USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Lebanon > July fourth, 1761: an historical discourse in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the charter of Lebanon, N.H., delivered July fourth, 1861 > Part 5
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Days thus embalmed, as they rise on the circling year, touch common sensibilities and find a glad rec- ognition in the loftiest and purest sentiments of men.
Holiest among these secular sabbaths is the birth- day of our own national independence. It has a sin- gular prominence in the record of civil and religious liberty. The free of all lands are a distinct people, whose unity and lineage is perpetuated by a paternity of ideas, and this subtle filiation has proved closer and stronger than the affinities of blood. The unbroken record of the struggles of this race for liberty, stretch- ing through the varied events of all ages, develops the divine plan in human government. It is this that gives a sublime import to the festivities of a free peo- ple uniting to celebrate their national triumphs. It is this that gives to our national holiday its prime signifi- cance.
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The student of history finds here and there, in the pathway of nations, great epochs into which many streams of influence, flowing from different countries and distant periods, concentre and combine their forces, and wherein the intelligence and culture, the strength and liberty secured by patient study and experience, by suffering and bloody conflicts, in the lapse of years, are organized into new and superior institutions by men whom Providence has raised up for such a time.
Such was the day we celebrate. It was one of the great nervous centres of history, spreading its broad and sensitive network backward and forward, receiving influence and vitality from every event and era of the past, and transmitting a formative power and an eleva- tion of character to the institutions of the future.
The declaration of rights and the proclamation of independence made on the 4th of July, 1776, viewed in their connection with English and colonial history, and the subsequent establishment of a free and inde- pendent government, constitute one of the most mo- mentous and significant events of civil history. The cause of freedom and of civilization there moved for- ward and entrenched themselves behind principles and institutions which, by the help of God, shall never be thrown down, but shall stand the imperishable bul- warks of liberty and the splendid monuments of a Christian civilization.
It would be a strange and unfilial act in us to re- frain, on the recurrence of such a day, from paying our tribute of admiration and love to the great states- men and patriots, and the brave yeomanry of that dark
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and perilous time when the foundations of many gen- erations were laid in tears and blood.
The work of our fathers was not so much the re- assertion of principles which had long been recogniz- ed, and the re-establishment, upon better foundations, of institutions which the lust of power had subverted. as it was the clear and distinct enunciation of truths which before had been only dimly foreshadowed in songs and literature, and the firm and fearless setting up, upon a broad scale, of institutions which before had only existed in partial and miniature forms.
There were pure patriots and great captains among the ancients who struggled and died for liberty. There were wise statesmen and elegant scholars, profound philosophers and gifted poets, but in the absence of the art of printing, there could be no wide-spread lit- erature, no general intelligence among large and ex- panded populations ; and hence the right of suffrage and representation could not be extended, and was not recognized as a common right, even by the freest and most enlightened of the ancient nations. The great centres of learning had not at their command the swift messengers of a broad commerce, nor the iron web of trade, which in our day carry thought and civilization wherever the sun sheds its light upon the habitations of men. As a consequence of this want of general intelligence and the means of a rapid intercommunica- tion. republics extending and transmitting the rights and privileges of a well-ordered liberty to large and populous regions could not exist ; only narrow democ- racies, limited to a single city or league of cities, and destined soon to be swept away by the savage hordes
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of barbarism, or, if suffered to survive, shielded only by their insignificance. One after another those little free states were blotted out, either by foreign power or intestine strife. At length the battle-axe of the Goth and Vandal was heard to ring even on the gates of Rome, and the great empire, which had retained the empty name and form of the republic long after its life had departed, was itself subverted.
With the supremacy of barbarism began the long night of history.
" As Argus eyes, by Hermes' wand oppressed, Closed one by one to everlasting rest ; Thus at her felt approach and secret might Art after art goes out, and all is night ; See skulking truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heaped on her head ; Philosophy that reached the heavens before, Shrinks to her hidden source, and is no more."
The iron rule of feudalism followed, and the last vestiges of freedom seemed ready to be swept away. The sons of liberty fled for safety to the fastnesses of the mountains, and there waited, in a virtuous poverty, the developments of Providence. But contrary to all hope, the brazen womb of feudalism gave birth to a sense of personal independence which, in connection with the ideas imparted to the people by the form of society organized by the Christian church, tended pow- erfully to break down the government of despotic lords, and by degrees to introduce a more liberal system of civil institutions. At length, what Guizot calls " the spirit of municipality," began to increase the intelli- gence and power of the masses, and to awaken their
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aspiration for a larger liberty. Guttenburg invented the art of printing, and the Turks drove the learned Greeks from old Byzantium. Consequent upon these events, there was a general fomentation of public sen- timent ; the love of letters revived, and the Reformation followed. The spirit of adventure and discovery, too, awoke, and man seemed to be advancing rapidly to the realization of a better condition, - to something of po- litical security and encouragement.
