War Begun—Firing upon Fort Sumter—“The American Eagle as you want it”—Death of Col. Ellsworth—Equips his Sons—Personal Feeling yields to Patriotism—His House a Store-House of Military Supplies—Sends a Regiment as his Substitute—Our National Flag—The Camp, its Dangers and Duties—Bull Run—Becomes Editor of the Independent—Salutatory—The Trent Affair—Fight, Tax—Soldiers or Ferrets—Characteristics as an Editor—One Nation, one Constitution, one Starry Banner—McClellan Safe, and Richmond too—Mildly Carrying on War—The Root of the Matter—The only Ground—A Queer Pulpit—President’s Proclamation of Emancipation—Let come what will—Close of the Third Era.

For five months the daily papers had borne for their prominent headlines, “The National Crisis,” “Pro-Slavery Rebellion,” “Pro-Slavery Revolution,” “The War-Cloud.” At length the issue of April 12, 1861, was headed, “The War Commenced: The first Gun fired by Fort Moultrie against Fort Sumter”; the next day, “Fort Sumter Fallen.”

Mr. Beecher was lecturing in Cincinnati when the tidings came North of the bombardment of Fort Sumter. The committee who had charge of the lecture were alarmed, and, remembering the old pro-slavery riots of thirty years before, declared that it would be unsafe for him to deliver his lecture. He told them that to give that lecture was his object in coming to Cincinnati, and do it he should; if not in a hall, then on the public street. With many misgivings on their part, he was permitted to go ahead, but so great was the fear of a riot that few attended. That night he turned his steps homeward. Eager to learn his opinion of the matter, we met him on the doorsteps. His oldest son, having left his position up the river, had stopped at a recruiting station on Broadway, already opened, and enlisted, and had then come home. Fearing something of the kind, the mother gave strict commands that he should not leave the house until his father’s return—a command which he was the more ready to obey since the business had already been attended to. Naturally he felt some little solicitude as to what his father should say, and his first words were: “Father, may I enlist?” and was answered: “If you don’t I’ll disown you.”

The next day was Sunday. The report of his sermon was headed thus: “Henry Ward Beecher on the Crisis: ‘What will you do, stand still or go forward?’

“The good people of Brooklyn have shared with us all the fears and anxiety of the past weeks. Yesterday there was, if possible, a more dense mass of human beings than usual packed within the walls of Plymouth Church, and a more than ordinary curiosity on the part of strangers, and a more than customary solemnity pervading the congregation. It was manifestly the belief of all there that the pastor would not fail to improve the occasion by preaching to the people of this age upon the duties of the present trying hour, and that he would deal with so grand a subject in a manner befitting its character, its importance, and its universal occupation of the American mind. Nor were they disappointed. Mr. Beecher delivered a sermon from the text, ‘Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward.’”

The above appeared in one of the daily papers. We have not time to give the synopsis of the reporter. The sermon was a careful review of the present condition of affairs and a sober counting the cost of both advance and retreat.

“Peace can be had by two-thirds of the nation yielding to the one-third; by legalizing the right of any discontented community to rebel; by changing our charter of universal freedom into a charter of deliberate oppression; by becoming partners in slavery and ratifying this gigantic evil; by surrendering all right of discussion, of debate or criticism. On these terms,” he said, “we may have peace.

“You can have your American eagle as you want it. If, with the South, you will strike out his eyes, then you shall stand well with Mr. Davis and Mr. Stephens, of the Confederate States; if, with the Christians of the South, you will pluck off his wings, you shall stand well with the Southern churches; and if, with the new peacemakers that have risen up in the North, you will pull out his tail-feathers, you shall stand well with the Society for the Promotion of National Unity! But when you have stricken out his eyes, so that he can no longer see; when you have plucked off his wings, so that he can no longer fly; and when you have pulled out his guiding tail-feathers, so that he can no longer steer himself, but rolls in the dirt, a mere buzzard—then will he be worth preserving? Such an eagle it is that they mean to depict upon the banner of America.

”... So far as I myself am concerned, I utterly abhor peace on any such grounds. Give me war redder than blood and fiercer than fire, if this terrific infliction is necessary that I may maintain my faith in God, in human liberty, my faith of the fathers in the instruments of liberty, my faith in this land as the appointed abode and chosen refuge of liberty for all the earth! War is terrible, but that abyss of ignominy is yet more terrible!“

He then pointed out the steps that must be taken in the going forward. They were, deepening and cleansing our convictions, making them more earnest and religious; drawing the lines; cherishing feelings of benevolence, and aiming at a peace built on foundations of God’s immutable truth, so solid that nothing can reach to unsettle it.

To show the spirit which he cherished in those days, we cannot do better than give one of the familiar lecture-room discussions which were so frequent between him and his people. It was immediately after the death of Colonel Ellsworth, which took place May 21, 1861:

”Ques. Will you please explain one point? I am so much a natural man as not to be able to obey the injunction which calls upon me to love my enemies; and when I stand on Broadway in New York, and see men in regiments which are bound for the field of battle, having been taken from their homes, their wives, their children, and all that is dear to them on earth, by the conduct of miscreants, I cannot understand how you can have such feelings as you express. I wish you would speak on that subject.”

“I have no doubt that the brother feels just as he says he does, and I have no doubt that I do not feel a bit so. When I consider the interests of God’s advancing kingdom of justice, and judgment, and mercy, and purity, and truth, and liberty, I think that all the things in the earth are of no value at all in the comparison, and that the earth might melt with fervent heat, the elements dissolve, and the globe vanish away rather than that this kingdom should not prevail. ‘Let God be true, but every man a liar.’ Let the nations perish, let everything go, but let the eternal treasures of God—truth, liberty, mercy, judgment, and purity—be preserved. I feel lifted up to a sovereign height of inspiration when I conceive of the majesty of these treasures, effluent from the heart of God, which He is seeking to embody in our time, in our earth, in this nation. Therefore, when I see justice put down I feel like a lion. When I see a great moral principle overborne there are no bounds to my indignation. When I see a great humanity trodden under foot I long to be a champion for it. And when I look on the face of an ignorant, erring, wicked multitude, I think of a great many things besides....

