Senator Cooper closed for the government. Law was not enough for him; he would have the sanction of "Religion" also. So he read extract from a Sermon. Gentlemen of the Jury, you have not had the benefit of Rev. Dr. Adams's prayers in this court; it is a pity you should not be blessed with the theology of despotism; listen therefore to the "Thanksgiving Sermon" of Rev. Dr. Wadsworth, which Hon. Mr. Cooper read to the Jury in Independence Hall.
"For passing by all other causes of irritation as just now secondary and subordinate, look for a moment, at the influence which the Gospel of Christ would have in this great sectional controversy about slavery.
"First, It would say to the Northern fanatic, who vapors about man-stealing as if there were no other evil under the sun but this one evil of Slavery—it would say to him, Emulate the spirit of your blessed Master and his apostles, who, against this very evil [man-stealing] in their own times, brought no railing accusation; but in one instance at least, sent back a fugitive from the household of Philemon.
"In treating Southern Christian slaveholders with Christian courtesy, and sending back their fugitives when apprehended among you, you neither indorse the system nor partake of its evil; you are only performing in good faith the agreement, and redeeming the pledges of your forefathers, and leaving to each man for himself to answer for his own acts at the judgment-seat of Jesus. It would tear away from the man, as the foulest cloak of hypocrisy, that pretence of a religious principle in this whole matter of political abolitionism.
"Religious principle! Oh my God! That religious principle, that for the sake of an abstract right whose very exercise were disastrous to the unprepared bondmen who inherit it, would tear this blest confederacy in pieces, and deluge these smiling plains in fraternal blood, and barter the loftiest freedom that the world ever saw, for the armed despotism of a great civil warfare! That religious principle which, in disaster to man's last great experiment, would fling the whole race back into the gloom of an older barbarism—rearing out of the ruin of these free homes, the thrones of a more adamantine despotism—freedom's beacons all extinguished, and the whole race slaves. That religious principle through which, losing sight of God's great purpose of evangelizing the nations, [by American Slavery,] would shatter the mightiest wheel in the mechanism of salvation, and palsy the wing of God's preaching angel in its flight through the skies.
"Alas—alas! ye that count as little this bond of blessed brotherhood, wrought by our fathers' mighty hands and bleeding hearts—we tell you, sorrowing and in tears, that your pretence is foul hypocrisy. Ye have reversed the first precept of the gospel, for your wisdom is a dove's, and your harmlessness a serpent's. Ye have not the first principle within you either of religion or philanthropy, or common human benevolence. Your principle is the principle of Judas Iscariot, and with the doom of the traitor ye shall go to your own place."
"No, Sir—no, Sir," concludes the Senator thirsting for his constituent's blood, "'There is no gospel in all this treasonable fanaticism—for treason to my country is rebellion to my God.'"
Judge Grier charged the Jury;—but as he stuck out from the phonographer's report—of which the proof-sheets were sent to him—the most offensive portion, Gentlemen of the Jury, I shall not be able to enlighten you with all the legal words of this "consummate judge." So be content with the following Elegant Extracts.
"With the exception of a few individuals of perverted intellect in some small districts or neighborhoods whose moral atmosphere has been tainted and poisoned by male and female vagrant lecturers and conventions, no party in politics, no sect of religion, or any respectable numbers or character can be found within our borders, who have viewed with approbation or have looked with any other than feelings of abhorrence upon this disgraceful tragedy."
"It is not in this Hall of Independence that meetings of infuriated fanatics and unprincipled demagogues have been held to counsel a bloody resistance to the laws of the land. It is not in this city that conventions are held denouncing the Constitution, the Laws, and the Bible. It is not here that the pulpit has been desecrated by seditious exhortations, teaching that theft