Theodore Parker：《美洲人权》节选（第九章）

THE RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA
Publisher：Boston, American Unitarian association，1911.

THE RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA

1854

And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their
soul. PSALM cvi. 15.

Next Tuesday will be the seventy-eighth anniversary of

American Independence. The day suggests
a national subject as theme for meditation this morning.
The condition of America makes it a dark and
a sad meditation. I ask your attention, therefore, to
a sermon of the Dangers which threaten the Rights of
Man in America.

The human race is permanent as the Mississippi, and
like that is fed from springs which never dry ; but the
several nations are as fleeting as its waves. In the
great tide of humanity, States come up, one after the
other, a wave or a bubble ; each lasts its moment, then
dies passed off, forgot :

" Or like the snow-falls in the river,
A moment white then melts forever,"

while the great stream of humanity rolls ever forward,
from time to eternity : not a wave needless ; not a
snow flake, no drop of rain or dew, no ephemeral bub
ble, but has its function to perform in that vast, un
measured, never-ending stream.

How powerless appears a single man! He is one
of a thousand million men; the infinitesimal of a vul
gar fraction ; one leaf on a particular tree in the forest.
A single nation, like America, is a considerable part
of mankind now living; but when compared with the

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334 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

human race of all time, past and to come, it seems as
nothing; it is but one bough in the woods. Nay, the
population of the earth, to-day, is but one tree in the
wide primeval forest of mankind, which covers the
earth and outlasts the ages. The leaf may fall and
not be missed from the bough; the branch may be
rudely broken off, and its absence not marked; the
tree will die and be succeeded by other trees in the
forest, green with summer beauty, or foodful and
prophetic with autumnal seed. Tree by tree, the
woods will pass away, and, unobserved, another forest
take its place, arising, also, tree by tree.

How various the duration of States or men dying
at birth, or lasting long periods of time ! For more
than three thousand years, Egypt stood the queen of
the world s young civilization, invincible as her own
pyramids, which yet time and the nations alike respect.
From Romulus, the first half-mythologic king of the
seven-hilled city, to Augustulus, her last historic em
peror, it is more than twelve centuries. At this day
the Austrian, the Spanish, the French and German sov
ereigns sit each on a long-descended throne. Victoria
is " daughter of a hundred kings." Pope Pius the
Ninth claims two hundred and fifty-six predecessors,
canonical and infallible. His chair is reckoned
more than eighteen hundred years old; and it rests on
an Etrurian platform yet ten centuries more ancient.
The Turkish throne has been firmly fixed at Constanti
nople for four hundred years. Individual tyrants,
like summer flies, are short-lived; but tyranny is old
and lasting. The family of ephemera, permanent
amid the fleeting, is yet as old as that of elephants,
and will last as long.

But free governments have commonly been brief.



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 335

If the Hebrew people had well-nigh a thousand years
of independent national life, their commonwealth
lasted but about three centuries; the flower of their
literature and religion was but little longer. The his
toric period of Greece begins 776 B. c. ; her inde
pendence was all over in six hundred and thirty years.
The Roman deluge had swallowed it up. No Deucal
ion and Pyrrha could re-people the land with men.
Her little states how brief was their hour of free
dom for the people ! From the first annual archon of
Athens to her conquest by Philip, and the death of her
liberty, it was only two hundred and forty-five years !
Her tree of freedom grew in a narrow field of time
and briefly bore its age-outlasting fruit of science,
literature, and art. Now the tree is dead ; its frag
ments are only curious Athenian stone. The Grecian
colonies in the East, ^Etolian, Dorian, Ionian how
fair they flourished in the despotic waste of Asia ! how
soon those liberal blossoms died! Even her colonies
in the advancing West had no long independent life.
Cyrene, Syracusa, Agrigentum, Crotona, Massilia,
Saguntum, how soon they died ! flowers which the
savage winter swiftly nipped.

The Roman commonwealth could not endure five
hundred years. Her theocratic Tarquin the Proud
must be succeeded by a more despotic dictator, with
the style of democrat ; and Rome, abhorring still the
name of king, must see all her liberties laid low. The
red sea of despotism opened to let pass one noble troop
the elder Brutus at the head, the younger bringing
up the rear then closed again and swallowed up that
worse than Egyptian host, clamoring only for " bread
and games ! "

The republics of Italy in the middle ages were no



336 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

more fortunate. The half-Grecian commonwealths,
Naples, Amalfi, Gaeta, what promise they once
held forth ; and what a warning fate 1 They were only
born to die. A similar destiny befell the towns of
more northern Italy, where freedom later found a
home, Milan, Padua, Genoa, Verona, Venice, Bo
logna, Florence, Pisa. Nay, in the midnight of the
dark ages, seven hundred years ago, in the very city
of the Popes and Csars, in the center of that red
Roman sea of despotism, there was a momentary spot
of dry free land; and Arnaldo da Brescia eloquently
spoke of " Roman Liberty." The " Roman Repub
lic " and " Roman Senate " became once more fa
miliar words. Italian liberty, Lombard republics,
how soon they all went down ! No city not even
Florence kept the people s freedom safe three hun
dred years. Silently the wealthy nobles and despotic
priests sapped the walls. Party spirit blinded the else
clear eyes : " the State may perish ; let the faction
thrive." The Republicans sought to crush the ad
jacent feeble States. They forgot justice, the higher
law of God: unworthy of liberty, they fell and died!
Let the tyrant swallow up the Italian towns ; they were
unfit for freedom. " A generous disdain of one man s
will is to republics what chastity is to woman ; " they
spurned this austere virtue. Let them serve their des
pots. " Liberty withdrew from a people who dis
graced her name." Let Dante burn his poetic brand
of infamy into the forehead of his countrymen. But
while freedom lasted, how fair was her blossom, how
rich and sweet her fruit! What riches, what beauty,
what science, letters, art, came of that noble stock!
Italy was the world s wonder for a day ; its sorrow
ever since. So the cactus flowers into one gorgeous



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 337

ecstasy of bloom; then the excessive blossom, with
withering collapse, swoons and dies of its voluptuous
and tropical delight.

Liberty wanders from the North, through Italy, the
fairest of all earthly lands ; then sits sadly down on
the tallest of the Alps, and once more reviews those
famous towns; the jewels that adorn the purple robe
of history all tarnished, shattered, spoiled. Slowly
she turns her face northward and longs for hope. But
even the Teutonic towns, where freedom ever wore a
sober dress, were only spots of sunshine in a day of
wintry storm. Swiss, German, Dutch, they were brief
as fair. In Novogorod and in Poland, how soon was
Slavonian freedom lost !

So in a winter day in the country have I seen a little
frame of glass screening from the northern snow and
ice a nicely sheltered spot, where careful hands tended
little delicate plants, for beauty and for use. How
fair the winter garden seemed amid the wildering snow,
and else all-conquering frost! The little roses lifted
up their face and kissed the glass which sheltered from
the storm. But anon, some rude hand broke the frail
barrier down, and in an hour the plants were frozen,
stiff and dead ; and the little garden was all filled with
snow and ice ; a garden now no more !

How often do you see in a great city a man per
ish in his youth, bowed down by lusts of the body.
The graves of such stand thick along the highway
of our mortal life, numberless, nameless, or all too
conspicuously marked. Other men we see early
bowed down by their ambition, and they live a life
far worse than merely sensual death themselves the
ghastliest monuments, beacons of ruin ! And so, along

the highway that mankind treads, there are the open
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338 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

sepulchers of nations, which perished of their sin;
or else transformed to stone, the gloomy sphinxes
sit there by the wayside a hard, dread, awful les
son to the nations that pass by. Let America,

" The heir of all the ages ! and the youngest born of time ! "

gather up every jewel which the prodigal scattered
from his hand, look down into his grave, and then
confront these gloomy, awful sphinxes, and learn what
lessons of guidance they have ; or of warning, if it
alone is to be found! Ever the sphinx has a riddle
which we needs must learn, or else perish.

The greater part of a nation s life is not delight ;
it is discipline. A famous political philosopher, who
has survived two revolutionary storms in France, has
just now written, " God has made the condition of
all men more severe than they are willing to believe.
He causes them at all times to purchase the success
of their labors and the progress of their destiny
at a dearer price than they had anticipated."

The merchant knows how difficult it is to acquire
a great estate; the scholar, youthful and impatient,
well understands that the way of science or of letters
is steep and hard to climb; the farmer, knowing the
stern climate of New England, her niggard soil, rises
early and retires late, and is never off his guard.
These men all thrive. But, alas ! the people of Amer
ica do not know on what severe conditions alone na
tional welfare is to be won. Human nature is yet
only a New England soil and climate for freedom to
grow in.

Nations may come to an end through the decay
of the family they belong to; and thus they may
die out of old age, for there is an infancy, man-



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA

hood, and old age to a nation as well as to a man.
Then the nation comes to a natural end, and like
a shock of corn fully ripe, in its season, it is gath
ered to its people. But I do not find that any State
has thus lived out its destiny, and died a natural
death.

Again, States may perish by outward violence, mil
itary conquest, for as the lion in the wilderness
eateth up the wild ass, so the strong nations devour
the weak. But this happened most often in ancient
times, when men and States were more rapacious even
than now.

Thirdly, States may perish through their own vice,
moral or political. Their national institutions may
be a defective machine which works badly, and fails
of producing national welfare of body or spirit. It
may not secure national unity of action there be
ing no national gravitation of the great masses which
fly asunder; or it may fail of individual variety of
action having no personal freedom ; excessive na
tional gravitation destroys individual cohesion, and
pulls the people flat ; the men are slaves ; they can
not reach the moral and spiritual welfare necessary
for a nation s continuous life. In both these cases
the vice is political; the machinery is defective, made
after false ideas. Or when the institutions are good
and capable of accommodating the nation s increase and
growth, the vice may be moral, lying deeper in the
character of the people. They may have a false and
unimprovable form of religion, which suits not the
nature of man or of God, and which consequently
produces a false system of morals, and so corrupts the
nation s heart. They may become selfish, gross, cow
ardly, atheistic, and so decay inwardly and perish.



340 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

If left all alone, such a people will rot down and
die of internal corruption. Mexico is in a perishing
condition to-day ; so is Spain ; so are some of the
young nations of South America, and some of the
old of Asia and Europe. Nothing can ever save Tur
key, not all the arms of all the allied West ; and
though Protestant and Catholic join hands, Christen
dom cannot propagate Mahometanism, nor keep it
from going down.

Leave these nations to their fate and they will
die. But commonly, they are not left to themselves ;
other people rush in and conquer. The wild indi
vidual man is rapacious by instinct. The present
nations are rapacious also by calculation ; they prey
on feeble States. The hooded crow of Europe
watches for the sickly sheep. In America the wolves
prowl round the herd of buffaloes and seize the sickly,
the wounded, and the old. And so there are scaven
gers of the nations, filibusters, the flesh-flies and
carrion-vultures of the world, who have also their
function to perform. Wealth and power are never
left without occupants. Rome was corrupt, her
institutions bad, her religion worn out, her morals des
perate ; northern nations came upon her. " Whereso
ever the body is, thither the eagles will be gathered
together."

In Europe there are nations in this state of decay,
from moral or political vice. All the Italo-Greek pop
ulations, most of the Celto-Roman, all the Celtic, all
the old Asiatic populations the Hungarians and
Turks. The Teutonic and Slavic families alone seem
to prosper, full of vigorous, new life, capable of mak
ing new improvements, to suit the altered phases of
the world.



