UC-NRLF 
 
 SB bO 
 

 
|roit. 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 DELIVERED IX THE 
 
 NORTH CHURCH, HARTFORD, 
 
 OX THE 
 
 ANNUAL STATE FAST, APRIL 14, 1854. 
 
 BY HORACE BUSHNELL. 
 
 U 
 
 EDWIX HUNT AND SOX 
 
 M.DCCC.LIV. 
 
ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE TEAR 1854, BY 
 
 EDWIN HUNT, 
 IN THE CLERK S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT OF CONNECTICUT. 
 
 PRINTED liY CASE. TIFFANY AND COMPANY. 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 Ji-;n. 15: 12. SHALL IRON BREAK THE NORTHERN IRON AND THE STEEL ? 
 
 ABSURD as it may be, there yet are many signs in our 
 time that, for once, it is going to be done. And yet we do 
 not quite despair of the harder metal. 
 
 This harder metal, called steel by us, was, in the proph 
 et s day, called indifferently northern iron and steel, 
 [ckalybs,] because it was from the commercial town or city 
 of Chalybs, a port of the Black Sea. Accordingly it be 
 came a proverb, so familiarly known was the superior hard 
 ness and strength of this metal, that " northern iron is not- 
 cut by iron," just as "biting on a file" has become a proverb 
 with us, to indicate the absurdity of attempting to demol 
 ish a character without character, or a firm cause by weak 
 arguments. 
 
 Of course it is not my design, this morning, to occupy 
 you with a dissertation or lecture on the comparative prop 
 erties of steel and iron, or on their mutual action one upon 
 the other : these are matters sufficiently well understood. 
 I only design to use the prophet s figure in his own way, 
 for the question of the text is a metaphoric or figurative 
 question, in which, referring to the absurdity of supposing 
 that common iron will cut steel, he asks, Who will be so 
 dull as to think that any common force is going to break 
 through God s decrees, and turn back the word of his 
 
 M219180 
 
prophets ? I shall use the illustration in the same figura 
 tive manner, only in reference to another and different sub 
 ject. 
 
 The question of the text " Shall iron break the northern 
 Iron or the steel?" is one that is often asked by the people 
 of our northern states, under this or that form, and some 
 times with a kind of misgiving or faintness of heart, as if 
 now the steel were really going to give way and be bat 
 tered by raw iron. This is not my opinion. I have no 
 apprehension of any such ignominious result. It can 
 never take place until steel and iron have changed places, 
 and the natural order of their capacity is inverted. At the 
 same time, it can not be denied, as already intimated, that 
 we have many indications in the facts of our public his 
 tory, which may naturally enough discourage the confi 
 dence of some. And for that reason it is not wonderful 
 that many, who have no doubt whatever of the superiority 
 of our genuinely free principles, and that in all the points 
 where our institutions are contrasted with the southern, 
 we are" to them as the northern iron to iron, are yet exer 
 cised with real anxiety lest the wrong should vanquish the 
 right and the mock principle the true, and even the proph 
 et s question be turned to bad rhetoric by the final subjec 
 tion of the steel to the iron. 
 
 What I propose for the present occasion is a deliberate 
 review of the prognostics of this pending controversy be 
 tween the northern and southern, or the genuinely free and 
 the slaveholding sections of our republic ; endeavoring, if 
 possible, to settle our judgment of the issue, and fortify 
 our confidence in the part we are called to maintain. The 
 subject is a painful one ; painful because it assumes the 
 possibility of doubt or debate in regard to a matter as 
 sumed to be settled by the fundamental principles of our 
 institutions, and yet more painful that it requires us to speak 
 
of sections and sectional issues, that have an ominous and 
 evil sound, suggesting elements of strife and discord, per 
 ilous to the unity of our Republic. I can not deny that 
 there is something invidious in the very statement of my 
 subject, and yet I take no blarne to myself on that account. 
 The time of delicacy is now gone by. We only speak of 
 that which is forced upon us, and take our stand for princi 
 ples which belong to our country, but which now, alas! 
 have come to be the principles only of a section ; there to 
 be maintained with fidelity, or else to be fought for again 
 by the generations to come, after our degenerate times 
 have finished the treason of a faithless and base surrender. 
 "We can not forbear to speak for human liberty because it- 
 has become a merely sectional charge or interest of the 
 republic. 
 
 It is a grief to many and a sign of triumph for the slave- 
 holding interest of our nation, that while we at the north 
 are so easily divided and broken, they are so easily brought 
 to act in concert and a well-sustained concentration of 
 movement. They are consolidated, as it were, by the 
 pressure of their common interest, acting always with 
 great unanimity, and maintaining their cause with an ever 
 vigilant jealousy. We, on the other hand, having no such 
 bond of interest or peril to hold us together, fall asunder 
 more easily, become divided among ourselves, act against 
 one another, and where there is a personal or party advan 
 tage to be gained, there will too often be some that dare to 
 betray our position, or desert and dishonor our principles. 
 We have seen so much of this that many are fatally dis 
 heartened by it. 
 
 And yet if you look again you will see that the concen 
 tration referred to is the result only of weakness, and our 
 want of concentration the result only of strength and a 
 
state of power that makes us too secure to have any con- 
 cern for unity. Accordingly, if anything should occur 
 that presses our concern, or awakens the sense of jeopardy, 
 you will see (exactly what is visible now) that we are ral 
 lied to a unity of action as spontaneous and firm as that 
 of the southern or^slaveholding side of the republic. Let 
 the voice of the north be called for now in a general elec 
 tion, and it is doubtful whether even a single vote could 
 be carried in support of the perfidious measure by which 
 the adherents of slavery in our Congress, are now hoping 
 to seal their political ascendency. 
 
