DICKINSON'S SPEECHES. SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE GREAT UNION MASS MEETING, HELD IN UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK, April 20, 1861. [This monster meeting was the first great popular demonstration in support of the government, after the fall of Fort Sumter; and while it gave expression to the loyal sentiments of those who participated in its action, it did much more. Its stirring utterances exerted a powerful and decisive influence in forming, marshalling, and arousing to action the public opinion of the North. Numbers who loved the country felt themselves embarrassed by party associations, and were looking on with doubt and uncertainty; and most were struck with wonder and indecision by the very audacity of the opening scenes of the rebellion. The scope of its motives and consequences were but imperfectly appreciated. But the key-note of loyalty rung out clear and strong from Union Square, and the effect was magical. It settled at once the question as to a divided North, and gave assurance that the government would be sustained and rebellion subdued. There were six principal stands for speakers, each organized with presiding officers, occupied by eloquent and patriotic orators, and surrounded by dense masses of earnest and loyal people. Mr. Dickinson made the opening address from that facing the statue of Washington, at which General Dix presided. General Anderson, with several of his officers, just returned from Fort Sumter, was present on the stand. The brave, gallant, and eloquent Colonel Baker, who subsequently fell at Ball's Bluff, was one of the speakers. Whoever had the fortune to participate in this scene in the great national drama, enacted amid general gloom and apprehension,-to witness the deep regret at what had been, the earnest wish that the impending evil might be averted, but still the patriotic exaltation and the earnest resolve that pervaded the vast multitude as it separated, and its individual members retired to their several posts of duty and of action, will not, while life remains, forget the grand, solemn, and inspiring spectacle.] VOL. II.-1 I AM invited, Mr. President, and my fellow-citizens, to attend and address this meeting, held, in the language of its call, "without regard to previous political opinions or associations, to express our sentiments in the present crisis in our national affairs, and our determination to uphold the government of our country, and maintain the authority of the Constitution and Laws."-I embraced the opportunity with alacrity, and have travelled two hundred miles, and upwards, this morning, that I might do so, for I look with extreme apprehension and alarm upon the danger which threatens us as a whole, recently a united people. I would know no sections in this great material heritage of freedom, which stretches from ocean to ocean, from the far frozen north to where prevail the gentle breezes of the tropics; no divisions or strife among or between children of a common father, and brothers of the same household; but the demon of discord has inaugurated his fearful court in our midst, and the crisis is to be met like every other vicissitude. A somewhat extended service in the national councils, at a period of unusual interest, gave me an opportunity for much and mature reflection, upon the relations between the North and the South; upon the duties each section owed to itself and the other, and to the cause of free government, under a hallowed compact, under the constitutional guaranties secured, and that fraternal regard which, by every consideration that could influence civilized and Christian men, each section and its people should at all times cultivate toward the other. I have looked upon all, as regards the Union, its value and its preservation, as the inheritors of the same catholic faith; and though scattered over an area so vast, divided into sections, subdivided into numerous States, and the two sections committed to different systems of industry, as united in one great interest, as essential to each other to promote the common enjoyment, and as bound together to the same great and immortal destiny. None of these views of what should, and ought to, and might have been, have been changed; but recent unfortunate events have served to confirm them beyond the shadow of a doubt, and to increase regrets that efforts costing so little, and of such incalculable value, could not have been put forth before it was too late. But now, in common with every lover of his country, I am called to lament that we should be aroused from the dream of a people's security, happiness, and glory, by a conflict of blood. Until recently, I had hoped that time, and a returning sense of patriotism, a recurrence to the scenes and trials of the Revolution, a thought of the great names and greater memories of those who wrought out the liberties we have possessed and should enjoy, and above all, a sense of duty we owed to ourselves, to each other, to our country and its constitution, to our descendants, to the cause of liberty throughout the earth, would bear this great question far above and beyond the field of vitiated and demoralized politics, and save the Union; not in mere form, but the Union of our fathers, in the spirit of the constitution; the Union purchased by the blood poured out at Lexington, and Saratoga, and Yorktown; the Union of the great spirits of '76, the Union of the Stars and Stripes, which, though torn and disfigured, is dearer than ever; the Union over which every patriot in every section can exclaim, in the language of the British