UC-NRLF 
 
 SB S3M 3M5 
 
LETTERS 
 
 AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 
 
 OR, 
 
 COMMON FALLACIES AND MONSTROUS ERRORS REFUTED 
 AND EXPOSED, 
 
 REV. JOSHUA R ;BALME. 
 
 Author of the "Lever of the Gospel," "Mirror of the Gospel," "Magnet of the 
 
 Gospel," "Telescope of the Gospel," "Telegraph of the Gospel," "American 
 
 States, Churches, and Slavery," and the "American War Crusade." 
 
 And Micaiah said, as the Lord liveth, what the Lord saith unto me that I will 
 speak. 1 KINGS xxn. 14. 
 
 HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO., LONDON. 
 
 AND TO BE HAD OF THE AUTHOR, 56 ISLINGTON, LIVERPOOL. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 AMERICAN PRIVILEGE, - I 
 
 THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA AND ITS GLORIES, - 8 
 
 AMERICAN MELODRAMATIC SCENES, - 10 
 
 THE AMERICAN SUBSTRATUMS OF MORAL AND RELIGIOUS 
 
 PRINCIPLE EXAMINED, - -<> 
 
 EXPLOSIVE ELEMENTS AND PYRAMIDAL SCENES i\ AMERI 
 CAN SOCIETY, - o7 
 UN THE AMERICAN UNION, 41 
 THE HAPPY FAMILY AND ITS QDARRELS, 5-t 
 THE BLACK PARTNERSHIP CONCERN, - 65 
 THE TIP OF THE LAST JOINT, OR GENTLEMANLY HONOUR 
 
 AND STANDING, 
 
 THE LORD MAYOR S BANQUET, LONDON, 
 CONCLUSION. - H> ( > 
 
INTRODUCTION, 
 
 ON his arrival in this country, the writer was crushed 
 to the earth by long continued persecution in the 
 cause of freedom. Whilst here he has met with little 
 practical sympathy in quarters where he expected to 
 find it ; first, because he, has a white face, many hav 
 ing reminded him that if he had come with a black 
 one, he would have found his way to the depths 
 of the popular heart ; secondly, he required 
 friendly aid and succour, and this was quite suffi 
 cient in the present artificial state of society to 
 subject him to renewed exercises of trial and diffi 
 culty ; but in his deep emergency God in his kind 
 and indulgent providence enabled him to engineer 
 his way to success in the publication of his book, 
 "American States and Churches;" thirdly, the 
 writer s criticisms of Dr. Cheever s sarcastic fling at 
 this country in the " Trent affair," and also his en 
 quiry as to whether Frederick Douglas was recon 
 verted to the faith which he once professed, and to 
 which he has been so great an opponent in America 
 an enquiry prompted by Douglas taking the Lord s 
 
 M315564 
 
IV. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Supper at Halifax, Yorkshire ; although no animosity 
 or unkind feeling was shewn or indulged in by the 
 writer, their friends on both sides of the Atlantic 
 made haste, not to explain their conduct, or to justify 
 it, but to cover up their guilt by heaping on the writer 
 calumny and abuse ; and fourthly, the writer s op 
 position to the war party has been the signal for the 
 most savage and vehement attacks on himself by Pro- 
 Federals in this country, which has rendered it neces 
 sary that he should take his sling from his side and 
 try to make his mark on the foreheads of some of the 
 Goliaths, who have threatened to give his flesh unto 
 the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field ; con 
 sequently, the writer has had to fight his way through 
 the ranks of opposing foes, and to fall back on the 
 special providences of Jehovah, outside the "organ 
 ized bands " of freedom in this country ; and he can 
 assure the reader that his confidence in the arm of 
 God s strength has not failed that his little of the 
 sparkling essence of life has not entirely evaporated, 
 as will be seen in the following pages that his 
 opponents have not succeeded in closing every avenue 
 of sympathy or door of usefulness against him, not 
 even with their resort to a boundless assumption of 
 falsehood, and wilful misrepresentation and abuse, 
 and also, that they can no more expedite the cause of 
 truth and righteousness by such means than they can 
 by availing themselves of the " shifting policy " of 
 unprincipled demagogues and rulers, by giving to 
 them their active countenance and support. Eecently 
 
INTRODUCTION. V. 
 
 two visitors extraordinary from this city have made 
 their appearance in the ISTew World. One of these, 
 Mr. Patterson, assures his cousins in America, " that 
 the people of this country are in favour of the war 
 for the Union ;" and the other, Mr. W. H. Newett, 
 has been lifting up his flag of union and peace on 
 behalf of the " two great Protestant nations, England 
 and America, in the midst of that fearfully corrupt 
 and demoralized national convention, called the 
 Young Men s Christian Association of America and 
 the British Provinces/ an association which has 
 never disfellowshipped the negro-hater or negro- 
 trader, or protested against their abominable frauds 
 and crimes, or detestable wickedness ; and yet, for 
 sooth, churches and evangelical bodies of Christians, 
 who receive black spirits and white spirits, red spirits 
 and grey, and cry, mingle, mingle, mingle you that 
 may, except what they call strackle-brained aboli 
 tionists/ " Oh ! yes, churches and bodies, such as 
 the above, are to go hand in hand to evangelize the 
 world ! What a coalition ! Should such be realized 
 in the present condition of our churches and conven 
 tional organizations in America, to use the softest 
 sentiments of charity, they cannot be " clear as the 
 sun, fair as the moon, or terrible like an army with 
 banners, 1 against the " modern infidelity " of the age, 
 or the outside heathenism or barbarism of the world. 
 If such a union is designed to be emblematic of the 
 Christian principles which control and beautify every 
 thought and action of the Christian s life, there must 
 
VI. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 be something rotten in the state of the churches as 
 well as in Denmark, or they must be strangely ignor 
 ant of the mind and will of Jehovah concerning the 
 terms of fellowship, or what is necessary to subserve 
 the interests of true piety, or of Christ s cause. But 
 what corrupt ecclesiastical organizations and an all- 
 powerful north cannot accomplish in America, " God 
 and the negro," says the Eev. Henry Ward Beecher, 
 " are to do ;" and, if we are to receive the testimony of 
 Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, already the work is done. 
 In a letter published in the Scotsman, Edinburgh, 
 she says, "The great work of liberation is substan 
 tially done. Thank God we live to feel that slavery 
 is ended. No more coffles ! no more slave markets ! 
 no more scourgings ! no more fugitive slave laws ! 
 Instead, free labour, and an intelligent well-trained 
 black army !" So that what the forty thousand pul 
 pits and the millions of free men in the North have 
 no disposition or power to accomplish, the creation 
 of the "intelligent, well-trained black army" has 
 already " substantially done." The army of General 
 Lee thundering at the gates of Washington, however, 
 shews that the work is not yet substantially done in 
 the way she so fervently desires, or by the terrible 
 means she is helping to call into requisition. How 
 different is Mrs. Stowe and the Eev. Henry Ward 
 Beecher to the late Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 
 who avowed that he could not " contemplate with 
 firmness so horrible a termination of slavery," when 
 dreading an insurrection amongst the slaves in the 
 
INTRODUCTION. vil. 
 
 West Indies ; but the above would-be philanthropists 
 not only contemplate insurrectionary scenes on the 
 slave plantations with firmness, but feast their eyes 
 on them with fiendish delight, and are now jubilant 
 over the work of massacre and blood, which has been 
 inaugurated in the south by stirring up revolt amongst 
 the slaves against their former masters ! Everything, 
 however, must have an end, even the present terrible 
 war with its mask to cover up ulterior designs and 
 mock philanthropy ; and when it comes to a close it 
 will be the wonder of the age, " where the strength 
 of the war party could ever have lain, just as in 
 France, after the fall of Kobespierre, people asked each 
 other who could have been the Jacobins?" And 
 when the names of William Lloyd Garrison, Dr. 
 Cheever, M. D. Conway, Henry Ward Beecher, and 
 Mrs. Stowe are given, how they will call forth the 
 derisive cheers and convulsive laughter of mankind ; 
 but I must not forget that on this day everything is 
 coleur de rose in America that the whole nation 
 is covered with the blaze of heroism and glory. But 
 what a change in the three last fourths of July to 
 those which preceded them ; how different their cele 
 bration ; and how unenviable the feelings of those 
 who can look upon the struggle now going on in " the 
 freest nation in the world " so-called, with approbation 
 or delight. 
 
 SUN STREET, LIVERPOOL, 
 July 4, 1S03. 
 
AMERICAN PRIVILEGE. 
 
 TO THE EDITORS OF THE LIVEliPOOL MERCURY. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, The words of John Bright must ever 
 sound strangely in the ears of enlightened and upright 
 men, and produce immense mischief in stirring up 
 animosity and strife both in the Old and New World. 
 "Privilege came forth every morning, and with blatant 
 voice cursed the American republic. Privilege had 
 beheld thirty millions happy and prosperous, without 
 an emperor or a king, or a state bishop or priest. 
 By the word "privilege," I suppose Mr Bright 
 means the aristocracy with its vested rights, and its 
 use in the above relationship presents him to the view 
 of mankind as the opponent of monarchy and a paid 
 ministry, denouncing them as " kingcraft and priest 
 craft." But as monarchy and the noble ordination of 
 the ministry will not lack noble intellects, hearts and 
 arms to defend them in this country, should the oc 
 casion demand it, let us lift up and make to pass in 
 review before us " squatter sovereignty," another 
 
 A 
 
2 AMERICAN PRIVILEGE. 
 
 name for aristocracy, or privilege, in America. Our 
 " sqiiatter sovereigns " are divided into two classes. 
 The first is an aristocracy of men-stealers, or slave 
 holders. These look on slavery as the normal con 
 dition of the negro ; consider property in him as 
 inviolable as any other in the country; cherish a 
 decided preference for that species of property so 
 called ; consider any interference with it by others 
 as presumptuous, intrusive, and diabolical ; avow 
 that the emancipation of the slave would be dangerous 
 to society and a curse to himself ; certify that slavery 
 is a great blessing, a kind of alkali which neutralises 
 the antagonism of whites and blacks for the mutual 
 interest of both ; contend that slavery is invested 
 with the sanction of religion and guaranteed by the 
 constitution ; affirm that they view it with thankful 
 ness and gratitude as a providential arrangement 
 ordained by the Almighty, and declare that all who 
 call in question or entertain a doubt concerning the 
 humanity and divinity of slavery display " bottomless 
 ignorance," unteachable fanaticism, and blasphemously 
 intrude between the negro and his God. 
 
 What fearful vested rights are disclosed in the 
 above form of our so-called " privilege " in America. 
 Into what bright forms the hideous features of slavery 
 are transformed to woo and charm the unsuspecting 
 and ignorant. With what presumptuous daring and 
 matchless effrontery is it associated with the sacred- 
 ness of religion. And with what subtlety and cunning- 
 do these " squatter sovereigns," or aristocrats, seek to 
 
AMERICAN PRIVILEGE. 3 
 
 hide from the view of men the bloody slave-whip 
 which is ever doing its cruel work, the red-hot brand 
 ing iron which is ever hissing in the flesh of the 
 wretched victims of its cruelty and the anguish and 
 sorrow which dwell in the hearts of multitudes of the 
 oppressed ! 
 
 O for a million tongues 
 
 To thunder freedom s name, 
 To utter a cry which should pierce the sky 
 
 The indignant cry of shame ! 
 
 Our eagle s talons are red 
 
 With the reeking blood of the slave, 
 And he proudly flings his protecting wings 
 
 O er the sight of freedom s grave. 
 Awake in Thy mercy and might, 
 
 And hasten the day which shall open the way 
 Of truth, and justice, and right. 
 
 But whoever may speak against negro slavery, say 
 our "squatter sovereigns," England must be silent, 
 for if it be sinful and cruel to hold men in bondage, 
 she has a heavy load of guilt to bear, since she first 
 gave slavery to us in America. If true, England gave 
 other things to us besides slavery, and we would not 
 have them. She gave us Stamp Acts, but these 
 created Eiot Acts ; she put threepenny taxes on our 
 tea, and we threw it into the waters of Boston 
 Harbour ; and she imposed taxation without repre 
 sentation, and we resisted it with the rattling musketry 
 of Bunker Hill and the roar of cannon from New 
 Orleans to Saratoga. Each and all these we repudiated 
 
4 AMERICAN PEIVILEGE. 
 
 because we did not like them, but we kept slavery 
 because we liked it ! How fearful, therefore, to 
 delude ourselves and to seek to deceive others by 
 casting off an awful responsibility which it becomes 
 us to feel and meet with manly courage. And this 
 we call privilege in America. 
 
