The American Union Speaker

by John D. Philbrick

Of course, I scorn to argue the obvious truth that the slaves here are as much entitled to freedom as the white slaves that enlisted the early energies of our Government. They are men by the grace of God, and this is enough. There is no principle of the Constitution, and no rule of justice, which is not as strong for the one as for the other. In consenting to the ransom proposed, you will recognize their manhood, and, if authority be needed, you will find it in the example of Washington, who did not hesitate to employ a golden key to open the house of bondage.

Let this bill pass, and the first practical triumph of freedom for which good men have longed, dying without the sight—for which a whole generation has petitioned, and for which orators and statesmen have pleaded—will at last be accomplished. Slavery will be banished from the national Capital. This metropolis, which bears a venerated name, will be purified; its evil spirit will be cast out; its shame will be removed; its society will be refined; its courts will be made better; its revolting ordinances will be swept away; and even its loyalty will be secured. If not moved by justice to the slave, then be willing to act for your own good and in self-defence. If you hesitate to pass this bill for the blacks, then pass it for the whites. Nothing is clearer than that the degradation of slavery affects the master as much as the slave; while recent events testify that wherever slavery exists, there treason lurks, if it does not flaunt. From the beginning of this rebellion, slavery has been constantly manifest in the conduct of the masters, and even here in the national Capital, it has been the traitorous power which has encouraged and strengthened the enemy. This power must be suppressed at every cost, and if its suppression here endangers slavery elsewhere, there will be a new motive for determined action.

Amidst all present solicitudes the future cannot be doubtful. At the national Capital slavery will give way to freedom; but the good work will not stop here. It must proceed. What God and nature decree rebellion cannot arrest. And as the whole wide-spreading tyranny begins to tumble, then, above the din of battle, sounding from the sea and echoing along the land, above even the exaltations of victory on well-fought fields, will ascend voices of gladness and benediction, swelling from generous hearts wherever civilization bears sway, to commemorate a sacred triumph whose trophies, instead of tattered banners, will be ransomed slaves. C. Sumner.

CXLXVI.

EXTRACT FROM FAREWELL ADDRESS AT NEW ORLEANS.

I shall speak in no bitterness, because I am not conscious of a single personal animosity. Commanding the Army of the Gulf, I found you captured, but not surrendered; conquered, but not orderly; relieved from the presence of an army, but incapable of taking care of yourselves. I restored order, punished crime, opened commerce, brought provisions to your starving people, reformed your currency, and gave you quiet protection, such as you had not enjoyed for many years. The enemies of my country unrepentant and implacable, I have treated with merited severity. I hold that rebellion is treason, and that treason persisted in is death, and any punishment short of that due a traitor gives so much clear gain to him from the clemency of the government. Upon this thesis have I administered the authority of the United States, because of which I am not unconscious of complaint. I do not feel that I have erred in too much harshness, for that harshness has ever been exhibited to disloyal enemies to my country, and not to my loyal friends. To be sure, I might have regaled you with the amenities of British civilization, and yet been within the supposed rules of civilized warfare. You might have been smoked to death in caverns, as were the Covenanters of Scotland, by the command of a general of the royal house of England; or roasted, like the inhabitants of Algiers during the French campaign; your wives and daughters might have been given over to the ravisher, as were the unfortunate dames of Spain in the Peninsular war; or you might have been scalped and tomahawked, as our mothers were at Wyoming by the savage allies of Great Britain, in our own Revolution; your property could have been turned over to indiscriminate "loot," like the palace of the Emperor of China; works of art which adorned your buildings might have been sent away, like to paintings of the Vatican; your sons might have been blown from the mouths of cannon, like the Sepoys at Delhi; and yet all this would have been within the rules of civilized warfare as practised by the most polished and the most hypocritical nations of Europe. For such acts the records of the doings of some of the inhabitants of your city toward the friends of the Union, before my coming, were a sufficient provocative and justification. But I have not so conducted. On the contrary, the worst punishment inflicted, except for criminal acts punishable by every law, has been banishment with labor to a barren island, where I encamped my own soldiers before marching here.

It is true I have levied upon the wealthy rebels, and paid out nearly half a million of dollars to feed forty thousand of the starving poor of all nations assembled here, made so by this war. I saw that this rebellion was a war of the aristocrats against the middling men—of the rich against the poor; a war of the landowner against the laborer; that it was a struggle for the retention of power in the hands of the few against the many; and I found no conclusion to it, save in the subjugation of the few and the disenthralment of the many. I, therefore, felt no hesitation in taking the substance of the wealthy, who had caused the war, to feed the innocent poor, who had suffered by the war. And I shall now leave you with the proud consciousness that I carry with me the blessings of the humble and loyal, under the roof of the cottage and in the cabin of the slave! and so am quite content to incur the sneers of the salon, or the curses of the rich. B. F. Butler.

CCLXVII.

CONCLUSION OF FAREWELL ADDRESS AT NEW ORLEANS.

I found you trembling at the terrors of servile insurrection All danger of this I have prevented by so treating the slave that he had no cause to rebel. I found the dungeon, the chain, and the lash your only means of enforcing obedience in your servants. I leave them peaceful, laborious, controlled by the laws of kindness and justice. I have demonstrated that the pestilence can be kept from your borders. I have added a million of dollars to your wealth in the form of new land from the batture of the Mississippi. I have cleansed and improved your streets, canals, and public squares, and opened new avenues to unoccupied land. I have given you freedom of elections greater than you have ever enjoyed before. I have caused justice to be administered so impartially that your own advocates have unanimously complimented the judges of my appointment. You have seen, therefore, the benefit of the laws and justice of the government against which you have rebelled. Why, then, will you not all return to your allegiance to that government,—not with lip-service, but with the heart.