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA

In America there is only one family in a condition
of advance, of hardy health. Spanish America is
in a state of decay; she has a bad form of religion,
and bad morals ; her republics only " guarantee the
right of assassination ; " an empire is her freest state.
But in the north of North America the Anglo-Saxon
British colonies rapidly advance in material and spir
itual development, and one day doubtless they will
separate from the parent stem and become an inde-
dependent tree. The roots of England run under the
ocean; they come up in Africa, India, Australia,
America, in many an island of all the seas. Great
fresh, living trunks grow up therefrom. One day
these offshoots will become self-supporting, with new
and independent roots, and ere long will separate from
the parent stem ; then there will be a great Anglo-
Saxon trunk in Australia, another in India, another
in Africa, another in the north of our own continent,
and yet others scattered over the manifold islands of
the sea, an Anglo-Saxon forest of civilization.

But in the center of the North American continent,
the same Anglo-Saxons have passed from their first
condition of scattered and dependent colonies, and
become a united and independent nation, five-and-
twenty millions strong. Our fellow-countrymen here
in America compose one-fortieth part of all the in
habitants of the globe. We are now making the
greatest political experiment which the sun ever looked
down upon.

First, we are seeking to found a State on industry,
and not war. All the prizes of America are rewards
of toil, not fighting. We are ruled by the constable,
not by the soldier. It is only in exceptional cases,
when the liberal institutions of America are to be



THE RIGHTS OF MAN

trodden under foot, that the constable disappears,
and the red arm of the soldier clutches at the people s
throat. That is the first part of our scheme we are
aiming to found an industrial State.

Next, the national theory of the government is a
democracy the government of all, by all, for all.
All officers depend on election, none are foreordained.
There are to be no special privileges, only natural,
universal rights.

It would be a fair spectacle, a great industrial
commonwealth, spread over half the continent, and
folding in its bosom one-fortieth of God s whole fam
ily ! It is a lovely dream ; not Athenian Plato, nor
English Thomas More, nor Bacon, nor Harrington,
ever dared to write on paper so fair an ideal as our
fathers and we have essayed to put into men. I once
thought this dream of America would one day be
come a blessed fact! We have many elements of na
tional success. Our territory for quantity and quality
is all we could ask ; our origin is of the Caucasian s
best. No nation had ever so fair a beginning as
we. The Anglo-Saxon is a good hardy stock
for national welfare to grow on. To my American
eye, it seems that human nature had never anything
so good for popular liberty to be grafted into. We
are already strong, and fear nothing from any foreign
power. The violent cannot take us by force. No
nation is our enemy.

But the question now comes, Is America to live or
to die? If we live, what life shall it be? Shall we
fall into the sepulcher of departed States a new de
bauchee of the nations? Shall we live petrified to
stone, a despotism many-headed, sitting another
sphinx by the wayside of history, to scare young



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 343

nations in their march and impede their progress? Or
shall we pursue the journey a great, noble-hearted
commonwealth, a nation possessing the continent, full
of riches, full of justice, full of wisdom, full of piety,
and full of peace? It depends on ourselves. It is
for America, for this generation of Americans, to say
which of the three shall happen. No fate holds us up.
Our character is our destiny.

I am not a timid man ; I am no excessive praiser of
times passed by; I seldom take counsel of my fears,
often of my hopes ; but now I must say that since
76 our success was never so doubtful as at this time.
England is in peril; the despots on the Continent hate
her free Parliament, which makes laws for the people
-just laws; they hate her free speech, which tells
every grievance at home or abroad ; they hate her
free soil, which offers a home to every exile, republican
or despotic. England is in peril, for every tyrant
hates her. Russia is in danger, for the two strongest
powers of Christendom have just clasped hands, and
sworn an oath to fight against that great marauding
empire of the East. Their armies threaten her cities ;
her sovereign deserts his capital; her treasure is car
ried a thousand miles inward ; the western fleets block
ade her ports and sweep her navies from the sea. But
Russia has no peril like ours ; England has no danger
so great as that which threatens us this day: In the
darkest periods of the American Revolution, when
Washington s army, without blankets, without coats,
without shoes, fled through the Jerseys, when they
marked the ice of the Delaware, and left revolutionary
tracks in frozen blood, we were not in such peril as
to-day. When General Gage had the throat of Bos
ton in his hand, and perfidiously disarmed the people,



THE RIGHTS OF MAN

we were not in such danger. Yea, when four hun
dred houses in yonder town went up in one great
cloud of smoke towards heaven, the liberties of Amer
ica were not in such peril as they are to-day. Then
we were called to fight with swords and when that
work was to be done, was America ever found wanting ?
Then our adversary was the other side of the sea, and
wicked statutes were enacted against us in Westmin
ster Hall. Now our enemy is at home ; and some
thing far costlier than swords is to be called into
service.

Look at some of these dangers. I shall pass by all
that are trifling. I find four great perils. Here
they are :

I. There comes the danger from our exclusive de
votion to riches.

II. The danger from the Roman Catholic Church,
established in the midst of us.

III. The danger from the idea that there is no
higher law above the statutes which men make.

IV. The danger from the institution of slavery,
which is based on that atheistic idea last named.

I. OF THE DANGER WHICH COMES FROM OUR EXCLU
SIVE DEVOTION TO RICHES.

Power is never left without a possessor: when it fell
from the theocratic and military classes, from the
priest, the noble, and the king, it passed to the hands of
the capitalists. In America, ecclesiastical office is not
power; noble or royal birth is of small value. If
Madison or Jefferson had left any sons but mulattoes,
their distinguished birth would avail them nothing.
The son of Patrick Henry lived a strolling school-



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 345

master, and a pauper s funeral was asked for his
body. Money is power; the only permanent and
transmissible power ; it goes by device. Money " can
ennoble sots and slaves and cowards."

It gives rank in the Church. The millionaire is
always a saint. The priests of commerce will think
twice before damning a man who enhances their sal
ary and gives them dinners. In one thing the Amer
ican heaven resembles the New Jerusalem : its
pavement is " of fine gold." The capitalist has the
chief seat in our Christian synagogue. It is a rare
minister who dares assail a vice which has riches on its
side. Is there a clergyman at the South who speaks
against the profitable wickedness which chains three
million American men ? How few at the North !
European gentility is ancient power ; American is new
money hot from the stamping.

In society, money is genteel; it is always respecta
ble. The high places of society do not belong to
ecclesiastical men, as in Rome; to military men, as
in St. Petersburg; to men of famous family, as in
England and Spain ; to men of science and literature,
men of genius, as in Berlin ; but to rich men.

Money gives distinction in literature, so far as the
literary class can control the public judgment. The
colleges revere a rich man s son; they name profes
sorships after such as endow them with money, not
mind. Critics respect a rich man s book ; if he has
not brains, he has brass, which is better. The cap
italist is admitted a member of the Academies of Arts
and Sciences, of collegiate societies ; if he cannot write
dissertations, he can give suppers, and there must be
a material basis for science. At anniversaries, he re
ceives the honorary degree. " Tis easier to weigh



J34-6 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

purses, sure, than brains." A dull scholar is expelled
from college for idleness, and twenty years later returns
to New England with half a million of money, and
gets his degree. As he puzzles at the Latin diploma,
he asks, " If I had come home poor, I wonder how
long it would have taken the Alma Mater to find
out that I was ever a good scholar, and now merited
an honorary degree - - facts which I never knew be
fore ! "

In politics, money has more influence here than in
Turkey, Austria, Russia, England, or Spain. For
in our politics the interest of property is preferred
before all others. National legislation almost invaria
bly favors capital, and not the laboring hand. The
Federalists feared that riches would not be safe in
America the many would plunder the wealthy few.
It was a groundless fear. In an industrial common
wealth, property is sure of popular protection.
Where all own hayricks no one scatters firebrands.
Nowhere in the world is property so secure or so
much respected ; for it rests on a more natural basis
than elsewhere. Nowhere is wealth so powerful, in
Church, society, and State. In Kentucky and else
where, it can take the murderer s neck out of the hal
ter. It can make the foolish " wise ; " the dull man
" eloquent ; " the mean man " honorable, one of our
most prominent citizens ; " the heretic " sound ortho
dox;" the ugly "fair;" the old man a "desirable
young bridegroom." Nay, vice itself becomes virtue,
and man-stealing is Christianity!

Here, nothing but the voter s naked ballot holds
money in check : there are no great families with their
historic tradition, as in all Europe ; no bodies of liter
ary or scientific men to oppose their genius to mere



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 347

material gold. The Church is no barrier, only its serv
ant, for when the minister depends on the wealth of
his parish for support, you know the common con
sequence. Lying rides on obligation s back. The
minister respects the hand that feeds him : " the ox
knoweth his owner, and the ass his master s crib."
Yet now and then a minister looks starvation in the
face, and continues his unpopular service of God.
No political institutions check the authority of wealth ;
it can bribe and buy the venal ; the brave it sometimes
can intimidate and starve. Money can often carry
a bill through the legislature State or national.
The majority is hardly strong enough to check this
pecuniary sway.

In the " most democratic " States, gold is most
powerful. Thus, in fifteen States of America, three
hundred thousand proprietors own thirteen hundred
millions of money invested in men. In virtue thereof
they control the legislation of their own States, making
their institutions despotic, and not republican; they
keep the poor white man from political power, from
comfort, from the natural means of education and
religion; they destroy his self-respect, and leave him
nothing but his body; from the poorest of the poor,
they take away his body itself. Next they control
the legislation of America; they make the President,
they appoint the Supreme Court, they control the
Senate, the Representatives; they determine the do
mestic and foreign policy of the nation. Finally,
they affect the laws of all the other sixteen States
the Southern hand coloring the local institutions of
New Haven and Boston.

That is only one example one of many. Russia
is governed by a long-descended czar; England by a



348 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

queen, nobles, and gentry, men of ancient family,
with culture and riches. America is ruled by a troop
of men with nothing but new money and what it brings
-three hundred thousand slaveholders and their
servants, North and South. Boston is under their
thumb ; at their command the mayor spits in the face
of Massachusetts law, and plants a thousand bayonets
at the people s throat. They make ball-cartridges
under the eaves of Faneuil Hall.

Accordingly, money is the great object of desire
and pursuit. There are material reasons why this is
so in many lands : in America there are also social,
political, and ecclesiastical reasons for it. " To be
rich is to be blessed : poverty is damnation : " that is
the popular creed.

The public looks superficially at the immediate ef
fect of this opinion, at this exceeding and exclusive
desire for riches ; they see its effect on Israel and John
Jacob, on Stephen, Peter, and Robert: it makes them
rich, and their children respectable and famous. Few
ask, What effect will this have on the nation? They
foresee not the future evil it threatens. Nay, they
do not consider how it debauches the institutions of
America ecclesiastical, academic, social, political ;
how it corrupts the hearts of the people, making them
prize money as the end of life, and manhood as only
the means thereto, making money master, and human
nature its tool or servant, but no more.

