American Dangers and Duties

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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.

The idea of society founded on civil and religious liberty for all men has laid the foundation of eighteen American states, containing, in 1860, 18,000,000 of people; the best commonwealths that were ever created in a time so brief. It has also, in less degree, influenced the rising confederacy of the Canadas, and is slowly preparing that vast region for self-government. It has diverted a large emigration from the Southern States, of men attracted by the hopes and opportunities of free society. Its possessions stretch from the northeastern coast of the Atlantic with southwesterly inclination to the southern shores of the Pacific, nearing the lower extremity of North America.

Although by no means of equal development, society in these eighteen free states is founded on the immutable principles of the natural rights of man. The laborer is a free man and a citizen. Social life is a democracy in which service to the community is the chief claim to preeminence. Education is the boon of every child, and the press and speech are free. The ballot in several Northern States is absolutely free to all men, and the current is setting in that direction in the remainder. In all these states the free worship of God is secured by fundamental law. The radical tendency among these 18,000,000 of people is towards the complete establishment of a Christian democracy. Already the superiority of this portion of the Republic in all the elements of civilization is undisputed. Its commercial and industrial enterprise is the controlling force of the country’s material prosperity. Its agriculture leads in the majority of crops that can be tilled on northern soil; and it has three crops, either of which can buy up the whole special productions of the southern states. It is the seat of popular education. Its literature and art, and general refinement of life, represent the Union to the world. The present census brings it into its great inheritance of overwhelming political power. Its religion is nearer the Sermon on the Mount than ever was reached by 18,000,000 of people before. It is headed towards the kingdom of God more decisively than any nation of ancient or modern times.

But the north is by no means yet in the kingdom. Each of its radical ideas of free society is violated and perverted by a considerable portion of every commonwealth; some of its principles by entire states. Out of the competitions of free labor has sprung a fierce and selfish love of money which scorns honesty and tramples down man in its accursed lust for gold. Whole classes of men are cursed by this venal insanity which, culminating in the marble streets of the commercial metropolis, distills its venom to the remotest log cabin in the wilderness. Out of the opportunities of free social life has sprung a mushroom growth of vulgar social ambition, luxury and sensuality; which struggles to become the fashion on the pavement of the Atlantic city and in the “percussion” village of the west. The sacred freedom of printing and speech has been perverted to a satanic press and the open advocacy of every vagary of despotism and sin. Political freedom has been demoralized to the freedom of unlimited office seeking, the betrayal of human rights for individual success and fearful corruption in public affairs. And out of the noblest feature of our church, its liberty of worship, comes that pernicious strife for sectarian supremacy and worldly success which endangers the most liberal religious organizations.

These abuses of northern society marshal a host in New England. They rage through the great cities of the Middle States. They demoralize multitudes on the prairies, and on the Pacific struggle with fearful intensity for the possession of society. The point to which this tendency gravitates is popular servility. So we have, in the North, a great crowd of men and women debauched by the abuse of the opportunities of free society, to the point of yielding to the blandishments and menaces of any despotism that promises to pay its way.