The American Union Speaker Part 9

L.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

There is yet time to show, that the descendants of the Pinckneys, the Sumters the Rutledges, and of the thousand other names which adorn the pages of your Revolutionary history, will not abandon that Union to support which so many of them fought, and bled, and died. I adjure you, as you honor their memory, as you love the cause of freedom to which they dedicated their lives, as you prize the peace of your country, the lives of its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to retrace your steps. s.n.a.t.c.h from the archives of your State the disorganizing edict of its convention,--bid its members to rea.s.semble and promulgate the decided expression of your will, to remain in the path which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity, and honor;--tell them that compared to disunion, all other evils are light, because that brings with it an acc.u.mulation of all;--declare that you will never take the field, unless the star-spangled banner of your country shall float over you; that you will not be stigmatized when dead, and dishonored and scorned while you live, as the authors of the first attack on the Const.i.tution of your country,--its destroyers you cannot be.

Fellow-citizens, the momentous case is before you. On your undivided support of the Government depends the decision of the great question it involves: whether our sacred Union will be preserved, and the blessings it secures to us as one people shall be perpetuated. No one can doubt that the unanimity with which that decision will be expressed, will be such as to inspire new confidence in republican inst.i.tutions; and that the prudence, the wisdom, and the courage, which it will bring to their defense, will transmit them unimpaired and invigorated to our children. May the Great Ruler of nations grant that the signal blessings with which He has favored ours, may not, by the madness of party or personal ambition, be disregarded and lost; and may His wise Providence bring those who have produced this crisis, to see their folly, before they feel the misery of civil strife; and inspire a returning veneration for that Union, which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of obtaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire.

A. Jackson.

LI.

BURR AND BLENNERHa.s.sETT.

A plain man, who knew nothing of the curious trans.m.u.tation which the wit of man can work, would be very apt to wonder by what kind of legerdemain Aaron Burr had contrived to shuffle himself down to the bottom of the pack, as an accessory, and turn up poor Blennerha.s.sett as princ.i.p.al, in this treason.

Who, then, is Aaron Burr, and what the part which he has borne in this transaction? He is its author, its projector, its active executor. Bold, ardent, restless, and aspiring, his brain conceived it, his hand brought it into action.

Who is Blennerha.s.sett? A native of Ireland a man of letters, who fled from the storms of his own country to find quiet in ours. On his arrival in America, he retired, even from the population of the Atlantic States, and sought quiet and solitude in the bosom of our western forests. But he brought with him taste, and science, and wealth; and "lo the desert smiled!" Possessing himself of a beautiful island in the Ohio, he rears upon it a palace, and decorates it with every romantic embellishment of fancy. A shrubbery, that Shenstone might have envied, blooms around him.

Music, that might have charmed Calypso and her nymphs is his. An extensive library spreads its treasures before him. A philosophical apparatus offers to him all the secrets and mysteries of Nature. Peace, tranquillity, and innocence, shed their mingled delights around him. And, to crown the enchantment of the scene, a wife, who is said to be lovely even beyond her s.e.x, and graced with every accomplishment that can render it irresistible, had blessed him with her love, and made him the father of several children.

The evidence would convince you, sir, that this is but a faint picture of the real life. In the midst of all this peace, this innocence, and this tranquillity, this feast of the mind, this pure banquet of the heart,--the destroyer comes. He comes to turn this paradise into a h.e.l.l. Yet the flowers do not wither at his approach, and no monitory shuddering through the bosom of their unfortunate possessor warns him of the ruin that is coming upon him. A stranger presents himself. It is Aaron Burr. Introduced to their civilities by the high rank which he had lately held in his country, he soon finds his way to their hearts, by the dignity and elegance of his demeanor, the light and beauty of his conversation, and the seductive and fascinating power of his address. The conquest was not difficult. Innocence is ever simple and credulous. Conscious of no designs itself, it suspects none in others. It wears no guards before its breast.