But just at the moment when men were in the act of securing political freedom, the swiftest and most terrible scourge ever invented by the demon of oppression inter- vened and blasted their hope. Standing armies, in the pay and interest of the king, were created. The proud barons were humbled by this fearful force, we must allow, but, as feudalism went down, kingship passed into the ascendant, and the rights of the people seemed lost forever. It is difficult to discover how political ser- vitude could ever have been dislodged from its strong- holds had not the great Genoese mariner, whose life and death are the saddest of historic tragedies, opened, under the leadings of Providence, an outlet to the op- pressed from this dungeon of tyranny.
In England, the people had wrested a few privileges from the throne, and still feebly claimed the rights of freemen, not as the inalienable prerogative of birth, but upon the ground of precedent and authority. As a class, however, they were subdued and trampled upon by the iron heel of the government and the privileged orders. At this critical period, religious intolerance and political power united their forces. both in England and on the Continent, and, as if impelled into madness
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by secret and mysterious impulses, worked all the en- gines of oppression, till they pushed into hopeless exile the Puritans of England, the Germans of the Palatinate, and the devout Huguenots of France. For such men, the last best product of many ages, God reserved a country broad and rich, beyond the sea, far removed from the corrupting influences, the thwarting prejudi- ces, and giant tyrannies of the old world. The circum- stances are significant. The overruling power which moves in history has ordered events ; and the feeble colonies thus driven into the wilderness by the hand of power, infold the great Christian nation which is to suc- ceed. But they are not yet prepared to enter upon their special mission. A century and a half of pupilage must intervene. A people must be made strong and self- reliant by the neglect of the home government, by the long and relentless Indian wars ; by the self-denial of the wilderness and the hardships of colonial life. Their views must be matured by the logic of experience and their power increased by numbers.
A train of events and a succession of causes ordered by Him " who made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath deter- mined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation," prepared them to lay the foundations of the State on the secure basis of learning and religion. Bitter persecutions and a narrow inheritance of worldly blessings, had driven them to a profound meditation upon the government of God as revealed in his word, and to an earnest study of the import and teachings of history. The divine oracles and history taught them that absolute, hereditary rulers and privileged orders
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served rather to perpetuate abuses, than to conserve the welfare of society ; that government and social institu- tions were not safe in their hands, even when guarded by the severest checks. They themselves were now en- tering upon scenes in which, if not they, their children would learn that the rightful source of power is, under God, the will of the governed ; that the welfare of so- ciety can more safely be entrusted to the wisdom and discretion of an educated and moral people than to the hazards of birth under any form of kingly rule.
Royal families may degenerate ; may become selfish and unscrupulous ; may seek for personal ends in con- flict with the public interest ; or, if the worst does not happen, may be outstripped by the people in the march of ideas and intelligence, and then endless conflicts and sorrows will succeed. But when the people make and administer their own institutions, they are flexible, and advance or change to meet the shifting phases of society. Collisions are thus prevented, and freedom given to en- terprise and thrift to multiply their resources. The aspirations of men are not baffled and turned into forces of revenge and destruction, but encouraged and kept healthful by the prospects of reward. The majority are rendered contented and hopeful while prosperity and intelligence widen with the advancing years and strength of the nation. In the little provincial assemblies which grew up under their charters, the colonists learned to legislate and to provide for emergencies. There, too, they discovered the value of great principle of repre- sentation, which has completely regenerated political science and practice, and almost made that a necessity to the moderns which was an impossibility to the ancients.
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" The patria," says the profound jurist, Horace Bin- ney, " of us moderns ought to consist in a wide land covered by a nation, and not in a city or little colony. Mankind have outgrown the ancient-city state. Coun- tries are the orchards and the broad acres where modern civilization gathers her grain and nutritious fruits. The narrow garden beds of antiquity suffice for our widened humanity no more than the short existence of ancient states. Moderns stand in need of nations and of national longevity, for their literature and law, their industry, liberty, and patriotism ; we want countries to work and write and glow for, to live and die for. The sphere of humanity has steadily widened, and nations alone can now-a-days acquire the membership of that commonwealth of our race which extends over Europe and America."