The political effect of this unnatural esteem for
riches is not at all well understood. History but
too plainly tells of the dangerous power of priests or
nobles consolidated into a class, and their united forces
directed by a single able head. The power of allied
kings, concentrating whole realms of men and money



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 349

on a single point; the effect of armies and navies col
lected together and marshaled by a single will; is all
too boldly written in the ruin of many a State. We
have often been warned against the peril from forts,
and castles, and standing armies. But the power of
consolidated riches, the peril which accumulated prop
erty may bring upon the liberties of an industrial
commonwealth, though formidably near, as yet is all
unknown, all unconsidered too. Already the consol
idated property of one-eightieth part of the popula
tion controls all the rest.

Two special causes, both exceptional and fleeting,
just now stimulate the acquisitiveness of America al
most to madness.

One is the rapid development of the art of manu
facturing the raw materials gathered from the bosom
or the surface of the earth. The invention of printing
made education and freedom possible on a large scale ;
one of the immediate results thereof is this the head
briefly performs the else long-protracted labor of the
hand. Wind, water, fire, steam, lightning, have be
come pliant forces to manufacture wood, flax, cotton,
wool, and all the metals. This result is nowhere so
noticeable as in New England, where education is al
most universal. The New England school-house is
the machine-shop of America. Wliat the State in
vests in slates and teachers pays dividends in hard
coin. This new power over the material world, the
first and unexpected commercial result of the public
education of the people, gives a great and perhaps
lasting stimulus to the pursuit of wealth. It affects the
most undisciplined portions of the world, for the edu
cated man leaves much rough labor for the ignorant,
and enhances the demand for the results of their toil.



350 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

The thinking head raises the wages of all mere hands.
Hence arises the increased value of slaves at the South,
and the rapid immigration of the most ignorant Irish
men to the North. They are to the thoughtful pro
jector what the Merrimac is to the cotton-spinner
a rude force pliant before his will. Dr. Faustus is
the unconscious pioneer of many a pilgrimage.

The other cause is the discovery of gold in Cali
fornia and then in Australia. This doubles or trebles
the pecuniary momentum of America. Its stimula
ting influence on our covetousness, accumulation, and
luxury, is obvious. What further and ultimate ef
fects it will produce I shall not now pause to inquire.
When a whirlwind rises, all men can see that dust is
mounting to the sky.

Besides, the form of American industry is changed.
Once New England and all the North were chiefly
agricultural; manufactures and commerce were con
ducted on a small scale ; and therein each man wrought
on his own account. There was a great deal of in
dividual activity, individuality of character. Few
men worked for wages. Now New England is mainly
manufacturing and commercial, Vermont is the only
farming State. Mechanics, men and women, work
for wages ; many in the employment of a single man ;
thousands in the pay of one company, organized by
superior ability. The workman loses his independ
ence, and is not only paid but governed also by his
employer s money. His opinions and character are
formed after the prescribed pattern, by the mill he
works in. The old military organizations for de
fense or aggression brought freedom of body dis
tinctly in peril: the new industrial organizations jeop
ardize spiritual individuality, all freedom of mind and



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 351

conscience. New England is a monumental proof
thereof.

Another change also follows : the military habits of
the North are all gone. Once New England had
more firelocks than householders ; every man was a sol
dier and a marksman. Now the people have lost their
taste for military discipline, and neither keep nor bear
arms. Of course a few holiday soldiers, called out by
a doctor, and commanded by an apothecary, can over
awe the town.

The Northern, and especially the Eastern and Mid
dle States, are the great center of this industrial de
velopment. Here, and especially in New England
the desire for riches has become so powerful that a
very large proportion of our men of the greatest
practical intellect have almost exclusively turned their
attention to purely productive business, to commerce
and manufactures. They rarely engage in the work
of politics unprofitable and distasteful to the in
dividual, and, at first sight, merely preservative and
defensive to the community. This they shun or
neglect, as the mass of men avoid military discipline.

The statutes must be made and administered by poli
ticians. Here they are not able men. Of the forty-
one New England delegates in Congress, of the six
governors, of the many other professional leaders in
politics, how many first-rate men are there? how many
middle-sized second-rate men? The control of the
national affairs passes out of the fingers of the North
which has yet three-fifths of the population, and
more than four-fifths of the speculative and practical
intelligence and material wealth. The nation is con
trolled by the South, whose ablest men almost exclu
sively attend to politics. Besides, the State politics



352 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

of the North fall into the hands of men quite inade
quate to such a weighty trust. This mistake is as
fatal as it would be in time of war to send all the able-
bodied men to the plough, and the women and children
to the camp. We are mismanaged at home, and dis
honorably routed in the Federal capital. In the pres
ent state of the world I think no nation would be
justified in turning non-resistant, tearing down its
forts, disbanding its armies, melting up its guns and
swords; and I am sure the North suffers sadly from
devoting so large a part of its masterly, practical men
to the productive work of commerce and manufactures.
Her politicians are not strong enough for her own de
fense. In American politics the great battle of ideas
and principles, yea, of measures, is to be fought.
Shall we keep our Washingtons surveying land?

The national effect of this estimate and accumula
tion of riches is to produce a great and rapid develop
ment of the practical understanding; a great love for
vulgar finery which pleases the palate or the eye ; great
luxury of dress, ornament, furniture. You see this
in the hotels and public carriages on land and sea, in
the costume of the nation, at public and private tables.
Along with this there comes a certain refinement of the
public taste.

But there is no proportionate culture of the higher
intellectual faculties of the reason and imagination ;
still less of yet nobler powers moral, affectional,
and religious. From the common school to the col
lege, the chief things taught are arithmetic and elocu
tion ; not the art to reason and create, but the trade to
calculate and express. Everything is measured by
the money standard. " The protection of property
is the great object of government." The politician



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 353

must suit the pecuniary interest of his constituency,
though at the cost of justice; the writer, author, or
editor, the pecuniary interest of his readers, though
at the sacrifice of truth; the minister, the pecuniary
interest of his audience, though piety and morality
both come to the ground. Mammon is a profitable
god to worship he gives dinners.

I think it must be confessed in the last eighty years
the general moral and religious tone of the people in
the free States has improved. This change comes
from the natural forward tendency of mankind, the
instinct of development quickened by our free institu
tions. But, at the same time, it is quite plain to me
that the moral and religious tone of American politi
cians, writers, and preachers, has proportionately and
absolutely gone down. You see this in the great
towns : if Boston were once the " Athens of America,"
she is now only the " Corinth." Athens has retreated
to some inland Salamis.

But, in general, this peril from the excessive pursuit
of riches comes unavoidably from our position in time
and space, and our consequent political institutions.
It belongs to the period of transition from the old
form of vicarious rule by theocratic, military, and
aristocratic governments, to the personal administra
tion of an industrial commonwealth. I do not much
fear this peril, nor apprehend lasting evil from it.
One of the great things which mankind now most needs
is power over the material world as the basis for the
higher development of our spiritual faculties. Wealth
is indispensable; it is the material pulp around the
spiritual seed. No nation was ever too rich, too well
fed, clad, housed, and comforted. The human race

still suffers from poverty, the great obstacle to our
XIII 22



354 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

progress. Doubtless we shall make many errors in
our national attempt to organize the productive forces
into an industrial State, as our fathers thousands of
years ago in organizing their destructive powers
into a military state. Once, man cut his fingers with
iron; he now poisons them with gold. All Christen
dom shares this peril, though America feels it most.
She is now like a thriving man who gets rich fast, and
thinks more than he ought of his money, and less of
his manhood. Some misfortune, the ruin of a prodi
gal son perishing in quicksands of gold, will, by and
by, convince him that riches is not the only thing in
life.

II. OF THE DANGER WHICH COMES FROM THE ROMAN
CATHOLIC CHURCH.

The Roman Catholic Church claims infallibility for
itself, and denies spiritual freedom, liberty of mind
or conscience, to its members. It is therefore the foe
to all progress ; it is deadly hostile to democracy. To
mankind this is its first command Submit to an ex
ternal authority ; subordinate your human nature to
an element foreign and abhorrent thereto ! It aims
at absolute domination over the body and the spirit of
man. The Catholic Church can never escape from the
consequences of her first principle. She is the nat
ural ally of tyrants, and the irreconcilable enemy of
freedom. Individual Catholics in America, as else
where, are inconsistent, and favor the progress of
mankind. Alas ! such are exceptional ; the Catholic
Church has an iron logic, and consistently hates lib
erty in all its forms free thought, free speech.

I quote the words of her own authors in America,
recently uttered by the press. " Protestantism



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 355

has not and never can have any rights where
Catholicity is triumphant." " We lose all the breath
we expend in declaiming against bigotry and intol
erance, and in favor of religious liberty." " Religious
liberty [in America] is merely endured until the op
posite can be carried into execution without peril to
the Catholic world." " Catholicity will one day rule
in America, and then religious liberty is at an end."
" The very name of Liberty . . . ought to be
banished from the very domain of religion." " No
man has a right to choose his religion." " Catholicism
is the most intolerant of creeds. It is intolerance it
self, for it is the truth itself." *

The Catholic population is not great in numbers.
In 1853, there were in America 1,71 churches, 1,574
priests, 396 theological students, 32 bishops, 7 arch
bishops, church-property worth about $10,000,000,
and 1,728,000 Catholics. But most of them are of
the Celtic stock, which has never much favored Prot
estantism or individual liberty in religion; and in this
respect is widely distinguished from the Teutonic pop
ulation, who have the strongest ethnological instinct for
personal freedom.

Besides, the Catholics are governed with absolute
rigor by their clergy, who are celibate priests, a social
caste by themselves, not sympathizing with mankind,
but emasculated of the natural humanities of our race.
There are exceptional men amongst them, but such
seems to be the rule with the class of Catholic priests
in America. They are united into one compact body,

* The above, and many more similar declarations, may be
found in a little pamphlet " Familiar Letters to John B.
Fitzpatrick, the Catholic Bishop of Boston, by an Independent
Irishman." Boston, 1854.



356 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

with complete corporate unity of action, and ruled
despotically by their bishops, archbishops, and pope.
The Catholic worshiper is not to think, but to believe
and obey ; the priest not to reason and consider, but
to proclaim and command; the voter is not to inquire
and examine, but to deposit his ballot as the ecclesias
tical authority directs. The better religious orders
do not visit America; the Jesuits, the most subtle
enemies of humanity, come in abundance ; some are
known, others stealthily prowl about the land, all the
more dangerous for their disguise. They all act under
the direction of a single head. One shrewd Protestant
minister may be equal to one Jesuit, but no ten or forty
Protestant ministers is a match for a combination of ten
Jesuits, bred to the business of deception, knowing no
allegiance to truth or justice, consciously disregarding
the higher law of God, with the notorious maxim that
" the end justifies the means," bound to their order by
the most stringent oath, and devoted to the worst pur
poses of the Catholic Church.

All these priests owe allegiance to a foreign head.
It is not an American Church ; it is Roman, not free,
individual, but despotic; nay, in its designs not so
much human as merely papal.

The Catholic Church opposes everything which fa
vors democracy and the natural rights of man. It
hates our free churches, free press, and, above all, our
free schools. No owl more shuns the light. It hates
the rule of majorities, the voice of the people; it loves
violence, force, and blood.

The Catholic clergy are on the side of slavery.
They find it is the dominant power, and pay court
thereto that they may rise by its help. They love
slavery itself; it is an institution thoroughly congenial



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 557

to them, consistent with the first principles of their
Church. Their Jesuit leaders think it is " an ulcer
which will eat up the Republic," and so stimulate and
foster it for the ruin of democracy, the deadliest foe
of the Roman hierarchy.