Every door and portal and avenue of the heart is thrown open, and all who choose it enter. Such was the state of Eden, when the serpent entered its bowers!

The prisoner, in a more engaging form, winding himself into the open and unpracticed heart of the unfortunate Blennerha.s.sett, found but little difficulty in changing the native character of that heart, and the object of its affection. By degrees, he infuses into it the poison of his own ambition. He breathes into it the fire of his own courage; a daring, desperate thirst for glory; an ardor, panting for all the storm, and bustle, and hurricane of life. In a short time, the whole man is changed, and every object of his former delight relinquished. No more he enjoys the tranquil scene; it has become flat and insipid to his taste. His books are abandoned. His retort and crucible are thrown aside. His shrubbery bloom's and breathes its fragrance upon the air in vain he likes it not. His ear no longer drinks the rich melody of music; it longs for the trumpet's clangor, and the cannon's roar. Even the prattle of his babes, once so sweet, no longer affects him; and the angel smile of his wife, which hitherto touched his bosom with ecstasy so unspeakable, is now unfelt and unseen. Greater objects have taken possession of his soul. His imagination has been dazzled by visions of diadems, and stars, and garters, and t.i.tles of n.o.bility. He has been taught to burn with restless emulation at the names of great heroes and conquerors,--of Cromwell, and Caesar, and Bonaparte. His enchanted island is destined soon to relapse into a wilderness; and, in a few months, we find the tender and beautiful partner of his bosom, whom he lately "permitted not the winds" of summer "to visit too roughly,"--we find her s.h.i.+vering, at midnight, on the wintry banks of the Ohio, and mingling her tears with the torrents that froze as they fell.

Yet this unfortunate man, thus deluded from his interest and his happiness,--thus seduced from the paths of innocents and peace,--thus confounded in the toils which were deliberately spread for him, and overwhelmed by the mastering spirit and genius of another,--this man, thus ruined and undone, and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason,--this man is to be called the princ.i.p.al offender; while he, by whom he was thus plunged in misery, is comparatively innocent, a mere accessory! Is this reason? Is it law? Is it humanity? Sir, neither the human heart nor the human understanding will bear a perversion so monstrous and absurd; so shocking to the soul; so revolting to reason!

Wm. Wirt.

LII.

CAUSE F0R INDIAN RESENTMENT.

You say you have bought the country. Bought it? Yes; of whom? Of the poor, trembling natives, who knew that refusal would be vain; and who strove to make a merit of necessity, by seeming to yield with a grace what they knew they had not the power to retain.

Alas, the poor Indians! No wonder that they continue so implacably vindictive against the white people. No wonder that the rage of resentment is handed down from generation to generation. No wonder that they refuse to a.s.sociate and mix permanently with their unjust and cruel invaders and exterminators. No wonder that, in the unabating spite and frenzy of conscious impotence, they wage an eternal war, as well as they are able; that they triumph in the rare opportunity of revenge; that they dance, sing, and rejoice, as the victim shrinks and faints amid the flames, when they imagine all the crimes of their oppressors collected on his head, and fancy the spirits of their injured forefathers hovering over the scene, smiling with ferocious delight at the grateful spectacle: and feasting on the precious odor as it arises from the burning blood of the white man. Yet the people here affect to wonder that the Indians are so very unsusceptible of civilization; or, in other words, that they so obstinately refuse to adopt the manners of the white man.

Go, Virginians, erase from the Indian nation the tradition of their wrongs.

Make them forget, if you can, that once this charming country was theirs; that over these fields and through these forests their beloved forefathers once, in careless gayety, pursued their sports and hunted their game; that every returning day found them the sole, the peaceful, and happy proprietors of this extensive and beautiful domain. Go, administer the cup of oblivion to recollections like these, and then you will cease to complain that the Indian refuses to be civilized. But, until then, surely it is nothing wonderful that a nation, even yet bleeding afresh from the memory of ancient wrongs, perpetually agonized by new outrages, and goaded into desperation and madness at the prospect of the certain ruin which awaits their descendants, should hate the authors of their miseries, of their desolation, their destruction; should hate their manners, hate their color, hate their language, hate their name, hate everything that belongs to them. No, never, until time shall wear out the history of their sorrows and their sufferings, will the Indian be brought to love the white man, and to imitate his manners.

