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anthropic views as regards the slave, but simply of the effect of slavery on the master.

See for yourselves. Look around you and say whether this saddening, deadening influence has not all but destroyed the very framework of your society. I am speaking the farewell words of one who has shown his devotion to his country at the peril of his life and his fortune, who, in these words, can have neither hope nor interest, save the good of those he addresses; and let me here repeat, with all the solemnity of an appeal to Heaven to bear me witness, that such are the views forced upon me by experience. Come, then, to the unconditional support of the Government. Take into your own hands your own institutions; remodel them according to the laws of nations and of God, and thus attain that great prosperity assured to you by geographical position, only a portion of which was heretofore yours.

B. F. Butler.

CCLXVIII.

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE UNION.

I AM not for the Union as it was.

I have the honor to say,

as a Democrat, and as an Andrew Jackson Democrat, I am not for the Union as it was, because I saw, or thought I saw, the troubles in the future which have burst upon us; but having undergone those troubles, having spent all this blood and this treasure, I do not mean to go back again and be cheek by jole, as I was before, with South Carolina, if I can help it. Mark me now; let no man misunderstand me; and I repeat, lest I may be misunderstood (for there are none so difficult to understand as those who do not wish to) — mark me again,— I say, I do not mean to give up a single inch of the soil of South Carolina. If I had been living at that time, and had the position, the will, and the ability, I would have dealt with South Carolina as Jackson did, and kept her in the Union at all hazards; but now that she has gone out, I would take care that when she comes in again she should come in better behaved; that she should no longer be the firebrand of the Union, ay, that she should enjoy what her people never yet enjoyed, the blessings of a republican form of government. And, therefore, in that view I am not for the re

construction of the Union as it was. I have spent treasure and blood enough upon it, in conjunction with my fellow-citizens, to make it a little better, and I think we can have a better Union. It was good enough if it had been let alone. The old house was good enough for me, but the South pulled it down, and I propose, when we build it up, to build it up with all the modern improve

ments.

And one of the logical sequences, it seems to me, that follow inexorably and inevitably, from the proposition that we are dealing with alien enemies, is the question, what is our duty in regard to the confiscation of their property? And that would seem to me to be very easy of settlement under the Constitution, and without any discussion, if my proposition is right. Has it not been held from the beginning of the world down to this day, from the time the Israelites took possession of the land of Canaan, which they got from alien enemies, has it not been held that the whole of the property of those alien enemies belongs to the conqueror, and that it has been at his mercy and his clemency what should be done with it? And for one, I would take it and give it to the loyal man - loyal from the heart, at the South, enough at least to make him as well as he was before; and I would take the rest of it and distribute it among the volunteer soldiers who have gone forth in the service of their country; and so far as I know them, if we should settle South Carolina with them, in the course of a few years, I should be quite willing to receive her back into the Union.

B. F. Butler. ·

CCLXIX.

SPEECH AT THE UNION SQUARE MEETING IN NEW YORK.

BUT

There is no time for hesita

UT we are called upon to act. tion or indecision no time for haste and excitement. It is a time when the people should rise in the majesty of their might, stretch forth their strong arm, and silence the angry waves of tumult. It is time the people should command peace. It is a question between union and anarchy - between law and disorder. All politics for the time being are and should be committed to the oblivion of the grave. The question should be,

"Our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country." We should go forward in a manner becoming a great people. But six months ago, the material prosperity of our country was at its greatest height. To-day, by the fiat of madness, we are plunged in distress and threatened with political ruin, anarchy, and annihilation. It becomes us to stay the hands of this spirit of disunion. The voice of the Empire State can be potential in this unnatural strife. She has mighty power for union. She has great wealth and influence, and she must bring forward that wealth and exert that influence. She has numerous men, and she must send them to the field, and in the plenitude of her power command the public peace. This is a great commercial city With one of the modern wonders of the earth. all the great elements that surround her, with her commercial renown, with her architectural magnificence, and with her enterprise and energy, she is capable of exercising a mighty power for good in silencing the angry waves of agitation.

