Various

“ What is a jest? It is as little worth the while to try to define its nature, as it is to analyze wit. We all know that the world laughs, and what it laughs at, and what the droll saws, anecdotes, rhymes, quips, and facetiæ are, which give fame to a Bebel, or a Frischlin, a Tom Brown, and a Joseph Miller. Leave labored analysis to the philosophers, contenting ourselves with remarking that a jest is a laugh candied or frozen in words, and thawed and relished in the reading or utterance. And laughter? When a man is too lazy to think out an idea, and yet too active to dreamily feel it, he laughs. ”

“ Louisiana holds the outlet of that stream through which the life blood of their commerce and industry must forever flow; and we never could admit her right to secede from the Union, and dictate the terms on which we should use the outlet of that stream, whose banks were destined by heaven itself as the residence of a united people. Not only Louisiana, but State by State that borders on the Atlantic or the Gulf, might secede, seclude the West from the ocean, and render them the tributaries of the seaboard States, by laying prohibitory duties on their imports and exports. ”

“ What American would wish to live, and encounter such a destiny? And why fallen? From a cause more damning than our fate. Fallen, let the truth be told, as history would record, because faction was stronger than patriotism, and the degenerate sons of noble sires extinguished the world's last hope, by basely surrendering the American Union to the foul coalition of slavery and treason. This rebellion is the most stupendous crime in the annals of our race, and its projectors and coadjutors, at home or abroad, individual or dynastic, are doomed to immortal infamy. ”

“ Is she to become a border State, and her southern boundary the line of blood, marked by frowning forts, by bristling bayonets, by the tramp of contending armies, engaged in the carnival of slaughter, and revelry of death? Is New England to be re-colonized, and the British flag again to float over the chosen domain of freedom? What of the small States, deprived of the secured equality and protective guarantees of the Constitution, to be surely crushed by more powerful communities? ”

“ Where slavery is, you cannot educate the people, you cannot diffuse science; and without enlightenment there can be no political justice, since unprincipled demagogues will sway all political destiny. Slavery cannot always exist side by side with freedom; it is the natural enemy of union, the enemy of civilization. Prominent secession leaders have admitted that slavery is the cause of this war, boasting at the same time that the confederate constitution is founded on a scientific distinction of races. ”

“ If the 'confederacy' should be destroyed, as, if not saved by foreign intervention, it certainly will be, slavery, if not already dead, will be pent up, and, in that case, will soon die by its own hands.
Immediate interests control us more than those which are remote; interests which affect ourselves, more than those which affect our descendants. Citizens of the Southern States, to save a petty individual interest, are nursing in the bosom of society a malignant canker, which, if let alone, must one day, in the inevitable course of destiny, eat into its vitals. ”

“ And is the Union indeed to fall? Are we to be divided into separate States or many confederacies, each warring against the other, the sport of foreign oligarchs, the scorn of humanity, the betrayers of the liberty of our country and of mankind? Can we yet save the Republic? This is a fearful and momentous question, but it must be answered, and answered NOW. Inaction is syncope. Delay is death. The life of the Republic is ebbing fast, and the approaching Ides of March may toll the funeral words, It is too late! ”

“ And it is the wonder to this day of every one who has been over the battle field, that the enemy should have been beaten. With all this boldness, he is a modest man; twice before having refused the chief command: once when it was offered to him at the time Pope was appointed; again when McClellan took it before Washington. Of a commanding figure, every inch a soldier, one cannot look upon him and his kindly eye without instant admiration. His modest way of riding among the men, alone or attended by a single orderly, will make him beloved by our republican soldiers. ”

“ But New York knows that the path of interest is that of honor and of duty. It is the Union only that has made her great. It is the concentration by the Union of interstate and international commerce in her great city, that was consummating its imperial destiny. Before the Union of 1778 and 1787, New York city was the village of Manhattan: destroy the Union, and she will again become little more than the village of Manhattan. The trident of the ocean, the sceptre of the world's commerce would fall from her grasp, and London be left without a rival. ”

“ Perhaps, while yet the civil war should rage with doubtful issue, while exhausted and bleeding at every pore, that sanguinary alliance of despots, combined to crush the liberties of man, would send its armies to our shores. Under what standard would we rally to preserve our liberty? There would be no Union—without it there would be no strength; and those who, united, could defy the world in arms, divided would be weak and powerless. ”