Wm. Wirt.

LIII.

SPEECH ON THE BRITISH TREATY.

The refusal of the posts (inevitable if we reject the treaty) is a measure too decisive in its nature to be neutral in its consequences. If any should still maintain, that the peace with the Indians will be stable without the posts, to them I will urge another reply. I will appeal directly to the hearts of those who hear me, and ask whether conviction is not already planted there. I resort especially to the convictions of the Western gentlemen, whether, supposing no posts and no treaty! the settlers will remain in security? Can they take it upon them to say, that an Indian peace, under these circ.u.mstances, will prove firm? No, sir, it will not be peace, but a sword; it will be no better than a lure to draw victims within reach of the tomahawk. On this theme my emotions are unutterable. If I could find words for them, if my powers bore any proportion to my zeal, I would swell my voice to such a note of remonstrance, it should reach every log house beyond the mountains. I would say to the inhabitants, Wake from your false security! Your cruel dangers, your more cruel apprehensions, are soon to be renewed. The wounds yet unhealed are to be torn open again. In the daytime, your path through the woods will be ambushed. The darkness of midnight will glitter with the blaze of your dwellings. You are a father--the blood of your sons shall fatten your corn-field. You are a mother,--the war-whoop shall wake the sleep of the cradle.

On this subject you need not suspect any deception on your feelings. It is a spectacle of horror which cannot be overdrawn. If you have nature in your hearts, they will speak a language compared with which all I have said or can say will be poor and frigid.

Who will accuse me of wandering out of the subject? Who will say that I exaggerate the tendencies of our measures? Will any one answer by a sneer, that all this is idle preaching? Would any one deny that we are bound, and I would hope to good purpose, by the most solemn sanctions of duty for the vote we give? Are despots alone to be reproached for unfeeling indifference to the tears and blood of their subjects? Are republicans irresponsible?

Have the principles on which you ground the reproach upon cabinets and kings no practical influence, no binding force? Are they merely themes of idle declamation, introduced to decorate the morality of a newspaper essay, or to furnish pretty topics of harangue from the windows of that State House? I trust it is neither too presumptuous nor too late to ask, Can you put the dearest interest of society at risk, without guilt and without remorse?

It is in vain to offer as an excuse, that public men are not to be reproached for the evils that may happen to ensue from their measures. This is very true where they are unforeseen or inevitable. Those I have depicted are not unforeseen. They are so far from inevitable, we are going to bring them into being by our vote; we choose the consequences, and become as justly answerable for them, as for the measure that we know will produce them.

By rejecting the posts, we light the savage fires, we bind the victims.

This day we undertake to render account to the widows and orphans whom our decision will make,--to the wretches that will be roasted at the stake,--to our country,--and I do not deem it too serious to say, to conscience and to G.o.d. We are answerable; and if duty be anything more than a word of imposture, if conscience be not a bugbear, we are preparing to make ourselves as wretched as our country. There is no mistake in this case; there can be none. Experience has already been the prophet of events, and the cries of our future victims has already reached us. The Western inhabitants are not a silent and uncomplaining sacrifice. The voice of humanity issues from the shade of the wilderness. It exclaims, that while one hand is held up to reject this treaty, the other grasps the tomahawk.

It summons our imagination to the scenes that will open. It is no great effort of the imagination to conceive that events so near are already begun. I can fancy that I listen to the yells of savage vengeance and the shrieks of torture! Already they seem to sigh in the western wind! Already they mingle with every echo from the mountains!

F. Ames.

LIV.

SPEECH AGAINST A LIBELLER.

