Various

“ If you see few indications of positive happiness, you find no appearances of overburdened misery. There is about the whole place something of the air of a New England farmstead, where labor, being honored, crowns even the humblest with dignity and peace. You take unspeakable comfort in the fact, that, open what door you may into the life of these people, there is no skeleton of oppression to startle and haunt you. Go with me, then, on this calm, bright day of early March, to visit one of the plantations on Port Royal Island, a few miles out of Beaufort. ”

“ In the sudden emotion common to humanity which we all experience at the sight of suffering, and which brought tears from the Holy One on the death of Lazarus, in the strange shivering which we feel pervade our souls at the shrill cry of anguish, do we not recognize more than a simple resemblance of nature—do we not feel that the race is really One, that a common grief again unites it, that in this oneness we are all justly partakers in the sin of Adam, that in this oneness we may partake of the glory of the Brother who died to unite the finite with the Infinite? ”

“ For self-interest, the Archimedean lever that moves the world, loses no jot of its influence when even honor and patriotism have withered away. Every dollar of the security upon which the currency is based must be deposited in the treasury vaults: in other words, the wealth of every individual citizen is under Government lock and key. Should, then, in the future, any misguided portion of our people see fit to withdraw from our communion, irretrievable ruin not only stares them in the face, but is actually upon them from the moment the bond is severed. ”

“ But the idea of God, vague and indeterminate apart from revelation, soon lost its pantheistic unity in the wildest polytheistic variety. The primitive idea of unity, passing through the distorting prism of the fallen and corrupt human imagination, was divided, decomposed, clothed in a thousand colors and forms to allure and satisfy the senses. Thus there was no part of nature without its appropriate god, invested with supreme power over the class of being subjected to its care. No one had ever seen any one of these gods, but the people had no doubt of their existence. ”

“ That Constitution vested the whole judicial power of the State in the courts, it vested nothing but 'legislative power' in the Legislature, and it prohibited the Legislature and Executive from exercising judicial power; it adopted the great fundamental principle of constitutional government, separating the executive, legislative, and judicial power. Indeed, it is the great doctrine of American law, that the concentration of any of these two powers, in any one body or functionary, is dangerous to liberty, and that the consolidation of all of these powers creates a despotism. ”

“ To the perfection of beauty in lines, colors, forms, masses, or multitudes, the appearance of unity is absolutely essential. Let the artist look to it, that our pictures may gain expression; our music cease to weary us through the unceasing dissimilarity of its parts, highly adorned arabesques running into each other, graceful, but without significance, without any perceptible principle of unity in the jarring 'motifs;' and our poems have some certain theme, that their highly wrought details may not confuse and bewilder the spirit always in search of some central unity. ”

“ After long ages of barbaric night, of slavery, of misery, these beings cut in ebony begin to robe themselves as men; on the battle field they have at last put on the virile toga dyed in blood, not now drawn by the lash from the back of the wretched chattel, but from the heart of the man face to face with his oppressor on the field of righteous battle. Rude and uncultured, they hold up to you hands hard with labor, still bleeding from the scarcely fallen manacles, and implore aid and manly mercy. ”

“ And we have more to teach her yet, more marvels yet to be evolved from that inexhaustible mine of invention—the Yankee brain. For as long as the war shall last, furnishing not only a promise of a golden harvest in the future, but a present and substantial support to inventive genius, at the same time that a new stimulus is being constantly supplied by the events and experience of each succeeding day, the work will go on, and weapon after weapon, engine after engine, will be thrown into the world's great market, constantly approaching nearer to the perfection of destructive power. ”

“ There is no doubt that this power is susceptible of development and cultivation, and that much that is brilliant in intuition is lost through the want of it. In spite of this, no system has as yet been devised for its culture. Let him who would labor for the real improvement of humanity think of it, write for it, and aid us in its development: as the law of internal unity with regard to the immense range of possible associations is so vital to our moral well being, so essential to our intellectual sanity, let our deepest thinkers devote themselves to its culture in the race! ”

“ And yet they could not withhold their admiration of the indomitable energy and perseverance of the American race, and their wonder at our miraculous growth in enlightenment and power. Taught wisdom by the past, they dared not combine to crush us by brute force, and so they have waited and hoped for the downfall which they sincerely believed would, sooner or later, overtake us. England and France have ever hung about us like hungry wolves around the dying buffalo, waiting patiently for the hour when they might safely step in and claim the lion's share of the spoil. ”

“ No dream of fairyland could, to my imagination, be lovelier than are the evergreen heights of these mountains, covered, matted, fringed, heaped, piled as they are with the greatest variety of mosses of the most delicate texture, feathery forms, and wondrously beautiful combinations. No one who has not seen them can have any just conception of mountain mosses, nor of the marvellous luxuriance of beauty with which they clothe rock, and tree, and earth, and everything upon these lone wild slopes and summits. ”