 There is, however, another class of aristocrats in 
 America whose " privileges" associate them with the 
 " aristocracy of skin," which is the vilest thing the 
 world ever knew or saw. These look upon the negro 
 as a " superior animal" or " domesticated brute," and 
 consider him as belonging to an inferior race to them 
 selves. They say, " as the crocodile is to the negro, so is 
 the negro to the white man ; and as the white man may 
 treat a negro, so the negro may treat a crocodile." " Pre- 
 judices," say they, " which neither refinement, nor 
 argument, nor education can subdue, mark the people 
 of colour, bond and free, as the subjects of a degradation 
 inevitable and incurable ; subject them to every ima 
 ginable insult in their expulsion from the railway car, 
 steamboat saloon, social circle, sanctuary, the states of 
 Illinois and New Jersey ; and with beseechings made 
 soft with tenderness, cause the President to entreat 
 them to leave the country, whilst he solemnly and 
 earnestly reminds them that America can never be 
 the black man s home, and that his country cannot 
 continue to be polluted with their footprints. "Be 
 sides," say our Northern aristocrats, " God has pro 
 vided for the negro a Canaan in Liberia ; and when 
 it shall be great and prosperous it will then doubt- 
 
AMERICAN PRIVILEGE. 5 
 
 lessly be seen (say they) that a wise Providence 
 suffered the negro race to pass through a long season 
 of oppression in order that they might be elevated 
 and purified, and demonstrate that God had been long 
 elaborating in the depths of his unfathomable counsel, 
 just as he elaborates the diamond in the mine, a gem 
 of Christian civilisation, to blaze on the sable brow of 
 Africa ; so that what Christianity could not do for 
 them in America, it could, would, and should do for 
 them in Africa ; and this is what we sincerely believe 
 to be no fault of the coloured or white man, but an 
 ordination of Providence, and no more to be changed 
 than the laws of nature." 
 
 Influenced by such considerations and governed by 
 such principles and motives, need we wonder that our 
 Northern class of aristocrats should spurn the negro, 
 as the bigot of old did the Jew, or as the Turk did 
 the Christian ; reveal a fixedness of purpose never to 
 allow the coloured man equal social, political or re 
 ligious privileges with themselves ; avow that in 
 America the negroes "must be for ever debased, use 
 less, and a nuisance from which it were a blessing for 
 society to be rid ;" and pass decrees of a most oppres 
 sive character which are to stand against them in all 
 their rigour, and which they say were enacted to work 
 out their " ultimate and unbounded good" in order to 
 relieve us of " their unwelcome presence where they 
 are not wanted, and to induce them to emigrate en 
 masse to Liberia, where they could repeat with the 
 highest gratification to each other and feel the captiv- 
 
6 AMERICAN PRIVILEGE. 
 
 ating spell of the sentiment contained in those lines 
 which the far-famed comedian Garrick proposed as 
 the commencement of an address for the opening of a 
 theatre at Botany Bay 
 
 " True patriots we, for be it understood 
 
 We left our country for our country s good." 
 
 What distinguished magi we have got in America. Is 
 it not wonderful to contemplate such so-called far- 
 reaching sagacity and benevolence ? 
 
 It is no less amusing to observe these aristocrats 
 seeking to penetrate into the " mysteries of infinity," 
 and to hear them talk with impious familiarity of the 
 " designs of an all-wise Providence" to silence their 
 fears in connexion with their own over-shadowing 
 iniquities, and smother conviction arising from obli 
 gations which bring pressing claims to love mercy, do 
 j ustly towards all men, and walk humbly with their 
 God. 
 
 What phantoms of evil imaginations, which vanish 
 into " airy nothings" when looked at with cool and 
 undistorted vision ! And how absurd to suppose that 
 a people dwelling in so wide and rich a land as ours 
 is, should be constantly saying to the millions of 
 Europe, spiced with an invitation to the "cotton lords" 
 to bring their mills and machinery with them to our 
 "poor man s paradise," exclaiming "there is room 
 enough for all/ and yet feel alarmed lest the coloured 
 man should make his home amongst them to pollute 
 or frighten them with the touch or colour of his skin. 
 
AMERICAN PRIVILEGE. 7 
 
 How basely wicked is the thought ! Oh, the deceit- 
 fulness of unrighteousness ! Verily the " tender 
 mercies of the wicked are cruel." And as these two 
 forms of " privilege" cover our whole land, one per 
 vading the South, and the other the North, it will be 
 perceived that obnoxious as John Bright makes out 
 " privilege" to be here ; and sneeringly as he may 
 refer to it, there are a few in the New World, and the 
 writer amongst them, who have never been possessed 
 or obsessed in favour of " privilege" there ; and when 
 "privilege" here and "privilege"there are brought into 
 contrast would exclaim in regard to the former 
 
 " give us the freedom and home of the brave, 
 With soil never trod by the foot of the slave ; 
 Where tyrants and dungeons and chains are unknown, 
 And liberty s smile is the stay of the throne." 
 
 Should the above be deemed worthy of a place in 
 your columns, and the opportunity present itself in 
 connexion with other urgent claims, I hope you will 
 allow me the privilege and gratification of calling at 
 tention to some other monstrous fallacies which are 
 propounded with all earnestness and gravity and 
 sought to be industriously circulated in this country 
 in regard to America. Meanwhile, allow me to sub 
 scribe myself Yours, for truth as well as liberty. 
 
 J. E. BALME. 
 
 An American Baptist Clergyman. 
 32 Sun -street, Brownlow-liill. 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA AND ITS 
 GLORIES. 
 
 TO THE EDITORS OF THE LIVERPOOL MERCURY. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, It is quite easy to fascinate men with 
 the beauteous imagery which is employed by those 
 who have embraced the Federal cause and policy in 
 this country, and to excite their admiration and heroic 
 appreciation of America by representing it as a "model 
 country," "a thing for angels to dream of," for men are 
 naturally fond of what is marvellous ; but as the 
 superb grandeur which invested the dignified order of 
 our " squatter sovereigns " in America, and the bright 
 halo of glory which surrounded their virtues, disap 
 peared like the mist before the rising sun, on lifting 
 up the mask in our last letter ; even so, by pushing 
 our inquiries into the real condition and true character 
 of our country, we shall find that its bright colours 
 will rapidly fade before us, and its towering glories 
 speedily vanish at every step, and from every stand 
 point where we can have a glimpse of it. 
 
 If we look at America in the light of our great 
 charters of freedom, such as the constitution and de 
 claration of independence, and also our written laws, 
 we shall find our honour as a people trampled in the 
 dust, and our name made a reproach and byword 
 
THE KEPUBLIC OF AMEEICA AND ITS GLOEIES. 9 
 
 amongst the nations. The constitution provides for 
 all, without limitation, restriction, and distinction of 
 colour, the act of habeas corpus., trial by jury, civil and 
 religious liberty, the right of petition, and protection 
 to person and property ; and yet to the negro these 
 grand clauses in the constitution have been as " in 
 operative as a bull against a comet " from the first 
 hour of our independence until now ; whilst through 
 the perversion and misapplication of it the victims of 
 slavery have increased from 647,000 to 4,000,000. 
 What a black heritage of guilt has this tremendous 
 feat of jugglery entailed on our land ! How wonder 
 ful that an instrument which was associated with the 
 bright angel of liberty, and was made to carry the 
 eagles of freedom, should by some mysterious process 
 have been made to carry " a devil " with it instead of 
 an angel. Our declaration of independence avows 
 that " ail men are equal, and are born to life, liberty, 
 and the pursuits of happiness ;" and yet, although it 
 has been the motto of a thousand speeches, and the 
 text of a thousand sermons, it is gravely alleged by the 
 president and governors from their chairs of state, the 
 senator in the senate chamber, legislator in the house 
 of legislature, the judge from the bench of judicature, 
 and the divine from the pulpit, that the negro is not a 
 man, and that his equality with them is simply neither 
 more nor less than the equality of the ox ; for as the law 
 of Moses commanded that the mouth of the ox was not 
 to be muzzled, that treadeth out the corn, even so, to 
 use the language of President Lincoln, who denies the 
 
10 THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA AND ITS GLORIES. 
 
 right of negroes to vote, sit on juries, and intermarry 
 with white people, yet this same negro has one right 
 reserved by the President, and this right claimed by 
 him and the magi who think with him, is simply and 
 solely deemed to be the right of (the ox) to eat the 
 bread which his own hand earns. 
 
 We have not only great charters of freedom in the 
 documents referred to, but we have written laws. It 
 has been truly said that no people are better than 
 their laws. If so, in what a mean, low, and debased 
 condition must our slave laws our " black laws " so 
 called in the Free States and our congressional 
 fugitive slave law, put us as a people. Our slave laws 
 reduce the negro to a " chattel personal ;" make every 
 child born of a slave, the property of his master or 
 owner so called ; subject the slaves to the lash for 
 learning to read, and the white man to fines and 
 penalties for teaching them. 
 
 Our black laws in two of our Free States, so called, 
 decree that no black man or mulatto shall enter, and 
 in all but two exclude them from voting, and in one 
 of these require a property qualification, whilst in all 
 the Free States they are made the badge of an ignoble 
 distinction, which excludes them from social rights 
 and sanctuary privileges, and marks them out as the 
 victims of a cruel prejudice. And then there is the 
 Fugitive Slave Law, which strikes down in the most 
 cruel and summary manner the natural right of the 
 slave to be free, tramples under feet two of the most 
 sacred guarantees of the constitution the Habeas 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA AND ITS GLORIES. 1 1 
 
 Corpus Act and trial by jury creates a tribunal un 
 known to the constitution in the persons of com 
 missioners, offers a bribe to send men into slavery, 
 and requires all citizens, under the heaviest penalties, 
 to doff their manhood, don the bloodhound, and go 
 yelping on the track of the weary, wayworn fugitive, 
 in order to secure his arrest, although they may feel 
 that the above law is opposed to every noble impulse 
 of humanity, the express command of Jehovah, and 
 that the code of Draco, which was written in blood, 
 was white-robed innocence when compared with it. 
 
 What a glimpse our written constitution and laws 
 give of our highly eulogised country. Our free re 
 presentative government so called, gives us a further 
 and deeper insight into the " wonders and glories of 
 our republic." 
 
 And first of all, there is our elective franchise, to 
 which all citizens are entitled, and can therefore vote 
 for the election of president, governors of States, 
 mayors and members of city corporations ; and those 
 who are not citizens can be made so to subserve party 
 purposes, whilst Indians sometimes are made to help 
 to turn the tide of electioneering in favour of favour 
 ite partizans ; and if these manoeuvres are not suffi 
 cient to accomplish party purposes, men who have no 
 regard to an oath, are induced by bribery to perjure 
 themselves ; " plug uglies " are also called in to block 
 up every avenue to the ballot box to keep out oppos 
 ing parties ; and, recently, for the first time in the 
 history of the world, whole regiments have had 
 
12 THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA AND ITS GLORIES 
 
 furloughs granted them to leave the battlefield that 
 they might vote in the interests of their military 
 dictators. 
 
 Need we wonder, therefore, that by the use of such 
 means, and from the force of contending parties who 
 make a virtue of necessity, we should have had a 
 succession of presidents who have violated the great 
 charters of freedom, which they were sworn to uphold ? 
 so that if they had been dealt with as the law of the 
 case demanded, many, if not all of them, would have 
 had to expiate their crimes on the gallows ! And 
 such has been the corruption, peculation, and fraud 
 which have filled every department of the Govern 
 ment and States, that our representative form of 
 government, with its "unbalanced "democracy w T hich 
 ought to be called " mobocracy " has been brought 
 into almost universal disrepute. Instead of winning 
 favour, it has created dark withering frowns and 
 shrugged-up shoulders amongst men ! In the place 
 of hosannas, it is bringing down upon itself a world s 
 thundering anathemas ! Instead of being a blessing, 
 it has become the pesthouse of fraud, the lazar house 
 of corruption a great w r orld nuisance ! 
 