Besides, most of the Catholics are the victims of op
pression, poor, illiterate, oppressed, and often
vicious. Their circumstances have ground the hu
manity out of them. No sect furnishes half so many
criminals victims of society before they become its
foes; no sect has so little philanthropy; none is so
greedy to oppress. All this is natural. The lower
you go down the coarser and more cruel do you find
the human being.

I am told there is not in all America a single Cath
olic newspaper hostile to slavery; not one opposed to
tyranny in general; not one that takes sides with the
oppressed in Europe. There is not in America a man
born and bred in the Catholic Church, who is eminent
for philosophy, science, literature, or art; none dis
tinguished for philanthropy ! The water tastes of the
fountain.

Catholic votes are in the market; the bishops can
dispose of them politicians will make their bid.
Shall it be the sacrifice of the free schools? of other
noble institutions? In some States it seems not un
likely.

I do not think our leading men see all this danger.
But the baneful influence of the Church of the dark
ages begins to show itself in the press, in the schools,
and still more in the politics of America. Yet I am
glad the Catholics come here. Let America be an
asylum for the poor and the downtrodden of all lands ;
let the Irish ships, reeking with misery, land their hu-



358 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

man burdens in our harbors. The continent is wide
enough for all. I rejoice that in America there is no
national form of religion ; let the Jew, the Chinese
Buddhist, the savage Indian, the Mormon, the Prot
estant, and the Catholic have free opportunity to be
faithful each to his own conscience. Let the American
Catholic have his bishops, his archbishops, and his
pope, his Jesuits, his convents, his nunneries, his celi
bate priesthood of hard drinkers, if he will. Let him
oppose the public education of the people ; oppose the
press, the meeting-house, and the ballot-box ; nay, op
pose temperance and religion, if he likes. If, with
truth and justice on our side, the few Catholics can
overcome the many Protestants, we deserve defeat.
We should be false to the first principles of democratic
theory, if we did not grant them their inalienable
rights. Let there be no tyranny ; let us pay the Cath
olics good for ill ; and cast out Satan by the finger
of God, not by the Prince of Devils. This peril is
easily mastered. The Catholic Church has still many
lessons to offer the Protestants.

III. OF THE DANGER FROM THE IDEA THAT THERE
IS NO HIGHER LAW ABOVE THE STATUTES OF MEN.

Of late years, it has been industriously taught iYi
America that there is no law of nature superior to the
statutes which men enact ; that politics are not amen
able to conscience or to God. Accordingly, the Amer
ican Congress knows no check in legislation but the
Constitution of the United States and the will of the
majority ; none in the Constitution of the Universe and
the will of God. The atheistic idea of the Jesuits,
that the end justifies the means, is made the first prin
ciple in American politics. Hence it has been repeat-



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 359

edly declared by " prominent clergymen " that poli
tics should not be treated of in the pulpit; they are
not amenable to religion ; Christianity has nothing to
do with making or administering the laws. When
the Pharisees and Sadducees have silenced the prophet
and the apostle, it is not difficult to make men believe
that Machiavelli is a great saint, and Jesuitism the
revealed religion of politics ! Let the legislators make
what wicked laws they will against the rights of man ;
the priest of commerce is to say nothing. Nay, the
legislators themselves are never to refer to justice and
the eternal right, only to the expediency of the hour.

Then when the statute is made, the magistrate is not
to ask if it be just, he is only to execute it; the peo
ple are to obey and help enforce the wicked enactment,
never asking if it be right. The highest virtue in the
people is " unquestioning submission to the Consti
tution ; " or, when the statute violates their conscience,
to do " a disagreeable duty ! " Thus the political ac
tion of the people is exempted from the jurisdiction
of God and His natural moral law ! " Christianity
has nothing to do with politics ! "

Within a few years this doctrine has been taught
in a great variety of forms. At first it came in with
evil laws, simply as the occasional support of a meas
ure ; at length it is announced as a principle. It has
taken a deep hold on the educated classes of the com
munity ; for our " superior education " is almost
wholly of the intellect, and of only its humbler pow
ers. It appears among the lawyers, the politicians,
the editors, and the ministers. Some deny the natural
distinction between right and wrong. " Justice," is a
matter of convention ; things are not " true," but
" agreed upon ; " not " right," only " assented to."



360 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

There is no " moral obligation." Government rests
on a compact, having its ultimate foundation on the
caprice of men, not in their moral nature. What are
called natural rights are only certain conveniences
agreed upon amongst men ; legal fictions their rec
ognition is their essence, they are the creatures of a
compact. Property has no foundation in the nature
of things; it may consist of whatever the legislature
determines land, cattle, food, clothing ; or of men,
women, and children. Dives may own Lazarus as well
as the dogs who serve him at the gate. There is no
political morality, only political economy.

This conclusion arises from the philosophy of
Hobbes and Filmer; yes, from the first principles of
Locke and Rousseau. It is one of the worst results
of materialism and practical atheism. It takes dif
ferent forms in different nations. In a monarchy it
has for its axiom, " The king can do no wrong ; he is
the norm of law Vox Regis vox Dei." In a de
mocracy, "The majority can do no wrong; they are
the norm of law Vox Populi vox Del" So the
statute becomes an idol; loyalty takes the place of
religion, and despotism becomes enthroned on the necks
of the people.

It is not surprising that this doctrine should be
taught from the pulpit in Catholic countries it is
conformable to the general conduct of the Roman
Church. It belongs also with the sensational phi
losophy which has yet done so much to break to pieces
the theology of the dark ages ; and does not aston
ish one in the sects which build thereon. But at first
sight it seems amazing that American Christians of
the puritanic stock, with a philosophy that transcends
sensationalism, should prove false to the only principle



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 361

which at once justifies the conduct of Jesus, of Lu
ther, and the Puritans themselves. For certainly if
obedience to the established law be the highest virtue,
then the patriots and Pilgrims of New England, the
reformers of the Church, the glorious company of the
apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, and
the noble army of martyrs, nay, Jesus himself,
were only criminals and traitors. To appreciate this
denial of the first principle of all religion, it would
be necessary to go deep into the theology of Chris
tendom, and touch the fatal error of all the three
parties just referred to. For that there is now no
time.

One of the consequences of this atheistic denial of
the natural foundation of human laws is the prepon
derance of parties. An opinion before it becomes a
law, while it is yet a tendency, becomes organized into
a faction, or party. Members of the party feel the
same loyalty thereto which narrow patriots feel for
their nation, or bigots for their sect ; they give up
their mind and conscience to their party. So fidelity
to their party, right or wrong, is deemed a great po
litical virtue ; the individual member is bound by the
party opinion. Thus is the private conscience still
further debauched by the second act in this atheistic
popular tragedy.

Thus both national and party politics are taken out
of the jurisdiction of morals, declared not amenable
to conscience : in other words, are left to the control of
political Jesuits. An American may read the natural
result of such principles in the downfall of the Grecian
and Italian Republics, or wait to behold it in his own
land.



362 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

IV. OF THE DANGERS FROM THE INSTITUTION OF
SLAVERY WHICH RESTS ON THIS FALSE IDEA.

Slavery is the child of violence and atheism. Brute
material force is its father : the atheistic idea that there
is no law of God above the passions of men that is
the mother of it. I have lately spoken so long, so
often, and with such publicity, both of speech and
print, respecting the extent of slavery in America, and
its constant advance since 1788, that I shall pass over
all that theme, and speak more directly of the present
danger it brings upon our freedom.

There can be no national welfare without national
unity of action. That cannot take place unless there
is national unity of idea in fundamentals. Without
this a nation is a " house divided against itself ; " of
course it cannot stand. It is what mechanics call a
figure without equilibrium ; the different parts thereof
do not balance.

Now, in the American State there are two distinct
ideas freedom and slavery.

The idea of freedom first got a national expression
seventy-eight years ago next Tuesday. Here it is.
I put it in a philosophic form. There are five points
to it.

First. All men are endowed by their Creator with
certain natural rights, amongst which is the right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Second. These rights are inalienable; they can be
alienated and forfeited only by the possessor thereof;
the father cannot alienate them for the son, nor the
son for the father; nor the husband for the wife, nor
the wife for the husband; nor the strong for the
weak, nor the weak for the strong; nor the few for
the many, nor the many for the few ; and so on.



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 363

Third. In respect to these all men are equal; the
rich man has not more, and the poor less; the strong
man has not more, and the weak man less : all are
exactly equal in these rights, however unequal in their
powers.

Fourth. It is the function of government to secure
these natural, inalienable, and equal rights to every
man.

Fifth. Government derives all its divine right from
its conformity with these ideas, all its human sanction
from the consent of the governed.

That is the idea of freedom. I used to call it " the
American idea ; " it was when I was younger than I
am to-day. It is derived from human nature ; it rests
on the immutable laws of God; it is part of the nat
ural religion of mankind. It demands a government
after natural justice, which is the point common be
tween the conscience of God and the conscience of
mankind, the point common also between the interests
of one man and of all men.

Now this government, just in its substance, in its
form must be democratic: that is to say, the govern
ment of all, by all, and for all. You see what con
sequences must follow from such an idea, and the
attempt to re-enact the law of God into political insti
tutions. There will follow the freedom of the people,
respect for every natural right of all men, the rights
of their body, and of their spirit the rights of mind
and conscience, heart and soul. There must be some
restraint as of children by their parents, as of bad
men by good men ; but it will be restraint for the joint
good of all parties concerned; not restraint for the
exclusive benefit of the restrainer. The ultimate con
sequence of this will be the material and spiritual wel-



THE RIGHTS OF MAN

fare of all riches, comfort, noble manhood, all de
sirable things.

That is the idea of freedom. It appears in the
Declaration of Independence; it reappears in the Pre
amble to the American Constitution, which aims " to
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide
for the common defense, promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty." That is a re
ligious idea ; and when men pray for the " reign of
justice" and the "kingdom of heaven," to come on
earth politically, I suppose they mean that there may
be a commonwealth where every man has his natural
rights of mind, body, and estate.

Next is the idea of slavery. Here it is. I put it
also in a philosophic form. There are three points
which I make.

First. There are no natural, inalienable, and equal
rights, wherewith men are endowed by their Creator;
no natural, inalienable, and equal right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.

Second. There is a great diversity of powers, and
in virtue thereof the strong man may rule and op
press, enslave and ruin the weak, for his interest and
against theirs.

Third. There is no natural law of God to forbid the
strong to oppress the weak, and enslave and ruin the
weak.

That is the idea of slavery. It has never got a na
tional expression in America ; it has never been laid
down as a principle in any act of the American people,
nor in any single State, so far as I know. All profess
the opposite ; but it is involved in the measures of both
State and nation. This idea is founded in the selfish
ness of man; it is atheistic.



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 365

The idea must lead to a corresponding government ;
that will be unjust in its substance for it will depend
not on natural right, but on personal force ; not on the
constitution of the universe, but on the compact of
men. It is the abnegation of God in the universe and
of conscience in man. Its form will be despotism
the government of all by a part, for the sake of a
part. It may be a single-headed despotism, or a des
potism of many heads; but whether a Cyclops or a
Hydra, it is alike " the abomination which maketh
desolate." Its ultimate consequence is plain to fore
see poverty to a nation, misery, ruin.