 At the same time, in computing the forces at work in 
 our political history, we must not omit to notice the very 
 great advantage hitherto accruing to the south, under 
 what is familiarly known as the problem of availability. 
 They have just one interest, viz., slavery. Their policy is 
 simple and single and well understood. Whatever will 
 soothe, or fortify, or amplify slavery, draws them into a 
 lead of unity. They offer, in this manner, to the political 
 gamesters, who are making up their count of party capi 
 tal, a prize too captivating to be disregarded. Nothing is 
 necessary to assured success, but to carry the southern 
 vote, with only a small addition just to turn the scale ; 
 and what will carry that vote is seldom any matter of 
 doubt. With us, on the other hand, there is no such unity 
 of interest. Our wealth is multiform; our productions 
 more or less antagonistic to each other. Commerce is the 
 rival of agriculture; manufactures of commerce; coal of 
 iron ; the wool growing of wool manufacture. We em 
 body also conflicting races, religions, and all the varieties 
 of opinion gendered by our higher intellectual activity. 
 Accordingly, there has been nothing here to be definitely 
 counted on; no calculable interest offeririg itself as a prize 
 in the game of party capital ; for so diverse and conflicting 
 
are our interests that we hardly know what we want our 
 selves. Hence the great question of political availability, 
 has been rested, hitherto, in its whole stress, and it is about 
 the heaviest stress of movement on opinion and character 
 to which our American society is subjected, on questions 
 of southern interest. The problem is how to carry the 
 south ; more boldly stated, how to buy the south ; by 
 what sale of principle, or Nebrask fetch, to draw the south 
 ern interest and consolidate a voting capital that will secure 
 the triumph of this or that man, or this or that party. 
 How this works, we have abundantly seen in the matter of 
 the Georgia Indians; the Mexican war; the slave-hunt 
 war of Florida; the fugitive slave law; and now again, 
 once more, in a shape that offends the stomach even of 
 political appetite itself. 
 
 We have also been weakened, at the north, by a cause 
 more distinctively honorable, viz., by our love to the 
 Union ; for, having as a part of our moral nurture, this 
 high virtue of attachment to the country and its institu 
 tions, the political managers find how to play upon us 
 and lead us adroitly under the smoothest and fairest pre 
 texts, into a submission to measures that have only a ques 
 tionable agreement with the institutions we have it as a 
 charge on our virtue to protect and perpetuate. Many 
 years ago, a certain convention was gathered in this city, 
 which has been called, ever since, by distinction, the Hart 
 ford Convention. It was composed of sober, Christian 
 men, who had become exasperated by what they regarded 
 as the wrongs and partialities of the government. How 
 far they meant to instigate sedition, has been a question. 
 Enough that merely the suspicion of such a design, taken 
 up and echoed by the more or less passionate appeals of 
 their adversaries, placed them forever after under a ban 
 of political outlawry. Meantime it is the regular and 
 
8 
 
 almost infallible resort of the slaveholding section of the 
 republic, when any great measure in which they are con 
 cerned is to be resisted or carried, to take up the open 
 threat of disunion. They have no principle of honor 
 against it ; for it is not any part of their political virtue to 
 adhere to their country they have no country but slavery. 
 Accordingly, it aih xes no stigma on the agitators. They 
 are as good for candidates after they have run out their 
 treason, or gasconade of treason, as they were before. 
 
 Under this same principle of loyalty to the Union we 
 have been drawn, with too great facility, into manv con 
 cessions and compromises that have yet farther weakened 
 our position, inasmuch as they have weakened our integ- 
 ritv in the principles of American liberty. I will not speak 
 with disrespect of any compromises that may turn on 
 points of mere interest ; for these are fit subjects of com 
 promise. But we have a case entirely different, where the 
 compromise turns on a matter of principle -still worse, 
 where the principle compromised lies at the foundation of 
 our liberties and of all that we boast in our democracy it 
 self. It is a loss too bitter when a whole country gives up 
 its principles to accommodate and pacify a faction. And 
 it is remarkable that our great compromises, of which we 
 have had so many, have been all of this kind, accommo 
 dations of liberty with slavery, surrenders of steel to iron. 
 They have every one involved some sacrifice of founda 
 tions, some lie against the principles of our free institu 
 tions, debauching, in so far, as they needs must, our politi 
 cal conscience, as well as our religious sense of humanity 
 and justice. 
 
 I will not assail the motive by which many patriotic 
 men have been led to unite in these compositions. If in 
 some cases it was done under the pressure of an impend 
 ing necessity, as appears to be generally conceded. I may 
 
nevertheless regret that necessity ; for it must be a very 
 stringent alternative that compels a patriot to waive the 
 principles of his country. I have serious doubts whether 
 God ever required a sacrifice so questionable, or brought a 
 crisis on, where it was less than a privilege and honor to 
 withstand the sacrifice. However this may be, we had 
 first the compromise of the Constitution, which makes 
 every slave, though held in southern law to be only a thing 
 or chattel, three-fifths of a man or citizen, in the count of 
 public representation! With this came another, which 
 consented in the abolition of the African slave trade, pro 
 vided we might first shame all our principles of liberty for 
 twenty years in the practice ! Then came the Missouri 
 compromise, in w T hich we agreed to have no care for Amer 
 ican principles in one territory, and required the next gen 
 eration to be more faithful to them in the territory next ad 
 jacent! Last of all, as the ripe fruit of this kind of states 
 manship, came the confused bundle of obliquities, called 
 the compromise of 1850 ; where we paid off the right of 
 California to come into the Union without slavery ! and 
 the abolition of the slave pens in the District of Columbia, 
 in which, before God and all our own principles of civil 
 liberty, we are responsible for the continuance of slavery 
 at all, even for a day, by agreeing to surrender the right of 
 trial by jury, guaranteed by all our northern constitutions 
 for every human being of whatever race or co]or! and 
 also to take an extra fee when we pass sentence against 
 liberty! 
 
 And now, at the end of so many compromises, where 
 we settle points of conscience by contract, and agree to 
 split the difference in matters of principle, what do we find 
 but that we have not virtue enough left to stand by our 
 contracts and fulfill them just what ought to have been 
 
10 
 
 seen beforehand ; for what can more certainly debauch the 
 moral sense of any people and rot away the vitality even 
 of faith itself in their bosoms, than a course of legislative 
 trifling that proposes to settle, by contract, what before 
 was settled by eternal principles, and might as well be set 
 tled by a raffle as by a vote. 
 
 True, it was a very honorable and loyal thing in us to 
 love the Union, and many plausible things may be said, 
 for this kind of proceeding. But for one, if God will ex 
 cuse us from the consequences, I would be most gladly ex 
 cused from any part in the honor. And they are the more 
 to be regretted, that the people of the south and the polit^ 
 ical leaders of the north, have learned by them what wires 
 to pull, or arguments to bring, if they will tame us to any 
 of their schemes and party compositions. That the most 
 accomplished party leader, or as some would say, the sub- 
 limest demagogue the nation has seen, should have been 
 forward in these compromises and spent his public life in 
 them, was but a matter of course ; but that a statesman 
 brought up in the principles of northern liberty, always 
 heretofore the acknowledged champion of those principles, 
 should have condescended to prepare a case for this com 
 promising talent; coming out suddenly, in a time of pro 
 found peace, like a clap of thunder in a clear sky, to cry 
 "danger to the Union ;" enumerating, with declamatory 
 heat and exaggerated words, the wrongs of the south, and 
 stirring them up to redress those wrongs, by a violence of 
 action not fictitious; drawing after him, at the north, by 
 the authority of his name and position, large bodies of the 
 most principled lovers of the Union, whose loyalty made 
 them a prey too easy to the stupendous fiction this, I say, 
 was not to be expected. We name it with profoundest 
 mortification. Nay, if we could persuade ourselves to 
 visit the tomb where so much of genius and of mortal 
 
11 
 
 greatness lies down baffled and broken with defeat, we 
 could only say in our tears of mingled homage and sorrow, 
 " Alas! tha,t the iron has broken the northern iron and the 
 steel." 
 
 Another and most melancholy sign that our steel is 
 yielding to iron, is given us in the fact that so many com 
 promises, accepted with so great facility, under the honor 
 able pretext of fidelity to the Union, have finally lost us 
 even the respect of the south. They are disgusted by the 
 lameness of our compliances. They declare that we really 
 have no principles, else we should assert them, and that 
 our pretended love to the Union is only a fiction ; that we 
 care, in fact^jpr nothing but the main chance of money 
 and tradeXNay they even boast that they can cotton us 
 at pleasure, and if I can understand the course of some of 
 our northern politicians in the Congress, they are acting 
 on the assumption thaf, as we have knuckled to the fugi 
 tive slave law, so when once the vote is carried and the 
 Missouri compromise annihilated, our steel will give way 
 as tamely to the iron under that; in which it appears that 
 we have not only incurred the contempt of the south, but, 
 which is a far more terrible retribution, taught our own 
 public men to have no confidence in our spirit or integrity. 
 Thus a leading southern paper, piling words of insult on 
 us, in a recent article on the Nebraska bill, says : " They 
 threaten us with a great northern party an^l a general war 
 upon the south. But they will do no such thing. They 
 will bluster and utter a world of swelling self-glorification, 
 and end in knocking themselves down to the highest bid 
 der. How far they may carry their indignation at this 
 time, it is impossible to say, but we may be sure they will 
 cool off just at the point where they discover that they can 
 make nothing more out of it, and may lose !" And in this 
 you may see to what extent we are not only played upon 
 
12 
 
 or victimized, by our love to the Union, having it for our 
 reward that we are despised and insulted by those who 
 get the benefit of our concessions. 
 
 We shall also discover, if we refer to the course of our 
 political history since the government was organized, 
 many painful indications that our side has been the losing 
 side. Five southern Presidents have held their office two 
 successive terms, and not one northern President has ever 
 been able to hold beyond a single term. At the end of 
 President Piercers term they will have bad the presidency 
 forty-eight years, and the north twenty, The cabinet offi 
 cers, ambassadors, judges of the supreme court, and higher 
 military officers, have been drawn from the south, by ma 
 jorities almost as decisive. Meantime the courses of legis 
 lation and the tides of political influence have been opera 
 ting a continual change in favor of slavery from the first 
 a change fitly represented by the ificfc that the grandfather 
 of a Connecticut representative in Congress, voting the 
 Nebraska bill j , was one of the leading members of a Con 
 necticut anti-slavery society. Thus also the Colonial 
 Congress, in their " Address to Great Britain," make the 
 institution of slavery one of their bitterest grievances ; de 
 claring that it is impossible "for men who exercise their 
 reason, to believe that the divine author of our existence 
 intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute 
 property in others. We can not endure," they say, " the 
 jnfamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to 
 the wretchedness that inevitably awaits them, if we entail 
 hereditary bondage upon them." All the great men of 
 that day, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, Frank 
 lin, Hamilton, Jay, coincided in sentiments like these. 
 They had no more expectation that slavery would survive 
 the date of our independence achieved, than that sin would 
 continue and flourish in Paradise. How far off are we 
 
13 
 
 now from any such position, debating, in fact, whether we 
 shall not even break a solemn legislative pledge and vote 
 the extension of slavery at the expense of our public honor. 
 Meantime there is not one of the glorious fathers just 
 named, who, if he were living ROW and daring to stand by 
 his former opinions of slavery, could obtain so much as a 
 post-office, or the place of a tidewaiter under the govern 
 ment. Accordingly it is now distinctly conceded, by as 
 good southern authority as the Charleston Courier, "that 
 our government, although hostile in its incipiency to do 
 mestic slavery, and starting into being with a strong bent 
 toward abolition, yet afterward so changed its policy that 
 its action, for the most part and with few exceptions, has 
 fostered the slaveholding interest, and swelled it from six 
 to fifteen states, and a feeble and sparse population to one 
 of ten millions." 
 
 Add now to all these points which I have brought into 
 view, the coraparati.ve tameness or want of spirit so often 
 manifested by our northern members of Congress, driven 
 out of their positions when they dare to take them, com 
 pelled to eat their own words, browbeaten., magnetized by 
 the slave-driving and imperious manner assumed toward 
 them, humbled to the meanest and most contemptible 
 sophistries, such as could not even impose upon a child, 
 to justify their votes to their constituents the discovery, 
 for example, in this matter of the Nebraska bill, that 
 the Missouri restriction is " unconstitutional!" when, by 
 force of nature, the right to govern lies in the right to pos 
 sess, and there is no stipulated right to govern simply 
 because there is, in the constitution, no stipulated right 
 to acquire and possess ; also the discovery that there is 
 a great principle here which forbids the compromise 
 to stand, viz., the " principle of non-intervention !" when 
 in fact it stands on the face of the bill that Congress 
 
14 
 
 may Intervene in everything but just the one matter of 
 slavery under all these and other like signs continually 
 appearing, we are humbled, mortified, sometimes angry 
 and sometimes dispirited. The true confidence gives way 
 in our bosom, and as the lovesick son of Montague con 
 fessed., 
 
 " Thy beauty hath made me effeminate, 
 And in my temper softened valor s steel/ 
 
 so for a reason much less poetic, we are half inclined to 
 yield our courage up and say, " It is over, the northern iron 
 must be broken, even though it be only by iron. 
 
 Got! forbid ! We are brought, as yet, to no such alter 
 native. There is yet another side to this question, a side 
 where we are met by confidence, and reassured in our 
 courage. 
 
 / First of all the age is plainly with us, and all the cur- 
 rehts of modern civilization are pouring, like a Mississippi, 
 down upon the head of slavery. By France, England and 
 Denmark it is abolished. Austria and Russia are uproot 
 ing the predial bondage or serfdom that has descended as 
 a bad inheritance from the former ages. Even Turkey is 
 moving in the same direction. - Indeed, it is our most igno 
 minious distinction, that we, the model republic of the 
 world, the people of Washington, are left almost alone, in 
 this nineteenth century, in the maintenance of chattel 
 slavery! This, too,. is distinctly seen by our southern fel 
 low-citizens themselves. Strange and pitiable fact the 
 Rev. Dr. Thornwell, of South Carolina, in his late argument 
 for the divine right and blessing of slavery, admits that 
 now the world is on the other side, and that the southern 
 states have it now on hand to stand up, in the spirit of 
 martyrs, against the condemnation and the scorn of the 
 civilized world, to maintain the perpetuity and vindicate 
 
15 
 
 
 
 the right of the sacred institution of slavery ! What a pic 
 ture of weakness have we displayed in such an attitude as 
 that! And suppose it should sometime happen that the 
 immense majority of non-slaveholding voters in the south 
 (for there are only about 130,000 that hold slaves out of the 
 whole ten millions of their census) suppose, I say, these 
 overwhelming majorities should some time get their eyes 
 open, and should not exactly care to be martyrs for that 
 which only reflects disgrace on their industry, and keeps 
 them down to a level of irredeemable poverty arid con 
 tempt. What then? Before this one consideration, van 
 ishes, how suddenly, all appearance of strength or security. 
 Besides, not only is the age with us, but our own insti 
 tutions, our whole history as a people is with us. The 
 government is a democracy ; that can not be denied, and 
 there is no sophistry that can long hold the men or the 
 party of democracy at peace with human slavery. The 
 Germans are beginning to have their eyes opened to this 
 matter, and a great many others of our natural born citi 
 zens begin to perceive even more distinctly, the stupend 
 ous absurdity of standing for equal liberty or democracy, 
 and voting human slavery, or even conniving at its perpe 
 tuity. There is soon to appear, if it is not already discern 
 ible, a new resolution of party ties, and the question is to 
 be exactly that which is raised by our institutions them 
 selves. The northern iron, the true democratic element, 
 that in which our history began, is not gone ; it is in the 
 people, the unsophisticated people, and it is just as certain 
 to assert its power and come out in the unfolding of life, 
 as a tree to bear fruit in its kind, and not to begin as a fig, 
 bearing olives in the end. Nothing is weaker, nothing 
 more certainly doomed to perish and die, than any institu 
 tion which is not in keeping with the history that embo 
 soms and shelters it. 
 