 The provision made for the education of the people 
 gives us another manifestation of our republic. This 
 provision is plentiful, for no country in the world has 
 more schools, colleges, or churches ; but the education 
 is corrupt in quantity, and defective in quality. This 
 is obvious from the fact, that if the simplest elements 
 of justice, feeblest deductions of reason, or the first and 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA AND ITS GLORIES. 13 
 
 easiest lessons of Christianity, had been taught, a 
 succession of ever-increasing victims could not have 
 passed through the fires to the Moloch of slavery the 
 free negroes would not have so long continued under the 
 ban of proscription. Northern schools, colleges, and 
 churches would not have been filled with pro-slavery 
 teachers, professors, and divines ; the sons and 
 daughters of slaveowners who have received their 
 education almost exclusively in the North, would not 
 have been so far inducted into the so-called humanity 
 and divinity of slavery, as to have their moral sense 
 extinguished shown in their attempt to found a new 
 republic based on slavery ; all liberty sentiments 
 would not have been expunged from tracts, pamphlets, 
 and books written by authors in this country, before 
 they have been put into circulation by our tract 
 committees and publishers ; men who have had the 
 taint or smell of abolition about them would not have 
 been isolated, ostracised, caricatured, abhorred, mal 
 treated, or endangered in their position, prospects, or 
 property ; our best friend and ally, England, would 
 not have been regarded and treated as our greatest foe : 
 the fires of the volcano which is now sending forth its 
 burning lava to ruin and devastate our land, would 
 not have been so long concealed from the view of men, 
 or allowed to gather its forces to produce such vast 
 and extended mischief both in America and Europe ; 
 those who profess to hold in trust the enlightened 
 principles of Christianity, which lie at the basis of 
 a sound education, and to have a providential mission 
 
14 THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA AND ITS GLORIES. 
 
 to supply the antidote to those boundless elements of 
 mischief, in the persons of Cheever, Beecher, Sloane, 
 Conway, Mrs Stowe, and others, would not have 
 abandoned moral for military issues, and have been 
 running to and fro in our land with the Eobespierre cry 
 of liberty, fraternity, and equality on their lips to rouse 
 the war passions and to let out deluges of blood. 
 Captains and chaplains would not have been selected 
 and appointed to go on a crusade to this country 
 armed with "sacks of flour" and "butteries" to 
 possess and obsess you in favour of our imaginary 
 liberties, by making speeches and reading homilies on 
 civil and religious liberty, and gravely reading Psalms 
 in public which commence, " Not unto us, Lord 
 not unto us, O Lord, but unto Thy name be all the 
 glory," in homage of the greatness and glory of our 
 republic now in ruins, and of our illustrious race of 
 philanthropists, patriots, and Christians, who have 
 accelerated its destruction. An all-pervading press 
 and the wonderful powers of the telegraph would not 
 have been controlled by military despotism, covered 
 ignominous defeats with imaginary glorious victories, 
 to enlist new recruits, to make more food for powder, 
 or contract new loans, to prop up our doomed republic, 
 or ambassadors sent to the Old World to astonish the 
 nations by the assumption of extraordinary powers 
 in connection with " tickets of leave." And yet, 
 forsooth, we have philosophers, poets, statesmen, and 
 divines, who point to the glory that dwells in our land, 
 and strangely misguided pro-Federal advocates here 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA AND ITS GLORIES. 1 5 
 
 who reciprocate the sentiment of John Bright in his 
 avowal that "there would be a wild shriek of freedom 
 to startle all the world if our republic in America was 
 overthrown/ and that Privilege here would shudder 
 at what would happen. I have still a few more points 
 of interest to comment upon. Yours respectfully, for 
 truth as well as liberty, 
 
 J. E. BALME, 
 
 American Baptist Clergyman. 
 32 Sun-street, Liverpool. 
 
AMERICAN MELODEAMATIC SCENES. 
 
 TO THE EDITORS OF THE LIVERPOOL MERCURY. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, It is quite amusing to read the state 
 ments of poets, senators, orators, and divines in 
 America, and the pro-Federals in this country, who 
 claim for America the highest place amongst nations. 
 In a grandiloquent speech made by Secretary 
 Seward in the senate chamber of the United States 
 in the autumn of 1860, we find the following startling 
 announcement, that the " worst slave state is in ad 
 vance of England ; " and in a lecture recently delivered 
 by the celebrated novelist Thomas Hughes in the 
 Collegiate Institute, the following paragraph was jot 
 ted down by the reporters, and published in the 
 newspapers of this town " He declared, from all his 
 reading and his conversation with Americans and 
 with Englishmen who had travelled in that country 
 (America), that there was no country in the world 
 where men are so free, so well educated, so noble in 
 all respects in all essential respects in which free 
 men ought to be noble as the citizens of the States 
 of the North, especially the New England States. 
 (Cheers.) No nation had done so much to enlighten 
 and elevate its people ; and its people were worthy of 
 the sympathy of those who had done well in the great 
 ends for which nations were established." 
 
AMERICAN MELODRAMATIC SCENES. 17 
 
 If, therefore, we are to give credence to the utter 
 ances of the persons referred to, your illustrious char 
 acters, such as Brougham, Gladstone, Livingstone, 
 Spurgeon, Florence Nightingale, and Queen Victoria, 
 must vanish behind the scenes, whilst the aristocracy 
 of slaveholders or menstealers in the Southern States 
 make their appearance in the persons of Jeff. Davis, 
 HoweU Cobb, Mason, SlideU, Floyd, Wise, Pryor, 
 Barkdale, accompanied by a large retinue of lady 
 major domos, surrounded by bright and beautiful land 
 scapes, where the skies cleave asunder to pour down 
 righteousness in the way of retributive justice ; where 
 the incense laden gales of miasma from the dismal 
 swamps of slavery fill every breeze ; where the soft 
 sweet lullaby dies away, and then swells into a grand 
 hallelujah chorus amid the din and clatter of blud 
 geons, thumbscrews, pincers, cowhides, cat-o -nine-tails, 
 bowie knives, revolvers, and bloodhounds, as these 
 aristocrats trip it with fantastic toe, making heaven 
 to weep and hell to rejoice, while the lash plays and 
 the blood flows ; while women are whipped and child 
 ren are sold ; while the paternal tie is rudely torn, 
 and the marriage annulled ; while honest gains are 
 filched and robbed, the souls of men are shut down in 
 all the darkness of ignorance, and God himself is 
 defied in the pretension that man can hold property 
 in his fellow-man ; while all around the great big 
 serpent slavery draws its long slow length along, over 
 every sunny bank, under every shady tree, by the 
 side of every meandering stream, coiling its snaky 
 
18 AMERICAN MELODRAMATIC SCENES. 
 
 folds or darting its sting and breathing its hiss under 
 the shadow of their " patriarchal domes/ filling the 
 land with its unclean presence and spirit, impregnating 
 the atmosphere with its stench, and turning the bloom 
 ing paradise of the South into an Aceldama. And yet, 
 forsooth, with this monster that binds so many hands, 
 cords so many feet, blinds so many eyes, blasts so 
 many intellects, crushes so many hearts, and opens so 
 wide the jaws of destruction, and makes such a smooth 
 path to it yes, with this monster, slavery, we are to be 
 fascinated ; with its patriarchal scenes, so called in the 
 " sunny South," we are to be entranced ; and with 
 such sounds we are to be filled with joys divine and 
 rhapsodies celestial, if we are to bow to the dogma 
 of the Hon. Wm. H. Seward. And if we are to receive 
 the teachings of Thomas Hughes, your distinguished 
 celebrities must still hide their diminished heads 
 whilst the genii, so called in the North, whom Beecher 
 designates the "picklock of society and the pickpocket 
 of the world/ and whose daughters, especially in the 
 New England States, according to the testimony of 
 the same divine, are to regenerate the South without 
 the aid of the first syllable oh yes, your illustrious 
 personages must still go down into the shade whilst 
 the above wonderful genii crowd upon the stage. 
 
 And here the scene opens with the crowding of the 
 shores of the New World with emigrants, whom Dr. 
 Guthrie calls the " scum of Europe ; " and as they 
 enter upon the business activities of life, down goes 
 the value of slave labour, and up goes the feverisli 
 
AMERICAN MELODRAMATIC SCENES. 1 9 
 
 anxiety of their Northern fleshmongering owners to 
 realise their full market value. Hence, when they 
 could find no market around them, they sent them 
 into the Southern market, that they might exemplify 
 their "thrift to fawning." It must be some consolation 
 therefore, to those who have constituted the so-called 
 " scuni of Europe," to be of some service to the com 
 monwealths of America in the North. The next 
 scene brings before us a large procession of dis 
 tinguished citizens, with clergymen robed in their 
 canonicals leading the way to church, where they offer 
 their devout gratitude to Almighty God for the passing 
 of the fugitive slave law, and condole each other and 
 the people that the Union was saved, the storms 
 which threatened the Eepublic were turned into a 
 calm, and that they would have peace in their time. 
 Again the curtain rises, and we hear the bells tolling, 
 as they announce the " glory departed " of Northern 
 free cities in the rendition of fugitive slaves amidst the 
 military tramp of armed men who are conveying them 
 to the ship or railway station to be consigned to the 
 hell of the Carolinas. 
 
 The next scene brings before us the fitting up of the 
 slave ships and their departure from New York, 
 Boston, and New Bedford, for Africa, to empty that 
 country in order to humanise, civilise, and christianise 
 them through the benign influences of the patriarchal 
 institution of slavery. 
 
 Another scene opens to our view, and we see a par 
 son salesman in a Baptist Convention in Philadelphia, 
 
20 AMERICAN MELODRAMATIC SCENES. 
 
 surrounded by great official dignitaries, such as Drs. 
 Way land, Cone, and others, and hear his voice as he 
 proceeds, amidst the profound silence of the assembly, 
 and without rebuke, to offer for sale his pious slave, 
 whom he had brought with him from the South. We 
 hear his voice exclaiming, " See, here is my Christian 
 slave, who has a desire to go to preach the gospel in 
 Africa. I will take 200 dollars for him. Oh, what a 
 chance for you who are anxious for the slave, to try 
 your liberality." Then comes the Baptist missionary, 
 Bushyhead, the agent of the Triennial Convention, 
 which had its head-quarters in Boston. Bushyhead 
 is surrounded with a beautiful plantation, well stocked 
 with slaves, and is deeply solicitous about the Indians, 
 and very assiduous in inducting them into the 
 mysteries and blessings of the patriarchal institution, 
 slavery, where this mystery of iniquity is now at work, 
 showing its baleful influences among the red men of 
 the forest. 
 
 Then comes before us the examination of the slave- 
 breeding pens of Virginia and the border States by 
 the representatives of the Bible, Tract, and Missionary 
 Societies, appointed by committees in New York to 
 see which slaves are ready for the market, and whether 
 they can bespeak any of the proceeds of their sale for 
 the printing of the Holy Bible, and to send mission 
 aries to Turkey and India by getting their owners to 
 become life members, or directors in the payment of 
 the usual fee. 
 
 In the next scene the Kev. Henry Ward Beecher 
 
AMEKICAN MELODRAMATIC SCENES. 21 
 
 leads the way in connection with a crowd of official 
 dignitaries, and solicits attention whilst he reads a 
 homily to prove that there is no rualum in se in 
 slaA^ery. An electric flash goes through the crowd, 
 and the editors of the New York Observer, Express, 
 and Christian Intelligencer, frantic with delight, shout, 
 " This our brother was dead, and is alive again ; was 
 lost, and is found." The Eev. Dr. Lord, of Dartmouth 
 College, follows with another homily on the subject, 
 to show that slavery is in accordance with natural 
 and revealed religion, and the law of love. Professors 
 Hoge of Princeton, and Stuart of Andover, thunder 
 out the announcement that master and slave is a 
 relationship of rightful authority, and that, after all 
 the spouting on the subject, the Bible, which estab 
 lishes that relationship, remains the same. The Rev. 
 Van Dyke, of New York, with deepest and broadest 
 emphasis avows that he finds slavery in nature and 
 Providence. Dr. Nehemiah Adams declares that it 
 is adapted to the beneficent workings of society, 
 and regrets that he cannot introduce it into Boston. 
 Dr. Blagden opens out his Bible and turns down 
 chapter and verse in its defence. Dr. Baron Stowe 
 finds that his Bible does not allow him to deny any 
 courtesy to a man because he is a " Christian slave 
 holder." The Rev. Henry T. Cheever says a man may 
 be a slaveholder and yet a Christian there is no 
 doubt of it. Dr. Gardiner Spring says if one prayer 
 would free every slave he would not be the man to 
 offer that prayer. And Mrs. Stowe brings up the 
 
22 AMERICAN MELODRAMATIC SCENES. 
 
 rear in this crowd of worthies with a brand-new 
 mantle of piety for her dear " lady pious slaveholder," 
 Mrs. Shelby, large enough to cover both the mistress 
 and her stolen property the slave ; and whilst she 
 looks with defiant scorn, and carries a whirlwind in 
 her track against the pirate who has stolen a chest of 
 goods, because he covets a mantle of piety to cover up 
 himself and his stolen goods, thinking, doubtlessly, 
 that if stolen men were no bar to the enjoyment of 
 such a privilege, stolen goods ought not. But, poor 
 soul, he is mistaken. He has not been inducted into 
 the mysteries of our special justificatory circumstances 
 in America, and the granting of special indulgences 
 to absolution which exempt these great transgressors 
 from the ban of condemnation. 
 
