Doc.
96.--speech of Caleb Cushing.
April 24, 1861.
“
General Cushing said that he cordially participated in the present patriotic manifestations.
Long may this glorious flag wave: above our heads, the banner of victory and the symbol of our national honor!
Our dear country now indeed demands the devotion of all people; for the dire calamity of civil war is upon us. He had labored hitherto for many years earnestly and in good faith at least, first for the conservation of the
Union, and then to avert the evils of fratricidal war; and of what he might have said in that relation he had nothing now to retract.
But the day of discussion had passed, and that of action had arrived.
He had before him the question, which had occurred to public men in other countries, where political convulsions divided friend from friend, and brother from brother, and sometimes arrayed them against one another in hostile camps and in deadly strife.
What in such a case is the dictate of duty?
Should we retire into safe seclusion in a foreign country, to return in better times, to wear the honor of freedom, like
Hyde?
Or should we remain to confront the perils of our lot, like Falkland or
Vane?
The latter course; if not the safer one, is at any rate the most courageous one.
He (
Mr. C.) chose so to act. He was a citizen of the
United States, owing allegiance to the
Constitution, and bound by constitutional duty to support its Government.
And he should do so. He was a son of
Massachusetts, attached to her by ties of birth and affection, and from which neither friend nor foe should sever him. He would yield to no man in faithfulness to the
Union, or in zeal for
[
146]
the maintenance of the laws and the constitutional authorities of the
Union; and to that end he stood prepared, if occasion should call for it, to testify his sense of public duty by entering the field again at the command of the
Commonwealth or of the
Union.”
Abstract of Newburyport Herald: in Nat. Intelligencer, April 30,
