One of the mountains; each a mighty voice:
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty!”[3]
I listened to the admonitions of medical skill, and I courted all the bracing influences of Nature, while time passed without the accustomed healing on its wings. I had confidently hoped to be restored so as to take my seat in the Senate, and to be heard there again, long before the session closed. But Congress adjourned, leaving me still an invalid. My next hope was, that I might be permitted to appear before the people during the present canvass, and with heart and voice plead the great cause now in issue. Here again I have been disappointed, and the thread of my disability is not yet spun to the end. Even now, though happily lifted from long prostration, and beginning to assume many of the conditions of health, I am constrained to confess that I am an invalid,—cheered, however, by the assurance that I shall soon be permitted, with unimpaired vigor, to resume all the responsibilities of my position.
Too much have I said about myself; but you will pardon it to the occasion, which, being personal in character, invites these personal confessions. With more pleasure I turn to other things.
I should feel that I failed in one of those duties which the heart prompts and the judgment confirms, if I allowed this first opportunity to pass without sincerest acknowledgment to my able, generous, and faithful colleague, Mr. Wilson. Together we labored in mutual trust, honorably leaning upon each other. By my disability he was left sole representative of Massachusetts on the floor of the Senate, throughout months of heated contest, involving her good name and most cherished sentiments. All who watched the currents of debate, even as imperfectly as I did in my retirement, know with what readiness, courage, and power he acted,—showing himself, by extraordinary energies, equal to the extraordinary occasion. But it is my especial happiness to recognize his unfailing sympathies for myself, and his manly assumption of all the responsibilities of the hour.
I am not here to indulge in eulogy, nor to open any merit-roll of service; but the same feeling which prompts these acknowledgments to my colleague embraces also the Commonwealth from whom we have received our trust. To Massachusetts, mother of us all,—great in resources, great in children,—I now pledge anew my devotion. Never before did she inspire equal pride and affection; for never before was she so completely possessed by those sentiments which, when manifest in Commonwealth or citizen, invest the character with its highest charm, so that what is sown a natural body is raised a spiritual body. My filial love does not claim too much, when it exhibits her as approaching the pattern of a Christian Commonwealth, which, according to the great English Republican, John Milton, “ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body.”[4] Not through any worldly triumphs, not through the vaults of State Street, the spindles of Lowell, or even the learned endowments of Cambridge, is Massachusetts thus,—but because, seeking to extend everywhere within the sphere of her influence the benign civilization which she cultivates at home, she stands forth the faithful, unseduced supporter of Human Nature. Wealth has its splendor, and the intellect has its glory; but there is a grandeur in such service which is above all that these can supply. For this she has already the regard of good men, and will have the immortal life of history. For this she has also the reproach and contumely always throughout the ages poured upon those who have striven for justice on earth. Not now for the first time in human struggles has Truth, when most dishonored, seemed most radiant, gathering glory even out of obloquy. When Sir Harry Vane, courageous champion of the English Commonwealth, was dragged on a hurdle up the Tower Hill to suffer death by the axe, one of the multitude cried out to him, “That is the most glorious seat you ever sat on!”[5] And again, when Russell was exposed in the streets, on his way to a similar scaffold, the people, according to the simple narrative of his biographer, imagined they saw Liberty and Virtue sitting by his side. Massachusetts is not without encouragement in her own history. She has seen her ports closed by arbitrary power,—has seen her name made a byword of reproach,—has seen her cherished leaders, Hancock and Adams, excepted from all pardon by the crown; but then, when most dishonored, did Massachusetts deserve most, for then was she doing most for the cause of all. And now, when Massachusetts is engaged in a greater cause than that of our fathers, how serenely can she turn from the scoff and jeer of heartless men! Her only disgrace will be in disloyalty to the truth which is to make her free.
Worse to bear—oh, far worse!—than the evil speaking of others is the conduct of some of her own children. It is hard to see the scholarship which has been drawn from her cisterns, and the riches accumulated under her hospitable shelter, now employed to weaken and discredit that cause which is above riches or scholarship. It is hard, while fellow-citizens in Kansas plead for deliverance from a cruel Usurpation, and while the whole country, including our own soil, is trodden down by a domineering and brutal Despotism, to behold sons of Massachusetts in sympathy, open or disguised, with the vulgar enemy, quickening everywhere the lash of the taskmaster, and helping forward the Satanic carnival, when Slavery shall be fastened not only upon prostrate Kansas, but upon all the Territories of the Republic,—when Cuba shall be torn from a friendly power by dishonest force,—and when the slave-trade itself, with all its crime, its woe, and its shame, shall be opened anew under the American flag. Alas, that any child of Massachusetts, in wickedness of heart, or in weakness of principle, or under the delusion of partisan prejudice, should join in these things! With such I have no word of controversy at this hour. But, leaving them now, in my weakness, I trust not to seem too severe, if I covet for the occasion something of the divine power