tected by the angel wings of a mother's blessing. He had come to tell of his country's rise, to rejoice in her progress, to mourn over her present decline, and to unite in invocations to Heaven that he may not witness her fall. Two hundred years since, a tyrant, on this spot, sought to snatch away the charter of a people's colonial liberty; but it was wrested from his grasp by the intrepidity of a Wadsworth, and concealed in the Charter Oak renowned in history. In like spirit, treason and rebellion this day seek to deprive you of the Constitution, which erects a government of freedom, and guarantees its perpetuity; but you may snatch it from their grasp, and conceal it in the Charter Oak of a loyal people's heart. Every true son of Connecticut, a State with more moral muscle than any other, may remember with pride, that in the war of the Revolution she furnished more men in proportion to her population than any other colony, and gave to Washington a "Brother Jonathan," one of his most true and trusted advisers. Great Britain, a government most free from the base, destructive, and fickle career of all modern monarchies, boasted in the haughtiness of her martial pride that the sun never set upon her possessions, and that her drum-beat encircled the world; but with a loftier pride still, Connecticut may boast, that her system of common schools has diffused its blessings wherever the sun shines, and encircles the world with its rectifying influence. The rebellion which threatens the integrity of the Union had its origin in mad and reckless ambition. It is the fruit of the most dark and damning conspiracy which ever disgraced the earth. I have watched it from its cradle to its present alarming proportions. There had been causes of sectional irritation, but nothing to justify the efforts of armed treason to destroy the government and dissolve the Union. The sectional irritations and the election of a Republican President were not the causes of the rebellion, though employed as apologies for it. The idea had long been entertained by Southern aspirants and Southern leaders, who seized upon the occasion to carry out their infernal schemes. It was set in motion by a combination of evil causes. Avarice furnished the road-bed, bankruptcy the superstructure, and unhallowed ambition the motive power, by which a greater army is brought to menace the Union in its thundering march, than was ever before embodied upon the conti nent. To put down a rebellion so wicked and formidable, all must come up to the good work, not as Democrats, nor Republicans, nor under any other partisan designation, but as loyal American citizens, engaged together in the vindication of their country's Constitution. This rebellion is prosecuted with more ferocity than any war in the history of modern civilization; commencing with treason of the deepest dye, murder, piracy, perjury, and robbery are its concomitants, and arson, theft, and numerous kindred villainies, follow in its train. Pickets have been deliberately, wantonly, and systematically slaughtered; disaffected, prowling, ferocious savages stimulated to deeds of blood upon our borders. Railroad bridges weakened so that unoffending passengers of all ages, sexes, and conditions, may be maimed and mangled for life, or hurried to destruction together; and their own citizens, who refuse to bow the knee to the secession Baal, are robbed, murdered, and driven from their homes in destruction; and these enormities are but a few of those which blot and blacken even the catalogue of depravity itself. "Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrought Shall honor bleed? shall truth succumb? Where freedom weeps her children's fall! This rebellion is more bloody than the ferocious decree of Herod, for it destroys all ages; more dreadful than the destroying angel of Egypt, for it passes over none, though blood besprinkles the door posts; and when our institutions are trembling to their base, and Republican liberty is struggling for existence, Great Britain, under the shallow and shameless. pretence of perfect neutrality between a great and friendly government, whose stability she has tested, and a mushroom rebellion of yesterday, while she perhaps abstains from official inter ference, shows but too plainly through her press, her aristocracy, and her every means of indirect annoyance, that she would take sides with rebellion if she dare. As the world's almoner, she has for years advertised her philanthropy in sighs for the wrongs of domestic slavery, and now proves her sincerity in taking sides with those who claim it as the legitimate foundation of government. It is not that she is unfriendly to our people, for a long commercial intercourse, mutually advantageous, has fostered kind relations. But it is the inveterate hatred of monarchy for free, popular government. Because we, the child of her own bosom, are one of the great powers of the Earth, and her rival upon the seas; a memorable illustration of the proverb, that "Wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous, but who can stand before envy." Let us look out upon the vast expanse dedicated to freedom, stretching away from the rising to the setting sun, and from perpetual snows to perennial flowers; with magnificent harbors upon the two great oceans of the world, every variety of soil, climate, and production; with unrivalled elements in every enterprise and industrious avocation; great, too, in early youth, in letters, arts, and arms; great in institutions of charity and religion; great in population and material wealth, but greater in the coming millions, whose footsteps we hear in the distance. A peaceful