energy, the intelligible signs and manifestations of his being. This is the open secret of all genuine success. This is the law decreed by God for the self-government of man—a law as benignant when lovingly kept as it is stern when neglected and broken. Let us accept this exposition of the law of victory, because it is the truth. Let us conform to it, because the interests of prudence and the nobilities of duty alike require our conformity to it. The soured critic affirming the regular failure of desert, fretting at the chronic injustice of the world, proves by this habit that he is a defeated man in that life-stadium where God has sent him to contend. His accusation of providence is the sorry signal of his discomfiture. He, on the contrary, who has acquired a clear perception of the organic justice of things, the tend ncy of every natural influence to a final harmony, who contentedly relies on the all-rectifying power of truth and right, thereby proves that he is a conqueror in that solemn struggle of the soul with its destiny for which God flung him into the world-arena. The insight he enjoys of the serene compensations of universal law is the meed of his conquest. ARTICLE XIII. Past the Rocks. "And there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his God." BIBLE. THREE years have elapsed since the ship, REPUBLIC, entered that dubious sea, beset by the shoals of Treason, and infested by piratical Rebellion. During this period, she has incurred tremendous risks, and averted and suffered grave calamities. More than once, she seemed to be heading straight for the rocks, and her rivals sent up a shout of sardonic tri umph; but, at the critical moment, an Invisible Hand was laid upon her helm, and she safely shot past the danger. More than once, the black hull of the Slaver, blazing with cannon shot, seemed to bar the channel and rake the REPUBLIC fore and aft; but she held her majestic course-hurling back the thunder that smote her, and bearing her ensign aloft through the cloud of battle. With what painful interest- with what solicitude and prayer we have watched the course of that ship, wrestling with unwonted perils; resisting the storm, the pirate, the mutineer. And well we may; for all our treasures are there embarked the profits of our enterprise, the guarantee of our liberties, the titles of our Civilization, and the very hopes of Religion. Although the voyage is not yet over — although the ship still plows that dangerous sea — we may consistently take a retrospective view of the cruise, and offer thanks for the perils already past. It is time to recognize the Divine Agency that has guided us. For never were vaster calamities averted, or vaster benefits secured, by a successive adjustment of events more obviously providential. We have had a wise Captain to command our Ship, and a valiant Crew to man it, but the preservation of the REPUBLIC is due to Him, who is at once the Pilot and the Owner. I. The first shoals that threatened the Ship were the Compromise Rocks. The REPUBLIC had suffered from these, more or less, since the day it was launched; but they were found to encroach more and more upon the channel, at the point of time that brought the Republican Party on board. When the new Captain got possession of the quarter deck, he found that his predecessor had unshipped the helm, turned off the steam, fractured the engine, and demolished the wheel. Already, Rebellion blew a gale,-the Ship rolled before the elements, the crew were seditious, the passengers sea-sick. In the terror of the moment, many would have run the Ship upon the rocks, hoping to leap ashore, instead of working her into the channel fearing they might be drowned. Metaphor aside, let us say, in literal language, that there was a strong disposition to ruin the Nation in hopes of allaying the Rebellion. The North was willing to give yet greater guarantees to Slavery, and to surrender still more of its lawful prerogatives, for the sake of averting the War. This is evident from the Crittenden resolutions, which Congress was petitioned to adopt by thousands of Northern men belonging to the most influential classes of our society. It is evident from Mr. Corwin's bill, which Congress did adopt. And it is especially evident from the servile spirit betrayed by the Northern members of the Peace Conference. What saved us from that final act of humiliation? from that betrayal of Liberty which must have been fatal? The insolent madness of the slaveholders, who would not desist from the baleful enterprise they had begun humble ourselves as we might, offer them what bribes we would. Rather, let us say, it was the interposition of God, who breathed that madness into the Southern mind, and infatuated the slave-masters with the illusion of independence, in order that the unnatural covenant between us might be sundered, and the Nation compelled to draw the sword against Slavery. But drawing the sword failed to destroy the propensity to compromise. That propensity