“For the sake of these great principles I would give my life as quick as I would pour out a glass of water; or I will do what is harder than that—I will keep it and use it for forty years, if God spares it, increasing its toil every year. I will make any sacrifice or perform any labor for the sake of a moral principle. But when I look at the South, other feelings besides those of vengeance are excited in me. Every one of those traitors is as wicked as you think, and more. The Floyds, the Davises, the Toombses, the Rhetts, and all such as they, are more wicked than we know; and yet the Lord Jesus Christ is the Saviour held up for every such one. They are all immortal, they are all, like myself, pilgrims toward the bourne of the eternal. And when I think how many ignorant creatures are led by those base men to do wicked things, half of the wickedness of which they do not know, I feel compassion for them and am sorry for them. If they array themselves against justice it is necessary that they should be overborne; but not one blow more than is necessary for the defence of the principle assailed should be struck. We are not authorized to inflict vengeance. ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.’ About the use of every single sword and spear and ball needful to assert a divine principle there should be no squeamishness. I am for war just so far as it is necessary to vindicate a great moral truth. But one particle of violence beyond that is a flagrant treason against the law of love. And I can say to-night that I would go to war with every State in the Southern Confederacy, if called of God to join the army, and would hold them to the conflict till the cause of right was vindicated; and that I could, at the same time, pray for those misguided men as easily as to-night I can pray for my own babes. I am as sorry for them as for any set of men in the world. I do not think I utter a prayer on any morning that I do not pray for them, and that God does not see my feeling of tenderness and sorrow toward them. And that is not all. I regard them as citizens yet. I love this whole country. I love its past and its prospective history. God do so to me, and more also, if I ever cease to feel for them all, misguided though they be, as anxiously as for my own kin and brethren. We cannot afford to be very critical with wickedness.

“However, there are some difficulties involved in this question. Colonel Ellsworth, who has just been murdered by one of these ‘miscreants’ of whom you speak, I knew well. I was thinking of my own sensations when I walked over from New York after hearing the sad news. Why, I was forty feet high! I was scared, I grew so fast. I walked so lordly that every step seemed to have the weight of a mountain; yet I did not feel the touch of the earth. For one hour I think I had enough volume of feeling to have swept away a continent. I was almost frightened at the turbulent and swelling tide within me, and I said: ‘Suppose my Master should come and say: My child, what are you doing with such feelings? Where is My teaching? What are you taking on yourself My supreme attribute for? “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”’ Is it not charming how these texts will exorcise the devil? I put that passage on my head as a crown, and I have felt as peaceful as a lamb ever since. And although it was very base and wicked for that man to murder Colonel Ellsworth as he did, I can say that had he not expiated his crime, and had the victim been my brother, I could still have forgiven him and prayed for him.

“Now, my brethren, I am going to fight this battle right straight through from beginning to end, and not lose my Christian feelings either. I am going to stick close to my Saviour. And, with regard to the past, I am not sorry for one sermon that I have preached among you, or that I have preached during the last twenty years of my life. If the question were put to me to-night, ‘When you look back upon your public life and see what you have done to bring about the present issue, are you not sorry for the ground you have taken?’ I would say, No. I bless God for every word I have spoken and every influence I have exerted in that direction. Knowing all that was to be, I would do over again all that I have done if the same state of things existed, only my little finger should be as heavy as my loins have been.

“Now that the time of conflict has come, we must accept it. I mean to go through it, and you shall; and I pray God that the whole anointed Church at the North may, bearing the banner of Christ along with the banner of our country. The stars over us shall not be brighter and purer than those that we carry into this very conflict. We have had examples enough to know that even in such a desperate case as civil war a man may be a Christian. I thank God that praying men have gone into the army from this church. Every day and night there is a prayer-meeting in our camp, and there will be to the end. And I believe that among our soldiers are those who, if they saw the bitterest and most blasphemous of the enemy suffering and dying, would relieve their sufferings by kind offices and soothe their last moments by comforting words. God grant that it may be so, and that, both in the service of the country and in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ, they may be true soldiers!”

It is impossible to describe, or even, in our time, to conceive, the fervor of patriotism that followed the firing upon Fort Sumter. Patriotic meetings were held in nearly every village of the North, and the raising of flag-poles with their accompanying exercises was the order of the day. A monster mass-meeting was held in Union Square, New York, over which John A. Dix presided, and where the flag which had been lowered at Sumter was displayed. The attack on the Massachusetts regiment in Baltimore as it hastened to the defence of Washington deepened and increased the excitement. The ranks of military companies already organized were speedily filled, and the young men met, in most of our Northern cities, week by week for military drill. A squad of these was formed in Brooklyn. Some fifteen of us wanted to go to the front, and offered ourselves to one of the New York regiments, but the offer was refused with thanks. Their ranks were full and they had no place for us. Hearing of this, Mr. Beecher, who took a deep interest in this whole matter and used to attend our drills, proposed that two of us, his own son and one who expected to belong to his family, should join a cavalry regiment then being enlisted in New York. He gave us each a horse, brought us home our equipment of pistols, bowie-knives, etc., and, the next day, went with us to New York to see us enlist; but the enlisting officer had received notice from Washington the day before to accept no more recruits—cavalry regiments were not thought to be necessary for the ninety days’ struggle; and so we were refused. One of us went to Riker’s Island, and, after a month of waiting, was able to get into service; the other, having just finished his theological course, and having for weeks been importuned by a church to become its pastor, concluded that it was God’s will that he should preach, left the city, and went to work.

There was great variety of work to be done. No need now of efforts to arouse the public mind—the firing upon Fort Sumter had done that; no need now of urging men to the front—the young men of the nation had formed into companies and regiments faster than the government was willing to accept them. Illinois asked permission to furnish all the men that were required. But another work pressed upon heart and hand. Homes at the North were being made desolate, not only by the absence but by the death of their loved ones. Tidings began to reach us of what afterwards seemed skirmishes, but were important battles in those days—Big Bethel, Newport News, and others; and the list of the dead, small to what it afterwards became, carried with it then, as always, sorrow and heart-break. The bodies of fallen sons and brothers, picked up on the battle-field or gathered from the hospitals, covered with the stars and stripes, were being borne through the streets of our cities on the way to bereaved homes, and the people needed comforting. Then it was that the words of one perfectly assured of the justice of the cause, that it was of God, and that those who upheld their country’s flag were doing His work, and who viewed life and death as only and equally desirable when they accomplished His will, rang out like the resurrection challenge of St. Paul: “O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?”

In a sermon preached May 26, 1861, when but the first mutterings of the storm had been heard and the first splashes of rain were felt, he says: “He whose remains are to pass to-day, amid many tears, through yonder city, lived long though he died early. Why? Because he lived to a moral purpose. Because he has given his name to patriotism. Millions of men shall live four-score years and shall not leave any such memorial as he has left. He had lived long enough. Any man that can give the whole weight of his being and his heart-life to a great truth or cause has lived long enough. Measure him by the higher and not by the lower standard. Do not say that he has lost days, that he has lost coming honors, that he lost pleasure. He lost nothing. He gained everything. He gained glory, and paid his life for it in such a way as to take on immortality.”

