laughing in his sleeve to think he was not living in this day, for he would surely have been underbid. No! let every man bare his bosom to the shafts of this great battle. Let him comprehend it in all its vastness, and see that these men in rebellion mean destruction and nothing else, and that their aiders and abettors are no better than they. Let them know they are to have no aid from the North and they will ground their arms. But let them think there is a party here to help them, and they will fight forever. You who cry out for peace should go for a vigorous prosecution of the war, for that is the shortest and only sure way to peace. Throw ten men in where there is but one now, and prosecute it with a vigor becoming this great people. None of us need change our political sentiments. We can go together in this, for it concerns all. But those who are determined, who have made up their minds to oppose their government, there is no use in talking to, I know. "Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar, yet will his foolishness not depart from him," and the same of a secessionist. I talk to those who wish to commune together, that we may compare ideas and determine how to best act. My theory is clear and plain-that you must put down rebellion and treat with fidelity. I had a letter, a few days since, from a gentleman in Kentucky, whom I never saw, but with whom I have sometimes corresponded. He said, "We wish to know what you are going to do in the North. In Kentucky we are prepared to fight out rebellion and put it down forever; but we are told that you in the North are going to give way and put in propositions for peace." I wrote him back, "In my opinion, so long as there is a loyal citizen, so long as there is a dollar at the North, so long will this war be prosecuted, until this infernal rebellion is put down." You can't change a man's mind who won't be convinced, but you may arrest treason in its thousand walks, and bring it to the judg ment of an indignant people. This question is becoming more and more understood. Men are meeting together to commune upon it; woman at the altar is pouring forth her gentle and availing prayer, and children are raising their hands against the monster that has come to curse them and dim the lustre of their rising star. Let us all act together, and see if we cannot have one occasion where we can rise above the party questions of the day. As for myself, I am enlisted for the war. I will call upon my fellow-citizens far and near to go with me in this great battle of opinion, and see if this country can be sustained and this government upheld, if these glorious Stars and Stripes can float over the sea and land throughout the long tracks of future time, to gladden the many millions who are to come after us. Shall we permit this government to be destroyed? No, I say, never! Let us stand up like men to this great occasion, and let him who fails or falters be called, as he deserves, a traitor. SPEECH DELIVERED AT A UNION MASS MEETING OF THE CITIZENS OF TOMPKINS AND THE ADJOINING COUNTIES, HELD AT ITHACA, N. Y., September 7, 1861. MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN-That there should be a free government, founded upon this continent, wherein no king-craft should bear sway, and where the people themselves should be sovereign, our fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. They staked all upon a great issue, and stood the hazard of the die. They asserted the great, the simple, the sublime truth that men were created free and equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that among them were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. After having evolved that great idea, so easily understood by all, they marched through peril and hardship, barefoot and over frozen ground, that they might establish and defend and maintain the liberty and the freedom that they had asserted. Go back with me to the issues of that eventful period-not merely in the history of this continent, but in the history of the world, such as man had never before, nor has elsewhere seen; and we find that they laid the foundations of this government broad and deep upon that solid rock of eternal truth, and adorned with all the learning and statesmanship of modern times; and especially they taught that man is a sovereign being. They denied the impious divine right of kings; they alleged and maintained that every people should govern themselves; and, after having asserted the sublime truth, they went forward upon the untried future, to work out the great experiment. It was an experiment and hope to them; it is realization and fruition to us. The great fact has been established, and its results have sped far beyond what they had anticipated or imagined. The little cloud no bigger than a man's hand has brought the sound of abundance of rain. The sparse colonies that struggled along upon the Atlantic slope have grown to be more than thirty free and prosperous States, not confined to the limits which even those great men and greater minds believed would be prescribed, but have leaped over the Mississippi; scared the eagle from his crag on the Rocky Mountains, and have only paused where the Pacific's wave rolls on the golden sands of California. From the St. John, on the northeast, by a line of coast nearly four thousand miles long, they stretch to the Rio Grande in the southwest, and from Lake Superior in the far north to where the Gulf breezes breathe odors of tropical fragrance; embracing twentyfive degrees of latitude and nearly sixty of longitude, covering the great central and southern portions of the temperate zone upon this continent. The tree of liberty, which our fathers planted in this goodly heritage, has shot deep its roots; its trunk towers in majesty on high, and so widespread are its branches, that all the children of the earth may come and subsist on its fruits, or refresh themselves in its shade: "Woodman, spare that tree! Touch not a single bough; The institutions established in such disinterested heroism, and going forward with a progress that has astonished the world, and wrung from it unwilling admiration, are now threatened with destruction. Is it by a foreign foe? No; they have stood the thunder-storm and defied the world in arms; and now are to be destroyed, if destroyed they must be, by the insidious worm of ambition that is gnawing at their heart. Those who have been reared under this government; who have been pampered at its treasury; upon whose brows have been wreathed its choicest laurels, are now seeking to tear its very heart-strings. And we are told that they are brethren, and that therefore we must not contend with them. Yes, they are our brethren. But shall we stand tamely by and see them bathe their hands in the blood of our revered mother? No: she must be defended at all hazards from these murderous parricides. And the crime is the greater and more heinous because they are brethren. If they were remorseless savages, or prowling Arabs, they might have a better apology to offer. But they are attempting to overthrow her who gave them existence, and nursed them on the lap of indulgence; who fostered and trusted them, and placed arms in their hands to defend her, with which they attempt to destroy her. Yes, they are our brethren. But they are not the first beings who have rebelled. There was rebellion even in heaven-blind, heedless, haughty, dark ambition caused Satan to rebel there. For just about the same cause is this rebellion brought upon us, and the end will be the same. Those who instituted it will be hurled down to darkness and chains forever by an indignant and outraged people. When this rebellion reared its snaky head the whole American people trembled. We felt the earth throb and heave and beat as with the convulsion of a mighty volcano. I found it perhaps more difficult than many, so far as personal convenience or considerations were concerned, and personal and political friendships, domestic relations and kindred associations could influence, to take ground against it. Many years in the Senate of the United States, friendships had grown up, and the course of public affairs had clustered around me Southern sympathies, which gave me a position in the Southern States that few men in the North or South held. For myself, therefore, I found it most difficult and painful to sever these ties. But in a patriotic sense I did not find it difficult at all. With the very booming of the first gun fired upon Sumter, I declared in a moment that I was in the field against the rebellion. The first news told me there would be a meeting in New York to sustain the government and the Union. I hastened there to declare my sentiments, that I might summon my friends to imitate my example. I believed then that I had the hissing, devilish, disunion serpent by the neck, and now I know I have. When I see such an assemblage as this, it tells me more, it speaks to the heart more eloquently than all the tongues of preachers and orators, than all the lessons the press can give; it tells me that the popular heart is sound to the core. I see before me and all around me trembling old age leaning upon his staff; stalwart manhood, with strong muscles in his arm; youth, ready to bare his bosom in battle; woman, with her gentle and anxious |