In the small assemblies of the town, the province, and the church, our fathers were educated, and pre- pared to found and become the rulers of a great govern- ment. Slowly through a hundred and fifty years, grew up a coldness of feeling and an antagonism of princi- ples between the colonies and the mother country. The separation, sooner or later, was inevitable ; and when at last the struggle came, how thoroughly it was founded upon principle, and with what religious for- titude is was conducted we all know. I need not re- hearse the familiar story of the Revolution. The names of its battle-fields are household words. I need not speak of those who were slain in the conflict, like the beauty of Israel on their high places ; nor of those who have since fallen on sleep and been borne to their graves amid the tears and honors of a grateful posterity. But
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when the war had successfully terminated, a more diffi- cult and delicate task, and one demanding rarer quali- ties of intellect and of heart, remained to be performed. The country emerged from the war exhausted and de- spondent. Its treasury was bankrupt and its credit had perished. Wanting resources to defray the ordinary expenses of government, they felt the burden of an overwhelming debt. Without being able to protect themselves by a navigation law, they saw their ports crowded with foreign ships. The armed hostility of England was only held at bay bythe peace which she had been compelled to make, while the old Confederacy was too weak to command the respect and confidence of the people. Congress had no authority to lay imposts or other taxes, and the State neglected the requisitions of a general government that possessed no coercive power but that of war. The Confederacy of 1781 had signally failed as a system of national government. The people of the whole country were compelled to replace the Articles of Confederation by an instrument which should give the power of raising revenue and of enforcing the obedience of the States. In a word, a national govern- ment which should reach the people, in place of the old league of states, became a necessity of the times. A constitution must be framed and a government organ- ized which should bring order and prosperity out of this political chaos. This, too, must be accomplished by a government founded not on force, but on justice and the common consent of the governed. Neither " precedent " nor the dogma of a "divine right" could lie at the foundation of the organic law ; but the new and untried doctrine of natural freedom and political
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equality must determine its form and character. Law was to be made majestic and efficient, not by a standing army, but by the intelligence and moral convictions of society. A government that should be able to defend the rights and protect the interests of a great people in all future time, was to be organized, with delegated powers, for a family of sovereign States, which should be able to bind them in a perpetual union and yet leave them independent of each other, within broad limits. Who has the wisdom and courage for such a task ?
The ability and success with which the Convention of 1787 fulfilled the duty devolved upon it by Provi- dence, may be seen in the encomiums of statesmen and historians, and in the constantly augmenting power and prosperity of the nation thus made one, by the Consti- tution they framed. With a sublime trust in man and in the God of nations, they committed life, liberty, prop- erty, and the development of the material and moral resources of a great country, to the protection and en- couragement of laws to be made and administered by the people themselves. With what reverent awe and love do we turn to gaze upon the cluster of great names that then ascended the political heavens. Their glory shall never be dimmed in the circling years of human history.
But we are now told in these days of rebellion and treason, that the venerated Constitution which has en- dured the varied and complicated tests of three quarters of a century ; which has drawn to it the admiration and envy of foreign nations ; which has been a model and a standard for the organic law of regenerated nationali- ties ; before which the ablest of our dead and living
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statesmen have bowed with obedient admiration, and on the defence of which the peerless and majestic intel- lect of our own Webster rested its claim to the lasting gratitude and memory of mankind ; this instrument, we are told, is simply a bond of copartnership between sov- ereign States to continue during pleasure, and liable to be rendered null and void at the whim of either party to the contract. But where can the record be found to justify so treasonable a sentiment ? Hamilton, one of the great architects of the Constitution, in urg- ing reasons for its adoption in place of the Articles of Confederation, says in language of singular power and purity, " The fabric of American Empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The
streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure original fountain of all legitimate au- thority." Listen also to the language of Pinckney, the distinguished soldier and statesman of South Carolina, in her best days. Speaking of the Declaration of In- dependence in the legislature of 1788, he says, " This admirable manifesto sufficiently refutes the doctrine of the individual sovereignty and independence of the several States. In that Declaration the several States are not even enumerated. The separate independ- ence and individual sovereignty of the several States were never thought of by the enlightened band of patriots who framed this Declaration. The several States are not even mentioned by name in any part, as if it was intended to impress the maxim on America that our freedom and independence arose from .our union ; and that without it, we never could be free or independent. Let us then consider all attempts to
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weaken this Union by maintaining that each State is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy which can never benefit us, but may bring us the most serious distress." Even the Articles of the old Confederation are styled, in the title, Articles of Confederation and perpetual union of the States. The preservation of the Union was one of the objects speci- fied in the resolution passed by the Confederate Con- gress, February 21, 1787, recommending a convention of delegates to form a more perfect government; and when that convention met " to form," to use the lan- guage of the Constitution, " a more perfect union," think you it would have provided for anything short of a per- petual union ? Did its members deceive themselves with words without meaning, and leave undone the very thing they had met, under a solemn and impera- tive sense of duty, to do? The necessity of establish- ing a national government was the hackneyed theme of every debate of the constitutional convention. If the Constitution tacitly concedes the right of secession, then the fathers of the republic placed in the very in- strument designed to perpetuate our national existence, the seeds of self-destruction. Did Washington and Ham- ilton and Madison and the other great men in that re- splendent catalogue of immortal names, thus trifle with history and deceive posterity ? None but shameless and degenerate children would tarnish the fame of their great ancestors with the foul imputation.