One very intimate with him in those days says: “I do not think that he spent a moment in solicitude for the fate of those who were at the front, not even of his own flesh and blood. Everything seemed swallowed up in his zeal for his country, and for her he was ready to sacrifice everything without complaint or hesitation.”

“My oldest son is in the army, and shall I read with trembling anxiety the account of every battle to see if he is slain? I gave him to the Lord, and I shall not take him back and I will not worry and fret myself about him. I will trust in God though He slay not only him but me also; and all I have I put on the same ground—I try to, sometimes not succeeding and sometimes succeeding a little. My God, this Christ Emmanuel—God with me—has sustained and comforted me in care and trouble, and taken away my fear and put hope in its place, and I will look to Him still; and if there are any here that have carried burdens, and whose faces are wrinkled with care, I beseech of you to try living by faith in a present Saviour that loves you and ordains all things, and says that everything shall work for your good if you love God.”

Among the things that occupied his time and called forth all his energies was the equipment of the Fourteenth Long Island Regiment. His home at 124 Columbia Heights became a store-house of military goods and a place of consultation for men interested in the events that were taking place; Plymouth Church became a rendezvous for regiments passing to the front, and the church parlors a workshop where the women and maidens of the church, under the direction of Mrs. Beecher, met daily to sew and knit and pack for the soldiers. He told Mrs. Beecher to use all his salary in this direction, except such as was absolutely necessary for running the household. She did this, and added to the amount by personal solicitation from families and merchants, until an immense sum was raised and expended.

While many men sent single substitutes, Mr. Beecher determined to be represented in the war by a whole regiment; and so, after helping to fit out two regiments, he took upon himself the entire burden of equipping a new one, called “The Long Island Volunteers,” afterwards the Sixty-seventh New York. This regiment would never have had any existence but for the labors of Mr. and Mrs. Beecher, and the members of the church whom they interested in it. Their eldest son, Henry Barton Beecher, joined it and was made a lieutenant. In those days the government had plenty of men and very little money, and therefore declined to accept this regiment for many weeks after it was organized, during which time the entire expense of feeding and clothing the men was borne by subscriptions raised by Mr. Beecher. It was not until after the battle of Bull Run, at the end of July, 1861, that the regiment was even in form accepted, and not until much later that it was actually mustered into the national service.

In those days of multiplied and harassing labors Mr. Beecher did not lose his hope, his cheerfulness, nor even his mirthfulness. He had a refuge to which he constantly fled when the pressure became too heavy. He had also the power of seeing the humorous side of many common or even tragic events, and drawing from them laughter as well as tears. The flowers, too, and the clouds had their message for him. He kept the channels of his soul wide open on every side to receive, and became a fountain of perpetual inspiration to others.

At this time, while the route through Baltimore was closed against our troops on their way to Washington, he preached to the “Brooklyn Fourteenth,” on the eve of their departure to the front, upon “Our National Flag.” After giving the history of our banner he more particularly addressed the soldiers before him:

“And now God speaks by the voice of His providence, saying, ‘Lift again that banner! Advance it full and high!’ To your hands God and your country commit that imperishable trust. You go forth self-called, or rather called by the trust of your countrymen and by the Spirit of your God, to take that trailing banner out of the dust and out of the mire, and lift it again where God’s rains can cleanse it, and where God’s free air can cause it to unfold and stream as it has always floated before the wind. God bless the men that go forth to save from disgrace the American flag!

“Accept it, then, in all its fulness of meaning. It is not a painted rag. It is a whole national history. It is the Constitution. It is the government. It is the free people that stand in the government on the Constitution. Forget not what it means; and, for the sake of its ideas rather than its mere emblazonry, be true to your country’s flag. By your hands lift it; but let your lifting it be no holiday display. It must be advanced ‘because of the truth.’

“That flag must go to the capital of this nation; and it must not go hidden, not secreted, not in a case or covering, but full high displayed, bright as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners! For a single week that disgraceful work, that shameful circuit, may be needful; but the way from New England, the way from New York, the way from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, to Washington, lies right through Baltimore, and that is the way the flag must and shall go! [Enthusiastic cheers.] But that flag, borne by ten thousand and thrice ten thousand hands, from Connecticut, from Massachusetts (God bless the State and all her men!), from shipbuilding Maine, from old granite New Hampshire, from Vermont of Bennington and Green-Mountain-Boy patriotism, from Rhode Island, not behind any in zeal and patriotism, from New York, from Ohio, from Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Delaware, and the other loyal States—that flag must be carried, bearing every one of its insignia, to the sound of the drum and the fife, into our national capital, until Washington shall seem to be a forest in which every tree supports the American banner!

“And it must not stop there. The country does not belong to us from the Lakes only to Washington, but from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The flag must go on. The land of Washington shall see Washington’s flag again. The land that sits in darkness, and in which the people see no light, shall yet see light dawn and liberty flash from the old American banner! It must see Charleston again, and float again over every fort in Charleston harbor. It must go further, to the Alligator State, and stand there again. And sweeping up through all plantations and over all fields of sugar and rice and tobacco, and every other thing, it must be found in every State till you touch the Mississippi; and, bathing in its waters, it must go across and fill Texas with its sacred light. Nor must it stop when it floats over every one of the States. That flag must stand, bearing its whole historic spirit and original meaning, in every Territory of this nation!”

Other sermons of similar character followed. “The Camp, its Dangers and Duties,” was one:

“For any one that is going forth to meet the temptations of camp life I had almost said I would sum up in one single word of remembrance a talisman of safety—temperance, absolute temperance.... The men that are dangerous in camps are not bloated drunkards, shameless gamblers, and such as they. But an accomplished officer, a brilliant fellow, who knows the world, who is gentle in language, who understands all the etiquettes of society, who is fearless of God, who believes nothing in religion, who does not hesitate, with wit and humor, to jeer at sacred things, who takes an infernal pleasure in winding around his finger the young about him, who is polished and wicked, and walks as an angel of light to tempt his fellow-men, as Satan did to tempt our first parents—if there be in camp such a one, he is the dangerous man.

“There ought to be a bold stand taken in favor of virtue by the good in each one of the various companies. If there is not such a stand taken in Company C of the Fourteenth Regiment, I shall be ashamed of my preaching.”

He was constantly invited to lecture, and almost any sum was offered to secure his services. These, as we may well conceive, were mostly patriotic addresses upon the great subjects that were then burning in the minds of the American people.

We remember well his having a course at Providence, Rhode Island, the third of which was delivered Monday, after the heavy work of the day previous, and when he took the train he had not touched pen to paper nor given it a moment’s thought; but his mind and heart were fully awake, and the resources of a lifetime of thought and labor were at his command.