I am one of those who believe that the heart of the wilful and deliberate libeller is blacker than that of the highway robber, or of one who commits the crime of midnight arson. The man who plunders on the highway may have the semblance of an apology for what he does. An affectionate wife may demand subsistence; a circle of helpless children raise to him the supplicating hand for food. He may be driven to the desperate act by the high mandate of imperative necessity. The mild features of the husband and father may intermingle with those of the robber and soften the roughness of the shade. But the robber of character plunders that which "not enricheth him," though it makes his neighbor "poor indeed." The man who at the midnight hour consumes his neighbor's dwelling does him an injury which perhaps is not irreparable. Industry may rear another habitation. The storm may indeed descend upon him until charity opens a neighboring door; the rude winds of heaven may whistle around his uncovered family. But he looks forward to better days; he has yet a hook left to hang a hope on. No such consolation cheers the heart of him whose character has been torn from him.

If innocent he may look, like Anaxagoras, to the heavens; but he must be constrained to feel this world is to him a wilderness. For whither shall he go? Shall he dedicate himself to the service of his country? But will his country receive him? Will she employ in her councils, or in her armies, the man at whom the "slow unmoving finger of scorn" is pointed? Shall he betake himself to the fireside? The story of his disgrace will enter his own doors before him. And can he bear, think you, can he bear the sympathizing agonies of a distressed wife? Can he endure the formidable presence of scrutinizing, sneering domestics? Will his children receive instructions from the lips of a disgraced father?

Gentlemen, I am not ranging on fairy ground. I am telling the plain story of my client's wrongs. By the guiltless hand of malice his character has been wantonly ma.s.sacred,--and he now appears before a jury of his country for redress. Will you deny him this redress? Is character valuable? On this point I will not insult you with argument. There are certain things to argue which is treason against nature. The Author of our being did not intend to leave this point afloat at the mercy of opinion, but with His own hand has He kindly planted in the soul of man an instinctive love of character. This high sentiment has no affinity to pride. It is the enn.o.bling quality of the soul; and if we have hitherto been elevated above the ranks of surrounding creation, human nature owes its elevation to the love of character. It is the love of character for which the poet has sung, the philosopher toiled, the hero bled. It is the love of character which wrought miracles at ancient Greece; the love of character is the eagle on which Rome rose to empire. And it is the love of character, animating the bosoms of her sons, on which America must depend in those approaching crises that may "try men's soul's." Will a jury weaken this our nation's hope? Will they by their verdict p.r.o.nounce to the youth of our country, that character is scarce worth possessing?

We read of that philosophy which can smile at the destruction of property--of that religion which enables its possessor to extend the benign look of forgiveness and complacency to his murderers. But it is not in the soul of man to bear the laceration of slander. The philosophy which could bear it we should despise. The religion which could bear it we should not despise,--but we should be constrained to say, that its kingdom was not of this world.

Griffin.

LV.

NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION.

Glorious New England! thou art still time to thy ancient fame, and worthy of thy ancestral honors. We, thy children, have a.s.sembled in this far-distant land to celebrate thy birthday. A thousand fond a.s.sociations throng upon us, roused by the spirit of the hour. On thy pleasant valleys rest, like sweet dews of morning, the gentle recollections of our early life; around thy hills and mountains cling, like gathering mists, the mighty memories of the Revolution; and, far away in the horizon of thy past, gleam, like thy own bright northern lights, the awful virtues of our Pilgrim Sires!

But while we devote this day to the remembrance of our native land, we forget not that in which our happy lot is cast. We exult in the reflection, that though we count by thousands the miles which separate us from our birthplace, still our country is the same. We are no exiles, meeting upon the banks of a foreign river to swell its waters with our homesick tears.

Here floats the same banner which rustled above our boyish heads, except that its mighty folds are wider, and its glittering stars increased in number.

The sons of New England are found in every State of the broad Republic. In the East, the South, and the unbounded West, their blood mingles freely with every kindred current. We have but changed our chamber in the paternal mansion; in all its rooms we are at home, and all who inhabit it are our brothers. To us the Union has but one domestic hearth; its household G.o.ds are all the same. Upon us then peculiarly devolves the duty of feeding the fires upon that kindly hearth, of guarding with pious care those sacred household G.o.ds.

