previous next
[26] nothing but ridicule. Our reply to it is, that the peace principles are as beneficent and glorious as ever, and are neither disproved nor modified by anything now transpiring in the country, of a warlike character. If they had been long since embraced and carried out by the people, neither slavery nor war would now be filling the land with violence and blood. Where they prevail, no man is in peril of life or liberty; where they are rejected, and precisely to the extent they are rejected, neither life nor liberty is secure. How their violation, under any circumstances, is better than a faithful adherence to them, we have not the moral vision to perceive. They are to be held responsible for nothing which they do not legitimately produce or sanction. As they neither produce nor sanction any oppression or wrong-doing, but elevate the character, control the passions, and lead to the performance of all good offices, they are not to be discarded for those of a hostile character ..

But are we not giving our sympathies to the Government as against the secession movement? Certainly—because, as between the combatants, there is no wrong or injustice on the side of the Government, while there is nothing but violence, robbery, confiscation, perfidy, lynch law, usurpation, and a most diabolical purpose, on the side of the secessionists. The weapons resorted to, on both sides, are the same; yet it is impossible not to wish success to the innocent, and defeat to the guilty party. But, in so doing, we do not compromise either our anti-slavery or our peace principles. On the contrary, we wish all the North were able to adopt those principles, understandingly, heartily, and without delay; but, according to the structure of the human mind, in the whirlwind of the present deadly conflict, this is impracticable. As, therefore, Paul said to the Jews who would not accept of the new dispensation, “Ye that are under the law, do ye not hear the law? Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them” —so we measure those who, rejecting the doctrine of non-resistance, profess to believe in the right and duty of maintaining their freedom by the sword. The worst thing they can do is to be recreant to their own convictions in such a crisis as this.

But this is, obviously, not the time to expect a dispassionate hearing on this subject. After the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, comes the still small voice. The war must go on to its consummation; and among the salutary lessons it will teach will be the impossibility of oppressing the poor and the needy,

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Paul (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: