the present the countless millions of dollars you must expend in a war with the North, there will be thousands and tens of thousands of your sons and brothers slain in battle and offered up as sacrifices upon the altar of ambition;-and for what, I ask again? Is it for the overthrow of the American Government, established by our common ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and founded upon the broad principles of right, justice, and humanity?

I declare here as I have often done before, and as has been repeated by the greatest and wisest statesmen of this or any other land, that it is the best and truest government, the most equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its control, the most inspiring in its measures to elevate the race of man, that the sun in heaven ever shone upon.

Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this under which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a century, in which we have gained our standing as a nation and our domestic safety, while the elements of peril are around us, with peace, tranquility, and rights unassailed and accompanied with boundless prosperity, is the height of madness, folly, and wickedness, to which I can lend neither my sanction nor my vote.

THE CIVIL WAR INEVITABLE

79

THE CIVIL WAR INEVITABLE

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Taken from a sermon preached immediately after the firing upon Fort Sumter, which occurred April 12, 1861.

There are many reasons which make a good and thorough battle necessary. The Southern men are infatuated. They will not have peace. They are in arms. They have fired upon the American flag! That glorious banner has been borne through every climate, 5 all over the globe, and for fifty years not a land or people has been found to scorn it or dishonor it. At home, among the people of our own land, among Southern citizens, for the first time has this glorious national flag been abased and trampled to the ground! !6 It is for our sons reverently to lift it, and to bear it full high again, to victory and national supremacy. Our arms, in this peculiar exigency, can lay the foundation of future union in mutual respect.

The South firmly believes that cowardice is the universal attribute of Northern men. Until they are most thoroughly convinced to the contrary, they will never cease arrogancy and aggression. But if it now please God to crown our arms with victory, we shall have gone far toward impressing Southern men with 20 salutary respect. Good soldiers, brave men, hard fighting, will do more toward quiet than all the compromises and empty, wagging tongues in the world. Our reluctance to break peace, our unwillingness to shed blood, our patience, have all been misinterpreted. 25

The more generous and forbearing we have been, the more thoroughly sure were they that it was because we dared not fight.

With the North is the strength, the population, the courage. There is not elsewhere on this continent that breadth of courage-the courage of a man in distinction from the courage of a brute beast-which there is in the free states of the North. It was General Scott who said that the New Englanders were the hardest to get into a fight, and the most terrible to meet in a conflict, of any men on the globe.

We have no braggart courage; we have no courage that rushes into an affray for the love of fighting. We have that courage which comes from calm intelligence. We have that courage which comes from broad moral sentiment. We have no anger, but we have indignation. We have no irritable passion, but we have fixed will. We regard war and contest as terrible evils; but when we are roused to enter into them, our courage will be of the measure of our detestation. You may be sure that the cause which can stir up the feelings of the North sufficiently to bring them into such a conflict will develop in them a courage that will be terrific to the men who have to meet it.

RECOGNITION OF SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY 81

SPEECH AGAINST THE RECOGNITION OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY

JOHN BRIGHT

From a speech delivered at Rochdale, Lancashire, England, August 1, 1861. John Bright was a staunch and fearless supporter of the Union cause when many Englishmen were disposed to recognize the Confederate States.

I advise you, and I advise the people of England, to abstain from applying to the United States doctrines and principles which we never apply to our own case. At any rate, the Americans have never fought "for the balance of power" in Europe. They have never fought to keep up a decaying empire. They have never squandered the money of their people in such a phantom expedition as we have been engaged in. And now, at this moment, when you are told that they are going to be ruined by their vast expenditure,-why, the sum that they are going to raise in the great emergency of this grievous war is not greater than what we raise every year during a time of peace.

They say that they are not going to liberate the slaves. No; the object of the Washington government is to maintain their own Constitution and to act legally, as it permits and requires. No man is more in favor of peace than I am; probably no man in this country has denounced war more than I have; few men in public life have suffered more obloquy-I had almost said, more indignity--in consequence of it. But I cannot for the life of me see, upon any of those

principles upon which states are governed now,-I say nothing of the literal word of the New Testament, -I cannot see how the state of affairs in America, with regard to the United States government, could have been different from what it is at this moment.

We had a Heptarchy in this country, and it was thought to be a good thing to get rid of it, and have a united nation. If the thirty-three or thirty-four states of the American Union can break off whenever they like, I can see nothing but disaster and confusion throughout the whole of that continent. I say that the war, be it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it wise or not, is a war to sustain the government and to sustain the authority of a great nation; and that the people of England, if they are true to their own sympathies, to their own history, and to their own. great act of 1834, will have no sympathy with those who wish to build up a great empire on the perpetual bondage of millions of their fellow-men.

LINCOLN

CHARLES H. FOWLER

Taken by permission from Bishop Fowler's popular lecture on Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln was the representative character of his age. No man ever so fully embodied the purposes, the affections, and the power of the people. He came up among us. He was one of us. His birth, his education, his habits, his motives, his feelings, his