“ Yet perhaps that which contains in itself the greatest number of the elements of beauty, is the medium-sized pyramidal tree, be it of spruce, Norway pine, or balsam fir. It unites at once, in its pyramidal shape, the strength and majesty of the old, and in its gracefully curved limbs and abundant leaves, the beauty and freshness of the young tree. When loaded down with a spotless burden of snow until its limbs are almost ready to break, no pyramid of art, no monument chiselled by human hands, can hope to approach its pure and model beauty. ”

“ The time will come, when repudiation will be repudiated by Mississippi—when her wretched secession leaders, the true authors of her disgrace and ruin, will be discarded—when her insolent slaveholding oligarchy will be overthrown, when the people will break the chains of their imperious masters, and labor, without regard to color, will be emancipated. Secession, repudiation, and slavery are the same in principle and had the same leaders. ”

“ Education the criterion of the right of suffrage, not property. I do not believe in a government of ignorance, whether by the many or the few. With the constant and terrible opposing element of slavery, we have certainly achieved stupendous results in three fourths of a century, and to say that our system has failed, because slavery now makes war upon it, is amazing folly. Why predict, that, when reunited, and with slavery extinguished, we would bully the world. ”

“ Have we not taken the lead in all adventurous and eminently practical enterprises, and is not our land the home of invention and the foster mother of the useful arts? Has not the whole world gazed with admiring wonder at our miraculous advancement in the scale of national existence? In a word, have we not long since become a great, established fact, as well in physical history as in the sublime record of that intellectual progress whereby humanity draws constantly nearer to the divine? ”

“ He who becomes conscious that health of body and mind are steadily yielding to the inroads of an insidious foe, is worse than a fool if he do not at once apply the knife to the seat of disease, however painful may be the operation. And though to-day we hear but little of reform, and all parties seem striving which shall display the most devotion to the cause of the past, the most affection for the unchanged and unchangeable status quo ante bellum in all things, yet is the popular mind not the less earnestly though silently working. ”

“ With his profound instincts of the Infinite, his craving for the Absolute, he seizes madly upon every object which suggests their image to him; the foul fiend, adapting his temptations to the nature of the tempted, still whispers, as into the ear of the mother of mankind: 'Ye shall be as gods;'—but the phenomenal flies before him, and he everywhere falls upon the thorns closely hedging in the narrow circle of the actual. Without Faith, the artist is among the most miserable of men, for through the illimitable horizons of the Infinite, genius catches secrets which it can never fully utter ”

“ Through the gloomy portals of that dark gate of suffering, an unseen Hand [Pg 168] has led me out into a broader and a higher life; and the heart that held darling only, purged from its selfishness by the fierce fire of affliction, beats now for all humanity. Hearts whose love and gratitude God has given me the power to win, say, out of the fulness of their love for me, that a ministering angel is among them in woman's guise; that no hand is half so lavish in its gifts, no heart so full of sympathy, no watcher's form so constant beside the couch of pain. ”

“ I rejoice in the recollection, that, during this contest they should have selected a sentence from my address against repudiation, and placed it on their banners, and at the head of their presses, in these words: 'The honor of the nation and of every State is the birthright of every American—it is the stainless and priceless jewel of popular sovereignty—it has been preserved unsullied, in all times that are past, through every sacrifice of blood and treasure, and it must be maintained.' Ay! ”

“ As the onward path of humanity passes over your new-made mounds, her children will veil their heads and honor the martyrs who lie below. And when the coming centuries shall have covered you with moss and flowers, they will never forget to throw the laurel as they pass, acknowledging that these tombs have made progress and happiness possible! Brothers, the Union shall be sacred which you died to save! In the more intense and glowing patriotism engendered by your sacrifice, we swear it on your blessed sepulchres, and this shall be your deathless epitaph! ”

“ The business men all see this, and in the event of any threatened disruption, they, the most influential part of community, because controlling that which is the representative of all value, will be found firm and unwavering on the side of the duly constituted authority. Thus we shall have all the benefits of a funded national debt, with none of its attendant evils. And what a bond of union is this!—a bond which involves our very meat and drink, a bond which there can be no possible motive to sever so powerful as the incentive to union and mutual coöperation. ”

“ In spite of all the confusion and ruin and bloodshed, in spite of all the mourning, and suffering, and sundering of ties, and upheaving of the very foundations and apparent total disruption of American society, no greater blessing could have befallen us than this same war, which has roused us to a new life, to the consciousness of defects and determination of reform, thereby planting us firmly on the true road to prosperity and happiness and power. ”

“ How few of us have realized that we were celebrating not merely the establishing of a form of government, the severing of galling bonds which bound us to the servitude of the old world, not merely the birthday of independence and of a nation, but the birthday of an immortal principle, whose beneficent effects were not more for us than for the generations of all succeeding time! ”

