Xl.
Russia,—by all odds the grandest of all
European structures,—without waiting an hour for consultation with other Powers, sent back her assurances of sympathy with us in our efforts to frustrate this treasonable attempt to break up a free and prosperous Government, which had proved so powerful and beneficent a shield for the protection of all its people.
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Russia is the natural ally of the
United States.
She has a vast territory, and all her people look to her for protection.
She has, during a thousand years, been slowly but surely emerging from Asiatic barbarism into the light and strength of modern civilization.
She has, moreover, done what no other nation had done:
she has carried the masses of her people along with her as fast as she has travelled herself.
Oriental in her origin, she has maintained a patriarchal government.
If it has ever been a despotism in form, it was manifestly the only machinery strong enough to govern, protect, and bless all her people.
She undertook a work far more difficult than
Rome had to do. She had to aggregate, harmonize, and blend together the great nomadic tribes of the
East.
When from the affluent social systems of
Asia, bursting with crowded populations, they drifted westward on her now
European territories,
Russia was submerged by wild, strange, and savage races.
She had the most stupendous task given to her which any nation has ever had to perform.
Contending with difficulties which had never before been encountered, she has at last presented to the world the wonderful spectacle of a mighty empire made up of countless dissevered and warring communities, all ferocious, all untamed, all nomadic, all speaking different tongues, and representing all the religious superstitions of the
East; but now all blended in a homogeneous social and political system, which has not only eclipsed, in the culture of its upper classes, the refinement of
European courts, and matched them in the arts of war and peace, but has boldly struck the shackles of slavery from the limbs of as many million men as now make up the population of all our old Free States.
I cannot resist
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the desire here to link
Bayard Taylor's grandest poem with this portion of our historic chain.
1
That involuntary servitude should be abolished by the most despotic of nations, with the applause of the world, and the day of emancipation (March 3, 1863) be ushered in by chimes of gratitude and thanksgiving from every church-spire in the
Russian Empire, while the great Republic of the world still bound the fetters upon four million slaves, will hereafter read strangely in history.
But a wiser and broader statesmanship than ours guides the destinies of
Russia.
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It was from such a nation that the earliest words of sympathy and confidence came when our first domestic troubles began; and it was not forgotten by the
American people when that tempest swept by. We see new storms gathering over
Europe, and our aid may be invoked against
Russia, and invoked in vain.
Statesmen know that while individuals may forgive, nations never do.
