act together cordially, unitedly, thoroughly, and discarding all mere party ties, in defence of country, Union, nationality. Party has no claims that can absolve from duty like this; and he who would weigh party against country, and fail to come up to the support of the government because those entrusted with its administration may bear political designations different from his own, should be branded as an enemy. The self-constituted leaders of the spurious democracy stand so branded to-day. For purposes of personal preferment and party intrigue, they promote divisions in the loyal States, hinder and weaken the government, and give encouragement to the rebellion. But they will fail again to betray the Empire State into their own shameful position. Let all Union men do their duty, and New York will take her place with Pennsylvania and Ohio, to form the three great central links in the chain of National Union, which shall be kept bright and strong forever.

VOL. II.-18

ADDRESS.

THE UNION: ITS PERILS AND ITS HOPES.

DELIVERED IN THE WINTER of 1863-4.

THE rise of the Republic, and its almost fabulous progress to its present gigantic dimensions, are events in the history of nations which are contemplated with deep and stirring interest wherever civilization reposes. The popular theory in which our government was founded disturbed the dreams of kingcraft, as it dozed in fancied security along the dead level of its divine right, and whispered in its "dull cold ear," the emancipation of the human mind, and man's capacity for self-government. While the experiment was laughed to scorn by the votaries of a stultified monarchy, it quickened the heart-throbs of the toiling millions with hope that the day of their deliverance was dawning. Its success has carried gladness to freedom's children throughout the earth, and shaken with fear and consternation every throne in Christendom. Its greatness long since shamed and silenced ridicule and derision, and those who employed these ministers of annoyance and reproach had been forced to exchange them for the solemn realities of envy and unwilling admiration; "and fools who came to scoff, remained to pray."

Our bravery as a people and our prowess in arms had been twice tested by one of the most powerful nations of the globe, to its entire satisfaction; and by the world's acclaim we were one of the great powers of earth, and self-government was an accomplished fact. The most sanguine speculations of youth had been sanctioned by the experience of maturer years, and revelling in the fancied security and exemption from the vicissitudes of men and nations, we failed to remember that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Our institutions are now forced to the result of another and severer trial. We must

contemplate with increased solicitude our Union, its perils, and its hopes. While our strength has proved sufficient to resist and chastise the advances of oppression and tyranny from abroad, they will yet be characterized as a melancholy failure, unless we have power to crush speedily and successfully conspiracy and treachery and treason at home. Though yet in the enjoyment of a nation's ruddy and robust youth, and just beginning to realize the power of manly developement, the hydra-headed monster, disunion, is upon us, threatening our very existence; and, "to be or not to be-that is the question."

It were profitless to recount or discuss questions of alleged sectional irritation; their relations are too remote and contingent to be set down as inducements, and with all their alleged agencies and elements of mischief, they formed no justification for conspiracy or rebellion. Nor can the loyal people of the United States permit the Union to be severed, and the government destroyed, whatever may be the course or the pretensions of sections or factions in any quarter of the confederacy. The question is, how can we expel the fatal virus from the system, and not by whose hand the poison has been drugged. How or with whom unfriendly relations originated is of little practical moment. How the conspiracy shall be arrested, and the rebellion put down, is of almost infinite importance, for put down the rebellion must be; and since it was not crushed in the bud, as it should have been it must be plucked up by the roots, and the confidence of the world re-established in the strength and perpetuity of free government.

The flagitious conspiracy in which this rebellion was nursed carried in its foul and treacherous bosom every conceivable crime. From associations so base, from offences so revolting, and from perjury so Heaven-daring, the debauched, extortionate, and leprous Catiline would have shrunk with terror. Like Edgar's description of himself to the demented Lear, it is "False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand, hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey." Trace it from its cradle to its gigantic proportions-from the first faint outline to the last sombre shading, and you will contemplate a more ferocious monster than has visited man since the fall. It is the serpent of old, seeking to betray in this political paradise, and insidiously whispering that his fruits will make men equal