 Next conies a Eepublican convention, that makes 
 America a place of torture for the black man, holds 
 out to him Liberia as a Paradise, decrees no more 
 slave territory, and yet elects a man to the presidency 
 who declares that "if any territory desires slavery, 
 and seeks admission into the Union, although he 
 would be sorry to do it, yet he would admit it." 
 
 The next scene gives us a view of the successive 
 plagues of America, the softening of the president s 
 heart in view of all circumstances, and the cornu 
 copias which rain down flowers upon him for his 
 grand achievements as a rail splitter, tavern keeper, 
 navigator of a flat boat, farmer catching coons, lawyer 
 learning the " specious arts " to deceive, political de 
 bater in which he adapted himself to men of all 
 
AMERICAN MELODRAMATIC SCENES. 2o 
 
 political creeds and shades of opinions, making Abo 
 litionists believe that he hated slavery as much as 
 any of them, Eepublicans feel that he had no love to 
 the negro as a man, was quite inflexible in their 
 belief that America was the country for the white 
 man, and the white man only ; and Democrats 
 quiescent under the assurance that if he could save 
 the Union and slavery as well, he would do it ; or 
 save the Union and slavery in part, he would do that ; 
 but if he could not save the Union without destroying 
 slavery he would do it ; and as President of the 
 United States he has been honoured with the achieve 
 ments of a Moses, although he has not acquired the 
 power of a Pharaoh to let the slaves go. 
 
 In the next scene, Secretary Chase makes his 
 appearance with his financial goose under his arm, 
 and goes through the operation of putting gold into its 
 mouth, and receiving a hurricane of greenbacks at its 
 tail to show the sudden increase of wealth in our 
 glorious republic, and assures the astonished crowds 
 that if he can only monopolise the trade, he can pre 
 vent the republic from coming to grief or tottering to 
 its fall. 
 
 And to close these melo- dramatic scenes, the Mar 
 plots gather in great force ; and amongst them we 
 recognise the Eev. Henry Ward Beecher, armed with 
 his knuckledusters, and bending his fists in the face 
 of England amidst the wildest demonstrations of ap 
 plause. There are also Cheever, Goodell, and Sloane, 
 surrounded by torches of Greek fire, horns of powder, 
 
24 AMERICAN MELODRAMATIC SCENES. 
 
 percussive biscuits, and starvation shells, which, like 
 so many Titans, they aspire to take up in the sling of 
 mortal hate to hurl into the heart of the South, to 
 start the slave population in revolt against their 
 masters. Doolittle and Wadsworth claim that the 
 thunderbolts of heaven will so avenge their cause that 
 the South is sure to be turned into swamps for croco 
 diles if the southerners persist in their rebellion. Jim 
 Lane, of Kansas notoriety, is so furious in the letting 
 out of blood that he advocates the destruction of the 
 Copperheads, or Democrats so called in the North, 
 and certifies to a commencement of such a reign of 
 terror in the state to which he belongs. Fred Douglas 
 gives a significant look towards this country, ad 
 ministering at the same time a particular caution or 
 warning that, if you interfere, Uncle Sam, though re 
 duced to a skeleton with the scab, cancer, and bare- 
 bones of slavery, will gather up the remnants of his 
 Titanic power and " strike down the mailed hand of 
 England." And Mrs. Stowe certifies that, on the 
 bright roll of their war crusade, Garrisonians, and 
 democrats, and republicans are all registered, and 
 stand shoulder to shoulder, and with voice answering 
 voice, and heart to heart, utter words of good cheer as 
 they cry- 
 Draw your good sabres bright, 
 Gather your reins up tight, 
 
 Buglemen blow : 
 Now for the crimson fight, 
 Charge on the foe. 
 
AMERICAN MELODRAMATIC SCENES. 25 
 
 Man to man, horse to horse, 
 Hand to hand, force to force ; 
 Oh, but they fiercely fight : 
 Give them your sabres bright, 
 Pistol them too. 
 
 And these deluges of blood are let out in the name 
 of justice, equality, and liberty. How deluded and 
 misguided, to allow a love of country to override their 
 love of justice ! And yet, according to Thomas 
 Hughes, these men are the world s greatest noble 
 men ! What a satire upon the human race ! This 
 is what we call in America " beating the devil at long 
 chalks." 
 
 In my next I shall notice "American Substratums." 
 Yours, for truth as well as liberty, 
 
 J. R BALME, 
 
 An American Baptist Clergyman.^ 
 32 Sun Street, May 4, 1863. 
 
THE AMERICAN SUBSTRATUMS OF MORAL 
 AND RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE EXAMINED. 
 
 TO THE EDITORS OF THE LIVERPOOL MERCURY. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, No nation any more than an individual 
 can depart from the laws of God without being subject 
 to His retributive justice. This is fearfully illustrated 
 in the cataract outpourings of blood, and wide-spread 
 scenes of suffering and woe which we now behold 
 in the present unhappy condition of America. No 
 country recorded in the annals of history has evermore 
 persistently departed from first principles, or wickedly 
 violated the just and righteous laws of God a fact 
 which no " mysterious cypher " or " hieroglyph " can 
 cover up or hide from the view of men, who are 
 acquainted with our condition or history as a people. 
 If, therefore, the punishment bears any proportion to 
 our crimes or guilt, God s thunderbolts must flame 
 with uncommon wrath to blast our country s greatness, 
 and make desolate our land. 
 
 These great and terrible judgments had long been 
 predicted by distinguished citizens and statesmen, who 
 pointed to the coming whirlwind of Divine vengeance 
 and raised the warning voice as if they had been 
 almost inspired ; but our nation rushed madly on in 
 its career of guilt and shame, until God shook down 
 
AMERICAN SUBSTRATUMS OF MORAL, &C. 27 
 
 upon it the "bolted fires" of His wrath as a just 
 penalty for its sins. Long, long ago Jefferson ex 
 claimed, " I tremble for my country when I reflect 
 that God is just. One day of American slavery IB 
 worse than a thousand years of that which we rose in 
 arms to oppose. The Almighty has no attribute 
 which can take sides with us in such a contest. And 
 His justice will not sleep for ever/ What words 
 could have been more prophetic or appropriate ? 
 
 Scarcely any, however, expected that the destruc 
 tion of our " grand Eepublic," so called, was so near 
 at hand or would be so suddenly affected ; and few r er 
 still anticipated that our Northern people would be the 
 blind Samson in connexion with the terrible scenes 
 now being enacted in the great drama of God s retri 
 butive providences in America, to pull down the 
 pillars of our American commonwealth on themselves, 
 and bury themselves in one common ruin with the 
 Southern Lords or Philistines. Such, however, was 
 the prediction of Longfellow when he dedicated his 
 poem to the Senate of the United States, which con 
 tained the following stanza : 
 
 There is a poor blind Samson in the land, 
 
 Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel, 
 
 Who may in some grim revel raise his hand 
 And strike the pillars of the commonwealth, 
 
 Till the vast temple of our liberties 
 
 A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies ! 
 
 When, however, the Unionists or pro-Federals 
 cannot cover up the plague-spots of our country which 
 
28 AMERICAN SUBSTRATUMS OF MORAL 
 
 the crashing thunders and forked lightnings in the 
 terrific displays of God s justice are now finding out, 
 and disclosing to the view of men in their shifting 
 policy, they acknowledge their severity, and recognise 
 their appropriateness so far as the South is concerned, 
 but claim exemption for the North, as if it had had no 
 share in the bonds of wickedness to be unloosed, but 
 had dwelt in the paradise of abiding peace established 
 on the foundation of righteousness, than which nothing 
 can be more fallacious or delusive. 
 
 Ah, but, says Dr. Guthrie, one of the vice-presidents 
 of the Manchester Union Emancipation Society, 
 " There is no country in the world, our own excepted, 
 where there is such a deep substratum of moral and 
 religious principle as is to be found in those portions 
 of the American republic which have not been cursed 
 with slavery, and considering so much scum from the 
 old world has been poured into it by the tides of 
 emigration, we have cause to wonder that the good 
 bears such a proportion to the evil !" 
 
 Lincoln, Seward, and Co. are ever and anon in 
 troduced to our favourable notice by the pro-Federals 
 as bright ornaments to the cause of humanity, liberty, 
 morality and religion. These men have a more 
 exalted opinion of the worth of European emigrants 
 at the present time than Dr. Guthrie, or they would 
 not have appropriated three millions of dollars to 
 open the floodgates of emigration, that a flood of the 
 above-mentioned " scum " might flow into our so- 
 called " Poor Man s Paradise !" In an address which 
 
AND RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE EXAMINED. 29 
 
 that great and good man Dr. Guthrie gave in the 
 Philharmonic Hall of this town, he truly remarked 
 that " the genius of Christianity was love, and that 
 her highest worship lay in such works as sprang from 
 loving God with all the heart, and loving their 
 neighbours as themselves ;" but does Dr. Guthrie or 
 his pro-Federal coadjutors admire the love or appre 
 ciate the work of the above Christian statesmen, so 
 called, who are now turning so lovingly, and beckon 
 ing so kindly to the able-bodied men of this country 
 through their consuls and crimps, whilst they repeat 
 the old ditty of the nursery rhyme : 
 
 " Come into my parlour," 
 
 Said the spider to the fly, 
 " Tis the prettiest little parlour 
 
 That ever you did spy." 
 
 Now, if, to use the language of Guthrie, " faith with 
 out works is a lie, a monstrous lie, a devil s lie, and 
 one of the blackest that ever came out of hell," what 
 must faith with the works of those Christian men- 
 spiders be, in connection with the black and bloody 
 work of enticing men away from home, friends, and 
 country, to jbe dumped by Northern Christian 
 scavengers into the " grand army of the North " to fill 
 up the gaps of the dead and dying on the battle fields 
 of the South, or amidst its pestilential swamps? 
 What kind Christian solicitude ! How deep or broad 
 is the substratum of moral or religious principle that 
 underlies such a work as that ! 
 