The father of his country anticipated, in his farewell address, the fearful crime which has come to pass. " The unity of government," he says, " which consti- tutes you one people is now dear to you. It is justly
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so ; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real in- dependence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize." He then warns, with prophetic language, against those who would " enfeeble the sacred ties" which bind us together. If we have a government in any true sense, it is a government of powers delegated by the people in their entirety, not by States. The simple but sub- lime language of the preamble of the Constitution is, " We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union," not we the sovereign States. The States were not parties to the contract, and hence possess no sovereignty which is able to override that which is made the supreme law of the land by the will of the people, the primal source of law. State rights move upon a subordinate plane. If the doctrine of Mr. Calhoun that " each State has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of the infraction as of the mode and measure of redress" of constitutional rights, had been recognized by the fathers, the Union would have perished at the outset. Occasions and pretexts must have arisen which would inevitably have subverted the government in its infancy. Constitutions do not pro- vide for their own destruction. Secession is usurpa- tion and revolution, and nothing else. The Union, not the States, possesses imperial attributes. It makes war and peace ; it holds the purse and the sword ; it makes treaties and regulates foreign commerce ; it in- poses taxes and administers justice. The Union alone is represented and recognized at foreign courts.
Unless the Saxon language is a chain of riddles, the
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Union is a government de facto, and can only be de- stroyed by revolution. Concede the right of secession and you concede the right to disband the government, with all its obligations at home and abroad, with all its glorious history and all its fearful responsibility to pos- terity. You concede the right to disorganize society, and expose it to the fearful evils of unrestrained pas- sion. The dogma is a hideous fiction by which political thieves and traitors, who are seeking to bear away the palladium from the citadel of liberty, would cover and dignify their treachery. It is the specious pretext of the disciples of Mr. Calhoun, who have been plotting for thirty years to overthrow the government.
Listen to the language of Edward Everett, the patriot scholar of New England. Speaking of his public pol- icy, he says : "I pursued this course for the sake of strengthening the hands of patriotic Union men at the South, although I was well aware, partly from facts within my personal knowledge, that leading Southern politicians had for thirty years been resolved to break up the Union, as soon as they ceased to control the United States govern- ment, and that the slavery question was but a pretext for keeping up agitation and rallying the South."
During all this time they have been secretly mar- shalling their forces, demoralizing the army and navy, exhausting the treasury, perverting history, calumni- ating the North, abusing the Union, and preparing for this carnival of treason and blood. They have even precipitated the issue, for they well knew that delay would destroy their flimsy pretext. The only true ac- count which can be given of this war is that the South, which has held the government for thirty years, has at
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length been legally and constitutionally outvoted by the North. No man worthy of any consideration pretends that they have any legitimate reason for rebellion. They cannot claim the rare right of revolution, for their per- sons and their property too have always been secure un- der this most beneficent of human governments. Even the distinguished Vice-President of this factitious con - federacy, the ablest and manliest traitor of them all, acknowledges that the Constitution - the work as well of the South as of the North - has never been vio- lated.
And what to-day is our attitude before the civilized world ? In a time of profound peace and prosperity, when the eyes of admiring nations were turned upon us with envy, and the arms of struggling patriots in Italy and Hungary were stretched to us for succor from over the sea, the mad ambition of a few sectional poli- ticians has plunged us into a fratricidal war that threat- ens our very existence, and strikes at the last best hope of a Christian civilization. Even tyrants are astonished at the madness and folly which would throw away so rich an inheritance.
Have we mistaken the purposes of the God of na- tions in planting the colonies ; in conducting them, like Israel of old, through the wilderness ; in raising up to them friends; in leading them, with an outstretched arm through wars and perils, and in blessing them at length with peace till they have become a great peo- ple ? Were the Christian heroism, and the blood poured out like water, in the Revolution, all in vain ? Were the wisdom and moderation of the men who made the Constitution of no permanent use ? The
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prayers of the fathers and their children, were they vain oblations ? Is this grand superstructure of insti- tutions, whose base rests upon the political equality of man, whose pillars rise from eternal justice, and whose guardians are learning and religion, to be toppled down as easily as the puny structure of a child by the breath of passion or the behests of slavery? No !- thank God, the " mud sills " are not rotten ; the foun- dations stand secure !
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