Various

“ We have seen it year by year driving out from our genial climate, and fruitful soil, and exhaustless natural resources, some of the men of the very best energy, talent and skill among our population. We have seen also, in times of peace, the liberty of speech taken away, the freedom of the press abolished, and the willing minions of this system, in hunting down their victims, spare from degradation and insult neither the young, nor the gray-haired veteran of seventy winters, whose every thought was as free from offense against society as is that of the infant of days. ”

“ Only one remedy Lyon knew, and he stood there, the early apostle of Emancipation, and preached it. His doctrine was not accepted then, it is not accepted now; but the time must come, when millions shall have been expended, and blood shall have flowed like water only to delay it, when we will fly to it for salvation. Let those who still cry 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace, learn what is to be its price—Emancipation. It will be a bitter draught; well, so was the independence of her colonies to England. And every day makes it more bitter; the gall in the cup rises to the brim ”

“ We have no desire to see it advance more rapidly than the development of the country requires—in short, what is really needed is simply the assurance that by war or by peace some basis shall be found for ultimately carrying out the views of the fathers of the American Union, and rendering this great nation harmonious and happy. Every day brings us nearer the great issue,—not of slavery and anti-slavery,—but whether slavery is to be assumed as an immutable element in America, or whether government will bring such influences to bear as will lead the way to peace and the rights of free labor. ”

“ It is the mountain counties of Maryland that have held treason in check in that State; it is forty mountain counties in Western Virginia that have laid the foundation of a new and loyal commonwealth; it is the mountain counties of Kentucky that first and most eagerly took up arms for the Union; it is the mountain region of Tennessee that alone, in that dishonored State, furnished martyrs to the sacred cause of freedom; it is the mountain people of Alabama that boldly stood out against the Confederate government till their own leaders deserted and betrayed them. ”

“ Should the payment of all loyal slave-holders, in the border States, for their chattels, prove a better plan,—and it could hardly fail to promptly reduce the rebellious circle to a narrow and uninfluential body,—let it be tried. If any of the arguments thus far adduced in favor of assuming slavery to be an institution which is never to be changed, and which must be immutably fixed in the North American Union, can be proved to be true, we would say, then let emancipation be forever forgotten—for the stability of the Union must take precedence of everything. ”

“ We should incur debts which would crush our prosperity; we should bequeath a heritage of woe to our children, which would prove their ruin. While the great cause of all this dissension lies legalized and untouched, there will continue to be a party which will never cease to strive to destroy it. The question simply is, whether we will be wounded now, or utterly slain by and by.
Meanwhile let us, before all things, push on with the war! It is by our victories that slavery will be in the beginning most thoroughly attacked. ”

“ It should be borne in mind that where such an evil as slavery exists there will be numbers of grave, sensible men, who, however quiet they may keep, will have their own opinions as to the expediency of maintaining it. The bigots of the South may rave of the beauty of 'the institution,' and make many believe that they speak for the whole,—a little scum when whipped covers the whole pail,—but beneath all lies a steadily-increasing mass of practical men who would readily enough manifest their opposition should opportunity favor free speech. ”

“ The great bugbear of slavery would still exist; fugitive slave laws be forever upon the political carpet; formidable jealousies spring up between two nations founded upon such diverse principles, yet united by very natural circumstance of language and climate; internal wrangling would destroy all unity, conspiracies give the death-blow to all prosperity and all hope of advancement. All this if there were no great party at the North to rise upon the vast ground of humanity, claiming for its millions the privilege of an unfettered life, for its children a fair start in the future. ”

“ The State is about to be plunged into the whirlpool of civil war. Undisguised disunionists are in complete possession of the State government, and the population is supposed to be ripe for revolt. Only one spot in it, and that the city of St. Louis, is regarded as having the slightest sympathy with the political sentiments of the Free States of the Union. The State is surely counted for the 'South' in the division that impends, for where is the heart in St. Louis bold enough, or the hand strong enough, to resist the swelling tide of pro-slavery fanaticism that was about to engulf the State? ”

“ There are nine or ten powerful States, large portions of three or four others, several large Territories—in all, a country as large as all Europe, as fine as any under the sun, already holding many more people than all the revolted States, and powerful regions of the earth. Does any one suppose that these powerful States—this great and energetic population—will ever make a peace that will put the lower course of this single and mighty national outlet to the sea in the hands of a foreign government far weaker than themselves? ”

“ Shall she, still struggling, find that blood and treasure, and all the thousand dear blessings of peace, have been sacrificed in vain? If you cry 'War is an evil!' we grant it; but is it reserved for the nineteenth century to discover a creed for which there shall be no martyrs? What great gift has the world ever won that was not bought with blood? When has independence of action or thought been purchased otherwise than at the cost of persecution,—more revolution? ”

“ Our relations with both sections of the American nation are such, that our respective countries must suffer immensely from the course which you are about to pursue, not because you have been oppressed, or fear oppression, but because you have been beaten in an election, and power, for the time, has been taken from your hands. You ask us to act hostilely against the established government of the United States, that government having given us no cause of offense,—to become the patrons of a revolution that has no cause, but the consequences of which may be boundless. ”

