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Under the flag.1
Therefore thus saith the Lord: Ye have not hearkened unto me in proclaiming liberty every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbor: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine.
Jer. XXXIV. 17.
Many times this winter, here and elsewhere, I have counselled peace,--urged, as well as I knew how, the expediency of acknowledging a Southern Confederacy, and the peaceful separation of these thirty-four States.
One of the journals announces to you that I come here this morning to retract those opinions.
No, not one of them!
[Applause.] I need them all,--every word I have spoken this winter,--every act of twenty-five years of my life, to make the welcome I give this war hearty and hot. Civil war is a momentous evil.
It needs the soundest, most solemn justification.
I rejoice before God to-day for every word that I have spoken counselling peace; but I rejoice also with an especially profound gratitude, that now, the first time in my antislavery life, I speak under the stars and stripes, and welcome the tread of
Massachusetts men marshalled for war. [Enthusiastic cheering.] No matter what the past has been or said; to-day the slave asks God for a sight of this banner, and counts it the pledge of his redemption.
[Applause.] Hitherto it may have meant what you thought, or what I