16 
 
 Do you ask, then, how it is, that our political history has 
 been so far in the interest of slavery? It could not be oth 
 erwise, I answer, until such time as the great issue prepar 
 ing is definitely made up and the alternative pressed home 
 in a point blank question that can not in anyway be evaded. 
 The revolutionary fathers were against slavery, at the 
 beginning, simply because they were honest men, and be 
 cause, wanting to be free themselves, they had not been 
 long enough practiced in the sophistries of the question to 
 find how they could be at once republicans arid slavehold 
 ers. Under the natural conflict, therefore, of interest and 
 principle, this process of sophistication must needs begin ; 
 and it must go on till it comes to a natural limit and practical 
 issue where the freedom or democracy established reveals 
 its utter t incompatibility with the slavery, at first only sen 
 timentally deprecated, but in fact left standing. The pol 
 iticians must temporize and form their combinations, and 
 work their schemes of availibility till they run the question 
 down to an issue where the people will endure them no 
 longer just that must be done, that has, in fact, been 
 done, and is now, I trust, brought to a full end. But you 
 greatly mistake if you suppose that this seeming retrogra- 
 dation is real. It is not. Neither is there anything in it, 
 rightly viewed, which indicates a real strength in slavery, 
 or anything but the fact that its day of doom is approach 
 ing. All the encroachments and seeming advances of 
 slavery are, in one view, only the pleadings that prepare 
 and sharpen the issues for trial. It must fully reveal itself 
 before we could take our ground firmly against it, and this 
 is now done. We are brought to a point where it is seen 
 to be essentially incompatible with the life of our institu 
 tions, and there is no alternative but that we shall meet it. 
 The wool is now completely off the eyes of our people. 
 They understand the politicians, and are going now to 
 
17 
 
 have a final reckoning with them. They have learned, 
 which is more, the 1rue import of the chivalry ; that it is a 
 kind of honor without faith such kind of honor as having 
 no scruple in robbing a man of himself, need have as little 
 in breaking a pledge or robbing a hetf-roost. All the 
 immense cry we have heard about fanaticism too, and 
 the fiery threats of disunion are now understood ; for it is 
 seen, that in a time of profound peace, when everything 
 that has been asked for slavery has been extorted, and the 
 north has given up even a large tithe of self-respect to 
 quiet and save the Union, the agitation is again opened 
 by the south themselves, in a perfidious violation of their 
 own most solemn pledges, to accomplish the aggrandize 
 ment or political ascendency of slavery. These discove 
 ries are fast opening the eyes of our people, and the recent 
 elections are signs in which the northern demagogue, who 
 leads the conspiracy, may distinguish the end of his trea 
 son; even as the tidings spoken of by the prophet fore 
 shadowed the fate of a more notable victim. " But tidings 
 out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him, there 
 fore shall he go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly 
 to make waste, yet he shall come to his end and none shall 
 % help him." 
 
 Meantime we are quite delivered of our concern for 
 the Union. The Union ? Why you can not drive the 
 south out of the Union by anything short of that which 
 drives them out oftheir reason, and even the smallest ves 
 tiges of discretional have witnessed great panics raised 
 over this matter of the Union, but have happily never seen 
 the time when there appeared to be any the least real dan 
 ger of a rupture. Doubtless the remoter southern states, 
 Georgia, South Carolina and the states of the Gulf, might 
 endure the risk of a separation, with a degree of compo 
 sure. But the question is not with them, it is with the 
 2 
 
18 
 
 frontier line of states, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Mis 
 souri. In these states slavery is a comparatively feeble 
 interest. And yet, in order to retain the doubtful advan 
 tage of holding a few slaves, which, in fact, they can keep 
 from running over the border only by putting them in 
 cages, they must consent to have a Canada brought down 
 to their doors, and be separated from it only by the impal 
 pable line of a conterminous sovereignty. There, in times 
 of peace with us, they must live in a continual torture of 
 suspicion lest some instigator of mischief is at work among 
 their slaves; and when there is war with us, which is like 
 ly to be true a great part of the time, their territory must 
 be the scene of perpetual forays and patrollings night and 
 day, to repel our incursions and keep down the risings of 
 their servants at their own thresholds and throats. Ac 
 cordingly the problem will be, in going out of the Union, 
 to find that tier of states that will consent to be the fron 
 tier states, and take the brunt of the suffering and the dan 
 ger a very difficult problem, I imagine it will be ; for 
 there must be statesmanship enough left, even in the most 
 demented rage of passion, to see what such a position will 
 cost. 
 
 No more then are we to be imposed upon by these 
 political fictions or panics gotten up to save the Union; 
 no more to be weakened and drawn off from our princi 
 ples, to accommodate the empty threats which slavery has 
 learned to use for its arguments. I think too that we 
 shall soon be ready, in the reaction by which we are now 
 recovering our position, to assume a more energetic atti 
 tude and declare, as our answer to all such threats, that 
 there shall be no separation ; that our fathers have be 
 queathed to us the Union and that we, having accepted 
 the trust, will keep it safe. This we have the power to 
 say and make the saying good. There is no force in 
 
19 
 
 slavery that can sever this Union and make a southern 
 empire out of the fragment withdrawn, except by our 
 consent and sufferance ; and the time is coming, if it has 
 not already come, when our people, instead of running 
 about in pusillanimous cackle, \vhen some new threat is 
 heard, to find what sacrifice they can make to pacify it, 
 will take the Union into their own hand and declare, once 
 for all, that it shall be maintained. A certain tempering 
 process is needed, as we know, to give the requisite hard 
 ness even to genuine steel. This process has been going 
 on, in the heat of so many panics and the cool of so many 
 compromises, and the annealing is now brought to such a 
 pitch that we are ready, and have our temper fully set 
 for a more spirited and resolved attitude ; the attitude 
 which our wealth and numbers and arts and the genuine 
 force of our principles enable us to hold, as the responsi 
 ble defenders of the Union. "Which if we do, meeting 
 the threats of faction by a resolute answer, that no dis 
 union will be permitted, it is not more certain that iron 
 will submit to steel than that such a position, taken with 
 genuine confidence, will settle at once the stability of 
 our common republic. Neither let any one say that, in 
 taking such a position, we challenge the horrors of a civil 
 war. Nothing else but this will as certainly save us from 
 a civil war. Or, if it must come to the worst, then it is a 
 far less bloody and costly work to maintain the armed 
 integrity of the Union, than to support, in all future time, 
 the neighborhood wars that must follow even a peaceful 
 division. 
 
