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

[463] bloodiest war; and behind it would be the Saxon determination, which, like that of the bull-dog, its type, will die in the death-grapple before it yields. Old national hate, fresh-edged and perpetuated,--untold wealth destroyed,--millions of lives lost, lives of the most cultivated nations,--the progress of the race stopped,--chaos come again over the fairest portion of Christendom,--fifty millions of people, dealing such death-blows across the Atlantic in the nineteenth century,--it is a burden which we are to pray God he will not call upon us to bear, *--a curse from which he will graciously save civilization and the race. On the contrary, let us hope that Southern success may be so rapid and abundant, that a blow like that which stuns the drunkard into sobriety may stun our Cabinet into vigor, and that nineteen millions of people, putting forth their real strength in the right direction, may keep peace outside our borders until we make peace within. [Loud applause.]