The battle of Bull Run, which was fought in July, as is well known, was the first battle of the war of really national importance. The result was sobering and humiliating to the North. On the following Sunday evening Mr. Beecher preached a sermon upon “God in National Affairs.” After tracing His way in the history of the nation, he says:

“The battle is well begun. If I consult my pride, if I consult my vanity, I fain would never have seen our banners dip; and yet, if I consult a larger wisdom, I know not but that the best thing that can befall us is that humiliation which shall teach us not to rely so much on words and cheers and newspaper campaigns. A defeat just sufficient to make us feel that we must fall upon the interior stores of manhood, that we must have faith in God, that we must set aside everything but a solemn purpose and an earnest consecration of ourselves to this work which God has given us to do—such a defeat cannot but be beneficial.”

And so it proved. The battle of Bull Run awoke the North from its dream of easy conquest, and thenceforth she took up the war in earnest.

In his Thanksgiving sermon in November of that year, upon “Modes and Duties of Emancipation,” he shows the conservatism of his belief and his confidence in the national authority if rightly used—“This conflict must be carried on through our institutions, not over them”—and his view of the great forces engaged—“While preparations for this conflict have been going on God has poured money into our coffers and taken it away from those who might use it to our harm. He is holding back France and England, and saying to all nations, ‘Appoint the bounds! Let none enter the lists to interfere while those gigantic warriors battle for victory! Liberty and God, and slavery and the devil, stand over against each other, and let no man put hand or foot into the ring till they have done battle unto death!’ Amen! Even so, Lord Almighty. It is Thy decree, and it shall stand! And when the victory shall come, not unto us, not unto us, but—in the voice of thrice ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, of ransomed ones, mingled with Thine earthly children’s gladness—unto Thee shall be the praise and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.”

During all these years, almost from the time he came to Brooklyn, Mr. Beecher had been fortunate in having a channel of communication with the public, in general so in harmony with his own views and spirit as the New York Independent. In its second number appears an extract from a sermon of his, followed by frequent contributions from his pen called “Star Papers,” and for the last three years a sermon in full upon the second page. He is now called to its head. In the issue of December 19, 1861, appears his “Salutatory.” Since in this he gives, in brief, his conception of the office and importance of the religious newspaper, it is given in full:

“The undersigned has to-day assumed the editorial management of the Independent. This will not involve any change in the principles, the purposes, or general spirit of the paper. The Independent was founded to illustrate and to defend the truths and doctrines of the Christian religion; to employ them as the authoritative standards by which to estimate and influence events, measures, and men; to infuse a spirit of truth and humanity into the affairs of this nation; to give aid and encouragement to every judicious scheme of Christian benevolence. It has sought to leaven with the Christian spirit all the great elements of our civilization. These were the aims. The results are upon record.

“For the future, studying a catholic sympathy with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ, and seeking to promote concord among all Christians of every name, the Independent will still continue explicitly and firmly to hold and to teach those great cardinal doctrines of religion that are substantially held in common by the Congregational orthodox churches of New England and by the Presbyterian churches of our whole land. But, as heretofore, this will be done for the promotion of vital godliness rather than for sectarianism.

“The Independent will not deviate from that application of Christian truth to all public questions which has thus far characterized its course. While seeking to promote religious feeling, as such, and to incite and supply devotional wants, it will not forget that there is an ethical as well as an emotive life in true religion. We shall therefore assume the liberty of meddling with every question which agitates the civil or Christian community, according to our own best discretion.

“The editorial profession, with the progress of popular intelligence, has assumed an importance second to no other. It may unite in it the elements of power hitherto distributed in the several professions, and add, besides, many that have belonged to no other calling. He who knows the scope and power of the press need desire no higher office than the editorial.

“In that silent realm of influences out of which proceed the actions of men and the events of history, the editor is the invisible leader. Votes cannot raise him higher. His pen is more than a sceptre. Profoundly impressed with such a responsibility, desiring to honor God in the welfare of men, we ask the sympathy of good men and the remembrance of all who pray.

At this time the excitement growing out of the capture of Mason and Slidell on board the British steamer Trent, by Commodore Wilkes on the San Jacinto, was at its height. News had just reached this country of the bitter feeling awakened by “the outrage,” of the shipment of troops to Canada, and other hasty preparations by Great Britain to avenge the insult to her flag. And Mr. Beecher’s first editorial bears the somewhat ominous title of “War with England.”

As we might expect, it is both temperate and defiant in language and tone:

“We have no idea that there will be any war with that power. England has a peculiar practical wisdom in affairs which touch her own material interests. Her folly will be expended in words; her wisdom reserved for actions. It is not her interest to go to war with the Northern States in the interest of the Southern States. There is no probability that she will allow herself, whatever she has done in other days, to be found fighting for slavery against freedom....

“There is no desire on our part for so unnatural a war. To avert it we shall be willing to yield anything but honor. Our hands are sufficiently full. To have a British fleet thundering at our sea-doors, while the volcano was yet pouring lava through our Southern States, would be a little more business on hand than could be attended to with that thoroughness which our people desire in all warlike enterprises.

“Yet should England force us into war, terrible and atrocious as that would be, America is determined to put her in the wrong before the world. If we have transgressed any law of nations; if we have, indeed, violated any right of England; if we have, to the width of a hair, passed beyond the line of our own proper duty and right, we shall, upon suitable showing, need no menace to make ample reparation. We shall do it for the satisfaction of our own sense of justice. But if we are right, if we have done right, all the threatenings in the world will not move this people from their steadfastness....

“Our wish is to unite with England in a race of civilization. But if she will fight, we must.”

Some idea of the variety and character of the work he did at this time may be gained by a look at his editorials found in the Independent of January 16, 1862, the third week of his administration as editor. The first is “Our Help from Above,” in which he directs all burdened hearts to the great sources and divine methods of consolation. “The nearer our thoughts come to the infinite and the divine the more power have we over our troubles. The act of consolation is, to a great degree, the act of inspiration.”

The raising, equipping, and feeding such vast armies as, it was now seen, would be required for the prosecution of the war, awakened in the minds of thoughtful men a question scarcely second in importance to any. By what plan or on what system shall the money required for these large and expensive enterprises be secured? His second editorial upon this page takes up this matter under the head of “A Word from the People to Congress,” in which he urges the fearless imposition of taxes sufficient to carry on the war, and justifies such a course upon the simple basis of honesty. The article opens with this sentence, “Taxation and national honesty are now synonymous,” and closes with this, “Every honest man in America ought to send to Washington one message in two words, Fight, Tax.”

