Still we have our public and private schools, seminaries, and churches, as others have in fully civilized countries; our newspapers, white and bronze; our leading men, and officeholders; natives of all climes and kindreds, Jew and Gentile, German and French, Bohemian and Scotch, English and Irish; our generals and our corporals; our learned and our unlearned; debtors and creditors—comprising mostly all of us; but believe me, friend, not a solitary living Indian.
I think we are a generous, hospitable, liberal people, up to the full limit of our means and capabilities. Being all away from home, as it were, and all strangers together, we have learned the blessedness of sympathy, and how a little lift is often a great boost, and a friend in need a friend indeed. It was formerly said that when a stranger appeared, the inhabitants emulously set to work to take him in, not however in the flattering and hospitable sense of the words. But as almost without exception any man in a new place or position is a verdant man, so we honestly maintain that they took themselves in, and found it rather difficult to take themselves out again. I believe that we are as quiet, honest, genteel, and mind-your-own-business a set of folks as you may find in most other and more favored communities. With the constant and increasing accessions to our society from more enlightened regions, it would be a wonder did we not attain in time to a level with many other and older-settled countries, who are apt to look abroad with serene complacency gathering motes in open eyes, We have had our castles in the air, and some of them are now underground; but we have read of South Sea bubbles, rise and fall in stocks, 'On to Richmonds,' McClellans, and Congress; and we don't think the beams are all in our own eyes and the motes too.
In fact we are not heathen nor barbarian, Goth nor Vandal, Hottentot nor Fire Eater—but bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh—one with you in all the customs, proprieties, civilization, and hopes of the great American people; bound to save the republic of our fathers, if we go to the death in defence of our mutual rights, principles, and homes.
Do you ask then, 'What is the need of saying all this, since we know it all?' I reply, there is need of saying it, and of repeating it again. There may not be need of it for you, my friend; there is need of it for many others. Talk not of making us of one flesh twain. It cannot be. It is not a question of mere interest that shall bind us as a people inseparably in one. God will not solder a chain. It is a higher bond, a holier bond. We are essentially and intrinsically one; one by nature; one by mutual sympathies, by blood relations, by dearest ties; one in all that constitutes the unity of a family relation; one in heart, one in aim, one in mind, purpose, education, and will. None can make us two. Lines may be drawn by ambitious schemers, divisions discussed, but these do not constitute separation or alienation. The heart of the people beats in profound and resolute unison. What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.
Rise, then, as thou art already rising, great heart of the troubled nation, throb from one confine to the other, bid faction's agitation hush, crush down opposition, scorn the unholy threat, dash the traitorous scheme, and declare the resolute and solemn purpose of all the members to live and govern together, as parts of the same living unity, till the whole body politic becomes a prostrate, lifeless corpse. And from the western border of the States, even from among the youngest and least of the children of the Union of Seventy-six, the union of oaths and the union of hearts, the union of instincts and the union of hopes, do we, in the name of her daughters and sons, bid you, upon the eastern confines, and the States between, you the mothers, and you the elder daughters, all hail, and God speed you in the work of forging anew, even in the fierce fires, the links that bind us into one; 'so making peace.'
For we are of you and with you, and will be ever, while our setting sun is your rising sun—ever, until we become two distinct and divergent races—till you cease to be Joseph and we cease to be Benjamin—till you become Edom and we become Moab—till long centuries shall have erased all kindred ties and bonds of consanguinity, and all men, forgetful of history, shall sink together into vassalage and ancient barbarism. But until then we are one in heart, one in life, and must abide one in fact, or sink together to common shameful desolation.
THE CAVALIER THEORY REFUTED.
A remarkable feature of all discussions of questions connected with the present civil war, is the lack of any attempt to question the foundation of important assertions. Our orators and writers have been ready to explain or soften adverse statements, but they have rarely questioned the existence of any asserted facts. One of the most persistent assumptions of the secessionists has been that the inhabitants of their States are the descendants of the gentry of England, and that the Unionists of the loyal States have neither any identity of origin nor a historical pedigree. On this assumed fact they build two arguments: first, that being homogeneous, they are united to a degree to which the Northerners can never attain; secondly, that the English people, and especially the English gentry, are closely allied to them in blood, and should naturally sympathize with them in their voluntary opposition to the constituted Government.
I propose to show that not only are these assertions unfounded, but that the reverse is the truth; and this I feel authorized in doing for several reasons.