 But there is a larger computation of causes and con 
 sequences, in which we may see, as clearly as it is possi 
 ble to see anything future, that the free states are destined 
 to wear away the violence of the slaveholding states and 
 by a law of time, apart from all public measures, have 
 
20 
 
 the mastery of the republic. Thus it will be seen that 
 wealth is the natural fruit of free labor, poverty of slave 
 labor. Freedom unites motives to industry. The slavery 
 of labor is work without industry. One too contains the 
 economic element, the other is labor in a law of waste. 
 One therefore is wealth, and the other poverty. A 
 barren rock in freedom will be riches in comparison with 
 a natural paradise in slavery. The towns, the buildings, 
 the roads, the agriculture, the schools, the commerce, in 
 all these freedom will be a sign to the eye, showing that 
 it leads the march of progress and development. With 
 it go the rewards of energy and righteousness. And it 
 will be equally conspicuous in the slovenly culture, the 
 impoverished fields, the raw, rude looking towns, and the 
 tasteless, ill kept structures of slavery, that the poverty 
 of wrong is its heritage. The contrast I sketch is familiar 
 and its truth is abundantly verified by experiment. And 
 yet we have seen almost nothing of the picture that is to 
 be revealed a few generations hence, when the legitimate 
 fruits both of free and slave labor are fully ripe. That 
 will be a sorrowful contrast, in which even debate will 
 cease and the silent Sahara of slavery will refresh us no 
 more, by so much as the vaporing airs of violence and 
 assumed confidence. 
 
 Population too has a stronger ratio of increase in the 
 free than in the slave states. The political representation 
 is regularly advancing on one side and regularly dimin 
 ishing on the other, and the sense of power, which is a 
 principal root of courage and spirit, will not be increased 
 on one side, or diminished on the other, without a corre 
 spondent effect on the tone of public confidence and the 
 energy of public attitudes. In which we may discover, 
 if we please, that even the swagger of sectional threats 
 and assumptions, is placed by the Almighty under a stat- 
 
21 
 
 ute of limitations. Within the present century too, the 
 whole northern tier of states, from one ocean to the other, 
 will be swarming with a population of sixty, or a hun 
 dred millions; pressing down thus more and more heavily 
 on the confines of slavery, as a vast incoming wave of 
 free labor; annihilating the value of the slave property, 
 requiring a division of the great plantations into small, 
 economically manageable farms ; till finally it will be dis 
 covered that the laws of population are themselves aboli 
 tionists without any concern for the odium, and a force 
 more invincible than liberating armies. Before this ad 
 vancing wave, the states of the frontier are beginning 
 even now to yield, undergoing as it were a second colo 
 nization. No sooner have these shaken off their ignoble 
 subjection to slavery, than the doom of the institution is 
 sealed. All agitation apart, and simply remaining in 
 quiet fidelity to our principles, as the hard and subtle 
 temper of steel stays fast in its body, sleeping while it 
 cuts, we are not less certain of driving slavery into the 
 Gulf of Mexico than the Mississippi is to find it with its 
 waters. And the time is much closer at hand than many 
 suppose. 
 
 Meantime it is a great advantage that the literary 
 power of the republic, is, and always will be, on the side 
 of freedom^. The scholarship, the philosophic and esthet 
 ic culture, the originative art and inspiration of slavery, 
 are barbarized of necessity by the element of slavery, and 
 make a sorry figure in the world of letters. Its genuine 
 accomplishments, admitting as we must some honorable 
 exceptions, are dinners, horses, hounds and pistols, united 
 here and there with a certain power of harangue which 
 is not oratory, and as much of political skill as does not 
 amount to statesmanship. The highest examples of cul 
 ture, such as are heard of in the great world of genius 
 
22 
 
 and elegant authorship, are nurtured in the schools and 
 tempered in the clear, living atmosphere of freedom. In 
 this field of literature, slavery looks on freedom as iron 
 might look on steel, distinguishing a finer, sharper senti 
 ment ; hearing too the heaven-born rights of liberty and 
 truth asserted in words that are blades of Damascus, too 
 highly tempered to be turned by the blunted hacks of 
 declamatory violence. Here again you have a tremen 
 dous silent power, by which slavery is continually pressed 
 and weakened in confidence. What people were ever 
 able, for any great length of time, to withstand the su 
 premacy and fight off the ideas of their own literature ? 
 
 Neither let it be forgotten that there is, in the people 
 of the north, what never can be wanting where intelli 
 gence, work and religion are united, a true, genuine sharp 
 ness of principle, which can not be long fooled, or be 
 guiled of its natural intent, as the predestinated supporter 
 of liberty. I speak not here of anything pretensive, but 
 of that silent something which Washington rejoiced to 
 find in the experiment of Bunker Hill, the ability " to 
 stand fire" for a cause ; that which rejected the king s 
 stamps and drove away his stamp-masters ; the same 
 which let the tea go for the tax, instead of paying the tax 
 for the tea. Since the party leaders and committees have 
 been able, once or twice, by their cries of " abolition" and 
 " danger to the Union," to manage the northern people 
 so adroitly and bring them to submit, with so good a 
 grace, to the sale of their principles under the fair pre 
 texts of compromise to serve the common good, it seems 
 to be imagined that their old, Puritanic, impracticable 
 spirit is quite gone. As it has been, say the gamesters 
 at Washington, so it will be again, and upon that com 
 putation they base their votes. But they do not take into 
 account the vast unmasking process going on for the last 
 
23 
 
 three years, and the silent discoveries the people have 
 been making during that time. They have been submit 
 ting to the fugitive slave law and reading Uncle Tom for 
 comfort. And it is a sign quite new which the politi 
 cians would do well to bring into their account, that the 
 class of theater-goers below, taking no thought of the 
 church-goers above, have been hearing Uncle Tom and 
 weeping with him, night after night, and month after 
 month, till at last the bugbear of abolition is changing to 
 a trumpet call of democracy. And when once that turn 
 is fully taken, it will be seen that the northern iron is not 
 broken or to be broken. It will be strange if some of the 
 leaders who have undertaken to sell their constituents do 
 not find that they have made a fatal oversight. 
 