How to treat the black men that came into our lines, or were liberated by the advance of our armies, was another of the pressing questions at this time, and one concerning which there was a great difference of opinion. He treated this subject in a column article on this page, entitled “Men, not Slaves.” The position which he held, and advocated with great force and clearness, is given in this sentence: “One thing is plain—one thing as a starting-point admits of no doubt, needs no hesitation: let us forget that these blacks ever were slaves, and remember only that they are men. With this as our first principle we cannot go far wrong.”

This money-raising was a matter of so great importance that he devoted another column to it on this same page, on the “Duty of the Hour.” In the first article he sent a message to Congress; in this he speaks to the Christian public: “Whether the great impending patriotic tax shall be a moral triumph and a testimony to the religious life of this people will depend largely upon the conduct of Christian men and the action of Christian teachers.... There seems to have been very little education of the consciences of Christian men to the duty of a cheerful support of government by their property. Even Christian men are tempted to give grudgingly, selfishly, meanly. The nobler sentiments of the heart have been allowed but little scope in this part of citizen duty.

“Is the Gospel worn out? Are ministers of the Gospel less manly and Christian than in the days of the fathers? Has the American pulpit forgotten that its place is in the van—that it leads, not follows, the camp?

“Every church should have a public sentiment developed within it which shall make this national tax almost a free-will offering. Let Christian laymen take counsel together. Let the leading men of towns and neighborhoods not only set a good example, but make it their duty to cheer and inspirit the slow and reluctant. Let Christian men everywhere, and in all things, seek to inspire the public mind with an earnest willingness to discharge this great debt which we are called to pay for national unity, national safety, and national glory.”

In those days of dress-parades in our largest army, and “all quiet on the Potomac,” men chafed continually over what appeared to be inaction and timidity on the part of the government at Washington. This found expression in still another article by this same pen upon this same page, “Courage and Enterprise”:

“There was never a time when timidity was so nearly allied to rashness, and courage to the highest prudence, as now. We have every element of national prosperity except the courage to use our power. Standing on a centre and whirling around with sound and celerity may make a top, but never an administration. Courage to see and accept the whole national danger; courage to see and to accept the thoroughest remedy; courage to ask the people for all that is needed, without a thought of refusal; courage to use the means, willingly afforded, so as to put the whole strength of this nation into every blow; courage to dash in pieces every enemy, without stopping to consider just how we shall mend the pieces afterward—this is the very critical prudence of good administration.

“Since war is upon us, let us have courage to make war.

“There is no money needed, there are no men wanted, there is no enthusiasm that the North will not give with eager gladness, if only SOMEBODY will speak to the nation such words as the fathers spoke! Then men LOVED liberty! The nation suffered for a principle! What are we doing now? Are we raising moss on cannon-wheels, or are we fighting? Is it husbandry or war that is going on? Are we to starve Southern armies or conquer them? Do we mean to put down rebellion by soldiers or ferrets?”

These editorials showed certain features which were as characteristic of his work in the editor’s chair as they were in the pulpit and upon the platform; the first of these was this: he chose his subjects from among the things which at that time affected and interested the people. This he did, not simply because he could then get the ear of the public, nor because these were in themselves the largest or most important matters, but from a deep religious conviction that these present questions and present interests were a part of God’s providence, by which and through which He was accomplishing His purposes; and that in treating these matters he was working together with Him. He believed thoroughly in God’s action in common affairs and through the impulses given to common men. This conviction made him a leader of the people without bringing him into bondage to them. It gave him the kind of leadership to which he attained: not of the abstract thinker in the movements of a hundred years hence, but of the practical man of affairs in the battles of to-day. This gave him the boldness that he never failed to display. Confident that he was moving in harmony with God’s purpose and at His own appointed time, he waited for no gathering of numbers, but pushed on alone, if necessary, with an assurance born of faith. Storms and confusion did not daunt him, because he recognized in these but the necessary methods by which the Almighty carries out His designs in the moral and spiritual as in the material world.

Another characteristic feature was seen in his treatment of the subject in hand. He uniformly regarded it from the standpoint of the law of Christ’s kingdom on the earth—“Bear ye one another’s burdens.” This insured harmony in his policy through all changes of events around him, and ultimately secured success. All the forces of the universe, because created and administered by the Saviour of mankind, were on the side not only of justice and truth but of kindness, forbearance, and helpfulness, and must in time prevail. So deep was his conviction of the direct and universal application of the law of this kingdom that he instinctively took this side, and linked his action and his destiny with its fortunes, when prudence and policy would seem to dictate a different course, with a sublime confidence in its final victory.

A third characteristic was this: He wrote so as to awaken inspiration, to stir men’s hearts to feel. It was not enough that men believed a truth; that was nothing unless they felt it. His words must take hold, they must excite the emotions and move men to action, or they were a failure.

Besides the editorial articles referred to on this one page, there was his sermon in this same issue occupying more than four columns of the second page of the paper. It was upon the Divine Government, and moved along on these lofty heights: “We believe that God is in His own world and that He governs it by His personal will; that this government includes nations, families, and individuals; that it aims at the highest good and the everlasting good of sentient and intelligent creatures; that it is one which admits the action of our minds upon God’s and the action of God’s upon ours; that it has in it a place for all human yearnings and strivings and longings.” “I bring you a Gospel that will never wear out, a Gospel which is for ever fresh, and that is, Emmanuel—God with us: God with you, in you, around you, loving you, bearing with you, forgiving you, helping you, watching over you, taking you up and carrying you as the parent takes up and carries the little child.”

The first anniversary Sunday of the attack on Fort Sumter was marked by a sermon on the “Success of American Democracy,” the tone of which may be judged by the following passage:

“‘We will give every dollar that we are worth, every child that we have, and our own selves; we will bring all that we are and all that we have, and offer them up freely—but this country shall be one and undivided. We will have one Constitution and one liberty, and that universal.’ The Atlantic shall sound it and the Pacific shall echo it back, deep answering to deep, and it shall reverberate from the Lakes on the North to the unfrozen Gulf on the South—‘One nation, one Constitution, one starry banner!’ Hear it, England!—one country, and indivisible. Hear it, Europe!—one people, and inseparable. One God; one hope; one baptism; one Constitution; one government; one nation; one country; one people—cost what it may, we will have it!”