“ Dead horses still lay in the road; the tailpiece of a broken cannon was yet there. As we emerged out of the dust at the top of the hill beyond, toward the afternoon sun, rose Bolivar Heights, and the innumerable white tents of General Sumner's large army corps. The soldiers were out for drill or dress parade. The distant sounds of the bands and bugles and drums, sometimes succeeding each other, then mingling together, fell softened but constantly on the ear, and everywhere was the gleam of the declining sun on glistening sword or bright musket barrel. ”

“ Indeed, our enemies, at home and abroad, the rebels, and their allies in the North and in Europe, already announce impending national bankruptcy and repudiation, and there are many devoted patriots who fear such a catastrophe.
That the danger is imminent, is a truth which must not be disguised. Here lies the great peril of the Government. It is not the rebel armies that can ever overthrow the Union. It is the alarming increase of the public debt and expenditures, and the still more appalling depreciation of the national currency, that most imperil the great Republic. ”

“ Whilst then we may yet recede from the brink of that precipice on which we now stand, whilst we are once more convened as citizens of the American Union, and have still a common country, whilst we are yet fondly gazing, perhaps for the last time, upon that banner which floated over the army of Washington, and living beneath that Constitution which bears his sacred name, let us at least endeavor to transmit to posterity, unimpaired, that Union, cemented by the blood of our forefathers. ”

“ The principal point which I would most gladly make clear, is the fact that in literature and the history of culture, there are two classes of critics: the ultra-modern and the ultra-conservative, both of whom are in the wrong. The one cries that every flash of genius is new, and that an old jest is an old abomination—the other vows that there is nothing new under the sun, and that every good story is hidden away, in all its excellence, somewhere in the storehouse of the past. ”

“ Kentucky, in a voice of thunder, answers, No, we will preserve the Union as it is. And will Mississippi receive the bribe thus offered to dissolve the Union? What is it? The privilege of exchanging our exports for imports free of duty, in the ports of Carolina; and then would Carolina pay the taxes to raise and maintain an army, or a navy, and protect our commerce? But if she could, nature pronounces the project impracticable. Our commerce must flow through the outlet of the Mississippi; and how would our exports reach the ports of Carolina—how would our imports thence be received? ”

“ Every man who has been conspicuous for his soldierly conduct and for the faithful performance of duty will be an object of general respect, though he may have passed unscathed through the fiery ordeal; while every maimed and wounded citizen will be regarded as bearing on his person, in his honorable scars and deficient limbs, the decorations which exalt and ennoble him in the eyes of his countrymen. Many a chivalrous deed will be recounted with pride and satisfaction, and handed down to immortality by the pen of history and poetry, and by the pencil and chisel of art. ”

“ Even if we should lose great battles, or if European interference should threaten, it would be better to rally the people anew even to the raising and equipment of millions of men, and sustain the war at this enormous cost, rather than entail division and its necessary calamities on the future political life of this continent. This war is costing immensely in men and property; but if, thereby, the integrity of the Union can be maintained, it will be an economy both in men and means, if only a brief period of the future be taken into the account. We are often reduced to a choice of evils. ”

“ The same reasoning demonstrates the fallacy of nullification or secession, with equal clearness and certainty. A State cannot nullify a law of the Union, because the Constitution and laws of the State are made subordinate to the Constitution and laws of the Union, by a compact to which the people of each State were one party, and bound themselves to the people of all the other States, as the other party. One State cannot change the compact, or any of its terms or provisions, yet it may rescind the compact at pleasure! ”

“ This anecdote—like that of the free lance Conrad—is a sad epitome of the middle ages, and to us of the present day, it rings like a curse on the olden time, in the form of a diabolical jest. It is, however, bitterest of all, to find the oppressed—as in the stories illustrating mere feudal fidelity,—so utterly degraded as to actually take part with their oppressors and with the foes of humanity, against their own rights. ”

“ Rabelais believed that he sacrificed to freedom, when he only worshipped fortune. He went through the world, familiar with the ways of princes and peers, priests and peasants, travelling in many lands, exhausting the resources of art and learning, seeing through the sins and shams and sorrows of life, and laughing at everything, like a good-natured, large-hearted Mephistopheles. But he had never learned the true philosophy of joyousness in the sincere love of nature, the deep phases of humanity, and the affluence and purity of strong affection. ”