[357] meeting is accomplished. Upon the wings of the lightning it goes out throughout the world that New York, the very heart of a great State, with her crowded thoroughfares, her merchants, her manufacturers, her artists — that New York, by one hundred thousand of her people, declares to the country and to the world, that she will sustain the Government to the last dollar in her treasury — to the last drop of your blood. The National banners leaning from ten thousand windows in your city to-day, proclaim your affection and reverence for the Union.Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, who was Secretary of the Treasury in the Democratic Administration of President Polk, denounced secession as a crime, and said :--“Much as I love my party, I love my country infinitely more, and must and will sustain it, at all hazards. Indeed, it is due to the great occasion here frankly to declare that, notwithstanding my earnest opposition to the election of Mr. Lincoln, and my disposition most closely to scrutinize all his acts, I see, thus far, nothing to condemn in his efforts to save the Union. . . . And now let me say, that this Union must, will, and shall be perpetuated; that not a star shall be dimmed or a stripe erased from our banner; that the integrity of the Government shall be preserved, and that from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the North to the Gulf of Mexico, never shall be surrendered a single acre of our soil or a drop of its waters.” David S. Coddington, an influential member of the Democratic party, gave a scathing review of the efforts of disunionists recorded in our history, and said:--“Shall I tell you what secession means? It means ambition in the Southern leaders and misapprehension in the Southern people. Its policy is to imperialize Slavery, and to degrade and destroy the only free republic in the world. . . . Nothing so disappoints secession as the provoking fidelity of New York to the Constitution. From the vaults of Wall Street, Jefferson Davis expected to pay his army, and riot in all the streets and in all the towns and cities of the North, to make their march a triumphant one. Fifty thousand men to-day tread on his fallacy.” Such was the response of some of the ablest representatives of the venerable Democratic party to the slanderers of that party, such as Sanders and his like in the South, and its trading politicians in the North.1 It was the
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1 Representative men of the Democratic party in different loyal States made speeches, and took substantially the same ground. The venerable General Cass, late Secretary of State, made a stirring speech at Detroit, on the 24th of April. “He who is not for his country,” he said, “is against her. There is no neutral position to be occupied. It is the duty of all zealously to support the Government in its efforts to bring this unhappy civil war to a speedy and satisfactory conclusion, by the restoration, in its integrity, of that great charter of freedom bequeathed to us by Washington and his compatriots.”
The veteran General Wool, a Democrat of the Jefferson and Jackson school, and then commander of the Eastern Department, said, in response to the greetings of the citizens of Troy, who, at the close of an immense meeting, on the 16th of April, went to his house in a body:--“Will you permit that flag to be desecrated and trampled in the dust by traitors? Will you permit our noble Government to be destroyed by rebels, in order that they may advance their schemes of political ambition and extend the area of Slavery? No, indeed, it cannot be done. The spirit of the age forbids it. My friends, that flag must be lifted up from the dust into which it has been trampled, placed in its proper position, and again set floating in triumph to the breeze. I pledge you my heart, my hand, all my energies to the cause. The Union shall be maintained. I am prepared to devote my life to the work, and to lead you in the struggle!” Caleb Cushing, who presided at the Charleston Convention (page 20) and at the Seceders' Convention at Baltimore (page 27), in 1860, made an eloquent speech at Newburyport, Massachusetts, on the same day, in which he said that he cordially participated in the patriotic manifestations around him. He would yield to no man in faithfulness to the Union, or in zeal for 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. Mr. Cushing did offer his services in the field to the Governor of Massachusetts, but they were not accepted. At a public reception of Senator Douglas, Mr. Lincoln's opponent for the Presidency, at Chicago, Illinois, on the 1st of May, that statesman, in a patriotic speech, said:--“There are only two sides to this question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots or traitors. . . . I express it as my conviction before God, that it is the duty of every American citizen to rally round the flag of his country.”
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