 Moral and religious principle is a thing of great 
 
30 AMERICAN SUBSTRATUMS OF MORAL 
 
 value, and is everywhere very much required, but 
 nowhere in God s creation is it more wanted than in 
 our Free States, so called, in America. The scarcity 
 of the thing there enhances the value of it very much. 
 If we look to the science of political economy for it, 
 we discover no trace of it in that department ; for 
 however minute or diligent we may be in our re 
 searches, we can find nothing but compromise, corrup 
 tion, and fraud. In taking a survey of the whole field of 
 political science in America and its different strata, 
 we can confidently affirm that there is not a wicked 
 or cruel act of the Federal Government on behalf of 
 slavery, which has not been subscribed to, ratified, 
 and endorsed by Northern senators and people, and 
 for which they are alone responsible, as they could not 
 have been enacted or put in force without their votes 
 and consent. If we turn our attention to our religious 
 theories and practises, as popularly taught and illus 
 trated, we are again doomed to be disappointed in 
 our researches for this deep, broad substratum of 
 moral and religious principle, for there is no depart 
 ment in America that has been more perverted or 
 corrupted than the science of religion, in theory or 
 practice. Not only have the blasphemous doctrines 
 that man may hold property in man, and that one 
 man is inferior to the other, been chiefly taught and 
 inculcated by our Northern professors and divines, but 
 acted upon by our Northern people in their brokerage 
 system with the Southern people, and, what is worse 
 still, shown in their contempt of the negro race, and 
 
AND RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE EXAMINED. 31 
 
 usurpation of their sanctuary rights and privileges, 
 where the negroes are met with the same biting 
 sarcasms and blasting irony and scorn, as the Jews 
 met the Gentiles when they drove them from their 
 places in the temple and filled them with ordinary 
 traffic, so that our Saviour in going into the temple had 
 to pass through herds of cattle, flocks of sheep, and 
 busy crowds who were selling turtle doves and ex 
 changing money ; indignant at the profanation of the 
 sacredness of his house, he took a whip and drove 
 them out of the temple, and overturned the tables of 
 the moneychangers. And were our Saviour now on 
 earth, would he not be indignant with the proud 
 Yankees who drive men of a different colour from 
 themselves from their places in the sanctuary, and 
 show his displeasure by rebuking them, exclaiming, 
 " My house shall be called a house of prayer for all 
 people, but ye have made it a den of thieves/ a brother 
 hood of thieves. Can we succeed any better in find 
 ing this deep, broad substratum of principle in our 
 survey of the enlightened sentiments or opinions of 
 the people ? Had the people been touched with the 
 fine issues that proceed from moral and religious 
 principles, the overwhelming masses thereof would 
 not have acquiesced in the death of that noble hero 
 and martyr, John Brown, or demanded his execution 
 for doing what he would have had every slave do to 
 him under similar circumstances, and what the grand 
 old Puritans covenanted to do in the cabin of the 
 Mayflower at all costs and risks. Where, then, shall 
 
32 AMERICAN SUBSTEATUMS OF MOEAL 
 
 we find this deep, broad substratum of moral and 
 religious principle ? Shall we find it in the fearful 
 struggle now going on between the North and South ? 
 Is the fierce war spirit that is now cherished by the 
 religious war crusaders, so called, evidence of its 
 existence ? If so, Eobespierre and his coadjutors in 
 the French revolution were great saints ; and liberties 
 lost, wrongs endured, hopes blasted, and sufferings 
 undergone must be regarded as the work of a genuine 
 philanthropy, putting darkness for light, and evil 
 for good. And yet this terrible issue, which is sweep 
 ing all the mounds of authority, and ornaments of 
 civilisation and safeguards of virtue before it, as with 
 a whirlwind, is the only issue before the country. If 
 this be the deep, broad substratum of moral and 
 religious principle referred to by Dr Guthrie and his 
 coadjutors the pro-Federals, what a terrible liberty- 
 loving element it must be ; and how it illustrates 
 those scenes of unutterable horror which marked the 
 era of the French revolution ! In the report of the 
 committee adopted at the 46th anniversary meeting 
 of the Liverpool auxiliary of the Wesleyan Mission 
 ary Society, recently held in Brunswick Chapel, 
 Liverpool, there occurs the following extraordinary 
 passage : "We have no educated barbarian who tests 
 the quality of his revolver and practises his own sports 
 manship upon the bodies of the poor heathen whose 
 souls he is sent to save. Nor can we find any one 
 so afflicted with a mathematical monomania as to be 
 driven by its delusions to leave his poor sheep in the 
 
AND RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE EXAMINED. 33 
 
 wilderness of heathenism, and return to England to 
 bewilder those who are already in the fold, to tread 
 down their pasturage and foul the waters of life. 
 Happily, such is the prompt efficaciousness of our 
 discipline, that, should such a prodigy appear, the 
 very next mail would carry out his sentence " His 
 Bishopric let another take! " Have our Wesleyan 
 brethren had no M Clintock and Bishop Simpson in 
 their midst to bewilder those who are in the fold, 
 &c,, by their misrepresentations of the condition of 
 the Northern Branch of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church ? and as those same divines are in full 
 fellowship with those extraordinary "soldiers of Christ 
 in America," described under the following heading 
 in the Liverpool Mercury, May 20th. 
 
 SOLDIERS OF CHRIST IN AMERICA. 
 
 At a recent meeting of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, in New York, several of the reverend speakers 
 denounced the rebellion of the South, and the con 
 duct of the Confederates in extraordinary language. 
 The Eev. Dr. Osborne, of White Plains, said he "had 
 to contend against a great deal in his district, for the 
 infamous Copperheads, sympathisers with the South, 
 were as thick as blackberries, and he often felt as if 
 he would like thrashing a man to be a Christian 
 virtue, that he might have the privilege of digging 
 into such fellows." Here there was a loud laughter 
 from the reverend auditory, as well as a fluttering of 
 
 
 
34 AMERICAN SUBSTEATUMS OF MORAL 
 
 fans in the galleries. Encouraged "by this, Dr. Osborne 
 went on to say " that if he were President Lincoln, 
 instead of suspending the writ of habeas corpus, he 
 would suspend the Copperheads." A Rev. Mr Foster 
 said that " the South hated the Yankees, despised, 
 scorned, and held them in ridicule, and he for one 
 hoped that the war would go on until such hellish, 
 devilish ideas were whipped out of the people of 
 the Southern States. To accomplish that object he 
 did not care if the war went on for one, two, or ten 
 years." A second Mr Foster, recently from New 
 Orleans, where he had acted as chaplain to a regi 
 ment, complained of the ladies of that city, who in 
 sulted every Yankee they met in the streets, some 
 times crossing on the other side to show their 
 contempt. The common cry among them was, 
 " Take care of your pockets, here s a Yankee coming." 
 " He wanted that feeling whipped out of the Southern 
 people by shot and shell." The Rev. J. R. Wakely 
 informed the Conference that "the proper way to 
 treat a Copperhead was to stamp your heels on him." 
 As the same divines are in full fellowship with these 
 soldiers, has any mail taken out the sentence to the 
 above, " Your fellowship let others take ?" How sad 
 to contemplate such a degeneracy in our race in 
 America! Mr Newdegate condescends to inform us 
 that we need not be surprised at our condition, or 
 with the troubles which have come upon our land. 
 " You have got no established religion ! Your 
 President is not the vicegerent of Christ ! You have 
 
AND RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE EXAMINED. 35 
 
 no bench of bishops, or fat livings for Churchmen ! 
 Consequently you are a nation accursed of God ! " His 
 Excellency, Charles Francis Adams, ambassador 
 to this country from America, says that they are to be 
 traced to the " consequences of royal piety, in his 
 Majesty King James the Second making his religion 
 his politics, and his politics his religion." " I may 
 not forget," to quote, " a resolution which his Majesty 
 made, and had a little before entered upon it at the 
 council board at AVindsor or Whitehall, that the 
 negroes in the plantations should all be baptised, 
 exceedingly declaiming against that impiety of their 
 masters prohibiting it, out of a mistaken opinion that 
 they would be ipso facto free." " Had James, therefore," 
 says Adams, " seen the true connexion between the 
 maxims of Jesus Christ, and the relation of master 
 and slave in the plantations, Christianity would in 
 time have gained the mastery over slavery in America, 
 as it did in Europe. He mistook it, and the conse 
 quence has been that slavery has gained the mastery 
 over Christianity in one half of the Union. Eeligion, 
 therefore, is the handmaid of oppression, and liberty 
 is wounded in the house of her friends." And 
 Secretary Seward, in his address to the Parliamentary 
 Eeform Association at Paisley, traces the continuance 
 of our troubles to the power of European opinion : "If 
 all Europe could not only think but speak as you do, 
 there would soon be no civil war or insurrection here." 
 What a trio of distinguished sages ! If the assurances 
 of Mr Paterson, therefore, that the people of England 
 
36 , EELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES EXAMINED 
 
 are in favour of the war for the Union," should carry 
 with them in America any weight of influence, accord 
 ing to Seward he will soon want no more citizen 
 soldiers from the North, or alien soldiers from Europe, 
 nor a Miss Dickinson, with her inspirations as the 
 goddess of liberty. 
 
 Keserving a few more points, yours, for truth as well 
 as liberty, 
 
 J. E. BALME, 
 
 American Baptist Clergyman. 
 32 Sun-street Liverpool, May 13, 1863. 
 
EXPLOSIVE ELEMENTS AND PYRAMIDAL 
 SCENES IN AMEEICAN SOCIETY. 
 
 TO THE EDITORS OF THE LIVERPOOL MERCURY. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, As no transcendent opening of gran 
 deur, beauty, or inestimable worth could be found in 
 connection with our explorations into the substratum 
 of American society, in our last communication, we 
 shall briefly call attention to the explosive elements 
 of human passion, frenzy, and madness which are 
 everywhere manifest in our degraded country, causing 
 tremendous eruptions of the burning lava of malice 
 and vengeful scorn to flow fortn sometimes from 
 South to North, at other times from North to South, 
 and then again from both North and South alternately 
 and conjointly towards England. These fiery erup 
 tions in connection with the Northern substratum of 
 society are abundantly made manifest in the depart 
 ments of the science of our political economy, religion 
 as popularly taught amongst us, our enlightened 
 public sentiment so-called, and the philanthropy 
 which the Rev. Newman Hall says lies at the bottom 
 of the struggle going on in America. 
 
 And apropos to our figure, we have an illustration 
 which will help to fix in our memories, and to move 
 
38 EXPLOSIVE ELEMENTS 
 
 us to the profoundest depths of our hearts in horror 
 of the terrible wreck of virtue, morality, liberty, and 
 religion which such explosive elements produce. The 
 illustration is as follows : During the drilling of an 
 oil well recently, at a place called Tudione, in Penn 
 sylvania, a sudden rush of oil in its crude state took 
 place, forming a pillar which rose to the height of 4 1 
 feet above the surface of the ground, and also a circle 
 of 100 feet in diameter. Above this jet or pillar 
 the gas or benzine rose in a cloud, which kept extend 
 ing itself until it came in contact with a fire in the 
 neighbourhood, when a terrific explosion took place, 
 instantly turning the jet of oil into a column of livid 
 name, and also the oil shower around it into a shower 
 of fire, which fell like water from a fountain, and 
 ignited the ground as each drop of oil came down in 
 the shape of a blazing globe of fire, whilst the blaz 
 ing gas or benzine above this pyramid of fire went 
 dashing towards the heavens like lightning flashes 
 until it licked the clouds with its furious tongues 
 of heat ; and as the fiery pillar was fed at the 
 rate of 100 barrels per hour, the scene of combustion 
 was tremendous, and, being continuous, it made a 
 noise like the rushing of a hurricane or tornado 
 through the forest. The heat of the fire became so 
 intense that no persons could approach within 150 
 feet without scorching their skin or burning their 
 garments, and the scenes of horror which took place 
 were frightful to contemplate. Scores of men were 
 thrown hither and thither by the force of the explo- 
 
AND PYRAMIDAL SCENES. 39 
 
 sion, and, being exposed to the shower of fire, were 
 horribly burnt as they rushed blazing from the scene 
 of their misfortune, shrieking and screaming in their 
 anguish. Within the blazing circle could be seen the 
 skeletons of those who had fallen a prey to the scorch 
 ing and devouring flames. Some who escaped from 
 the blazing circle of destruction and ruin after 
 wards died from the injuries which they received. 
 Others who survived were so seriously injured by 
 the scorching heat of the flames as to become great 
 sufferers from pain ; and all who were present at the 
 opening of the well sustained more or less injury by 
 the explosion which took place. 
 