 In all these points, in the matter of wealth, population, 
 literary culture, inborn spirit and force, you perceive the 
 tremendous array of causes operating and conspiring 
 against slavery. They are causes that make no public 
 show or noise, but you must not think that, because they 
 are silent compared with the imperious airs and fiery 
 demonstrations of slavery, they have less power. It is 
 here as in Job " Out of the south cometh the whirlwind 
 and cold out of the north." What can be more powerful, 
 you say, than the whirlwind ? The darkening, booming 
 air, the shuddering tremor of the ground, the thundering 
 crash of the forests, stun your senses for the moment as 
 if the end of all things were come. But the cold creeps 
 on silent, stealing over water and land ; strips the trees, 
 congeals the rivers, splits the rock or the cannon in whose 
 heart the water is hid, hardens the ground to a casement 
 of stone, wraps a shroud round the body of the world 
 and lays it by as in a grave. Even the mariners that 
 survived the hurricane are stiffened by the cold, and drop 
 as icicles into the sea. So it will be found that the silent, 
 
24 
 
 cold north has yet the greater power, that, apart from any 
 bluster of violence, it moves on firmly and surely in the 
 force of its own irresistible laws, hewing a way patiently 
 through to its end. And whoever thinks otherwise, judg 
 ing falsely from the past, will find that what have seemed 
 heretofore to be fatal hacks on the steel, were only cuts 
 into the leather of the sheath, which, having just now 
 reached the blade within, are likely to fare in the repeti 
 tion, as the softer metal should. 
 
 There is yet another element in the power of the north 
 which contains a very certain proof that the northern iron 
 will stand, viz., that God and principle are consciously 
 felt to be with us, and not with the interest of slavery. 
 What a picture have we of the moral impotence of slave 
 ry, in the fact that some of our well meaning northern 
 philanthropists have just now been called to organize a 
 " Southern Aid Society," to assist the slaveholding people, 
 with all the immense wealth they boast, in teaching their 
 slaves the way of salvation ; a picture yet more sad in 
 the fact that they must be saved cautiously, in a small way 
 and by rote, lest the full salvation of unrestricted knowl 
 edge in the word should jeopard the life of their masters. 
 How feeble in the tone of confidence must any people 
 be, first, that can accept a ministration like this, and sec 
 ondly, that can dare no other. How little does it mean, in 
 such a case, that they can make out theologic arguments 
 for slavery. There is never any true force in a people, 
 who can not be assured of their principles, but feel a 
 secret tremor of misgiving at the heart, lest God s princi 
 ples may be against them. See how it was, a few days 
 ago, when three thousand northern ministers sent their 
 brief and simple protest into the Senate of the United 
 States, " in the name of Almighty God," against the 
 passage of the Nebraska bill. The name of Almighty 
 
25 
 
 God! it was shocking strange, they knew not what to 
 make of it! They gathered round the document, like a 
 group of wild men round some air-stone just fallen from 
 the sky, trembling and gazing at respectful distance, won 
 dering from what world the strange thing came, and 
 whether the Great Spirit is really in it or not. In such 
 demonstrations, you may see the essential weakness of 
 any cause, or institution, or form of society, which is not 
 certain of its own principle. And here is the certain as 
 surance that the northern iron will stand. Fair weather 
 cometh out of the north, with God is terrible majesty. 
 The sky of principle is ever clear and the majesty of God 
 is only the more appalling, for the fair weather of light 
 and purity in which he irradiates the confidence of right 
 eous men. 
 
 There is then, I conclude, no reason to fear that the 
 northern iron will fail or break. It may seem at times 
 that it will, or has already broken, but all such misgivings 
 are premature and are not to be suffered. 
 
 It was natural and was probably enough expected that 
 I would go into a formal discussion, to-day, of the Ne 
 braska question. But I saw nothing in that question 
 that requires discussion or even permits it longer. I pre 
 ferred, therefore, to take you farther back into the recesses 
 and tempering processes of our history, and show you 
 what it is that makes Nebraska bills and could not make 
 anything better; what also it is that is going to be their 
 certain defeat, or their Egyptian overthrow. The peo 
 ple of the south tell us, that it is not they that are for 
 ward in this matter, and affect a show of honor, in the 
 fact that they are only voting what the north proposes 
 just as the chief priests and Pharisees might have said, in 
 their accusation of Jesus, that they were only acting with 
 
26 
 
 the apostles and taking their lead, because they had found 
 one of the twelve who would sell his Master. But let us 
 not complain too bitterly that some are ready to betray 
 us, or that, when they sell, there is not faith enough in the 
 buyers to pay ; for it is a remarkable fact that no one of 
 our chief compromisers has ever been rewarded by the 
 south ; and they are ready, as we now see, under the slight 
 est, thinnest pretext, after having gotten their part of the 
 compromise, to reject and disown their obligation in the 
 part still due to us. Exactly so it should be, for what is 
 the compromising process itself, but a mode of political 
 gaming, under a patriotic name ; a consenting to settle 
 over again by votes and contracts what was settled by 
 the first principles of our institutions; a surrender of 
 fidelity here that makes it easy to surrender there ; a 
 mode of dealing, that in the end, is sure to make the 
 peoples and the states only counters in the game of their 
 leaders. 
 