While I would prosecute this war in a manner becoming a civilized and a Christian people, I would do so in no vindictive spirit. I would do it as Brutus set the signet to the death-warrant of his son "Justice is satisfied, and Rome is free." I love my country; I love this Union. It was the first vision of my early years; it is the last ambition of my public life. Upon its altar I have surrendered my choicest hopes. I had fondly hoped that in approaching age it was to beguile my solitary hours, and I will stand by it as long as there is a Union to stand by and when the ship of the Union shall crack and groan, when the skies lower and threaten, when the lightnings flash, the thunders roar, the storms beat, and the waves run mountain-high, if the ship of State goes down, and the Union perishes, I would rather perish with it than survive its destruction. Let us, my friends, stay up the hands of Union men in other sections of the country. How much have they sacrificed of advantage, of national wealth, of political promotion! Let us aid them and cheer them on. Let us, my fellow-citizens, rally round the flag of our country, the flag of our fathers, the glorious flag known and honored throughout the earth, and now rendered more illustrious by the gallant Anderson. In the spirit of peace and forbearance he waved it over Fort Sumter. The pretended authorities

of South Carolina and the other Southern States attacked him because they seemed to consider him a kind of minister plenipotentiary. Let us maintain our flag in the same noble spirit that animated him, and never desert it while one star is left. If I could see my bleeding, torn, maddened, and distracted country once more restored to quiet and lasting peace under those glorious stars and stripes, I should almost be ready to take the oath. of the infatuated leader in Israel — Jephthah — and swear to sacrifice the first living thing that I should meet on my return from victory.

D. S. Dickinson.

CCLXX.

THE PERPETUITY OF THE UNION.

GIVE up the Union? NEVER! The Union shall endure,

and its praises shall be heard when its friends and its foes, those who support, and those who assail, those who bare their bosoms in its defence, and those who aim their daggers at its heart, shall all sleep in the dust together. Its name shall be heard with veneration amid the roar of the Pacific's waves, away upon the river of the North and East where liberty is divided from monarchy, and be wafted in gentle breezes upon the Rio Grande. It shall rustle in the harvest and wave in the standing corn, on the extended prairies of the West, and be heard in the bleating folds and lowing herds upon a thousand hills. It shall be with those who delve in mines, and shall hum in the manufactories of New England, and in the cotton-gins of the South. It shall be proclaimed by the Stars and Stripes in every sea of earth, as the American Union, one and indivisible; upon the great thoroughfares, wherever steam drives, and engines throb and shriek, its greatness and perpetuity shall be hailed with gladness. It shall be lisped in the earliest words, and ring in the merry voices of childhood, and swell to Heaven upon the song of maidens. It shall live in the stern resolve of manhood, and rise to the mercy-seat upon woman's gentle availing prayer. Holy men shall invoke its perpetuity at the altars of religion, and it shall be whispered in the last accents of expiring age. survive and be perpetuated the American Union; and when it shall be proclaimed that time shall be no more, and the curtain

Thus shall

shall fall, and the good shall be gathered to a more perfect union, still may the destiny of our dear land recognize the conception, that

"Perfumes as of Eden flowed sweetly along,

And a voice, as of angels, enchantingly sung,
Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,

The Queen of the world, and the child of the skies."

D. S. Dickinson.

CCLXXI.

OUR REFORMERS.

WHAT to-day is the position of the men who, for the past

thirty years, have worked to bring our practice into conformity with the principles of the Government, and who, in the struggle against established and powerful interests, have accepted political disability and humiliated lives? Have any of these been put in governing places where their proved fidelity would guarantee the direct execution of what is to-day the nearly unanimous will of the people? Certainly not yet. So far, the virtue of the reformers is its own reward. While they are yet living, their mantles have fallen upon the shoulders of others to whom you have given high position, but they are still laboring in narrow paths-broadening, to be sure, and brightening-for the rough ground is passed, and their sun of victory is already rising. We give deep sympathy and honor to the men who, in the interests of civilization, separated themselves from mankind to penetrate the chill solitudes of the Arctic regions. Their names remain an added constellation in polar skies. But, we know that bitter skies and winter winds are not so unkind as man's ingratitude. And why, then, do we withhold sympathy and honor from these men who have so unflinchingly trod their isolated paths of self-appointed duty, accepting political and social excommunication these heroes of the moral solitudes? But even as it is, our reformers have a better lot than history usually records for such; they have the satisfaction not only to see but to enter, with the people whom they led, into the promised land. And perhaps they are well satisfied to repose, and to rest upon their finished work, feeling surely that they have been faithful

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