At first slavery came as a measure; nothing was
said about it as a principle. But in a country full of
schoolmasters, legislatures, newspapers, talking men
a measure without a principle to bear it up is like a
single twig of willow cast out on a wooden floor; there
is nothing for it to grow by; it will die. So of late
the principle has been boldly avowed. Mr. Calhoun
denied the self-evident truths of the Declaration of
Independence; denied the natural, inalienable, and
equal rights of man. Many since have done the same
political, literary, and mercantile men, and, of course,
ecclesiastical men ; there are enough of them always in
the market. All parts of the idea of slavery have been
affirmed by prominent men at the North and the South.
It has been acted on in the formation of the constitu
tion of every slave State, and in the passage of many
of its laws. It lies at the basis of a great deal of na
tional legislation.

Hear the opinions of some of our Southern patriots :
" Slavery is coeval with society : " " It was com
mended by God s chosen theocracy, and sanctioned by
His apostles in the Christian Church." All ancient



366 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

literature is " the literature of slaveholders ; " " Rome
and Greece owed their literary and national greatness
exclusively to the institution of slavery ; " " Slavery
is as necessary for the welfare of the Southern States
as sunshine is for the flowers of the prairies ; " "A
noble and necessary institution of God s creation." *
u Nature is the mother and protector of slavery ; "
" Domestic slavery is not only natural and necessary,
but a great blessing." " Free society is a sad and
signal failure ; " " It does well enough in a new coun
try." " Free society has become diseased by abolish
ing slavery. It can only be restored to pristine health,
happiness, and prosperity by re-instituting slavery."
" Slavery may be administered under a new name."
" Free society is a monstrosity. Like all monsters it
will be short-lived. We dare and do vindicate slavery
in the abstract." The negro " needs a master to pro
tect and govern him ; so do the ignorant poor in old
countries." f

" There is no moral wrong in slavery ; " it " is the
normal condition of human society." " The benefits
and advantages which so far have resulted from this
institution we take as lights to guide us to the brighter
truths of its future history." " We belong to that
society of which slavery is the distinguishing element,
and we are not ashamed of it. We find it marked by
every evidence of Divine approval." J

These two ideas are now fairly on foot. They are
hostile ; they are both mutually invasive and destruc
tive. They are in exact opposition to each other, and
the nation which embodies these two is not a figure

* Richmond Examiner for June 30, 1854.
f Richmond Examiner, June 23, 1854.
^Charleston Standard (S.C.), June 21, 1854.



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 367

of equilibrium. As both are active forces in the minds
of men, and as each idea tends to become a fact a
universal and exclusive fact as men with these ideas
organize into parties as a means to make their idea
into a fact, it follows that there must not only be
strife amongst philosophical men about these antag
onistic principles and ideas, but a strife of practical
men about corresponding facts and measures. So the
quarrel, if not otherwise ended, will pass from words
to what seems more serious ; and one will overcome the
other.

So long as these two ideas exist in the nation as
two political forces there is no national unity of idea,
of course, no unity of action. For there is no center
of gravity common to freedom and slavery. They
will not compose an equilibrious figure. You may cry,
" Peace ! peace ! " but so long as these two antagonistic
ideas remain, each seeking to organize itself and get
exclusive power, there is no peace ; there can be none.

The question before the nation to-day is, Which
shall prevail the idea and fact of freedom, or the
idea and the fact of slavery; freedom, exclusive and
universal, or slavery, exclusive and universal? The
question is not merely, Shall the African be bond or
free? but, Shall America be a democracy or a despo
tism? For nothing is so remorseless as an idea, and no
logic is so strong as the historical development of a na
tional idea by millions of men. A measure is nothing
without its principle. The idea which allows slavery in
South Carolina will establish it also in New England.
The bondage of a black man in Alexandria imperils
every white woman s daughter in Boston. You can
not escape the consequences of a first principle more
than you can " take the leap of Niagara and stop



368 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

when half-way down." The principle which recog
nises slavery in the Constitution of the United States
would make all America a despotism ; while the princi
ple which made John Quincy Adams a free man would
extirpate slavery from Louisiana and Texas. It is
plain America cannot long hold these two contradic
tions in the national consciousness. Equilibrium must
come.

Now there are three possible ways of settling the
quarrel between these two ideas ; only three. The cate
gories are exhaustive.

This is the first : The discord may rend the nation
asunder and the two elements separate and become dis
tinct nations a despotism with the idea of slavery,
a democracy with the idea of freedom. Then each
will be an equilibrious figure. The Anglo-Saxon des
potism may go to ruin on its own account, while the
Anglo-Saxon democracy marches on to national wel
fare. That is the first hypothesis.

Or, second: The idea of freedom may destroy slav
ery, with all its accidents attendant and consequent.
Then the nation may have unity of idea, and so a
unity of action, and become a harmonious whole, a
unit of freedom, a great industrial democracy, re-
enacting the laws of God, and pursuing its way, con
tinually attaining greater degrees of freedom and pros
perity. That is the second hypothesis.

Here is the third: The idea of slavery may destroy
freedom, with all its accidents attendant and conse
quent. Then the nation will become an integer ; only
it will be a unit of despotism. This involves, of
course, the destructive revolution of all our liberal in
stitutions, State as well as national. Democracy must
go down ; the free press go down ; the free church go



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 369

down ; the free school go down. There must be an in
dustrial despotism, which will soon become a military
despotism. Popular legislation must end; the Fed
eral Congress will be a club of officials, like Nero s Sen
ate, which voted his horse first consul. The State leg
islature will be a knot of commissioners, tide-waiters,
postmasters, district attorneys, deputy-marshals. The
town-meeting will be a gang of government officers,
like the " Marshal s Guard," revolvers in their pock
ets, soldiers at their back. The habeas corpus will
be at an end; trial by jury never heard of, and open
courts as common in America as in Spain or Rome.
Commissioners Curtis, Loring, and Kane will not be
exceptional men; there will be no other " judges; " all
courts, courts of the kidnapper ; all process summary ;
all cases decided by the will of the government ; arbi
trary force the only rule. The constable will disap
pear, the soldier come forth. All newspapers will be
like the " Satanic press " of Boston and New York,
like the journal of St. Petersburg, or the Diario Ro
mano, which tell lies when the ruler commands, or tell
truth when he insists upon it. Then the wicked will
walk on every side, for the vilest of men will be exalted,
and America, become the mock and scorn and hissing
of the nations, will go down to worse shame than was
ever heaped upon Sodom ; for with her lust for wealth,
land, and power, she will also have committed the
crime against nature. Then America will be another
Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, yea, like Gomorrah for
the Dead Sea will have settled down upon us with noth
ing living in its breast, and the rulers will proclaim
peace where they have made solitude.

Which of these three hypotheses shall we take?

I. Will there be a separation of the two elements,
XIII 24



370 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

and a formation of two distinct States, freedom with
democracy, and slavery with a tendency to despotism?
That may save one half the nation, and leave the other
to voluntary ruin. Certainly it is better to enter into
life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands and
two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.

Now, I do not suppose it is possible for the Anglo-
Saxons of America to remain as one nation for a great
many years. Suppose we become harmonious and
prosper abundantly : when there are a hundred millions
on the Atlantic slope, another hundred millions in the
Mississippi Valley, a third hundred millions on the
Pacific slope, and a fourth hundred millions in South
America, it is not likely that all these will hold to
gether. We shall be too wide spread. And, besides,
it is not according to the disposition of the Teutonic
family to aggregate into one great State any very
large body of men; division, not conglomeration, is
after the ethnologic instinct and the historical custom
of the Teutonic family, and especially of its Anglo-
Saxon tribe. We do not like centralization of power,
but have such strong individuality that we prefer local
self-government; we are social, not gregarious like the
Celtic family. I, therefore, do not look on the union
of the States as a thing that is likely to last a great
length of time, under any circumstances. I doubt if
any part of the nation will desire it a hundred years
hence.

True, there are causes which tend to keep us united :
community of ethnologic origin fifteen millions are
Anglo-Saxon ; unity of language, literature, re
ligion ; historic and legal traditions, and commercial
interest. But all these may easily be overcome, and
doubtless will be. So a dissolution of the great Anglo-



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 371

Saxon State seems likely to take place, when the
territory is spread so wide that there is a practical in
convenience in balancing the nation on a single govern
mental point; when the numbers are so great that we
require many centers of legislative and administrative
action in order to secure individual freedom of the
parts, as well as national unity of the whole ; or when
the Federal Government shall become so corrupt that
the trunk will not sustain the limbs. Then the
branches which make up this great American banyan-
tree will separate from the rotten primeval trunk, draw
their support from their own local roots, and spread
into great and independent trees. All this may take
place without fighting. Massachusetts and Maine
were once a single State ; now friendly sisters.

But I do not think this " dissolution of the Union "
will take place immediately, or very soon. For Amer
ica is not now ruled as it is commonly thought
either by the mass of men who follow their national,
ethnological, and human instincts; or by a few far-
sighted men of genius for politics, who consciously
obey the law of God made clear in their own masterly
mind and conscience, and make statutes in advance of
the calculation or even the instincts of the people, and
so manage the Ship of State that every occasional tack
is on a great circle of the universe, a right line of
justice, and therefore the shortest way to welfare; but
by two very different classes of men ; by mercantile
men, who covet money, actual or expectant capitalists ;
and by political men, who want power, actual or ex
pectant office-holders. These appear diverse; but
there is a strong unanimity between the two ; for the
mercantile men want money as a means of power, and
the political men power as a means of money. There



372 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

are noble men in both classes, exceptional, not instan-
tial, men with great riches even, and great office. But
as a class, these men are not above the average moral
ity of the people, often below it : they have no deep,
religious faith, which leads them to trust the higher
law of God. They do not look for principles that
are right, conformable to the constitution of the uni
verse, and so creative of the nation s permanent wel
fare; but only for expedient measures, productive to
themselves of selfish money or selfish power. In general,
they have the character of adventurers, the aims of ad
venturers, the morals of adventurers ; they begin poor,
and of course obscure, and are then " democratic,"
and hurrah for the people : " Down with the powerful
and the rich " is the private maxim of their heart. If
they are successful, and become rich, famous, attain
ing high office, they commonly despise the people :
u Down with the people ! " is the axiom of their heart
only they dare not say it ; for there are so many
others with the same selfishness, who have not yet
achieved their end, and raise the opposite cry. The
line of the nation s course is a resultant of the com
pound selfishness of these two classes.

From these two, with their mercantile and political
selfishness, we are to expect no comprehensive morality
which will secure the rights of mankind ; no compre
hensive policy, which will secure expedient measures
for a long time. Both will unite in what serves their
apparent interest, brings money to the trader, power
to the politician, whatever be the consequence to the
country.

As things now are, the Union favors the schemes of
both of these classes of men; thereby the politician
gets power, the trader makes money.



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 373

If the Union were to be dissolved and a great North
ern commonwealth were to be organized, with the idea
of freedom, three quarters of the politicians, Federal
and State, would pass into contempt and oblivion ; all
that class of Northern demagogues who scoff at God s
law, such as filled the offices of the late Whig admin
istration in its day of power, or as fill the offices of the
Democratic administration to-day they would drop
down so deep that no plummet would ever reach them ;
you would never hear of them again.