We cannot do with less than the whole Union; to us it admits of no division. In the veins of our children flows Northern and Southern blood.

How shall it be separated? Who shall put asunder the best affections of the heart, the n.o.blest instincts of our nature? We love the land of our adoption; so do we that of our birth. Let us ever be true to both, and always exert ourselves in maintaining the unity of our country, the integrity of the Republic. Accursed, then, be the hand put forth to loosen the golden cord of the Union!--thrice accursed the traitorous lips which shall propose its severance! But no; the Union cannot be dissolved. Its fortunes are too brilliant to be marred; its destinies too powerful to be resisted. Here will be their greatest triumphs, their most mighty development. And when, a century hence, this Crescent City shall have filled her golden horns,--when within her broad-armed port shall be gathered the products of the industry of a hundred millions of freemen,--when galleries of art and halls of learning shall have made cla.s.sic this mart of trade,--then may the sons of the Pilgrims, still wandering from the bleak hills of the North, stand upon the banks of the great river and exclaim with mingled pride and wonder,--"Lo, this is our country: when did the world ever behold so rich and magnificent a city,--so great and glorious a Republic!"

S. S. Prentiss.

LVI.

ON SENDING RELIEF TO IRELAND.

We have a.s.sembled, not to respond to shouts of triumph from the West, but to answer to the cry of want and suffering which comes from the East. The Old World stretches out her arms to the New. The starving parent supplicates the young and vigorous child for bread. There lies, upon the other side of the wide Atlantic, a beautiful island famous in history and in song. Its area is not so great as that of the State of Louisiana, while its population is almost half that of the Union. It has given to the world more than its share of genius and of greatness. It has been prolific in statesmen, warriors, and poets. Its brave and generous sons have fought successfully all battles but their own. In wit and humor it has no equal, while its harp, like its history, moves to tears, by its sweet but melancholy pathos. Into this fair region G.o.d has seen fit to send the most terrible of all those fearful ministers who fulfil his inscrutable decrees.

The earth has failed to give her increase; the common mother has forgotten her offspring, and her breast no longer affords them their accustomed nourishment. Famine, gaunt and ghastly famine, has seized a nation in its strangling grasp; and unhappy Ireland, in the sad woes of the present, forgets, for a moment, the gloomy history of the past.

Oh, it is terrible, in this beautiful world: which the good G.o.d has given us, and in which there is plenty for us all, that men should die of starvation! You who see, each day, poured into the lap of your city, food sufficient to a.s.suage the hunger of a nation, can form but an imperfect idea of the horrors of famine. In battle, in the fulness of his pride and strength, little recks the soldier whether the hissing bullet sings his sudden requiem, or the cords of life are severed by the sharp steel. But he who dies of hunger, wrestles alone, day after day with his grim and unrelenting enemy. The blood recedes, the flesh deserts, the muscles relax, and the sinews grow powerless. At last, the mind, which, at first, had bravely nerved itself for the contest, gives way, under the mysterious influences which govern its union with the body. Then he begins to doubt the existence of an overruling Providence; he hates his fellow-men, and glares upon them with the longings of a cannibal, and it may be, dies blaspheming!

Who will hesitate to give his mite to avert such awful results? Surely not the citizens of New Orleans, ever famed for deeds of charity and benevolence. Freely leave your hearts and purses opened, heretofore, to the call of suffering humanity. n.o.bly did you respond to oppressed Greece and to struggling Poland. Within Erin's borders is an enemy more cruel than the Turk, more tyrannical than the Russian. Bread is the only weapon that can conquer him. Let us, then load s.h.i.+ps with this glorious munition, and, in the name of our common humanity wage war against this despot Famine. Let us, in G.o.d's name, "cast our bread upon the waters," and if we are selfish enough to desire it back again, we may recollect the promise, that it shall return to us after many days.