 The above is a feeble but fitting emblem of the 
 scenes of suffering and trial which have been the sad 
 experience of multitudes who have come within the 
 vaster circle of the scorching flames of persecution 
 that have been ignited with the fires of freedom in 
 connection with the borings or drillings into what Dr 
 Guthrie calls the deep, broad substratum of moral and 
 religious principles in America. Not only in the 
 degraded South, but in our " moral and religious 
 North," so called, no drilling or boring could be made 
 into any of the departments already referred to with 
 out discovering an abundance of fiery elements which 
 the smallest spark of freedom or atom of moral and 
 religious principle would cause to explode, or kindle 
 into a grand pyrotechnic display of human passion, 
 from which the uncompromising abolitionist would 
 feel glad to escape, and the approach to which would 
 
40 EXPLOSIVE ELEMENTS. 
 
 fill him with apprehension and alarm. Hence the 
 almost universal precaution taken to warn the public 
 against the abolitionist in churches, synods, and con 
 ventions, lest there should be an explosion and the 
 peace of the churches or states be destroyed. Up to 
 the period of the disruption, abolitionism was always 
 considered the greatest crime in our Nothern calendar, 
 and the Christian abolitionist in particular had to be 
 subject to the fiery ordeal of persecution, and to en 
 dure privation and hardship, inconvenience and loss. 
 Not only were there hidden stores of danger in society 
 beneath him, but around him in church and state 
 there were active agencies, which sometimes resembled 
 the scene given in the following picture, " A pyramid 
 of serpents/ The following is from the Morning 
 Chronicle, and, although passing strange, the scene 
 described may be true. A traveller in South America 
 writes : " In the savannahs of Isacubo, in Guiana, I 
 saw the most terrible spectacle that can be seen, and, 
 although it is not uncommon to the inhabitants, no 
 traveller has ever mentioned it. We were ten men 
 on horseback, two of whom took the lead in order to 
 sound the passage, while I preferred to skirt the great 
 forest. One of the blacks who formed the vanguard 
 returned at full gallop and called to me, Here, sir, 
 come and see the serpents in a pile/ He pointed out 
 to me something elevated in the middle of the 
 savannah or swamp which looked like a bundle of 
 arms. One of my company then said, This certainly 
 is one of the assemblages of serpents, which heap 
 
AND PYRAMIDAL SCENES. 41 
 
 themselves on each other after a violent tempest. I 
 have heard of these, but have never seen any before. 
 Let us proceed cautiously, and not go too near/ We 
 were within 20 paces of it. The terror of our horses 
 prevented our nearer approach, to which none of us 
 were inclined. On a sudden the pyramid mass became 
 agitated ; horrible hissings issued from it ; thousands 
 of serpents rolled spirally on each other, shot forth 
 out of their circle their hideous heads, and presented 
 their venomous darts and fiery eyes at us." However 
 uncommon such scenes as the above may have been 
 to travellers in South America, scarcely a church in 
 our principal denominations, conventional gatherings, 
 or political assemblies, in our Northern States, but has 
 presented the same hideous aspect to abolitionists. 
 We have had some agitated masses in the church and 
 senate chamber ; and let any good man and true 
 rebuke the present unholy, fratricidal war, and no 
 parties in Church or state more than some who claim 
 to be " famous anti-slavery agitators " will fling their 
 envenomed darts or turn up their fiery, malignant 
 eyes ! 
 
 This is no uncommon thing in America, since no 
 
 person or party is allowed to hold an opinion different 
 
 to that of their own, without being subject to open 
 
 rancorous malignity ; or feeling Joab s vengeful stab. 
 
 Yours, for truth as well as liberty, 
 
 32 Sun Street. 
 
 JOSHUA E. BALME, 
 
 American Baptist Clergyman. 
 
ON THE AMERICAN UNION. 
 
 TO THE EDITORS OF THE LIVERPOOL MERCURY. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, Our Union, so called, in America, is so 
 drunk with sorcery and witchcraft, so corrupted and 
 perverted with falsehood and fraud, and so wrinkled, 
 withered, and bowed down with crime, that it is a 
 matter of surprise how any sincere and upright man 
 can look upon her haggard features, or her double- 
 dyed garments of dishonour and shame with any 
 other feelings than those of utter detestation and ab 
 horrence ; and yet we find Federals and pro-Federals 
 who profess to have the " honour clear," and " soul 
 sincere," ever and anon introducing her to the favour 
 able notice of mankind as if she was the grand polar 
 star of attraction which was to draw all nations to 
 worship at her feet the mighty enchantress of the 
 world, that could not only stir the air, but also the 
 ears and hearts of men with harmony, and charm them 
 wisely and well ! The Hon. Edward Everett is 
 amongst the first and foremost of our country s ad 
 mirers to call our attention to the Union, and to ex 
 patiate on the spell of her enchantments, and the 
 witchery of her charms ; whilst with deepest and 
 broadest emphasis he puts the crown on her beauty. 
 
ON THE AMERICAN UNION. 43 
 
 pronouncing her to be " the nicest adjustment of 
 human wisdom." When referring to the robes of 
 splendour and beauty which she is said to wear, Peter 
 Sinclair, Esq., the agent of the Union and Emancipa 
 tion Society in this country, solemnly avows, in one 
 of a series of letters to the Edinburgh Review, that 
 she is covered with "the fairest fabric of human 
 liberty the world possesses." And if we are to believe 
 John Bright, M.P., or the Hon. A. H. Stephens, the 
 Vice-president of the Confederate States, we must 
 pass through " Glory s morning gate and walk in 
 Paradise to obtain a glimpse of her heritage," since 
 Stephens, in a speech which he made in the Hall of 
 Representatives, Georgia, November, 1860, described 
 her domain to be the " Eden of the world, the Para 
 dise of the universe" a sentiment in which John 
 Bright coincides, as shown in his affirmation that 
 " America is a land of which angels might dream." 
 
 According to the above, it must be delightful to 
 dwell in such a land to gaze on landscapes painted 
 with such rich beauties and suffused with such 
 heavenly light where still waters glide through such 
 meadows of enchantment and fields of paradisaical 
 beauty where flowers bloom along every pathway, 
 incense floats on every gale, and where warbling 
 songsters fill every forest and grove, and sweep the 
 mystic chords of every heart with their enchanting 
 
 Tioti, tioft, tiou, tiou. 
 Spe, tiou, squa. 
 
44 ON THE AMERICAN UNION. 
 
 Ti6, ti6, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tix. 
 
 Coutio, coutio, coutio, coutio. 
 
 Squo, squo, squo, squo. 
 
 Tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzi. 
 
 Corror, tiou, squa pipiqui. 
 
 Zozozozozozozozozozozozo, zirrhading ! 
 
 Tsissisi, tsissisisisisisisis, 
 
 Dzorre, dzorre, dzorre, dzorre, hi. 
 
 Tzatu, tzatu, tzatu, tzatu, tzatu, tzatn, tzatu, dzi. 
 
 Dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo. 
 
 Quio, tr rrrrrrrr itz. 
 
 Lu, lu, lu, lu, ly, ly, ly, ly, lie, lie, lie, lie. 
 
 Quio, didl, li lulylie. 
 
 Hagurr, gurr, guipio. 
 
 Coui, coui, coui, coui, qui, qui, qui, qui, gai, gui gui. 
 
 Goll goll goll goll guia hadadoi. 
 
 Couigui, horr, he diadia dill si ! 
 
 Hezezezezezezezezezezezezezezezeze couar ho dze hoi. 
 
 Quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, ti. 
 
 Ki, ki, ki, 10, 10, 10, ioioioio ki. 
 
 Lu ly li le lai la leu lo, didl io quia. 
 
 Kigaigaigaigaigaigaigaiguiagaigaigai couior dzio dzio pi. 
 
 " Before creating such a land," says the celebrated 
 Charles O Connor of New York : " God, in the be 
 nignity and far-seeing wisdom of his power, permitted 
 the great family of mankind to live on, advance, im 
 prove step by step, 5000 years and upwards, until the 
 earth was deemed mature for laying the foundation 
 of our truly free, truly happy, and truly independent 
 empire." " Then," says O Connor, " God raised up a 
 set of men whose like had never existed upon the 
 face of the earth men unequalled in their percep 
 tions of justice, in their comprehensive benevolence, 
 and in their capacity to lay safely, justly, soundly, 
 
ON THE AMERICAN UNION. 45 
 
 and with all the qualities which should ensure per 
 manency, the foundations of the above empire the 
 first assembly of rational men who ever proclaimed 
 in clear and undeniable form the immutable prin 
 ciples of justice, and consecrated to all time, in the 
 face of tyrants, and in opposition to their power, the 
 rights of nations and the rights of men." Senator 
 Doolittle has proclaimed it to be his religious belief 
 that our American republic was the " political power 
 foretold by the prophets for which good men in all 
 ages looked and prayed and to whose duration and 
 success Heaven, with all its omnipotence, was pledged." 
 The poet Longfellow has recently put the capstone of 
 glory on the above column of testimony in honour of 
 the Union in his ode to its greatness, in which he 
 makes the Union to be the great keystone in the 
 centre arch of Society and the world, and boldly 
 declares that 
 
 " Humanity with all its fears, 
 With all its hopes of future years, 
 Hangs breathless on its fate ! " 
 
 Such being the case in their estimation, it is no won 
 der that the Federals, or pro-Federals, such as John 
 Bright, should dread disunion, or that the Hon. 
 Secretary Seward should bring up the rear, and assure 
 mankind that our great and glorious Union, so-called, 
 has been ingratiated into the " world s affections," and 
 that the different nations of mankind are "prepossessed 
 in its favour to an extent that no other nation enjoys 
 
46 ON THE AMERICAN UNION. 
 
 or ever possessed before !" It remains for us, there 
 fore, to examine this wonderful thing called the Union, 
 which has so delightfully sprung into being, and is 
 said to rise before the nations the marvel of beauty, 
 wreathed with unfading honour and glory. And if 
 we take into account its unnatural combinations, we 
 shall perceive that its bright colours fade with the 
 touch, and that an enormous fraud has been practised 
 on mankind a fraud as cruel and heartless as the 
 hoax palmed off on the credulity of 700 ministers in 
 France, and 4000 ministers of religion in this country 
 namely, that our Northern clergy and churches 
 have diffused a gospel based on the sacred and in 
 alienable rights of human freedom, concerning which 
 we have had something to say in our book, " Ameri 
 can States and Churches." It has been said that 
 the Union is the emblem of nationality; if so, 
 our flag gives a correct but humiliating repre 
 sentation of its character and condition. The late 
 Daniel (TConnell was quick to perceive this, and 
 prompt to expose it, whilst with terrible sarcasm he 
 rung the sentiment in the ear of the world 
 
 " United States, your banner wears 
 
 Two emblems one of fame ; 
 Alas ! the other that it bears 
 
 Reminds us of your shame. 
 The white man s liberty in types 
 
 Stands blazoned on your stars, 
 But what s the meaning of those stripes? 
 
 They mean the negro s scars ! " 
 
 But can those stars be real when they are made to 
 
ON THE AMERICAN UNION. 47 
 
 coalesce with unnatural stripes ? If they had riot 
 been mock stars, would they or could they have 
 formed a combination with real stripes, or have re 
 mained in such a preposterous coalition for so long a 
 time ? It is incompatible with the principles of free 
 dom to be in alliance with the stripes or scars of 
 slavery. A peaceful, permanent, and happy Union 
 on such a basis, was in the nature of things impos 
 sible. " When the republic was first born/ says John 
 Bright, " it contained the seeds of great peril." At 
 first slavery was connived at, then tolerated as u 
 necessary evil, and then enthroned in church and 
 state as a cardinal virtue, where it acquired a colossal 
 power to control parties and sects, the judgments of 
 courts both civil and sacred, and the freedom of 
 speech and the press ! With such a combustible 
 element at the basis of our republic, how could an ex 
 plosion be well avoided by the mixing up of such in 
 congruous elements ? In such a case it needed but 
 the spark of true freedom to explode the mine. 
 
 Whilst Jefferson, one of the founders of the Union, 
 deprecated the existence of slavery, he also predicted 
 that " it would be the rock upon which the Union 
 would split." And so it has been, for it was impos 
 sible to impair the law of contract that existed be 
 tween the slave and the free States without endanger 
 ing the existence of the entire country. This was so 
 patent to William Lloyd Garrison and party, that 
 they uniformly and persistently demanded that the 
 Union should be allowed to slide up to the time of 
 
48 ON THE AMERICAN UNION. 
 
 the disruption, and proclaimed the stars and stripes 
 to be a " flaunting lie." 
 