separation of this beauteous and bountiful heritage is impossible; it would be geographically as fatal as politically destructive; a cordon of red-coats and British bayonets would line our northern frontier, and a standing army of two hundred thousand men would be required to preserve the peace along our artificial southern line, whose presence would provoke the very conflict they were placed there to prevent. The mouth of the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico, and the free transit over the isthmus would be commanded by a British fleet, and thus, were a division practicable, should we be maimed and crippled in our fair proportions, dwarfed in our enterprises, and humiliated before the world as a petty, fragmentary republic, too weak to defend itself against internal conspiracy, or to resist foreign insult or aggression. The general government has covenanted with the States to guarantee them each a Republican form of government, and the people of the Union are pledged to the oppressed children of VOL. II.-8 every clime to give them security and repose in freedom's holy land. Hither they have flocked from the oppressions of the old world, to enjoy the fruits of equality in this, and are among the first to rally to the defence of the glorious emblem of their chosen land, the stars and stripes. Let this cheering spectacle mantle the cheek of every native-born citizen, who would favor rebellion, with shame. Shame, that a land so free should produce such base-born children, when the sons of Ireland, Germany, and other lands are foremost in the ranks of loyalty, defending the Constitution and the Union, as they would their very altar-fires. This government could withstand the assault of a world in arms against her; but a rebellion in her midst, more atrocious, if possible, than that of Satan in heaven, demands our best efforts, our united energies. We must so assert the power and dignity of the government, that rebellion will feel it and fear it, and tremble. We should have one startling war-cry, to ring along our lines, and be the watchword of every loyal citizen in the Union. Let it be this: Peace and protection to loyalty everywhere;-Death and destruction to traitors! This struggle has not even the poor merit of being sectional. The Southern people are divided. The Union feeling, if it could be fairly represented, largely predominates in every Southern State, except, perhaps, that proverbial secession wasp's nest, South Carolina. Virginia, poor old betrayed, down-trodden State, played away as a stake by graceless and gambling politicians, and writhing under the heel of a lawless mob, called the confederate army! she is now tasting some of the fruits of longcoveted secession; her substance consumed, her industry destroyed, her system of slavery shaken to its foundation, her government repudiated and deposed by her own people, and a new one founded in the spirit of the federal constitution and loyal to the Union, erected upon its ruins! Such is the history, such the humiliation, and such the rewards of the once lofty Old Dominion, and proud mother of Presidents! Kentucky, God bless her! in spite of forsworn and traitorous Senators, and a Governor with perjury as black as hell upon his soul, who endeavored to seduce or drive her into the bottomless pit of secession, had remained true to the Union, as proved by her 60,000 majority under the menace of armed and open traitors, and the meaner baseness of pretended friends; and whenever the Southern Union-loving people are emancipated, by the prospect of protection, from the fear of the gallows and the torch, the bowie-knife and the revolver, a majority of the disloyal States will imitate the noble example of good old Kentucky, and roll up their thousands for the supremacy of the Constitution and the perpetuity of the Union. The Northern sentiment is less divided than is generally believed. The sympathy with rebellion, which exhibited such ambitious proportions at the earlier stages, has recently shrunk to the most meagre and diminutive dimensions. Its noisy advocates and apologists who, by false pretences, carried with them for a day honest men, who supposed it was a mere political conflict, now stand alone, forsaken, subdued, and silenced; scorned by all loyal men, and despised and derided by the armed treachery whose cause they have espoused. Your good Mayor, who introduced me so kindly, was pleased to say that I was, politically, an old-fashioned Democrat. Although it is not material to the present purpose, I am, always have been, and always expect to be, a Democrat of the old school, or Jackson stamp. I have been, and am, a believer in the great Democratic doctrines of equality and simplicity; and one of the primary articles of that creed, I have always understood, was to support, in the spirit and essence of truth, the Constitution under which we live. But a self-constituted, high order of Democracy has recently arisen, claiming exclusiveness for its peculiar excellence. It virtually regards it heresy to support the Constitution under the administration of a political opponent, and sympathizes with armed treason, in its efforts to dissolve the Union and destroy the government, and proposes to negotiate with it a treaty of peace. A Democrat!-a disciple and follower of Jefferson and Jackson, sympathizing with a rebellion in arms against the government of the Constitution! As well a Christian who prays to the devil for mercies! A Democrat, and giving aid and comfort and countenance to those who are seeking to destroy the noblest edifice of government ever erected by man! "Thou wear'st a lion's hide! doff it for shame, |