Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[452] continent until we see one flag from the Lakes to the Gulf, and we shall never see it until slavery is eliminated from the institutions of these States. Let the South go to-morrow, and you have not got peace. Intestine war here, border war along the line, aggression and intrigue on the part of the South She has lived with us for seventy years, and kept us constantly in turmoil. Exasperated by suffering, grown haughty by success, the moment she goes off, is such a neighbor likely to treat us any better, with our imaginary line between us, than she has treated us for seventy years while she held the sceptre? The moment we ask for terms, she counts it victory, and the war in another shape goes on. You and I are never to see peace, we are never to see the possibility of putting the army of this nation, whether it be made up of nineteen or thirty-four States, on a peace footing, until slavery is destroyed. A large army, immense expenses, a foreign party encamped among us, a despotic government, using necessarily despotic war powers,--that is the future until slavery is destroyed. As long as you keep a tortoise at the head of the government, you are digging a pit with one hand and filling it with the other. The war means digging a pit with your two hands, and filling it up with the lives of your sons and the accumulations of your fathers. Now, therefore, until this nation announces, in some form or other, that this is a war, not against Jefferson Davis, but against the system; until the whole nation indorses the resolution of the New York Chamber of Commerce, “Better every rebel die than one loyal soldier,” [applause,] and begs of the government, demands of the government, to speak that word which is victory and peace,--until we do that, we shall have no prospect of peace.

I do not believe in the government. I agree entirely with Mr. Conway. I do not believe this government — has