 On January 31, 1861, the leading representatives 
 of the above party met in Association-hall, Albany. 
 New York, and resolved as follows : " That the 
 American slave system is the sum of all villanies, 
 a compound of all cruelties and crimes robbery, 
 adultery, piracy, and murder, and whatever is impure, 
 unholy, and accursed. Eesolved, that slaveholders, 
 as such, have no rights which any human being is 
 bound to respect ; that their slaveholding States are 
 organised bands of thieves and robbers, living by 
 plunder and piracy on the avails of unpaid and un- 
 pitied toil ; that our governmental union with such 
 States and men was an atheistic rebellion against 
 every principle of reason and revelation, every law of 
 nature and of God, which no possible circumstances 
 could have warranted in its formation, or justify in 
 its longer continuance ; and that to call such a state 
 of things a union is to outrage, beyond possible en 
 durance, the common sense of creation ; and the only 
 relief in enduring such an unholy alliance, at once so 
 devilish and disgraceful, is the hope that God, or some 
 other power, will ere long dash it in pieces like a 
 potter s vessel/ 
 
 The Union was first formed to protect themselves 
 from common danger. In order to meet England 
 they had to be united. " Union was strength," said 
 they ; " United we stand, divided we fall." But 
 whilst we have been secure from outward dangers, 
 
ON THE AMEKICAN UNION. 49 
 
 we have fallen a prey to ruin from the greater 
 dangers which have threatened us from within. 
 Slavery has always been an element of disunion a 
 jarring note of discord a bone of contention ; but 
 the South had nothing to fear from any abolition 
 power in the North, for the good men and true who 
 clung to the sacred principles of freedom on the basis 
 of no compromise and no surrender, like the Spartans 
 in olden times, were few and far between, scattered 
 and peeled, driven hither and thither, and were sub 
 ject to almost universal indignity and scorn when the 
 war broke out. At that period there were only some 
 three or four in Congress, such as Sumner, Lovejoy, 
 and Giddings, who had stemmed the tide of opposi 
 tion to their principles ; and my friend, Wendel 
 Phillips was uttering a loud lament that the cause of 
 abolitionism had made no progress for twenty-five 
 years previously. 
 
 And in that lament he was joined by that eloquent 
 but misguided man, Frederick Douglas, as shown in 
 his "Monthly" for June, 1860. Should the pro- 
 Federals point us to an advance of public opinion in 
 favour of abolitionism in the election of Lincoln, we 
 have overwhelming proof to the contrary in Lincoln s 
 own statements, given in hio campaign book, and 
 letter to the Hon. Horace Greeley. At page 202 of the 
 above book he says " I should like to know if taking 
 this old declaration of independence, which declares 
 that all men are equal on principle, and making ex 
 ceptions to it ; where will it stop ? If one man says 
 
50 ON THE AMERICAN UNION. 
 
 it does not mean a negro, why may not another man 
 say it does not mean another man ? If that declara 
 tion is not the truth, let us get this statute book in 
 which we find it, and tear it out." At page 193 of 
 the same book he says " I am not, nor ever have 
 been, in favour of bringing about in any way the 
 social and political equality of the white and black 
 races. I am not, nor ever have been, in favour of 
 making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying 
 them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white 
 people ; and I will say in addition to this, that there 
 is a physical difference between the white and black 
 races, which will for ever forbid the two races living 
 together on terms of social and political equality. 
 And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do 
 remain together there must be the position of superior 
 and inferior. I am as much as any other man in 
 favour of having the superior position assigned to the 
 white race." 
 
 But the above is not all. In page 18 of the book 
 we have referred to, he says " I have always hated 
 slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist." And 
 in his letter to the Hon. Horace Greeley, dated 
 Washington, August 22, 1862, he says " I would 
 save the Union ; I would save it the shortest way 
 under the constitution. The sooner the national 
 authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will 
 be the Union as it was. If there be those who 
 would not save the Union, unless they could at the same 
 time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My 
 
ON THE AMERICAN UNION, 51 
 
 paramount object in this struggle is to save the 
 Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. 
 If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, 
 I would do it ; and if I could do it by freeing all the 
 slaves, I would do it ; and if I could do it by freeing 
 some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." 
 And yet, forsooth, according to Peter Sinclair and the 
 pro-Federals, the sentiments of Lincoln are worthy of 
 a place beside the noblest utterances of Granville 
 Sharpe, Clarkson, Wilberforce, Brougham, or any of 
 your British philanthropists ! Can deception, fraud, 
 or hypocrisy be exceeded in the above ? The moral 
 world must be moving the wrong way on its axis 
 when such beggarly shams and gigantic swindles as 
 the one referred to above, can be palmed off at public 
 meetings as abolitionist, receive congratulatory 
 addresses as such, and receive their plaudits ! By 
 the duplicity, cunning, and fraud which Lincoln 
 practised, he obtained a few abolition votes ; but what 
 contributed most of all to his success was the division 
 which had taken place in the Democratic party. This 
 gave him a large majority. But although Lincoln 
 was elected, a larger number of Democratic or pro- 
 slavery senators and legislators were sent by the people 
 to Congress at the general election of 1860 than 
 obtained in the Senate, or the Hall of Legislature at 
 "Washington, under the presidency of Buchanan, 
 Lincoln s predecessor! The Hon. A. H. Stephens, 
 when referring to this fact in an eloquent speech 
 which he delivered in the Hall of Eepresentatives, 
 
52 ON THE AMERICAN UNION. 
 
 Georgia, November 14, 1860, says, "The President of 
 the United States, is no emperor, no dictator. He is 
 clothed with no absolute power. He can do nothing 
 unless he is backed by power in Congress." The 
 House of Eepresentatives is largely in the majority 
 against him. In the very face of the heavy majority 
 which he has obtained in the Northern States, there 
 have been large gains in the House of Eepresentatives 
 to the conservative constitutional party of the country, 
 which here I will call the national Democratic party, 
 because that is the cognomen it has at the North. 
 There are twelve of this party elected from New York 
 to the next Congress, I believe. In the present house 
 there are but four, I think. In Pennsylvania, New 
 Jersey, Ohio, and Indiana, there have been gains. In 
 the present Congress there were 113 Eepublicans, 
 when it takes 117 to make a majority. The gains in 
 the Democratic party in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New 
 Jersey, New York, Indiana, and other States, not 
 withstanding its distractions, have been enough to 
 make a majority of nearly 30 in the next House of 
 Eepresentatives against Lincoln. Even in Boston, 
 Mr Burlingame, one of the noted leaders of the fanatics 
 of that section, has been defeated, and a conservative 
 man returned in his stead. 
 
 Is this the time, then, to apprehend that Mr. Lincoln, 
 with this large majority in the house against him, can 
 carry out any of his unconstitutional principles in that 
 body? In the Senate he will also be powerless. 
 There will be a majority of four against him this 
 
ON THE AMERICAN UNION. 53 
 
 after the loss of Bigler, Fitch, and others, by the un 
 fortunate dissensions of the National Democratic 
 party in their States. Mr Lincoln cannot appoint an 
 officer without the consent of the Senate he cannot 
 form a cabinet without the same consent. He will be 
 in the condition of George III., the embodiment of 
 Toryism, who had to ask the Whigs to appoint his 
 ministers, and was compelled to receive a cabinet 
 utterly opposed to his views ; and so Mr Lincoln will 
 be compelled to ask the Senate to choose for him a 
 cabinet, if the Democracy of that body chose to put 
 him on such terms. He will be compelled to do this 
 or let the Government stop, if the Democratic men in 
 the Senate should so determine. Then how can Mr. 
 Lincoln obtain a cabinet which would aid him or 
 allow him to violate the constitution ? So far, there 
 fore, from there being an advance wave of public 
 opinion in favour of liberty in the last general election 
 of America, the result was a clear gain in favour of 
 what is called the conservative or pro-slavery element, 
 and Lincoln owed his election not to the Eepublican 
 party, but to the dissensions and divisions which 
 obtained amongst the Democrats. Why, then, it may 
 be asked, did Southern senators and representatives 
 retire from their places in Congress, and form them 
 selves into a new government ? This will form the 
 subject of my next communication. Meanwhile, 
 allow me to subscribe myself, yours for truth as well 
 as liberty, 
 
 J. E. BALME, 
 
 American Baptist Clergyman. 
 32 Sun-street, Brownlow Hill. 
 
THE HAPPY FAMILY AND ITS QUARRELS. 
 
 TO TBH EDITORS OF THE LIVERPOOL MERCURY. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, In the neighbourhood of Trafalgar 
 Square, London, there used to be a man who ex 
 hibited a cage containing birds, reptiles, insects, and 
 animals, said to be living in quiet grace and harmony, 
 bearing the title of " The Happy Family." But when 
 any of them showed their irreconcilable natures, the 
 exhibitor gave them a gentle tap on the head with a 
 lath which he kept for that purpose. Our " Happy 
 Union Family" in America, so called, bears a strong 
 resemblance to the above, and with its antagonistic 
 natures has required to be kept under restraint with 
 the laths of presidential authority. The Abolitionist 
 member, however, was the most difficult to manage, 
 and had to endure not only gentle but sometimes very 
 severe treatment in order to preserve its false harmony 
 and peace from being interrupted, and its " nice and 
 subtle happiness " from being destroyed, by the touch 
 of his magical enchanter s wand. And not only is its 
 happiness demonstrated to be of an imaginative and 
 uncertain character, but also insecure, for on the elec 
 tion of President Lincoln to assume the functions of 
 .supreme power with his lath, there was an outburst 
 
THE HAPPY FAMILY AND ITS QUARRELS. 55 
 
 of enmity which has produced alienation and strife 
 ever since ; and the more President Lincoln has tried 
 to reunite the different members of our once so-called 
 " Happy Family," the more deadly have their resent 
 ment and hostility become. And although he has 
 called to his councils and aid the Hon. W. H. Seward, 
 who claims to be invested with extraordinary powers, 
 shown in a despatch of Lord Lyons to Earl Russell, 
 Nov. 14, 1861, which contains the following words, 
 said to have been addressed to him by Seward " My 
 lord, I can touch a bell on my right hand, and order 
 the arrest of a citizen of Ohio ; I can touch another 
 bell, and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New 
 York, and no power on earth, except that of the Presi 
 dent, can release them. Can the Queen of England 
 do so much?" Although President Lincoln has the 
 aid of such a wonderful man, with his spiritual 
 mediums to boot, to all human appearance he will 
 come to grief with the members of the Northern 
 division in our Union family, and have his difficulties 
 and trials the same as in the Southern one, over which 
 he has lost all control, and for the subjugation of 
 whom he uses all his powers and resources in vain. 
 
 " Is it, man, with such discordant noises, 
 
 With such accursed instruments as these, 
 Thou drownest Nature s sweet and kindly voices, 
 And j arrest the celestial harmonies ? 
 
 Were half the power that fills the world with terror, 
 Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, 
 
56 THE HAPPY FAMILY AND ITS QUARRELS. 
 
 Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
 There were no need of arsenals nor forts : 
 
 The warrior s name would be a name abhorred ; 
 
 And every nation that should lift again 
 Its hand against a brother, on its forehead 
 
 Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain ! " 
 
 With the above unhappy, unnatural, disastrous state 
 of affairs, men acquainted with the condition of our 
 so-called " Happy family " have felt no surprise. 
 With them the wonder has been that the quarrels have 
 not brought on the Union crash sooner, and that every 
 atom or fragment of its existence has not been long 
 ago numbered with the things that were, illustrative 
 of the scriptural sentiment, that " a house divided 
 against itself cannot stand." From the commence 
 ment of its existence, its fate has been sealed, and its 
 knell rung, although in the articles of its original 
 compact our Union representatives resolved that it 
 should be "perpetual." But whilst man proposes, 
 God disposes ; and we now see amidst the hurricane 
 sweep of his retributive providences what a fearful 
 and terrible disposition He is making of our so-called 
 "great, and wonderful, and glorious Union." The 
 astounding fact also is revealed that the destruction 
 of the " Old Union " was necessary to promote the 
 interests of liberty, commerce, and Christianity. No 
 truth is more clearly substantiated than this, that the 
 old Union has been a nursery for the growth of 
 slavery. Over one half of its domain its plantations 
 
THE HAPPY FAMILY AND ITS QUAREELS. 57 
 
 have been stocked with the choicest breeds of slaves, 
 whilst the other half has always been turned into 
 hunting ground for the fugitive, and the official 
 hounds of the Union, with administrative collars 
 round their necks, have never been harmless in their 
 barks, nor innocent in their bites, nor indolent with 
 their capacious mouths and ponderous jaws when 
 they have got upon his track, and he would not 
 capitulate as " lawful prey," except when he has been 
 successful in placing himself under the protection of 
 what our American people call the " Queen-craft of 
 monarchy ?" But we are now gravely informed that 
 our Union has undergone a change, and that our men- 
 hunters, from President Lincoln down to the meanest 
 official, have lost their tiger instinct, leap, and claws. 
 And wonderful it is when it has only turned from the 
 slave to shew their terrible claws and bare their teeth 
 in savage blood-thirstiness to his master. This is a 
 change that may serve as a bait to catch what the 
 Honourable Edward Everett designates "easy con 
 sciences of weak-minded men and silly fools " a fit- 
 ing representation of the class to which he belongs 
 but it is a base trap, from which the common sense of 
 the multitude will lead them to turn away and reject 
 with contempt and disdain. 
 
