George Bancroft

“ GRAY, Chaplain of the Senate:
God of a bereaved nation, from Thy high and holy Habitation look down upon us and suitably impress us to-day, with a sense that God only is great. Kings and Presidents die; but Thou, the Universal Ruler, livest to roll on thine undisturbed affairs forever, from Thy Throne. A wail has gone up from the heart of the nation to heaven—O, hear, and pity, and assuage, and save. We pray that Thou wilt command thy blessing now, which is life forevermore, upon the family of the President dead ”

“ Clay that a Union all slave or all free was an impossible Utopia, and that there was no good reason why the north and the south should not continue to live for many years to come as they had lived since the adoption of the constitution. ”

“ Madison, who said, "slavery is the greatest evil under which the nation labors—a portentous evil—an evil, moral, political, and economical—a sad blot on our free country"—went mournfully into old age with the cheerless words: "No satisfactory plan has yet been devised for taking out the stain."
The men of the Revolution passed away; a new generation sprang up, impatient that an institution to which they clung should be condemned as inhuman, unwise, and unjust. ”

“ Who shall assign limits to the achievements of free minds and free hands under the protection of this glorious Union? No treason to mankind, since the organization of society, would be equal in atrocity to that of him who would lift his hand to destroy it. He would overthrow the noblest structure of human wisdom which protects himself and his fellow-man. He would stop the progress of free government and involve his country either in anarchy or in despotism.” In selecting his cabinet, the new president was singularly fortunate. ”

“ Against the Constitution, against the memory of the nation, against a previous decision, against a series of enactments, he decided that the slave is property; that slave property is entitled to no less protection than any other property; that the Constitution upholds it in every Territory against any act of a local legislature, and even against Congress itself; or, as the President for that term tersely promulgated the saying, "Kansas is as much a slave State as South Carolina or Georgia; slavery, by virtue of the Constitution, exists in every Territory." ”

“ Probably alarmed at the prospect of losing votes at the south through his opposition to the annexation of Texas, and seeing defeat certain unless he could rally to his support the people of the north, Mr. Clay made one concession after another, until he had virtually abandoned the ground he occupied in 1833, and made himself amenable to his own rebuke uttered at that time: “What man,” he had then asked, “who is entitled to deserve the character of an American statesman, would stand up in his place in either house of congress and disturb the treaty of peace and amity?” ”

“ We thank Thee that the representatives of the nation have come to sit to-day in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln's tomb, to express once more their now chastened sorrow. May they all reconsecrate themselves to those principles which made him worthy to be remembered thus, and then a redeemed and transfigured land will be a fitting monument for him and for them.
Endow the President with wisdom equal to his great responsibilities, that the blessings of a whole nation may also be given to him. ”

“ In his message to congress approving the Oregon territorial bill Mr. Polk said: “I have an abiding confidence that the sober reflection and sound patriotism of all the states will bring them to the conclusion that the dictate of wisdom is to follow the example of those who have gone before us, and settle this dangerous question on the Missouri compromise or some other equitable compromise which would respect the rights of all, and prove satisfactory to the different portions of the Union.” President Polk was not a slavery propagandist, and consequently had no pro-slavery policy. ”

“ That in the life of Abraham Lincoln, who, by the benignant favor of Republican institutions, rose from humble beginnings to the heights of power and fame, they recognize an example of purity, simplicity and virtue, which should be a lesson, to mankind; while in his death they recognize a martyr, whose memory will become more precious as men learn to prize those principles of constitutional order and those rights, civil, political, and human, for which he was made a sacrifice. ”

“ We thank Thee that the life-power of the young nation they planted, received from Thee such energy, guidance, and protection, that it spread rapidly over the breadth of the continent, carrying with it Christian liberty, churches, schools, and all the blessings of a Christian civilization. We thank Thee that the progress of the true American life has been irresistible, because sustained by Thy eternal counsels and Thy almighty power, and because the might of God was in this national life. ”

“ Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison had died despairing of the abolition of slavery; Calhoun died in despair at the growth of freedom. His system rushed irresistibly to its natural development. The death-struggle for California was followed by a short truce; but the new school of politicians, who said that slavery was not evil, but good, soon sought to recover the ground they had lost, and, confident of securing Kansas, they demanded that the established line in the Territories between freedom and slavery should be blotted out. ”

“ Not that there have not at all times been just men among the peers of Britain—like Halifax in the days of James the Second, or a Granville, an Argyll, or a Houghton in ours; and we cannot be indifferent to a country that produces statesmen like Cobden and Bright; but the best bower anchor of peace was the working class of England, who suffered most from our civil war, but who, while they broke their diminished bread in sorrow, always encouraged us to persevere. ”

“ Great reason have we also to thank Thee that such was the enduring strength of our institutions that they received no perceptible shock from the death of even such a man and in such an hour, and that Thou didst provide for that perilous moment one whose strength was sufficient to receive and bear the weight of government, and who, we trust, will work out the great problem of Christian freedom to its final solution, and by equal law and equal rights bind this great people into one inseparable whole. ”