Gratitude is not a very common virtue; but grati
tude to the hand of slavery, which feeds these crea
tures, is their sole and single moral excellence; they
have that form of gratitude. When the hand of slav
ery is cut off, that class of men will perish just as
caterpillars die when, some day in May, the farmer
cuts off from the old tree a great branch to graft in a
better fruit. The caterpillars will not vote for the
grafting. That class of men will go for the Union
while it serves them.

Look at the other class. Property is safe in Amer
ica: and why? Because we have aimed to establish
a government on natural rights, and property is a
natural right ; say oligarchic Blackstone and socialistic
Proudhon what they may, property is not the mere
creature of compact, or the child of robbery; it is
founded in the nature of man. It has a very great
and important function to perform. Nowhere in the
world is it so much respected as here.

But there is one kind of property which is not safe
just now: property in men. It is the only kind
of property which is purely the creature of violence
and law ; it has no root in itself.

Now, the Union protects that " property." There



374 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

are three hundred thousand slaveholders, owning thir
teen hundred millions of dollars invested in men. Their
wealth depends on the Union ; destroy that, and their
unnatural property will take to itself legs and run off,
seeking liberty by flight, or else stay at home and, like
an Anglo-Saxon, take to itself firebrands and swords,
and burn down the master s house and cut the master s
throat. So the slaveholder wants the Union ; he
makes money by it. Slavery is unprofitable to the
nation. No three millions earn so little as the three
million slaves. It is costly to every State. But it en
riches the owner of the slaves. The South is agri
cultural ; that is all. She raises cotton, sugar, and corn ;
she has no commerce, no manufactures, no mining.
The North has mills, ships, mines, manufactures ; buys
and sells for the South, and makes money by what im
poverishes the South. So- all the great commercial
centers of the North are in favor of Union, in favor
of slavery. The instinct of American trade just now
is hostile to American freedom. The money power
and the slave power go hand in hand. Of course such
editors and ministers as are only the tools of the
money power, or the slave power, will be fond of
" Union at all hazards." They will sell their mothers
to keep it. Now these are the controlling classes of
men ; these ministers and editors are the mouthpieces
of these controlling classes of men; and as these
classes make money and power out of the Union, for
the present I think the Union will hold together. Yet
I know very well that there are causes now at work
which embitter the minds of men, and which, if much
enforced, will so exasperate the North that we shall
rend the Union asunder at a blow. That I think not
likely to take place, for the South sees the peril and
its own ruin.



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 375

II. The next hypothesis is, freedom may triumph
over slavery. That was the expectation once, at the
time of the Declaration of Independence; nay, at the
formation of the Constitution. But only two national
steps have been taken against slavery since then
one the Ordinance of 1787, the other the abolition of
the African slave-trade; really that was done in 1788,
formally twenty years after. In the individual States,
the white man s freedom enlarges every year; but the
Federal Government becomes more and more addicted
to slavery. This hypothesis does not seem very likely
to be adopted.

III. Shall slavery destroy freedom? It looks very
much like it. Here are nine great steps, openly taken
since 87, in favor of slavery. First, America put
slavery into the Constitution. Second, out of old
soil she made four new slave States. Third, America,
in 1793, adopted slavery as a Federal institution, and
guaranteed her protection for that kind of property
as for no other. Fourth, America bought the Louisi
ana territory in 1803, and put slavery into it. Fifth,
she thence made Louisiana, Missouri, and then Ar
kansas slave States. Sixth, she made slavery perpetual
in Florida. Seventh, she annexed Texas. Eighth, she
fought the Mexican War, and plundered a feeble sister
republic of California, Utah, and New Mexico, to get
more slave soil. Ninth, America gave ten millions of
money to Texas to support slavery, passed the Fugitive
Slave Bill, and has since kidnapped men in New Eng
land, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, in all the East,
in all the West, in all the Middle States. All the great
cities have kidnapped their own citizens. Professional
slave-hunters are members of New England churches ;



376 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

kidnappers sit down at the Lord s table in the city of
Cotton, Chauncy, and Mayhew. In this very year, be
fore it is half through, America has taken two more
steps for the destruction of freedom. The repeal of
the Missouri Compromise and the enslavement of Ne
braska: that is the tenth step. Here is the eleventh:
The Mexican treaty, giving away ten millions of dol
lars and buying a little strip of worthless land, solely
that it may serve the cause of slavery.

Here are eleven great steps openly taken towards
the ruin of liberty in America. Are these the worst?
Very far from it! Yet more dangerous things have
been done in secret.

I. Slavery has corrupted the mercantile class. Al
most all the leading merchants of the North are pro-
slavery men. They hate freedom, hate your freedom
and mine! This is the only Christian country in
which commerce is hostile to freedom.

II. See the corruption of the political class. There
are forty thousand officers of the Federal Government.
Look at them in Boston their character is as well
known as this hall. Read their journals in this city -
do you catch a whisper of freedom in them? Slavery
has sought its menial servants men basely born and
basely bred: it has corrupted them still further, and
put them in office. America, like Russia, is the country
for mean men to thrive in. Give him time and mire
enough, a worm can crawl as high as an eagle flies.
State rights are sacrificed at the North ; centralization
goes on with rapid strides ; State laws are trodden under
foot.* The Northern President is all for slavery.

* While this volume is passing through the press, another
example of this same corruption appears. The Senate passes
a bill to protect United States officers engaged in kidnapping



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 377

The Northern members of the Cabinet are for slavery ;
in the Senate, fourteen Northern Democrats were for
the enslavement of Nebraska; in the House of Repre
sentatives, forty-four Northern Democrats voted for
the bill, fourteen in the Senate, forty-four in the
House, fifty-eight Northern men voted against the con
science of the North and the law of God. Only eight
men out of all the South could be found friendly to
justice and false to their own local idea of injustice.
The present administration, with its supple tools of
tyranny, came into office while the cry of " No higher
law " was echoing through the land !

III. Slavery has debauched the press. How many
leading journals of commerce and politics in the great
cities do you know that are friendly to freedom and
opposed to slavery? Out of the five large daily com
mercial papers in Boston, Whig or Democratic, I know
of only one that has spoken a word for freedom this
great while. The American newspapers are poor de
fenders of American liberty. Listen to one of them,
speaking of the last kidnapping in Boston : " We
shall need to employ the same measures of coercion as
are necessary in monarchical countries." There is al
ways some one ready to do the basest deeds. Yet
there are some noble journals political and commer
cial ; such as the New York Tribune and Evening Post.

IV. Then our colleges and schools are corrupted by
slavery. I do not know of five colleges in all the North
which publicly appear on the side of freedom. What
the hearts of the presidents and professors are, God
knows, not I. The great crime against humanity,
practical atheism, found ready support in Northern

citizens of the free States, from the justice of the people. Such
kidnappers are to be tried in the Kidnappers Court.



378 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

colleges, in 1850 and 1851. Once, the common read
ing books of our schools were full of noble words.
Read the school-books now made by Yankee peddlers of
literature, and what liberal ideas do you find there?
They are meant for the Southern market. Slavery
must not be offended !

V. Slavery has corrupted the churches ! There are
twenty-eight thousand Protestant clergymen in the
United States. There are noble hearts, true and just
men among them, who have fearlessly borne witness to
the truth. I need not mention their names. Alas !
they are not very numerous; I should not have to go
over my fingers many times to count them all. I honor
these exceptional men. Some of them are old, far older
than I am ; older than my father need have been ; some
of them are far younger than I ; nay, some of them
younger than my children might be : and I honor these
men for the fearless testimony which they have borne
- the old, the middle-aged, and the young. But they
are very exceptional men. Is there a minister in the
South who preaches against slavery? How few in all
the North!

Look and see the condition of the Sunday Schools.
In 1853, the Episcopal Methodists had 9,438 Sunday
Schools; 102,732 Sunday School teachers; 525,008
scholars. There is not an anti-slavery Sunday School
in the compass of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Last year, in New York, they issued, on an average,
two thousand bound volumes every day in the year,
not a line against slavery in them. They printed also
two thousand pamphlets every day ; there is not a line
in them all against slavery ; they printed more than
two hundred and forty million pages of Sunday School
books, not a line against slavery in them all; not a



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 379

line showing that it is wicked to buy and sell a man,
for whom, according to the Methodist Episcopal
Church, Christ died!

The Orthodox Sunday School Union spent last year
$248,201 ; not a cent against slavery, our great na
tional sin. They print books by the million. Only one
of them contains a word against slavery ; that is Cow-
per s Task, which contains these words my mother
taught them to me when I was a little boy, and sat in
her lap :

" I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me when I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews, bought and sold, have ever earned ! "

You all know it: if you do not, you had better learn
and teach it to your children. That is the only anti-
slavery work they print. Once they published a book
written by Mr. Gallaudet, which related the story, I
think, of the selling of Joseph : at any rate, it showed
that Egyptian slavery was wrong. A little girl in a
Sunday School in one of the Southern States one day
said to her teacher, " If it was wrong to make Joseph
a slave, why is it not wrong to make Dinah, and Sambo,
and Chloe slaves ? " The Sunday School teacher and
the church took alarm, and complained of the Sunday
School Union : " You are poisoning the South with
your religion, telling the children that slavery is
wicked." It was a serious thing, " dissolution of the
Union," " levying war," or at least, " misdemeanor,"
for aught I know, " obstructing an officer of the United
States." What do you think the Sunday School Union
did? It suppressed the book ! It printed one Sunday
School book which had a line against Egyptian slavery



380 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

and then suppressed it! and it cannot be had to-day.
Amid all their million books, there is not a line against
slavery, save what Cowper sung. There are five million
Sunday School scholars in the United States, and there
is not a Sunday School manual which has got a word
against slavery in it.

You all know the American Tract Society. Last
year the American Tract Society in Boston spent $79,-
983.46 ; it visited more than fourteen thousand fam
ilies ; it distributed 3,334,920 tracts not a word
against slavery in them all. The American Tract So
ciety in New York last year visited 568,000 families,
containing three million persons ; it spent for home
purposes $406,707; for foreign purposes $422,294;
it distributed tracts in English, French, German,
Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, Hungar
ian, and Welsh and it did not print one single line,
nor whisper a single word against this great national
sin of slavery ! Nay, worse : if it finds English
books which suit its general purpose, but containing
matter adverse to slavery, it strikes out all the anti-
slavery matter, then prints and circulates the book.
Is the Tract Society also managed by Jesuits from
the Roman Church?

At this day, 600,000 slaves are directly and per
sonally owned by men who are called " professing
Christians," " members in good fellowship " of the
churches of this land; 80,000 owned by Presbyterians,
225,000 by Baptists, 250,000 owned by Methodists:
600,000 slaves in this land owned by men who pro
fess themselves Christians, and in churches sit down to
take the Lord s Supper, in the name of Christ and
God ! There are ministers who own their fellow-men
" bought with a price."



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 381

Does not this look as if slavery were to triumph over
freedom ?