The summer of 1862 was, perhaps, a period of as great discouragement to the North as any during the war. After months of preparation and wearisome delays, with the grandest army that had ever been gathered on this continent, McClellan had made his advance against Richmond, only to entrench, retreat, and at last to be hurled back defeated and shattered. It was when these terrible disasters were beginning to be understood and their true significance appreciated that Mr. Beecher’s editorials in the Independent rose to their highest point of power and influence. They were directed to the people and to the government as occasion demanded, but always with such a grouping of facts, with so clear an appreciation of the situation, and with so great earnestness of appeal and power of denunciation that they must be reckoned among the loyal forces. We give the titles and a few sentences from several of that time, that their general character may be understood. On July 3, 1862, we have one upon “The Great Duty”:

“In another column will be found the President’s call for 300,000 more soldiers. These, and as many more if needed, can be raised. The North has not changed her mind. The integrity of this nation, the authority of its Constitution over all its original territory, will be maintained at every hazard and at whatever expense.

“It is our duty to the nation and to the family of nations to make a slaveholders’ rebellion so odious and disastrous that it shall stand to all ages like Sodom and Gomorrah. Whatever it may cost in men and money, the North is fully assured that for nothing else can money be so well spent, and for nothing nobler can men live, or, if need be, lay down their lives!

“The great duty now is to maintain a united North. No event can be more sure than the victory of this government over the slaveholders’ conspiracy, if the loyal States are united. But if secret feuds or open factions shall divide and paralyze the popular feeling, the cause will fail, or succeed only after long, wasting, and useless expenditures.”

In the next issue, July 10, he has an equally strong editorial upon “The Country’s Need.” The suppression of news, the failure to trust the people, the political intrigues at the capital, moved him to righteous and sorrowful indignation:

“Did the government frankly say to this nation, We are defeated? To this hour it has not trusted the people. It held back the news for days. Nor was the truth honestly told when outside information compelled it to say something. It is even to this hour permitting McClellan’s disaster to be represented as a piece of skilfully planned strategy! After the labor of two months, the horrible sickness of thousands of men poisoned in the swamps of the Chickahominy, the loss of probably more than ten thousand as noble fellows as ever lifted a hand to defend their country, McClellan, who was four miles from Richmond, finds himself twenty-five miles from the city, wagons burned, ammunition-trains blown up, parks of artillery captured, no entrenchments, and with an army so small that it is not pretended that he can reach Richmond! The public are infatuated. The papers that regaled us two weeks ago with visions of a Fourth of July in Richmond are now asking us to rejoice and acclaim—not at victory—but that we have just saved the army! McClellan is safe!—and Richmond too!

“The government, upon this disaster, procures the governors of the States to ask it to call for 300,000 more men. Why did not the President take the responsibility, plainly confess our disaster, say that we were within a hand-breadth of ruin, throw himself on the people? No. The people pay taxes, give their sons and brothers—but that is all. We are sick and weary of this conduct. We have a sacred cause, a noble army, good officers, and a heroic common people. But we are like to be ruined by an administration that will not tell the truth; that spends precious time in playing at President-making; that is cutting and shuffling the cards for the next great political campaign. Unless good men awake, unless the accursed silence is broken that has fallen on the people, unless the government is held sternly to its responsibility to the people, we shall dally through the summer, make brigadier-generals until autumn, build huge entrenchments, but fight no battles till they are forced upon us, and then we shall be called upon to celebrate our defeats or retreats as masterly strategies!

“We have a country. We have a cause. We have a people. Let all good men pray that God would give us a government!”

This is followed by one, July 17, on the “Patriotism of the People.” Its tone will be understood by these few sentences:

“There is no need of rousing the patriotism of the people. It is an inexhaustible quality. It underlies their very life. The government itself is buoyed up by it, and rides upon it, like a ship upon the fathomless ocean.

“No. It is the government that needs rousing. We do not need meetings on the Hudson, but motion on the Potomac. It is not in Boston, or Buffalo, or Cincinnati, or New York that this case is to be settled, but in Washington. There is no use of concealing it. The people are beginning to distrust their rulers—not their good nature, their patriotism, their honesty, but their capacity for the exigency of military affairs. They know that in war an hour often carries a campaign in its hand. A day is a year. The President seems to be a man without any sense of the value of time. The people admire his disinterestedness. They believe him firm when he reaches decisions. But they perceive how long a period he requires to form judgments; how wide a circuit he takes of uncertainty and vacillation before he determines. In civil affairs, that can bear to wait, the people deem him among the best of our long line of Presidents. But it is war! Armies are perishing. Months are wasting. We are in the second year of rebellion. We have been just on the eve of doing something for sixteen months!

“The nation rose up in its majesty to punish rebellion. It put a magnificent army into the President’s hand. For one year that army was besieged in the capital!

“At length, this past spring, began the campaign in Virginia. The people gloried in the belief that the majesty of the government would be asserted. After four months’ campaign the armies of the United States are on the defensive! Not less than a hundred thousand men have been lost by death, wounds, sickness, and captivity; McClellan is cooped up on James River; Pope is collecting an army; and the country is to-day actually debating whether the enemy cannot strike a blow at Washington! Is this such a management as will confirm the confidence of the country in Mr. Lincoln’s conduct of the war? Do we need to ask why men are slow to volunteer? Does any man need to be told what the end of such things must be? This is not punishing rebellion; it is helping it....

“We speak plainly, sorrowfully, earnestly. An enemy of the Administration would have no right to speak so. We are friends—all the more because we speak out what millions think but do not utter, lest it might hinder the cause. But, unless some one speaks, there will soon be little cause left to hinder or to help.”

In the next issue, that of July 24, he has another two-column editorial upon “The Duty of To-day”:

“In the beginning of this great struggle the question among loyal men was, How shall we save this nation? One year of fighting and the question is, Whether we can save it? That is the question of to-day....

“The South has simplicity and unity of purpose. The North is uncertain which she wishes most—to subdue the rebellion, to leave slavery unharmed, or to have the right President at the next election!

“The South adjourns every question and postpones every interest in favor of arms. The North is busy with conflicting schemes and interests—and is also mildly carrying on war.

“Does anybody doubt the result of such a course? It is so certain that it is not worth our while to waste another man or another dollar! Either the Administration policy should instantly change or the war cease! It is not more vigor so much as a different internal idea. If the Administration cannot be disenchanted of the traditional policy that has grown up during the heartless, timid, compromising era of the last half-century, and adopt the simple and straightforward policy that becomes a people striving for liberty and free institutions upon the American continent, then we are doomed! It is war that we are making—war first, war second, war wholly! It is not politics. It is not Constitution-making. It is not the decision of legal niceties. These are not the business of government, as toward the South. It is war, absolute, terrible, and immeasurable war!

“The South has organized on the fact of slavery, and fights on that issue, pure and simple. The North must organize on the doctrine of liberty, and fight right through on that issue, pure and simple.

“The South sacrifices everything that conflicts with her central idea. The North must do the same. The South is not ashamed of slavery. The North must not be ashamed of liberty!