had become our ruling passion. It had acquired the force, the depth, the sleepless importunity of an instinct. Accordingly, we accepted the War with the tacit understanding that the South was to be fought without being hurt; and especially that the Slave system— though admitted to be the nursery and bulwark of the Rebellion — was to be sedulously shielded from all harm. For a year and a half, the War was a compound of political finesse, military drill, and moral suasion. Government knocked the enemy over with one hand, and generously set him up with the other; blockaded his ports, and assaulted his fortified lines; and sent back slaves to cultivate his corn, and sink his rifle pits, and man his cannon! What destroyed this policy? this pernicious vestige of the compromising mania -this foolish and culpable reverence for our Destroyer? It was national disaster, routed armies, carnage-covered fields, imbecile generalship. It was enmity abroad, leering from Liverpool iron-clads. It was vaunting treason at home, mocking the public woe. It was something little short of national despair, which God sent upon the country to thrill our torpor, to correct our perversity, to break our covenant with oppression. Early victory over the Rebellion, and speedy conquest of the South, must have restored the Union with Slavery still in the ascendant. But when God maddened the oligarchy to precipitate the War, He meant that the trump of battle should sound the knell of slavery. He meant that the Federal hand, reluctantly grasping the sword to maintain its heritage, should never sheathe it more till the Slave Power had received a mortal thrust. Had the nation been wise enough to have apprehended God's purpose then, and obedient enough to have complied with his will, the War might have wrought its design in a year. It is the perversity of the Nation that has protracted the scourge. The long train of disasters that mark the first epoch of the War, is the enormous price of our conversion to justice. Deeper and yet deeper must run the plowshare of judgment all parties being engulfed, and all institutions overturned, that stand in its way till that loathsome curse, entrenched so deep in American society, is torn away from our polity, and cast into Hades. Let us thank God that a great majority of our people, committed to the salutary school of adversity, have become educated up to this conviction. Let us rejoice that the Rebels sunk their torpedoes so thick in the shoals of Compromise, that the REPUBLIC has been compelled to steer out upon the deep. The explosion, that was to have destroyed the ship, has only blown away the rocks that endangered her, and made the channel safer for all coming time. II. The next obstacle that threatened the REPUBLIC was idolatry of the Constitution. No more amazing phenomenon was ever seen, since man began to honor, and sophists learned NEW SERIES. VOL. 1. 17 to darken, compacts. The story of the domination of this idolatry presents one of the most singular passages to be found in human history. Had it been the veritable Constitution which the Nation spontaneously came to worship, it would have been idolatry, but a noble phase of it the idolatry of Liberty. But, unhappily, the thing really worshipped was not the original Constitution, but an infamous interpretation of it: thus the idolatry of the land became, virtually, the idolatry of Slavery. To speak, write, or think in opposition to Slavery, was to violate the Constitution, and incur penalties. The law of God -the higher law - became an object of hatred and ridicule; but any mandate of the Constitution hideously transformed into a charter of oppression was sacredly cherished and revered. The war developed an astounding political paradox. The Southern wing of the party, hitherto dominant in the nation, rent the Constitution, and turned their backs toward it,-finding that, even under their interpretation, it was not base enough for their purpose. The Northern wing lauded it louder than ever they made the air reek with the incense they burned in its name. Yet it soon appeared that these two party wingsone cursing the Constitution, the other devoutly lauding it— were in perfect agreement as regarded the duty of the GovERNMENT in the premises. They who had repudiated the Constitution, and degraded it, and sacrilegiously defaced the nation's idol, claimed immunity from punishment, and demanded to be let alone. They who adhered to the Constitution, and lauded it, and performed their pious genuflections before it, said to the Federal magistrate, You have no authority to punish them; we conjure you to let them alone! Amazing unanimity! The violator of the temple, and the adoring devotee, uniting against him who would avenge the sacrilege! When the Government makes bare its martial arm, and rears its regnant front, to restore its violated majesty, what an uproar ensues! What protests are thundered against it not by those who have assaulted the idol, but by those who fill the - |