sombre, dreary habiliments. Ah, God! to pass through these hospitals where lie the young men who a year ago were the ruddy flowers of happy homes! To see the wounded, rebel and loyal, seated on straw in wagons, foot-sole to foot-sole, the same clear, frank eyes meeting each other, the same young, honest voices from both, and not to see the horrid demon driving both! Alas for the hearts on the battlefield and those at home; for the ball that pierces any soldier's heart never lodges there, but speeds onward to pierce other hearts far away; and for the broken prophecies and promises of life; for those whose life ebbs away to-day where no hand is near to soothe, no kind one near to receive the last sigh, and treasure for the dear ones at home the last message of love! You are our President, and, in a sacred sense, these are all your children; and now you seem to me like one whose name you bear, and who, in obedience to the first Voice which he heard, laid his beloved son upon the altar of the Highest; but when thus his faith was proved, lo, an angel appeared, and cried, Stay thy hand! and the angel pointed to a brute which God had provided for that sacrifice in place of his son. Father, you have done well in obeying the first voice which called for the painful sacrifice of your own children; but listen well, I implore you, if there be not an angel of peace crying, Stay thy hand! Watch well if there be not a shining finger pointing to the Brute which, and which alone, God hath provided for the sacrifice of this hour!

XXI

SURSUM CORDA

LEADEN is the casket before us, and on it is written, "Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath."

Leaden, meagre, and pale; but he is a fool who would choose the caskets of gold and silver in its place; for it contains Liberty.

Bresquet, jester to Francis I, kept a Calendar of Fools. When Charles V, confiding in the generosity of Francis, passed through France to appease the rebellion of Gaunt, Bresquet put that Emperor into the Calendar of Fools. His king asked him the cause. He answered, "Because you have suffered at the hands of Charles the greatest bitterness that ever prince did from another; nevertheless, he would trust his person into your hands." " Why, Bresquet," said the king, "what wilt thou say if thou seest him pass back in as great safety as if he marched through the midst of Spain." Said Bresquet, "Why, then I will put him out of the Calendar of Fools, and put you in."

History also keeps a Calendar of Fools.

It has already ascribed it to the insanity and folly, which, thank God, form such large composite parts of all evil, that Slavery has cast off its legal protection, and passes through the country it has so foully wronged, a branded felon and outlaw. But if this be asinine in Slavery, what place in History's Calendar of Fools will be too prominent for this nation, should it permit this devil to pass as safely as ever, crushing under his cloven foot every fair growth of Liberty, and impudently defying the country upon which he has brought every conceivable woe?

There is danger that, if left to our politicians, this

golden hour will simply inscribe "Yankee" on the Calendar of Fools; for there is nothing so unfathomably stupid as moral cowardice. "Fear nothing but fear," says Montaigne. To-day you can count on the fingers of one hand the men in Washington who can say Abolitionist without the normal prefix dammed. When the President, even, wishes to use the phrase in a friendly way, he says Abolishment. It is plain that these men can be used by the earnest hearts of America only for filtration. As the waters of our great Western rivers are passed through filters of stone before they are clear enough to drink, so the somewhat muddy streams of American Liberty must find in Cabinet and Congress their stony filters, whose restraint will be purifying.

But it will be purifying only if we see that the streams pass through them: remaining checked by them, the waters shall become stagnant and poisonous.

We have no Joshua to bid the sun stand still and prolong our Golden Hour beyond its last diamond minute. Meanwhile, the inevitable horizon of earthly necessity approaches nearer and nearer to it. The exigencies of Northern society may assist traitors to put an end to this war, even if it be not a noble end: the heavy taxes may bring men down on their bellies. The rude state of society in the South, not more complex than an oyster, can coexist with the rude conditions of war; but the North will presently find an apology for evading the responsibility it should fulfil; for it has no right to allow a barbarous Slaverydespotism to build itself upon a half of this continent.

But will foreign powers allow this war to continue indefinitely?

Revolutions are not bad, sometimes; the revolutions of this planet, for instance; they go on and do not upset the

world's universal table, nor rust its loom, nor interfere with France's afternoon cigar. Nay! by such revolution all these are supplied. It seems to get a slow entrance into the American cerebrum, that in a family of nations, as in a family of individuals, one member is not permitted to throw all the rest into confusion. Enough time is to be allowed for the vindication of national as of personal individuality; but when nationality becomes burning down St. Paul's to broil Jonathan's steak, then nationality is the synonym of nuisance. It is sure to be abated. My American masters, if you desire to have the nations pause and admire before your Revolution, and not hustle it off as a sham, let it be one spheral and vital, leading on springtide and waving summer-fields, for you and for the weary world. Heavens! what an opportunity you have for this!

The most imminent danger now, as it has been from the first, is that we may be induced by the semi-loyal States, whose treachery is all the more dangerous because it believes itself the only loyalty, to allow Slavery to remain unburied, to be revived under their moonshine.

Few as are the slaveholders and the slaves in these Border States, let us not be deceived into thinking them of little importance in the issue. There is a German maxim which reads, "Give the Devil a lock of your hair, and he will be sure to get your whole head."

Three Hessian flies only were seen upon the cabin wall of a Dutch ship which approached an American wharf; now what field in the continent has not known the devastations of the Hessian fly? Six Norway rats swam ashore from another Dutch ship in our waters; now where is the cellar without them? Two hundred and forty years ago twenty slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia, in

Dutch ship No. 3; now where can you go, from Bunker Hill to Sumter, without hearing the rattle of a slave's chain ?

Brothers, let us make a clean sweep of this thing whilst we are about it!

An ancient Persian scripture says: "Justice is so dear to the heart of Nature, that if at last an atom of injustice should be found, the blue sky would shrivel like a snakeskin to cast it off."

A single slave held in this nation will break it to fragments again, and as often as we try it; just as a single powder-grain, ignited at the heart of the rock of Gibraltar would rive it asunder. Will those who know that the rights of the poorest man are of more importance than a thousand unions ever keep silent or patient with even one fetter in the land? By God, never!

These slaves of the loyal States we take because they are essential to any permanent peace in the country, and if we are compelled to abnormal strife for peace, we have a military right to strive for a permanent peace, and not merely to defeat an army in this or that engagement. We take these slaves as we have taken the houses and stock of loyal men on our march. Let them bring in their bills. Doubtless we shall have to pay more than the number of loyal slaveholders would warrant; for we shall be sure to find, when pay-day comes, that every slaveholder had been all along a very Abdiel for fidelity: but who shall stop to count the money that goes to ransom a race and a nation from the slavery which buys and sells the bodies of the one and the souls of the other?

We shall need liberation first in these Border States, not only because we must make a clean sweep of the evil, but because these Border State negroes are to be our guar