“ To the majority of readers it will seem the climax of heresy to assert that hitherto we have not known a pure and lofty nationality. What! you will ask, did not our ancestors, by their sufferings and strivings in that war which first made our land famous throughout the civilized world, bestow upon us a separate, true, and noble national existence? Have we not twice humbled the pride of the most powerful nation upon earth? Have we not covered the seas with our commerce, and brought all nations to pay tribute to our great staples? ”

“ No race of thinkers can ever be enslaved. Hitherto we have been too unreflecting, too much governed by momentary impulses, too much carried away by party cries and unhealthy enthusiasm, and hence completely beneath the sway of designing demagogues. We have left the politicians to do our thinking for us, and accepted too unhesitatingly their interested dicta as our rules of political action. The press has hitherto led the people, and so mighty an engine of political power has been eagerly seized and controlled by party leaders as a means of accomplishing their ends. ”

“ We give ourselves with purity but once;
The love of soul yields not to change of state;
Heaven's life news the broken ties of earth;
There is no death! all that has truly lived,
Lives ever; feeling cannot die ”

“ Far higher, indeed, than the most sublime conception that uninspired thought could ever have engendered; human, yet far above humanity; ruling all ages; winning all adoration; sublime in tender simplicity—behold the meek Lamb of God, the Holy Son of the Blessed Virgin!
Oh, eternal, immaculate Beauty! if in this world Thou but sufferest us to divine Thy Perfections; if Thou hast given us ephemeral delights which always escape our eager grasp at the very moment we dream of their full enjoyment; if the flower fades so fast—the days of spring are so fleeting ”

“ They were thus forced upon the conception of a Being superior to Jupiter, who subjected all the gods to his inflexible laws; and giving wings to those instincts of dread always present in the soul of a fallen race, they invented an invisible Divinity who never manifested himself to men; who dwelt in inaccessible and dreadful regions, in which an inscrutable Horror forever reigned; and through this new Terror, Unity was again brought into the design of creation, for all beings were, in despite of themselves, forced to fulfil the decrees of its pitiless will. ”

“ The crisis of our fate which they have so long awaited, they now fondly believe to be upon us; and old England, false, treacherous, cowardly, piratical England, fearful lest our native resources may enable us to weather the storm, has at last dropped the mask of a century, and openly encourages and abets the rebels and traitors who are desperately striving for our dismemberment, even furnishing them with the very bone and sinews of war, that they may compass their unholy ends, and effect the ruin which will give to her another fat colonial province. ”

“ Even, therefore, while the human tempest rages around us, we may well pause to contemplate the peaceful beneficence of nature, and to rejoice in the thought that all the wickedness and violence of man cannot provoke or derange into confusion and disorder the great natural elements which minister to his comfort and happiness—which cause the seed to germinate, the flower to bloom, and the fruit to ripen, regardless of all his passions, and in spite of his ingratitude. ”

“ It is wonderful to reflect that of all the vegetable productions of the earth—its vast forests, the flowery clothing of its boundless prairies, the immeasurable productions raised by the industry of the whole human race in its countless fields of labor—that of all this mighty growth which covers and adorns the face of the whole solid globe, more than ninety-five hundredths are derived exclusively from the atmosphere. ”

“ May we of this day and generation live to see the crowning of all these hopes; and when our sun goes down in the shadows of eternity, may we be able to look back and thank God for the trials and sufferings and losses and mournings of to-day, as the refining fire through which we have come strong and bright, the sharp knife whereby the gnawing worms of error, and corruption and inevitable death have been cut from the heart of our goodly tree. ”

“ The country will become a camp, and the ocean will swarm with our privateers. Rather than submit to dismemberment or secession, which is anarchy and ruin, we will, we must fight, until the last man has fallen. The Almighty can never prosper such a war upon us. If the views of a foreign power have been truly represented in Parliament, and such an aggression upon us is contemplated, let him beware, for in such a contest, the political pyramid resting upon its apex, the power of one man, is much more likely to fall, than that which reposes on the broad basis of the will of the people. ”

“ Beauty, in its proper expression, must be allied to or suggest the Infinite, for in it alone can ceaseless variety be united with absolute unity. Unity is an essential characteristic of life itself; variety resolving itself into unity, and unity expanding itself into variety, mark all that God has made. As a necessary consequence of the position we have assumed, viz.: 'That art is not a servile copy, but rather a creation of man in the Spirit of Nature,' Variety and Unity must characterize every great work of art, as they mark every work of the Creator. ”

“ We only know that thousands of our brothers lie on the battle field dead or dying, wounded and suffering, and we anticipate the melancholy wail which their wives and children, their brothers and friends will utter on the morrow. Shall it be mingled with shouts of victory, and softened by the sweet consolation that the death and suffering of so many noble victims have been repaid by the safety of our country, and the reëstablishment of liberty under the glorious Constitution of our fathers? ”