VI. Slavery corrupts the judicial class. In Amer
ica, especially in New England, no class of men has
been so much respected as the judges; and for this
reason : we have had wise, learned, excellent men for
our judges; men who reverenced the higher law of
God, and sought by human statutes to execute justice.
You all know their venerable names, and how rever
entially we have looked up to them. Many of them are
dead ; some are still living, and their hoary hairs are
a crown of glory on a judicial life, without judicial
blot. But of late slavery has put a different class of
men on the benches of the Federal courts mere tools
of the government ; creatures which get their appoint
ment as pay for past political service, and as pay in
advance for iniquity not yet accomplished. You see
the consequences. Note the zeal of the Federal judges
to execute iniquity by statute and destroy liberty. See
how ready they are to support the Fugitive Slave Bill,
which tramples on the spirit of the Constitution, and
its letter too; which outrages justice and violates the
most sacred principles and precepts of Christianity.
Not a United States judge, circuit or district, has
uttered one word against that " bill of abominations."
Nay, how greedy they are to get victims under it!
No wolf loves better to rend a lamb into fragments
than these judges to kidnap a fugitive slave, and pun
ish any man who dares to speak against it. You know
what has happened in Fugitive Slave Bill courts. You
remember the " miraculous " rescue of Shadrach ; the
peaceable snatching of a man from the hands of a
cowardly kidnapper was " high treason ; " it was
" levying war." You remember the " trial " of the



382 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

rescuers! Judge Sprague s charge to the grand jury,
that, if they thought the question was which they ought
to obey, the law of man or the law of God, then they
must " obey both ! " serve God and mammon, Christ
and the devil, in the same act! You remember the
" trial," the " ruling " of the Bench, the swearing on
the stand, the witness coming back to alter and " en
large his testimony " and have another gird at the
prisoner! You have not forgotten the trials before
Judge Kane at Philadelphia, and Judge Grier at
Christiana and Wilkesbarre.

These are natural results of causes well known. You
cannot escape a principle. Enslave a negro, will you?
- you doom to bondage your own sons and daughters,
by your own act.

Do you forget the Union meeting in Faneuil Hall,
November 26th, 1850, the Tuesday before Thanksgiv
ing Day? It was called to indorse the Fugitive Slave
Bill a meeting to promote the stealing of men in
Boston, of your fellow-worshipers and my parishioners.
Do you remember the Democratic Herods and Whig
Pilates, who were made friends that day, melted into
one unity of despotism, in order that they might en
slave men? They had unity of idea and unity of ac
tion, that day. Do you remember the speeches of Mr.
Curtis and Mr. Hallett ; their yelp against the inaliena
ble rights of men; their howl at God s higher law?
The worser half of that platform is now the United
States court; the Fugitive Slave Bill judge, the
United States attorney. They got their offices for
their political services past and for their character
very fitting reward to very fitting men ! A man pro
fesses a fondness for kidnapping, hurrahs for it in
Faneuil Hall : give him the United States judgeship ;



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 383

make him United States attorney fit to fit ! When
slavery dispenses offices, every service rendered to des
potism is well paid. Men with foreheads of brass,
with iron elbows, with consciences of gum elastic, whose
chief commandment of their law, their prophets, and
their gospel, is to

crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning;"

verily they shall have their reward ! They shall be
come Fugitive Slave Bill judges; yea, attorneys of the
United States !

In 1836, a poor slave girl named Med, who had
been brought from Louisiana to Boston by her master,
sued for her freedom in the courts of Massachusetts.
Mr. Benjamin R. Curtis appeared as the slave-hunter s
counsel, long, and stoutly, and learnedly contending
that she should not receive her freedom by the laws,
Constitution, and usages of this Commonwealth, but
should be sent back to eternal bondage.* On the 7th
of March, 1850, Mr. Webster made his speech against
freedom, so fatal to himself ; but soon after found such
a fire in his rear that he must return to Massachusetts

* The girl was set free, and the principle laid down that
slaves coming to a free State with the consent of their masters,
secured their freedom. An account of the case was published
in the Boston Daily Advertiser of August 29, 1836, and intro
duced with the following editorial comment : " In some of the
States there is, we believe, legislative provision for cases of
this sort [namely, allowing the master to bring and keep slaves
in bondage], and it would seem that some such provision is
necessary in this State, unless we would prohibit citizens of the
slaveholding States from traveling in this State with their
families, and unless we would permit such of them as wish to
emancipate their slaves, to throw them at their pleasure upon
the people of this State."



384 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

to rescue his own popularity then apparently in
great peril. On the 29th of April, the same Mr. Cur
tis, faithful to his proclivities towards slavery, made
a public address to the apostate senator, at the Revere
House, and expressed his " abounding gratitude for
the ability and fidelity " which Mr. Webster had
" brought to the defense of the Constitution and the
Union ; " praising him as " eminently vigilant, wise,
and faithful to our country, without shadow of turn
ing." At the Union meeting in Faneuil Hall (Nov.
26th), Mr. Curtis declared the fugitive slaves " a class
of foreigners," " with whose rights Massachusetts has
nothing to do. It is enough for us that they have no
right to be liere." Other services, similar or analogous,
which he has rendered to the cause of inhumanity, I
here pass by.

This is a world in which " men do nothing for noth
ing; " the workman is worthy of his hire; in due time
Mr. Curtis received his reward.

He has lately (June 7th) "charged" the grand
jury of the circuit court of the United States, point
ing out their duty in respect to recent events in Boston.
A Federal enactment of 1790 provides that, if any per
son shall wilfully obstruct, resist, or oppose any officer
of the United States in executing any legal writ or
process thereof, he shall be imprisoned not more than
twelve months, and fined not more than three hundred
dollars. Mr. Curtis charges that the offense is " a
misdemeanor : " to constitute the crime, it is " not nec
essary to prove the accused used or even threatened
active violence." " If a multitude of persons should
assemble, even in a public highway, with the design to
stand together, and thus prevent the officer from pass
ing freely along the way, .... this would of



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 385

itself, and without any active violence, be such an ob
struction as is contemplated by this law."

So much for what constitutes the crime. Now see
who are criminals : " All who are present and actually
obstruct, resist, or oppose, are of course guilty. So
are all who are present, leagued in the common design,
and so situated as to be able, in case of need, to afford
assistance to those actually engaged, though they do
not actually obstruct, resist, or oppose." That is, they
are guilty of a misdemeanor, because they are in the
neighborhood of such as oppose a constable of the
United States, and are " able " " to afford assistance."
" If they are present for the purpose of affording as
sistance, though no overt act is done by them, they
are still guilty under this law." They are guilty of
a misdemeanor, not merely as accessory before the fact,
but as principals, for " in misdemeanors all are prin
cipals."

" Not only those who are present, but those who,
though absent when the offense was committed, did
procure, counsel, command, or abet others to commit
the offense, are indictable as principals." But what
amounts to such counseling as constitutes a misde
meanor? " Evincing an express liking, approbation,
or assent to another s criminal design." It need not
appear that the precise time, or place, or means ad
vised, were used." So all who evinced " an express
liking, approbation, or assent " to the rescue of Mr.
Burns are guilty of a misdemeanor; if they evinced
" an express liking " that he should be rescued by a
miracle wrought by Almighty God, and some did
express " approbation " of that " means," they are
indictable, guilty of a misdemeanor ; " " it need not
appear that the precise time, or place, or means ad-
XIII 25



386 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

vised, were used ! " If any colored woman, during the
wicked week which was ten days long prayed that
God would deliver Anthony, as it is said his angel de
livered Peter, or said " Amen " to such a prayer, she
was "guilty of a misdemeanor:" to be indicted as a
" principal."

So every man in Boston who, on that bad Friday,
stood in the streets of Boston between Court Square
and T Wharf, was " guilty of a misdemeanor," liable
to a fine of three hundred dollars, and to jailing for
twelve months. All who at Faneuil Hall stirred up
the minds of the people in opposition to the Fugitive
Slave Bill; all who shouted, who clapped their hands
at the words or the countenance of their favorites, or
who expressed " approbation " by a whisper of " as
sent," are " guilty of misdemeanor." The very
women who stood for four days at the street corners,
and hissed the infamous slave-hunters and their co
adjutors, they, too, ought to be punished by fine of
three hundred dollars and imprisonment for a year!
Well, there were fifteen thousand persons " assembled "
" in the highway " of the city of Boston that day op
posed to kidnapping ; half the newspapers in the coun
try towns of Massachusetts " evinced an express lik
ing " for freedom, and opposed the kidnapping ; they
are all " guilty of a misdemeanor ; " they are " prin
cipals." Nay, the few ministers all over the State, who
preached that kidnapping was a sin ; those who read
brave words out of the Old Testament or the New;
those who prayed that the victim might escape: they,
likewise, were " guilty of a misdemeanor," liable to be
fined three hundred dollars and jailed for twelve
months. Excellent Fugitive Slave Bill judge! Mr.
Webster did wisely in making that appointment ! He



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 387

chose an appropriate tool. The charge was worthy
of the worst days of Jeffreys and the second James !

We all know against whom this judicial iniquity
was directed against men who at Faneuil Hall, under
the pictured and sculptured eyes of John Hancock
and the three Adamses, appealed to the spirit of hu
manity, not yet crushed out of your heart and mine,
and lifted up their voices in favor of freedom and the
eternal law of God. If he had called us by our names
he could not have made the thing plainer. You know
the zeal of the United States attorney, you have heard
of the swearing before the grand jury and at the grand
jury. Did the judge s lightning only glow with ju
dicial ardor and zeal for the Fugitive Slave Bill? or
was it also red with personal malignity and family
spleen ? Judge you !

But, alas! there was a grand jury, and the Sal-
monean thunder of the Fugitive Slave Bill judge fell
harmless quenched, conquered, disgraced, and brutal
- to the ground. Poor Fugitive Slave Bill court ! it
can only gnash its teeth against freedom of speech in
Faneuil Hall ; only bark and yelp against the inaliena
ble rights of man, and howl against the higher law of
God ! it cannot bite ! Poor imbecile, malignant court !
What a pity that the Fugitive Slave Bill judge was not
himself the grand jury, to order the indictment ! what a
shame that the attorney was not a petty jury to con
vict ! Then New England, like Old, might have had
her " bloody assizes," and Boston streets might have
streamed with the heart s gore of noble men and women ;
and human heads might have decked the pinnacles all
round the town ; and Judge Curtis and Attorney Hal-
lett might have had their place with Judge Jeffreys
and John B oilman of old. What a pity that we have



388 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

a grand jury and a traverse jury to stand between
the malignant arm of the slave-hunter and the heart
of you and me! Perhaps the court will try again,
and find a more pliant grand jury, easier to intimidate.
Let me suggest to the court, that the next time it should
pack its jurors from the marshal s " guard." Then
there will be unity of idea ; of action, too the court a
figure of equilibrium.*

At a Fugitive Slave Bill meeting in Faneuil Hall, it
is easy to ask a minister a question designed to be in
sulting, and not dare listen to the proffered reply ; easy
to bark at justice, and howl at the inalienable rights
of man; easy to yelp out the vengeance of a corrupt
administration of slave-hunters upon all who love the
higher law of God ; but He himself has so fashioned the
hearts of men that we instinctively hate all tyranny, all
oppression, all wrong; and the hand of history brands
ineffaceable disgrace on the brass foreheads of all such
as enact iniquity by statute, and execute wickedness as
law. The memory of the wicked shall rot. Scroggs
and Jeffreys also got their appointment as pay for
their service and their character fitting blood
hounds for a fitting king. For near two hundred years
their names have been a stench in the face of the Anglo-
Saxon tribe. Others as unscrupulous may take warn
ing by their fate.

Thus has slavery debauched the Federal courts.