“ Sometimes, like a messenger through the thick darkness of night, it steps along mysterious ways; but when the hour strikes for a people, or for mankind, to pass into a new form of being, unseen hands draw the bolts from the gates of futurity; an all-subduing influence prepares the minds of men for the coming revolution; those who plan resistance find themselves in conflict with the will of Providence rather than with human devices ”

“ Sons of a pious ancestry, with a clear perception of duty, unclouded faith and fixed resolve to succeed, they thronged around the President, to support the wronged, the beautiful flag of the nation. The halls of theological seminaries sent forth their young men, whose lips were touched with eloquence, whose hearts kindled with devotion, to serve in the ranks, and make their way to command only as they learned the art of war. ”

“ In the throes of discontent at the self-reproach of their fathers, and blinded by the lustre of wealth to be acquired by the culture of a new staple, they devised the theory that slavery, which they would not abolish, was not evil, but good. ”

“ Seven days later, the convention of Confederate States unanimously adopted a constitution of their own, and the new government was authoritatively announced to be founded on the idea that the negro race is a slave race; that slavery is its natural and normal condition. The issue was made up, whether the great republic was to maintain its providential place in the history of mankind, or a rebellion founded on negro slavery gain a recognition of its principle throughout the civilized world. To the disaffected LINCOLN had said, "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." ”

“ At various places in New York, especially at Albany, before the legislature, which tendered him the united support of the great Empire State, he said: "While I hold myself the humblest of all the individuals who have ever been elevated to the Presidency, I have a more difficult task to perform than any of them. I bring a true heart to the work. I must rely upon the people of the whole country for support, and with their sustaining aid even I, humble as I am, cannot fail to carry the ship of state safely through the storm." ”

“ But it is written, "Let the dead bury their dead;" they may not bury the living. Let the dead bury their dead; let a bill of reform remove the worn-out government of a class, and infuse new life into the British constitution by confiding rightful power to the people.
But while the vitality of America is indestructible, the British government hurried to do what never before had been done by Christian powers; what was in direct conflict with its own exposition of public law in the time of our struggle for independence. ”

“ In the same year George Mason wrote to the legislature of Virginia: "The laws of impartial Providence may avenge our injustice upon our posterity." Conforming his conduct to his convictions, Jefferson, in Virginia, and in the Continental Congress, with the approval of Edmund Pendleton, branded the slave-trade as piracy; and he fixed in the Declaration of Independence, as the corner-stone of America: "All men are created equal, with an unalienable right to liberty." ”

“ For a time the war was thought to be confined to our own domestic affairs, but it was soon seen that it involved the destinies of mankind; its principles and causes shook the politics of Europe to the centre, and from Lisbon to Pekin divided the governments of the world.
There was a kingdom whose people had in an eminent degree attained to freedom of industry and the security of person and property. Its middle class rose to greatness. Out of that class sprung the noblest poets and philosophers, whose words built up the intellect of its people ”

“ Why take black men from a civilized and Christian country, where their labor is a source of immense gain, and a power to control the markets of the world, and send them to a land of ignorance, idolatry, and indolence, which was the home of their forefathers, but not theirs? Slavery is a blessing. ”

“ These momentous questions are, by the invasion of Mexico, thrown up for solution. A free state once truly constituted should be as undying as its people: the republic of Mexico must rise again.
It was the condition of affairs in Mexico that involved the Pope of Rome in our difficulties so far that he alone among sovereigns recognised the chief of the Confederate States as a president, and his supporters as a people; and in letters to two great prelates of the Catholic church in the United States gave counsels for peace at a time when peace meant the victory of secession. ”

“ When it came home to the consciousness of the Americans that the war which they were waging was a war for the liberty of all the nations of the world, for freedom itself, they thanked God for giving them strength to endure the severity of the trial to which He put their sincerity, and nerved themselves for their duty with an inexorable will. ”

“ The generation that made the Constitution took care for the predominance of freedom in Congress by the ordinance of Jefferson; the new school aspired to secure for slavery an equality of votes in the Senate, and, while it hinted at an organic act that should concede to the collective South a veto power on national legislation, it assumed that each State separately had the right to revise and nullify laws of the United States, according to the discretion of its judgment. ”

“ Supported in advance by Douglas, who spoke as with the voice of a million, he instantly called a meeting of Congress, and summoned the people to come up and repossess the forts, places, and property which had been seized from the Union. The men of the north were trained in schools; industrious and frugal; many of them delicately bred, their minds teeming with ideas and fertile in plans of enterprise; given to the culture of the arts; eager in the pursuit of wealth, yet employing wealth less for ostentation than for developing the resources of their country ”

“ The fifty years of civil war under which she had languished was due to the bigoted system which was the legacy of monarchy, just as here the inheritance of slavery kept alive political strife, and culminated in civil war. As with us there could be no quiet but through the end of slavery, so in Mexico there could be no prosperity until the crushing tyranny of intolerance should cease. The party of slavery in the United States sent their emissaries to Europe to solicit aid ”