”... The government cannot any longer avoid choosing the issue that has been made up and thrust upon it—freedom or slavery. The time has come. So long as there was a chance of solving this question as a civil question it was wise to leave it, as far as possible, to the States concerned, and to employ the moral influences which change men’s minds. But slavery has become a military question. One year has changed all things. A remiss and vacillating policy of the Administration; the committing of the armies of the United States for a whole year to a man who thought he was at West Point giving a four years’ course of instruction to five hundred thousand men infinitely at leisure, has changed the relations and possibilities of things. It has taken slavery out of the realm of discussion and placed it in the arena of war. It must be settled by force....

“Nothing will unite this people like a bold annunciation of a moral principle. Let the American flag be lifted up by Mr. Lincoln, as was the brazen serpent, and let it be known that every man who looks upon it on this continent shall be free, and a tide of joy and irresistible enthusiasm will sweep away every obstacle. Let Mr. Lincoln decree it. The nation will do it!

“Such a policy would carry the conscience of the North; would kindle the enthusiasm for liberty, which is always the most potent of influences; would bring all the historic traditions of the old American struggle to enkindle the ardor of the young, who are to form our armies. It would brush away at one stroke a thousand hindrances, give simplicity and unity to our plans, and distinctness to our policy. It would end all threat of foreign intervention. Above all, it would give to the American armies that pillar of smoke by day and fire by night by which God the Emancipator led forth His people from bondage into liberty!”

In the next issue, July 31, he writes a two-column editorial upon “The Root of the Matter”:

“It is not enough that we increase our men and means. We shall never succeed until we accept the idea latent in this conflict. Slavery must be crushed. Liberty must have absolute and unquestioned dominion on this continent. We will not have oppression under the symbol of a sceptre or of a whip—neither exported from abroad nor sprouting from our own soil! This continent is dedicated to Liberty. It is the mission of this generation of men to establish free institutions from ocean to ocean. We sought to do it in peace. Since war has come, we will seek to take from its repulsiveness and horror by making it serve the noblest ends of human liberty. If it is for liberty upon a whole continent that we fight, then every son or brother that falls is a sacrificial victim. By his blood we ransom generations of men!

“The way to make the Administration see this truth is to see it ourselves. There is a kind of political mesmerism. Our rulers will partake of our sensations. What the people see the President will see. What the people taste will repeat itself on the President’s tongue.

“Let the sentence be spoken. Let all hindrances and hesitations end. Lift up the banner! And as the winds of war roll out its folds, let those letters shine out as if God had written them with heavenly light, ‘Universal Emancipation.’”

The next editorial, August 7, is upon “A Leader for the People.” These were the days of Pope and the disasters of the army, and the uncertainty and terror at Washington. Two columns of argument and appeal for more genuine enthusiasm for the great doctrines on which this government was founded close with a prayer, the only relief of a heart bursting with a mighty passion of sorrow and impatience:

“Great God, what a people hast Thou brought forth upon this continent! What love of liberty; what heroic love of law and institution; what courage, and constancy, and self-sacrifice hast Thou given them! And no man is found to lead this so great a nation! Be Thou Leader! Lord God of Hosts, hast Thou forgotten how to lead a people? There are no ages on Thy head! Years make Thee neither old nor weary! Behind Thy unwrinkled brow no care dwells! Teach this people to need no other leader but Thyself! Then, led by Thee, teach them to be all-sufficient for every deed of justice, and omnipotent for liberty!”

These are followed, August 14, by a three-column editorial upon “The Time has Come”:

“We have been made irresolute, indecisive, and weak by the President’s attempt to unite impossibilities; to make war and keep the peace; to strike hard and not hurt; to invade sovereign States and not meddle with their sovereignty; to put down rebellion without touching its cause; to bring an infuriated people into enforced union with their enemies, and to leave all their causes of quarrels unsettled and vigorous, and yet hope for future concord.

“Thus far the conservative North has been striving to conduct this war so as not to meddle with the so-called Southern right of slavery. But, in spite of every scruple, events have crowded men to the necessity of confiscation and emancipation. There is one more step. It is the last sublime step toward national safety and national Christian glory. It is immediate and universal emancipation!”

In the next issue, August 21, is another article, upon “The Only Ground,” of the same temper, urging the same plea:

“The President has the right and power to destroy slavery. Let him account to the civilized world for not doing it.”

And another August 28, upon “Reconstruction”:

“Since, then, the old Union is de facto ceased, and all the local rights lapsed by rebellion to the hands of the government, and it is to reconstruct the Union, would it be a stretch of authority in the government so to reconstruct it as to insure its perpetuity by purging out all possible cause of future discord? The President has the authority. He is exercising it every day. All that we ask is that he will look forward and not backward; that he will consider the nation of the future, and not mere precedents in the past.... To put down rebellion first, and attend to slavery afterwards, is letting two serpents uncoil that may as well be stricken through with one blow.”

The preacher’s pulpit is in perfect accord with the editor’s chair. In a sermon of July 27, 1862, he says: “God has been pleased to bring this nation at this time into great trials that are to test the faith of all true men. I think that we have not by a long way touched bottom yet. I think that the wind has not yet blown its fiercest. There are blacker clouds than those that have yet expended their fury. I cast no confidence away. I do not know that we are to succeed to-day or to-morrow; but we are going to succeed. I do not know that we are going to succeed in Virginia for the present, but we are a-going to succeed in America.America.

“When I die there will be a great many things that, if I have time to think of them, I may be sorry for. After I die there may be a great many inconsistencies, a great many sins, a great many unperformed duties that, when I behold them in retrospect, I shall regret. But I tell you that, whether in the passage of death, or at the gate of heaven, or before God’s eternal throne, I never expect to be sorry that I have preached so often and so strongly in behalf of those that were in bonds; that I have spoken, as I have had opportunity, for those that could not speak for themselves; that I have roused up, according to the measure of my influence, the whole community to vindicate the cause of God toward His oppressed ones. I shall not be sorry for that. I shall be sorry that I have not done more; but I never shall be sorry that I have done so much.

“And my faith in this cause was never so strong as it is now. I do not throw it away. I feel certain that if the will of God is done in this matter, though we may have to wait, we shall have great recompense of reward in waiting.

“May God inspire the hearts of our rulers by the right things! May God unite the hearts of this great people in right counsels and in right feelings! May God accept the offerings that we make of our children, of our brothers, of our neighbors, of everything that we have! Let us put them all on the altar of patriotism, knowing that in this case the altar of patriotism is the altar of God. He will accept the offering, and in His own time, by tokens infallible, He will reward our faith and bring us forth purged, purified, strengthened by the things which we have suffered.”