VII. Alas me! Slavery has not ended yet its long
career of sin. Its corruption is sevenfold. It de
bauches the elected offices of our city, and even our
State. In the Sims time of 1851, the laws of Mas-

*The experiment was made; the brother-in-law of the Fugi
tive Slave Bill judge was put on the jury, and indictments
were found in October and November.



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA

sachusetts were violated nine days running, and the
Free-soil governor sat in the State House as idle as a
feather in his chair. In the wicked week of 1854, the
Whig governor sat in the seat of his predecessor ; Mas
sachusetts was one of the inferior counties of Virginia,
and a slave-hunter had eminent domain over the birth
place of Franklin and the burial-place of Hancock !
Nay, against our own laws the Free-soil mayor put the
neck of Boston in the hands of a " train-band captain "

the people " wondering much to see how he did
ride ! " Boston was a suburb of Alexandria ; the
mayor a slave-catcher for our masters at the South!
You and I were only fellow-slaves !

All this looks as if slavery was to triumph over
freedom. But even this is not the end. Slavery has
privately emptied her seven vials of wrath upon the na
tion committing seven debaucheries of human safe
guards of our natural rights. That is not enough

there are other seven to come. This apocalyptic
dragon, grown black with long-continued deeds o<f
shame and death, now meditates five further steps of
crime. Here is the programme of the next attempt

a new political tragedy in five acts.

, I. The acquisition of Dominica and then all
Hayti as new slave territory.

II. The acquisition of Cuba, by purchase, or else by
private filibustering and public war, as new slave ter
ritory. I

III. The re-establishment of slavery in all the free
States, by judicial " decision " or legislative enact
ment. Then the master of the North may " sit down
with his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument ! "

IV. The restoration of the African slave-trade,
which is already seriously proposed and defended in



390 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

the Southern journals. Nay, the Senate Committee
on Foreign Relations recommend the first step towards
it the withdrawal of our fleet from the coast of
Africa. You cannot escape the consequence of your
first principle : if slavery is right, then the slave-trade is
right; the traffic between Guinea and New Orleans is
no worse than between Virginia and New Orleans; it
is no worse to kidnap in Timbuctoo than in Boston.

V. A yet further quarrel must be sought with Mex
ico, and more slave territory be stolen from her.

Who shall oppose this fivefold wickedness? The
Fugitive Slave Bill party ; the Nebraska enslave
ment party? Northern servility has hitherto been
ready to grant more than Southern arrogance dared
to demand!

All this looks as if the third hypothesis would be ful
filled, and slavery triumph over freedom ; as if the na
tion would expunge the Declaration of Independence
from the scroll of Time, and, instead of honoring Han
cock and the Adamses and Washington, do homage to
Kane and Grier and Curtis and Hallett and Loring.
Then the Preamble to our Constitution might read
" to establish injustice, insure domestic strife, hinder
the common defense, disturb the general welfare, and
inflict the curse of bondage on ourselves and our pos
terity." Then we shall honor the Puritans no more,
but their prelatical tormentors ; nor reverence the great
reformers, only the inquisitors of Rome. Yea, we may
tear the name of Jesus out of the American Bible;
yes, God s name; worship the Devil at our Lord s
table, Iscariot for Redeemer !

See the steady triumph of despotism! Ten years
more, like the ten years past, and it will be all over
with the liberties of America. Everything must go



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 391

down, and the heel of the tyrant will be on our neck.
It will be all over with the rights of man in America,
and you and I must go to Austria, to Italy, or to Si
beria for our freedom ; or perish with the liberty which
our fathers fought for and secured to themselves
not to their faithless sons ! Shall America thus mis
erably perish? Such is the aspect of things to-day!

But are the people alarmed? No, they fear noth
ing only the tightness in the money-market ! Next
Tuesday at sunrise every bell in Boston will ring joy
ously ; every cannon will belch sulphurous welcome
from its brazen throat. There will be processions,
the mayor and the aldermen and the marshal and the
naval officer, and, I suppose, the " marshal s guard,"
very appropriately taking their places. There is a
chain on the Common to-day it is the same chain that
was around the court-house in 1851 it is the chain
that bound Sims ; now it is a festal chain. There are
mottoes about the Common " They mutually pledged
to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred
honor." I suppose it means that the mayor and the
kidnappers did this. " The spirit of 76 still lives."
Lives, I suppose, in the Supreme Court of Fugitive
Slave Bill judges. " Washington, Jefferson, and their
compatriots ! their names are sacred in the heart of
every American." That, I suppose, is the opinion of
Thomas Sims and of Anthony Burns. And opposite
the great Park Street Church, where a noble man is
this day, I trust, discoursing noble words, for he has
never yet been found false to freedom " Liberty and
independence, our father s legacy ! God forbid that
we their sons should prove recreant to the trust ! "
It ought to read, " God forgive us that we their sons
have proved so recreant to the trust ! " So they will



392 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

celebrate the 4th of July, and call it " Independence
Day ! " The foolish press of France, bought and
beaten and trodden on by Napoleon the Crafty, is full
of talk about the welfare of the "Great Nation!"
Philip of Macedon was conquering the Athenian allies
town by town ; he destroyed and swept off two and
thirty cities, selling their children as slaves. All the
Cassandrian eloquence of Demosthenes could not rouse
degenerate Athens from her idle sleep. She also fell
the fairest of all free States; corrupted first -
forgetful of God s higher law. Shall America thus
perish, all immature !

So was it in the days of old: they ate, they drank,
they planted, they builded, they married, they were
given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered
into the ark, and the flood came and devoured them all !

Well, is this to be the end? Was it for this the
Pilgrims came over the sea? Does Forefathers Rock
assent to it? Was it for this that the New England
clergy prayed, and their prayers became the law of the
land for a hundred years? Was it for this that Cotton
planted in Boston a little branch of the Lord s vine,
and Roger Williams and Higginson he still lives in
an unregenerate son did the same in the city which
they called of peace, Salem? Was it for this that
Eliot carried the Gospel to the Indians? that Chauncy,
and Edwards, and Hopkins, and Mayhew, and Chan-
ning, and Ware labored and prayed? for this that our
fathers fought the Adamses, Washington, Han
cock? for this that there was an eight years war, and
a thousand battle-fields? for this the little monument
at Acton, Concord, Lexington, West Cambridge, Dan-
vers, and the great one over there on the spot which
our fathers blood made so red? Shall America be-



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA

come Asia Minor? New England, Italy? Boston
such as Athens dead and rotten ? Yes ! if we do not
mend, and speedily mend. Ten years more, and the
liberty of America is all gone. We shall fall, the
laugh, the byword, the proverb, the scorn, the mock
of the nations, who shall cry against us. Hell from
beneath shall be moved to meet us at our coming, and
in derision shall it welcome us :

" The heir of all the ages, and the youngest born of time ! "

We shall lie down with the unrepentant prodigals of
old time, damned to everlasting infamy and shame.

Would you have it so? Shall it be?

To-day, America is a debauched young man, of
good blood, fortune, and family, but the companion
of gamesters and brawlers ; reeking with wine ; wast
ing his substance in riotous living ; in the lap of harlots
squandering the life which his mother gave him.
Shall he return? Shall he perish? One day may de
termine.

Shall America thus die? I look to the past, Asia,
Africa, Europe, and they answer, " Yes ! " Where is
the Hebrew Commonwealth ; the Roman Republic ;
where is liberal Greece, Athens, and many a far-
famed Ionian town ; where are the commonwealths of
medieval Italy ; the Teutonic free cities German,
Dutch, or Swiss? They have all perished. Not one
of them is left. Parian statues of liberty, sorely muti
lated, still remain ; but the Parian rock whence Liberty
once hewed her sculptures out it is all gone. Shall
America thus perish? Greece and Italy both answer,
" Yes ! " I question the last fifty years of American
history, and it says, " Yes." I look to the American
pulpit, I ask the five million Sunday School scholars,



394. THE RIGHTS OF MAN

and they say, " Yes." I ask the Federal court, the
Democratic party, and the Whig, and the answer is
still the same.

But I close my eyes on the eleven past missteps we
have taken for slavery; on that sevenfold clandestine
corruption ; I forget the Whig party ; I forget the
present administration; I forget the judges of the
courts ; I remember the few noblest men that there
are in society, Church and State; I remember the
grave of my father, the lessons of my mother s life;
I look to the spirit of this age it is the nineteenth
century, not the ninth ; I look to the history of the
Anglo-Saxons in America, and the history of man
kind; I remember the story and the song of Italian
and German patriots ; I recall the dear words of those
great-minded Greeks Ionian, Dorian, ^Etolian ; I re
member the Romans who spoke, and sang, and fought
for truth and right; I recollect those old Hebrew
prophets, earth s nobler sons, poets and saints; I call
to mind the greatest, noblest, purest soul that ever
blossomed in this dusty world ; and I say, " No ! "
Truth shall triumph, justice shall be law ! And, if
America fail, though she is one fortieth of God s fam
ily, and it is a great loss, there are other nations be
hind us; our truth shall not perish, even if we go
down.

But we shall not fail ! I look into your eyes
young men and women, thousands of you, and men
and women far enough from young! I look into the
eyes of fifty thousand other men and women, whom,
in the last eight months, I have spoken to, face to face,
and they say, " No ! America shall not fail ! "

I remember the women who were never found faith
less when a sacrifice was to be offered to great princi-



RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA 395

pies ; I look up to my God, and I look into my own
heart, and I say, "We shall not fail! We shall not
fail!"

This, at my side, it is the willow ; * it is the symbol
of weeping : but its leaves are deciduous ; the au
tumn wind will strew them on the ground ; and beneath,
here is a perennial plant; it is green all the year
through. When this willow branch is leafless, the
other is green with hope, and its buds are in its bosom ;
its buds will blossom. So it is with America.

Did our fathers live? are we dead? Even in our
ashes live their holy fires! Boston only sleeps; one
day she will wake! Massachusetts will stir again!
New England will rise and walk ! the vanished North
be found once more queenly and majestic! Then it
will be seen that slavery is weak and powerless in itself,
only a phantom of the night.

Slavery is a " finality," is it? There shall be no
"agitation," not the least, shall there? There is
a Hispaniola in the South, and the South knows it.
She sits on a powder magazine, and then plays with
fire, while humanity shoots rockets all round the world.
To mutilate, to torture, to burn to death revolted Af
ricans whom outrage has stung to crime that is only
to light the torches of San Domingo. This black
bondage will be red freedom one day: nay, lust, ven
geance, redder yet. I would not wait till that flood
comes and devours all.

When the North stands up, manfully, united, we
can tear down slavery in a single twelvemonth; and,
when we do unite, it must be not only to destroy slavery
in the territories, but to uproot every weed of slavery
throughout this whole wide land. Then leanness will

* Referring to the floral ornaments that day on the desk.



396 THE RIGHTS OF MAN

depart from our souls; then the blessing of God will
come upon us ; we shall have a commonwealth based on
righteousness, which is the strength of any people, and
shall stand longer than Egypt, national fidelity to
God our age-outlasting pyramid!

How feeble seems a single nation; how powerless a
solitary man! But one of a family of forty, we can
do much. How much is Italy, Rome, Greece, Pales
tine, Egypt to the world ? The solitary man a
Luther, a Paul, a Jesus he outweighs millions of
coward souls ! Each one of you take heed that the
Republic receive no harm !