“ If the South is quite right in wishing to preserve slavery intact forever, surely those are in the wrong who would make war on it for wishing to secede from a government which tolerates attacks on legalized institutions! What a precious paradox have we here? Yet these virtual justifiers of the South in the great cause of the war, claim to be zealous and forward in punishing that secession which, according to their own views, is constitutional and right! ”

“ But there is something worse than death: cowardice is worse. And the decay of enthusiasm and manliness is worse. And it is worse than death, aye, worse than one hundred thousand deaths, when a people has gravitated down into the creed, that the "wealth of nations" consists, not in generous hearts, "fire in each breast, and freedom on each brow," in national virtues, and primitive simplicity, and heroic endurance, and preference of duty to life—not in men, but in silk and cotton, and something that they call "capital." ”

“ Action, even in the face of disaster, was less a defeat than an inglorious retirement. The public, surely unaware of the fearful odds against him, clamored for an engagement; the State expected it of its hero; the government awaited it, and with a brave heart, but no hope, Gen. Lyon prepared for the attack. The result all the world knows. Was it a victory where the conquerors were obliged to retire from the field, and carry out their wounded under a flag of truce? ”

“ If war did little else, it would have its value from the fact that it acts so extensively as an institution for the dissemination of useful knowledge. Every murmur of political dissension sends thousands to consult the map, and repair their early neglect of geography. Perhaps if atlases and ethnographical works were more studied we should have less war. And it is by no means impossible that the mutual knowledge which has been or is to be acquired by the people of the South and the North during this present war will eventually aid materially in establishing a firm bond of union. ”

“ The day has come for a new order of things. The South must learn—and show by its acts that it has been convinced—that the North is its equal in those virtues which it claims to monopolize. But this it will only learn from the young and vigorous minds of the new school,—from its enemies,—and not from the trembling old-fashioned traitors, who have been so long at its feet that they shiver and are bewildered, now that they are fairly isolated, by the tide of war, from their former ruler. ”

“ They cry out against emancipation in every form,—blind to the onward and inevitable changes which are going on,—so that when the South comes in again they may point to their record and say, 'We were ever true to you. We, indeed, urged the war, for we were compelled by you to fight, but we were always true to your main principles.' They have wasted time and trouble sadly—it will all be of no avail. Be it by the war, be it by what means it may, the social system and political rule of the South are irrevocably doomed. ”

“ That is to say, that the majority of the people of the North fully acquiesce in the justice of the main principles held by the South—the only difference of opinion being whether these slavery and slavery-extension doctrines can be practically developed under our federal Union! Yet we, knowing, seeing, feeling, in this war, the enormously evil effects of the slave system on the free men among whom it exists, are expected to endure and legalize the cause which stirred it up! Either the South is right or wrong—there is no escaping the dilemma. ”

“ Who has forgotten the late doleful convictions of the dough-faces that the South would hold together to the last in spite of wind or weather, concluding invariably with the old refrain,—'Suppose we conquer them—what then?' Had the country at large known in detail, as it should have known from a common-school education, what the South really is,—or from experience of life what human nature really is,—it would never have believed that this boasted unanimity was based on aught save ignorance or falsehood. ”

“ For a hundred years, openly or covertly, but without intermission, has war been going on between despotism and freedom, with varied success, but on the whole with a steady gain for freedom; and now here, on the same field where it originated, is the long strife to be finally settled. On these same fields the same freedom is to culminate in unquenchable splendor, or to set forever, leaving mankind to grope in darkness and ignorance under the misrule of despotic tyranny. ”

“ Emancipation has been sedulously set aside under pretence of conciliating them; but it was needless,—'old custom' had made them cautious, and mindful of 'expediency;' but the mass of them hate 'the institution.' It is for the traitorous Northern dough-faces, and the paltry handful of secessionists, 'on a thin slip of land on the Atlantic,' that slavery is, at present, cherished. The great area of the South is free from it,—and ever will be. ”

“ The dream of universal peace, a peace that was to endure because based on enlightened selfishness,—that is to say on buying in cheap markets and selling in dear ones,—was as rudely dispelled as had been all earlier dreams of the kind. Interest, it was found, could no more make men live lovingly together than principle could cause them to do so in by-gone times. If there were two nations that might have been insured not to fight each other, because interest was sufficient to prevent men from having resort to war, those nations were Russia and England. ”

“ The hatred to slavery too often finds its expression in an almost inhuman hatred of 'niggers,' whether slave or free, but it is none the less significant of the feelings and opinions of the white population.
As I write, every fresh thunder of war and crash of victory is followed by murmurs of amazement at the enthusiastic receptions which the Union forces meet in most unexpected strongholds of the enemy, in the very heart of slavedom. ”

“ But 'Abolition' of the most one-sided and suicidal description is less insulting to those who are lavishing blood and treasure on the great cause of freedom, than is the conduct, at this time, of those men who are now, through their traitorous organs, urging the cry that the hour is at hand when we must place slavery firmly on a constitutional basis; this being, as they assert, the only means whereby the Union can ever be harmoniously restored. ”

“ No element more fatal to our growth or freedom could Lyon conceive than this slave autocracy. It sapped the very foundations of republicanism, and, stealthily advancing to the extreme limits of the law, enjoyed the confidence of the people, while it plotted their subjugation. All the varied machinery of the new social system, falsely styled government, had for its object the extinction of individual rights and the deification of capital. ”