 It could not be otherwise. Pontius Pilate was a poli- 
 tican not a statesman but a politician and it was not 
 strange therefore, that he also undertook to be a compro 
 miser. And the Nebraska bills are to the compromises, 
 what the crucifixion of Jesus was to the alternative by 
 which he proposed to end the trial. The people demand 
 ed a sentence of death, openly threatening to report 
 the governor to Caesar, and break down Caesar s con 
 fidence in him. Therefore he will gratify them, in part. 
 Protesting again and again, " I find no fault in him," he 
 adds with a mean, unprincipled subserviency, " I will 
 therefore chastise him and let him go." A man who 
 could propose to compromise it, in this manner, with 
 the persecutors of innocence, agreeing to chastise inno 
 cence in a way of quieting their malignity, was ready, of 
 course, to crucify for no better reason. Thus it has been 
 
27 
 
 with our compromises over the slave and slavery. They 
 have only done what they must prepared us to crucify 
 with a Nebraska after we have compounded in a Mis 
 souri. Let us have no more then of these compromises for 
 the Union: we have had enough. They have taken away 
 the conscience of our public men, and turned the north 
 ern iron that was in them, to iron only, or pewter, or per 
 chance to dough. It has sometimes seemed as if the 
 people, nay and even the ministers of religion, were un 
 dergoing a correspondent transformation the whole north 
 changing to a continent of dough. But it is not so, as 
 we are beginning, at last, to show. It is only the political 
 gamesters that have really undergone the change. And 
 now we understand them. They have brought us to the 
 point where there is not so much as a gauze of plausibil 
 ity to cover their dishonor longer. They may pass the 
 Nebraska bill ; if they do, we will as certainly repeal it, 
 waging the repeal as a holy crusade till it is carried ; and 
 then, if it is found that slavery has, meantime, gained a 
 footing there, we will wash the territories with nitre, but 
 that every stain of slavery upon them shall be removed. 
 
 It may seem that, in the freedom I have here indulged, 
 I encourage a rash and headlong spirit of sectionalism, 
 such as perils the continuance of our institutions and the 
 practical administration of our laws. It can not be 
 denied that matters are now verging toward an array of 
 section against section, in our country. God forbid that 
 we should have any pleasure, or any but a feeling of pro- 
 foundest sorrow, in view of such a result. We have all 
 one country. As men of the north we love our country. 
 We pray for it not as by section, but we say " The 
 north and the south thou hast created them." But when 
 it comes to this, that we are to be sold in our principles, 
 that the pledges by which, in part, we saved our princi- 
 
i 
 
 28 
 
 pies, are sacrificed by a public lie, when we have no longer 
 any country left but slavery, what can we do but see if 
 we can reclaim by a section, if need be, that which we 
 are losing as a republic. We can do nothing less. It is 
 better to have the section of a just nationality, than the 
 whole of a common dishonor. And it is high lime that 
 we had made up our minds to if. Had we done so be 
 fore consenting to flinch in our principles, or to sacrifice 
 them prudentially to the Union, it would in my opinion 
 have been a great deal better, both for us and for the time 
 to come. 
 
 Certain I am of this that we are not required, by any 
 considerations of genuine patriotism, to give heed longer 
 to the insane threats and sublimated airs of slavery. We 
 can be imposed upon no longer by these plantation atti 
 tudes ; and woe be to the public man, whose northern iron 
 turns to baser metal, before these cheap intimidations. We 
 have tried what we could in savins: the Union, let us now 
 
 o / 
 
 try what we can do in a way of saving our principles and 
 our pledges to liberty. Or better still, let us take our 
 ground firmly and declare to the world, God helping us, 
 that we will save both our principles and the Union, or 
 die in the attempt. 
 
 And in order to confirm ourselves in our vow, it is need 
 ful that we now withdraw our public men, as much as 
 possible from the mere games of politics, and see to it, 
 first, that we have a principled legislation, then that hav 
 ing good laws we enforce and faithfully keep them. Let 
 us choose our magistrates and leaders not to own us for 
 their capital, but to serve us and our principles; and then 
 let us watch them with a vigilance that never sleeps, hav 
 ing it always for a truth, whenever one of them is discov 
 ering some new-fangled " unconstitutionally," or some 
 new " principle" which is a creature of abstraction invented 
 
29 
 
 to cover up a concrete wrong, that he is certainly prepar 
 ing a fraud under which to shelter and disguise his obliqui 
 ties. Let us also understand that we are not to be used 
 as the conveniences or makeweights of any scheme of 
 political availability, and that as Mordecai would not bow 
 down at the gate before Haman the king s minister, be 
 cause he was an Amalekite, the national enemy of Israel, 
 risking thus the life of all his countrymen, and trusting it 
 to God to vindicate his fidelity, so let us have it for a 
 law to assert and vote our principles, and leave it to God 
 to reveal the justification of our conduct. Our children 
 meantime let us train for a like fidelity. Let us see that 
 the true northern iron is in them, not any meaner com 
 pound of untempered iron, pewter, clay, or dough. Let 
 them be formed to integrity, industry, truth, firmness; 
 armed with a spirit of jealous vigilance that can not 
 sleep and will not withhold, when the institutions we 
 leave to them are beset by any conspiracy or betrayed and 
 sold by ambitious and faithless men. 
 
 When Freedom, on her natal day, 
 Within her war-rocked cradle lay, 
 
 An iron race around her stood 
 
 v ^^^ 
 Baptized her infant brow in blood, 
 
 And through the storm that round her swept 
 Their constant ward and watching kept. 
 
 So be it ours, and the charge of our children after us, 
 to be the "iron race," and in that name the watches and 
 wards of liberty. 
 
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