American Dangers and Duties

by A. D. Mayo

All subscriptions and applications for tracts, addressed by mail, with money, enclosed, to Mrs. Lucy C. Mayo, 32 Lodge street, or Miss Nancie Burton, 70 Chapel street, Albany, N. Y.

AMERICAN DANGERS AND DUTIES.

The President of the United States has appointed a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer, in view of the perilous condition of the country. We rejoice at this symptom of returning sanity in national affairs. We have never doubted that the wanton repudiation of God’s eternal laws of justice, honesty and humanity in high places would finally bring the Republic into the condition so impressively stated in this proclamation. It is too evident that “God’s Omnipotent arm only can save us from the awful effects of our own crimes and follies—our own ingratitude and guilt towards our Heavenly Father.”

Let us now approach the Almighty with no vain attempt to conceal our hearts from Him, or to delude ourselves and our fellow men. Let us earnestly look at our public dangers, that we may learn their source; and pray for light upon our path of duty. God helps only those who try to help themselves. He governs humanity by immutable laws which the prayers of a world cannot change. Let this call from the chief citizen of the Republic to national consecration persuade us all to study the divine law of American civilization; the extent of our departure from it; the obligation to obey it more faithfully in the days to come.

The present state of our country is not the result of any accidental or temporary cause. No radical statesmen or victorious party or company of professional agitators, has power to involve the Republic in such disturbance. These causes, so passionately and plausibly assigned, are themselves unimportant effects of the one chief cause. The Republic is now in a tumult because the progressive civilization of the nineteenth century has finally vanquished the combined forces resisting its advent; deprived its chief opponent, the slave power, of the command in national affairs; and prepared to administer the government of the United States forever in the interest of Christian society. The past always dies hard, its struggles for a lease of life are the present agitation in American affairs. Let us briefly overlook the progress of this mighty conflict; the present state of the battle; the obligation of freemen in the crisis now upon us.

Eighty-four years ago, thirteen American colonies revolted from the British Empire. All acknowledged the right of property in one race of men. But only in six colonies was this idea inwrought into the texture of society; in seven northern provinces it was already a condemned barbarism. These seven northern colonies were inclined to believe in the natural right of every man to freedom sufficient to develop his own nature without hindrance to other men; a right to be forever asserted and secured by a government of the whole people. The masses of the six southern colonies believed heartily in the enslavement of the negro laborer, such enslavement to be ensured by an aristocratic form of society and organization of the State. The colony of Massachusetts was the foremost representative of the northern idea, which not only commanded majorities in seven provinces, but largely influenced the ablest patriot leaders of Virginia. The southern column was led by the Carolinas and Georgia. These states, with a white population of 480,000, contained 230,000 slaves. Throughout the Revolution they were the focus of indifference and opposition to the common cause; being practically a British province during most of the war. Their idea of society held the majority of the people in Virginia and Maryland, and governed an aristocratic party in the middle states, whose descendants abide with us to-day. The northern idea prevailed; wrote the Declaration of Independence; carried Washington through the war, and organized the government radically on the basis of civil and religious liberty for all races of men. The Carolinas and Georgia, at the last hour, forced into the Constitution a recognition of slavery, alien to its spirit, and supposed, by the wisest patriots, to be of temporary necessity. Thus did freedom triumph in 1787; though robbed of the complete fruits of victory by the obstinancy of a hostile idea.

Thus armed, free society girded itself up to the majestic toil of subduing and civilizing a new continent. It entrenched itself on the rocky shores and snowy hills of New England, and made those six states the foremost representative of the true Democratic idea.

Under the auspices of Jay, King, Livingston and a band of like-minded statesmen, the idea was organized in the State of New York; the great constructive centre of American civilization.

It gradually forced negro slavery from three middle states, and then began to march its armies of emigration towards the Pacific. It compelled the national government to consecrate to liberty the area of five great states in the northwest. It created a new power in central and western New York, which confirmed the policy of the Empire State. It formed the civilization of the five northwestern states east of the Mississippi. When a new empire was brought in by the Louisiana purchase, it rallied its forces and secured the territory north of the Missouri Compromise Line, from which it already has fashioned three great states. It scaled the Rocky Mountains and covered Oregon and Washington with the proviso of freedom. And when the second vast empire was annexed to the national domain, it swept along its border and consecrated the whole Pacific coast to liberty.