With all his earnestness he must have his laugh at a contemporary, “A Queer Pulpit”:

“We knew that the Journal of Commerce was famous upon statistics and prided itself upon its good literary taste. But we had no idea before of the powers of its rhetoric. We extract a figure from its issue of August 27 that should be commended to the directors of the New York Hospital:

“‘It is the voice of a glorious past which speaks to him, in the tones of the fathers whose graves are with us. It is the voice of the living nation, millions on millions of whom utter the same words we utter to-day. It is the voice of posterity, speaking from the womb of time, that calls on him to save the Constitution, which was made, not for the duration of a human life, but to be the blessing of all men and all nations until the end of thrones and earthly powers. That he will be faithful we do not for one instant doubt.’

“This is taking part in politics rather early. Constitutional studies must be pursued under difficulties in this case. But if posterity are so greatly stirred in their minds, there is nothing for it but for the President to write them a letter. He answered Horace Greeley. Surely he will heed the sufferings of posterity in such uncomfortable quarters.

“For ourselves, we cannot be too thankful that we are already born. We prefer open-air speaking. If the President don’t save the Constitution now, it is a hopeless case!”

In an editorial, September 11, upon “The Contrast,” he sums up the difference in sentences like these:

“Richmond determines, Washington reasons; Richmond is inflexible, Washington vacillates; Richmond knows what it wants to do, Washington wishes that it knew; Richmond loves slavery and hates liberty, Washington is somewhat partial to liberty and rather dislikes slavery; Rebellion is wise and sinful, Government is foolish.”

Upon a report that a member of the Cabinet had said “that nations often lose their institutions, their liberties, and yet preserve their national life, and that in our case we must aim to preserve the national life,” he writes an editorial (September 18, 1862) which he properly entitled “The Trumpet”:

“... Let other people imagine as they may a national life, like a disembodied spirit, wandering over the continent seeking rest and finding none. We propose no such issue to this struggle. The nation must emerge from war shorn of no attribute and mutilated in none of its members. We claim this continent for liberty. We demand the execution of slavery for treason. We arraign this arch-conspirator, arrested with a dagger in its hand aimed at the life of this government and the liberties of the people, and in the name of mankind and before Almighty God we demand that its life be forfeited. Let the trumpet sound!”

These are but samples of the editorials that were sent out from his pen through the columns of the Independent. Week after week they continued, pleading for vigor, denouncing inaction, urging that liberty be recognized as the great issue at stake, and demanding immediate emancipation of the slave.

At last, after this long, weary, heart-breaking delay, he publishes, September 25, “The Proclamation” of the President announcing “that on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or any designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be thenceforward and for ever free.” Mr. Beecher says of it:

“We send forth to-day the most important paper ever published in the Independent, the most extraordinary document ever proceeding from this government....

“No more guises and veils. No more side-issues. No more deceitful compromises. The government has taken ground, and every man in the nation must take ground. You are for or against this government, and this government is declared to mean liberty to the slave! There is no neutral ground for traitors to hide in, playing wolf at night and sheep by day. The President’s proclamation will sift the North, give unity to its people, simplicity to its policy, liberty to its army! That whole army is no longer a mongrel something between a police force and a political caucus. It is an army organized to strike where blows will be most felt.

“The Proclamation emancipates slaves in thrice thirty days. But it emancipates the government and the army to-day. The nation is freer than it was on the 21st. We have a policy. The people will base it upon a principle. It is the policy of liberty upon the principle of justice. The future is before us! Through what dark days we must pass we know not. What battles and what reverses are in store we do not inquire. At last we have a right to believe that God is leading us. He who carried His people from bondage through the wilderness, and established them in the promised land, can surely guide us!

“Let sorrows fall fast; there is joy before us! We behold upon the troubled sea a Christ coming to us, walking on the waves! In His hand are winds and storms. Every hour now moves toward the great day of Emancipation. At length the dawn shall bring that day most eminent in our national calendar. Amid all the festivities that usher in the year, there shall be a great joy, deeper, purer, holier than ever came to us with the New Year—the joy of a nation that, after long sorrow and shame, shall cast off from itself the guilt of slavery, and stand erect before the world a consistent witness for liberty!”

He looks upon it as the beginning of the end, and is satisfied if it be God’s will that his work should now cease. On the evening of the last day of slavery in America—Wednesday evening, December 31—he says in his lecture-room talk:

“As for myself, let come what will come, I care not. God may peel me, and bark me, and strip me of my leaves, and do as He chooses with my earthly estate. I have lived long enough; I have had a good time. You cannot take back the blows I have given the devil right in the face. I have uttered some words that will not die, because they are incorporated into the lives of men that will not die. Through my instrumentality, aided by God’s providence, many souls have been converted and gone singing home to their eternal abode. I think I have a larger church in heaven than I have on earth, and I think they love me and want me there. I have no reason to ask for longer life. If my work is done, and God does not want me here, and this is my last night of labor on earth, ought I to be sorry? Ought I not to be the most grateful man that ever lived that I have had such health, that I have had such an open field, that I have had the privilege of speaking the truth right straight along for fifteen years, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear, and that I have been borne up, in doing this, by so large a church, composed of such an enthusiastic body of God’s people?

“And to-night the shadows of the past come over me. I remember when I first stood, in about this place, in the old church. I remember the sermon that I preached to you on the first Sunday night after I came among you, as if it were but an hour ago. I then declared to the inchoate congregation gathered here that it was my purpose to preach the Gospel in its applications to slavery, and peace, and war, and moral purity, and every Christian reform, and that I would do it whether you heard it or not, and whether you stood by me or forsook me. I recollect those times perfectly well.

“Fifteen years have passed since then, and here we are talking about the President of the United States emancipating four million slaves. Here we are in the midst of a war whose inevitable outcome from this time must be to make war on slavery. Mightier than Congress now is the arm for emancipation—mightier than all things! In the providence of God what wonderful revolutions and changes have taken place in fifteen years! I am willing to live fifteen years more, if God wishes it, if I may renew my youth and work on. I should dread to find now that there were no more locks to get up, and that I must henceforth travel on a dead level. I would try and pull with my freight-boat on a level, if God wished me to, though I would like here and there to rise. It would be a pleasure to live, if it were God’s will, till the day-star dawned, for I know it will dawn, but I am willing to lay down my burden at any time, if it please God. If He will accept the thanks that I give Him for all that He has permitted me to do, to say, and experience in days past, then, as to the future, let His will be done. I ask neither to live nor to die.”

This closes the third era of his work in the great anti-slavery contest. We now turn back to glance over the same period and note some of the more important events aside from this struggle, public, domestic, and private, that marked the years from 1850 to January, 1863.