tamper with such danger? I will see all political parties cast down upon the pavement of perdition before I will consent to it. I know that I owe all that I am to our glorious Constitution, which permits men to rise from humble stations to the highest honors of the land. No other government permits it. And sooner than suffer myself to wink at this attempt to subvert it, I would cast falsehood and curses on a venerated mother's grave. The enemies of the country, open and secret, must come to judgment. I shall try them, not before politicians, but before an indignant people, and shall have them arraigned where they will cast fewer aspersions on this question involving the existence of constitutional liberty. It will cost untold blood and treasure. Already have our sons rushed forward to the battle-field. How many have gone down with violence and butchery to bloody graves! You have furnished brave sons here as elsewhere. Some are now languishing in rebel dungeons. The parched sands of Virginia and the glades of Missouri have drank the heart's blood of our bravest and best. And before this dreadful war closes, our land may be one vast Rama of weeping and lamentation for our children. But whatever the cost, if it leaves a government and the old Stars and Stripes, they will not be maintained too dearly. There is to be taxation, and undoubtedly it will be severe. But suppose it takes one-half of all we have, if it leaves us law and order. [A voice, "Better take it all."] Yes, better take all; for if government is not maintained, it will be taken by rebel marauders. The rights of person, and every right we hold most dear, are involved in this issue. You can never divide the nation peaceably. You can never find a stopping-place, when once you have rewarded treason, by permitting it to succeed. Owls will hoot from your dwellings; ruin, darkness, and desolation will brood over you. Such assemblies as this will be prevented by hostile troops, under the anarchy which will ride rough-shod over you.

Where are the great spirits-the Clays, the Websters, the Bentons, of the nation? They have been wafted away like the prophets of old. Would to Heaven that we had the voice of a Clay, of a Webster, to cheer us on now. How they would drive rebellion to its hiding-place! Henry Clay would make it cower and tremble like a deer at the wolf's howl. And the

majestic Webster-what dark clouds would rest upon his por tentous brow! And the logical and statistical Benton, who always stood up for the Union, with his sarcasm, would make them wither like mown grass. They are gone. They rest from their labors. They saw our country's glory, but not her shame. Peace be to their ashes. [A voice: "Fremont ?"] Fremont! Yes; doing his duty like a soldier. I never supported him as a politician; but I support him as a general. And God speed him. I have no doubt he will do his full duty; and if he does, I will labor unceasingly to stay up his hands, and cheer him onward in his discharge of duty. I shall inquire no man's politics now who endeavors in good faith to protect the nation's honor. And he who does, I hold to be no patriot, no Democrat, no honest man. [A voice: "A Tory."] Worse than a Tory— a traitor. No; our ship of state-happily exemplified here today, upon these grounds (pointing to a ship which had been brought in the procession by the boat-builders of Ithaca)—although she has been arrested in her successful course, let us all rally around her, not inquiring who is in command, whether Republican or Democrat, nor who are the crew; but seeing she is our ship, under our flag, preserve her whether she be called by the one or the other empty name; let us rally around her, let us go on board, let her be manned, weigh anchor, hoist all sail, cut her loose, and let her steer into the broad ocean, to cruise on in this great errand of mercy-the freedom of mankind; carrying the Stars and Stripes to every sea under heaven; carrying peace and good will to all men.

"Sail on into that sea, O ship!

Through wind and waves right onward steer."

Oh, my fellow-citizens; let us all devote ourselves to the service of our country. Every one can do something in his sphere. For myself, I am enlisted for this great war, rage how it may, terminate how it will. Give me poverty, stripes, and chains; give me shame, give me destitution, give me want, give me abject misery and distress, give me bereavement, let my heart be wrung by every emotion that can agonize and torture man, and make me a wanderer in the earth, and give me an ignoble death, rather than permit my country to perish. Sooner than

that should be done, in the language of Emmett, I would raze every house, burn every blade of grass, and the last intrenchment of Liberty should be my grave. No, my fellow-citizens, let our watchword be, our country, our beloved country! And will you not each one exclaim with me, "Oh, my country, may God protect her from evil!"

SPEECH

AT A UNION MASS MEETING OF TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE, HELD AT

BRIDGEPORT, CONNECTICUT, September 14, 1861.

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN-Why this vast concourse of people? Are the fountains of the great political deep broken up? You have not come here to hear me discourse upon the Union, but because you believe the Union is menaced; and you have come to commune together upon the great matters that concern our political peace—that concern our existence as a nation. We have been so long accustomed as a people, in this great country, where the waves of opinion ebb and flow with perfect freedom, to view everything through the medium of party politics, that we have almost become incapable of discussing public affairs through any other channel. But, in the words of your resolutions, I declare it my purpose and my intention, in treating this terrible and dangerous rebellion, to ignore party politics. I regret to see an attempt in any quarter to maintain or create a mere political party upon a question that concerns every one alike—the lofty and the lowly; the rich and the poor; the aged and the young; and every interest and every ramification of society. For myself, I belonged, and still belong, when that question is the question, to what was the true Democracy-and I can say what few can say, and (I humbly think) what is not worth while for many to say, that never in my life, which has been somewhat extended, as you see, have I given an opposition vote; never any other than what I deemed the regular Democratic ticket; and when the party has been divided, as has been not unfrequently the case in New York State, I have acted with that branch of it which I deemed most enlarged in its views, most catholic and most national. I therefore fear no thunderbolts, launched upon my head, that I am a

Republican, or anything else. I am a free, untrammelled citizen of the United States. I belong to no party that can use me. The free Constitution of my country is my guide, and I will vindicate it as long as Heaven leaves me the faculties which have been given to me. My birthplace and my early childhood were in this State. I was the son of a Democrat of olden times -the times of Thomas Jefferson, and who participated in the agitations that clustered round his election and Administration; who was one of nine to stand up in his town and assert the existence of the Democratic party, and his adherence to it, when every Democrat in the town was convened in a single pew of the meeting house, at their Freemen's Meeting; a transaction which the poet OSBORN characterized as

"Lifting, like crutch of angry cripple,

The pigmy nine against the people."

My Democracy taught me, too, to revere the Constitution. It taught me to rally round the Stars and Stripes of my country. It taught me to uphold the hands of the Government when threatened, in every contest, and in every vicissitude of life. Democracy-the true Democracy-is not taken out in the Patent Office. You file no specifications; you lay no model there, and you do not have to pay for the right to exercise it. Nor is it like some of the india-rubber patents-one that you can stretch out to great length when occasion requires, or that you can contract and shrink to small dimensions at convenience. It is a great chart of Republican equality. It is the politics that the New Testament enjoins-bringing a new dispensation, and preaching good-will to men.

But whatever our opinions may have been, all the political parties of the world sink into insignificance when our country is threatened. It becomes, then, our duty-the duty of every one there is no one exempt-to go forward, and, leaving behind him all party influences, to bring his choicest offerings to the altar of his country. He that fails to do that, either misunderstands his duty, or, if he understands it, he neglects and perverts the best faculties God gave him. We have so long enjoyed good government that we can hardly imagine what would be the terrible curse of a bad one. We have been so long accustomed to the principle of sacred private rights, that