poet, "With all thy faults, I love thee still!" the Union which can never be destroyed in the affections of the American people. Yes, "You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, But these anticipations have not been and are not to be realized. Six months since, we were enjoying unexampled success; now, ruin runs riot over this fair land, and all for madness. Numerous States have passed ordinances of secession from the Union, and have seized the federal property within their reach; they repudiate and disown its authority, assault its flag, and defy its power; have deliberately, and with an overpowering force, attacked and reduced a partially garrisoned and unof fending fortification, because they seemed to regard the gallant Major Anderson, with his loyal men, who reposed in peace, a kind of minister plenipotentiary of the United States, near, and rather too near the government of South Carolina, and now they threaten, as is asserted upon what seems good authority, to march against the Federal Capital. Troops marching to its defence have been murdered, and war is therefore upon us, with all its terrible realities; a civil, intestine war, against and between brethren! It were profitless to inquire for original or remote causes; it is no time for indecision or inaction; it is no time for crimination or recrimination, or for reviving partisan issues; it is no time to inquire whose hand holds the helm or who placed him there, if as prescribed by the constitution; nor by what name he is known in the political jargon of the day. But the only inquiry should be, Does he propose to steer the good Ship of State according to the chart of the constitution, between the Scylla and Charybdis which threaten her pathway; and will he uphold the Constitution and administer the laws with the firmness, justice, and forbearance, with a wisdom, mercy, and discretion, becoming the Chief Magistrate of such a people, in such an exigency? And if he does that, and that only, he should be, and will be, triumphantly sustained; not by political parties extant or obsolete, nor time-serving politicians, but by the patriotic pulsations of the great popular heart. Our troubles are chargeable as well to a demoralized sentiment as to sectional disturbance. The country is cursed with the "cankers of a calm world and a long peace;" rank with mean ambition; swarming with office-hunters and plethoric with treasury-mongers. Like the plagues of Egypt, they have filled the beds and boards and kneading-troughs of the Republic, and poisoned the very fountains of political morality. My desires and efforts, and anxieties and prayers, have been for peace; that everything might be yielded that could be, consistently with a nation's dignity and honor (and our great Republic can yield much to a portion of its erring people), rather than provoke or even permit a conflict of hostile forces; and even yet, I invoke the benign spirit of conciliation! But the government must arm; and that in a manner commensurate with its vast resources, and becoming the lamentable occasion; yet it should put on its armor for preservation, not for destruction; not for aggressive war, but for defensive peace; not for subjugation or coercion, but to arrest tumult, lawlessness, and disorder; not to despoil others, but to keep its own; to maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to vindicate the laws; to put down insurrection, and to repel invasion; to maintain the power and dignity of the nation and preserve its flag inviolate; to save, if saved it can be, the Union, already dissevered, from the final overthrow and destruction with which it is menaced. The contemplation of even the most brilliant successes upon the field of blood, brings me in this controversy only heart-sickness and sorrow; for I cannot forget that it is a war between those who should have loved and cheered and consoled each other along the bleak and desolate pathway of life's perilous pilgrimage, and that we may say of him who falls in the wicked and unnatural strife: "Another's sword has laid him low; Another and another's, And every hand that dealt the blow, But I would assert the power of the government over those who owe it allegiance and attempt its overthrow, as Brutus put his signet to the death-warrant of his son, that I might exclaim with him, "Justice is satisfied, and Rome is free." I would defend our government, and its territory, and its citadel, that we may not weep like women over that we failed to defend like men. In this fraternal strife, let us by no means forget the numerous patriotic hearts at the South, that beat responsive to the Union sentiment. How long and how faithfully they have endured; how much of assault and contumely they have withstood; what interests, political, social, and material, they have sacrificed; how long and how faithfully they have buffeted the angry waves which have beat around them! They have loved and cherished the Union, and have clung with a deathlike tenacity to the pillars of the constitution, to uphold and sustain it; and may God bless them. Let us remember them in this, the evil day of our common country, and do nothing to cast impediments in the way of their patriotic progress and endur ance. The action of our own noble State may be potential in the gloomy crisis. She has power, and must interpose it; wealth, and must proffer it; men, and must rally them to duty; and should employ her mighty energies to silence this accursed din of arms and tumult and murder, at an early moment, in the name of the constitution and the Union, of justice, forbearance, humanity, and peace. |