Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2

[235] ideas; its trust, God and the right; its old-fashioned men patiently arguing with cannon and regiments; blood the seal of the debate, and every stone and wall and roof and doorway witness forever of the angry tyrant and sturdy victim.

Now, gentlemen, man is not a mere animal, to eat, and sleep, and gain, and lay up, and enjoy, and pass away to his fathers. If we had been only that; if the North had been a pedler race, as the South supposed, not willing to risk sixpence for an idea,--no Democratic lawyers in yonder Court Street would have shut up their doors, put their keys in their pockets, and asked of Governor Andrew a commission when that piece of bunting was fired upon near Fort Sumter! It was only six feet square of cotton; it was only a few stars and stripes; it was only an insult offered to the sentiment of twenty millions of people. But it made Democrats and Republicans forget their differences, and a million of men crowd down to the Gulf. It was only a sentiment. But what does it feed on? Ascend one of those lofty buildings above Chicago, and grow weary in counting her crowd of masts and her miles of warehouses; and when you have done it, you remember that the sagacity and the thrift of three hundred thousand men have created that great centre of industry, and there comes to your mind, perhaps sooner than anything else, the old lullaby,--

How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower.

It is industry; it is thrift; it is comfort; it is wealth. But on Bunker Hill let somebody point out to you the church-tower whose lantern told Paul Revere that Middlesex was to be invaded. Search till your eye rests on