 If we look at the culminating glory of our wonder 
 ful union in connection with our last tariff, we shall 
 see under what terrible restrictions the commerce of 
 the world is placed. In this tariff, dated July, 1862, 
 the cotton goods of Lancashire are subject to duties 
 
58 THE HAPPY FAMILY AND ITS QUARRELS. 
 
 ranging from 25 to 40 per cent.; woollen manufactures, 
 30 ; and worsted, 35. Sheffield cutlery is made to 
 pay 35 per cent, duty, and English railway iron from 
 o?4 to 5 per ton. No Wilton carpet can pass the 
 Northern customs without a tax of 45 cents per 
 square yard. Birmingham buttons must pay 35, and 
 Coventry ribbons 40 per cent. ! Such is the Northern 
 Morrell Tariff. And yet, forsooth, these are the men 
 for whom you are to erect your triumphal arches, 
 peal your merry bells, and create a world s jubilee ! 
 
 And when we contemplate the association of our 
 American Union with -Christianity, we may well take 
 up the language of Jehovah, where he appealed to the 
 Tews, exclaiming, " Will a man rob God ? " And 
 couple with it the response w r hich he gave to the 
 question in its application to them. " Ye have robbed 
 me, even this whole nation ! " Thus has it been with 
 our American people ; and no man can demonstrate 
 that they can present the free-will offering of their 
 hearts, naming with supreme love to God, on His 
 altar, when they turn away from their fellow-men be 
 cause they possess a different colour on their skin to 
 themselves ; or if when turning to them, it is to sub 
 ordinate them to their use in their persons, services, 
 and lives, as " chattels personal !" Our Union, there 
 fore, in America, in the above respects had become a 
 world nuisance ; and its existence and continuance 
 on the old basis were not compatible with the govern 
 ment of God. We are quite aware that structures of 
 reasoning, chains of argument, and link added to link 
 
THE HAPPY FAMILY AND ITS QUARRELS. 59 
 
 in those chains, enamelled with the flowers and 
 beauties of rhetoric, have been constructed and thrown 
 out in its interest and favour, but no efforts of its ad 
 mirers or friends can brace up its weakness or hide 
 its deformities. President Lincoln, the Hon. William 
 H. Seward, and others, backed by overwhelming 
 masses in the North, have tried both by the pen of 
 the ready writer, the tongue of the eloquent, and the 
 sword of the warrior, but have miserably failed. And 
 now that huge imposture, called the Union, stands 
 fully revealed, this greatest sham of the ages now 
 stands unmasked with all its horrors disclosed to the 
 view of the world, whilst a voice comes thundering 
 down the roll of ages Take away "the accursed 
 thing." 
 
 In a letter addressed to the governors of the 
 different States of the Union in 1 783, General Wash 
 ington said : " There are four things which I humbly 
 conceive are essential to the well-being, I may even 
 venture to say to the existence, of the United States 
 as an independent power. First, an indissoluble union 
 of the States under one federal head ; second, a sacred 
 regard to public justice ; third, the adoption of a 
 proper peace establishment ; and, fourth, the preva 
 lence of that pacific and friendly disposition among 
 the people of the United States which will induce 
 them to forget their local politics and prejudices." 
 The above extraordinary letter of Washington dis 
 closes his deep anxiety for the fate of the " beloved 
 Union," records the conviction that the law of com- 
 
60 THE HAPPY FAMILY AND ITS QUARRELS. 
 
 pact which bound the slave and free States was not 
 sufficient of itself to secure the perpetuity of the 
 Union. Hence the necessity of the above extraordi 
 nary pre-requisities, which it was utterly impossible 
 to call into being with such incongruous elements as 
 composed the different classes of the Union. A know 
 ledge of the compact, therefore, between the different 
 States of the Union, is of paramount importance to 
 those who feel an interest in America, and essentially 
 necessary in order to obtain a proper understanding 
 of the character and causes of those thrilling and 
 appalling events which are now taking place in the 
 New and filling the Old World with wonder, and, so 
 far as they are comprehended, with intensest abhor 
 rence and disgust ! The compact designates the 
 Union which it contemplated " The United States of 
 America?" Its articles of agreement were to be its 
 basis, although the Constitution of the United States 
 and Declaration of Independence have never been 
 called into requisition and acted upon from the day 
 of their adoption as articles of the National Creed to 
 the period when civil war broke out amongst us. The 
 lofty principles inculcated in them, and the imperial 
 heritage of blessing which they were designed to 
 secure to all, without limitation as to sex, age, or 
 colour, have neither been desired nor coveted by the 
 overwhelming masses of people who have composed 
 those States, except for the white man. Amongst 
 other things, those articles which constitute the law 
 of compact made provision for the sacredness and 
 
THE HAPPY FAMILY AND ITS QUARRELS. 61 
 
 supremacy of each separate State. The Hon. Secretary 
 Seward, " whose bright and patriotic plans and pur 
 poses," says Peter Sinclair, Esq., " qualify him to fill 
 a high office of trust, and administer it so as to become 
 in many respects, along with Abraham Lincoln and 
 Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, 
 models for the study of the world." Seward, when 
 commenting on this clause in his place in the Senate 
 Chamber, in 1860, addressed himself to the represen 
 tatives and people of the slave States as follows : 
 " In your capital States you are sovereigns on the 
 subject of slavery within your own borders, as we are 
 on the same subject within our borders. It is well 
 and wisely arranged. Use your authority to main 
 tain what system you please. We are not distrustful 
 of the result. If our authority shall be assailed from 
 within or without by any enemy, or for any cause, 
 and we shall have need, we shall expect you to de 
 fend us. If you shall be so assailed, in the emergency, 
 no matter what the cause or the pretext, or who the foe, 
 we shall defend your authority as the equivalent "of 
 our own !" " You are sovereigns," said Seward, 
 " within your own borders on the subject of slavery!" 
 Where there is sovereignty there is the exercise of 
 absolute power in accordance with vested rights 
 acquired or otherwise. But how fearful are the 
 vested rights of slavery ! And how terrible is the 
 sovereignty that makes merchandise of the bodies and 
 souls of men, and traffics in human flesh ! And yet^ 
 said Seward, " it is well and wisely arranged ! " Well 
 
62 THE HAPPY FAMILY AND ITS QUARRELS. 
 
 and wisely arranged that four millions should be 
 reduced from persons to things articles of merchan 
 dise commodities to be bought and sold ! Well and 
 wisely arranged that slaves should have no relation 
 ships which they can call their own, but, like cattle, 
 be separated at the will of their owners husbands 
 from wives, parents from children, brothers from 
 sisters, and friends from bosom friends ! Well and 
 wisely arranged that they should be robbed of 
 the fruits of their industry, and stripped of all mental, 
 moral, social, and religious culture ! Well and wisely 
 arranged that they should be subject to a robbery and 
 tyranny unequalled in the world ! Now, the Hon. 
 W. H. Seward, when he uttered the above language, 
 was well acquainted with the character of that system 
 which these slaveholders sought to maintain. He 
 knew full well the injuries which it inflicted, and the 
 untold agonies which it produced, and yet Seward 
 said, " Use your authority in maintaining the above 
 sovereignty." As if he had said, " Go on and multiply 
 the wrongs of the negro slave in connection with this 
 terribly ferocious system of inhuman bondage. Do it 
 in every form in which their humanity may be 
 assailed, and by every character of agency and 
 appliance you may please to use. According to your 
 taste, convenience, or caprice, make your exactions, 
 enforce obedience with the utmost rigour, and make 
 your will supreme ; " we are not distrustful of you," 
 says Seward, " or of the result." Their victims may 
 weep, groan, or struggle in the agonies of death, but 
 
THE HAPPY FAMILY AND TTS QTJAREELS. 63 
 
 it is no concern of ours, said the above "philanthropic 
 man" so called, the "astute philosopher, meta 
 physician, and model statesman of America." " You 
 are sovereigns within your own borders/ and. there 
 fore, we repudiate all responsibility in the States 
 where those victims of your cruelty and tyranny 
 reside. Such was the Honourable William H. 
 Seward in 1860, when he made a bid for the 
 Presidency. What a wonderful model for the study 
 of the world. 
 
 Another clause in the law of compact made pro 
 vision for equal rights and privileges to all the 
 separate states of the Union, both in regard to the 
 protection of each State sovereignty and the general 
 sovereignty of all the States from common danger, 
 and also to a share in the common territory. The 
 rights common to each were common to all. Our 
 Union, therefore, was nothing more nor less than a 
 partnership concern. And to all the articles of our 
 political creed embodied in our law of compact, each 
 State has given its " unfeigned assent and consent." 
 And these possess a binding power on each and all 
 which they are not at liberty to set aside or reject 
 without endangering the existence of the whole. In 
 the history of our country we have had repeated in 
 fractions of the law of compact by the Northern or 
 Free States so called in the adoption of the Missouri 
 Compromise, which dispossessed the slave States of 
 their equal rights in the national territory ; as well 
 ay the personal liberty bill, which brought five of the 
 
64 THE HAPPY FAMILY AND ITS QUARRELS. 
 
 Free States into conflict with the United States ; in 
 the Congressional Fugitive Slave Law ; and also in 
 the threats made by the Northern people against the 
 Southerners in regard to the tarriff, and to cherish a 
 war of sections. Against these infractions the 
 Southern States protested, but in vain. And in vain 
 also did they point to the law of compact which had 
 been infringed. Hence their determination to secede. 
 And as there is a brotherhood as well as honour 
 among thieves, it was the duty, and ought to have 
 been the privilege, of Northern States to allow them to 
 secede, and amicably to have wound up the affairs of the 
 Old Union Concern " the " existence of which no 
 possible circumstances could justify," said Wm. Lloyd 
 Garrison, or " ought to continue;" and "to preserve 
 which," said General Washington, it required "the 
 prevalence of that pacific and friendly disposition 
 among the people of the United States which would 
 induce them to forget their local politics and pre 
 judices !" As we shall return to this subject, allow 
 me to subscribe myself as usual, Yours for truth as 
 well as liberty, 
 
 32 Sun Street 
 
 JOSHUA R BALME, 
 
 American Baptist Clergyman. 
 
THE BLACK PAETNEESHIP CONCEEN. 
 
 TO THE EDITORS OF THE LIVERPOOL MERCURY. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, Nothing can be more preposterous or 
 absurd than to suppose that the above concern called 
 the Union in America, possesses a basis founded on 
 an enlarged philanthropy, or enlightened forecast; 
 and if it had not been placed on record, it is scarcely 
 possible to believe that any ruler or statesman should 
 have fallen into so gross a delusion, as to avow, that 
 it could continue amidst the dangers that would 
 imperil its existence, since an impartial administra 
 tion of justice, or the sinking down of a shaft to the 
 rock called principle, would at any period have 
 sprung a mine to destroy it with its false peace, at 
 once and for ever ! In its brief history those dangers 
 have been frequent, from jealousy between the 
 Northern and Southern partners in the acquisition of 
 new states and territory from the Tariff which led 
 South Carolina to threaten to withdraw from the 
 Union from the war of 1812 which brought it to the 
 verge of disruption from the opposition of New 
 England States to that war under the leadership of 
 Massachusets from " Bleeding Kansas " and John 
 Brown s raid, which led the Eichmond Whig to 
 
 c 
 
66 THE BLACK PARTNERSHIP CONCERN. 
 
 announce that " their connexion with the North was 
 a standing insurrection in the South ! But the 
 greatest danger which ever threatened the Union, 
 was the election of Lincoln, who, like the Hon. Wm. 
 H. Seward in his " Bloody Eochester Speech," so 
 called, had made himself particularly obnoxious and 
 offensive in an address which he delivered at Spring 
 field, Illinois, June 12th, 1858. 
 
 In this address Lincoln said, "If we could first 
 know where we are, and whither we are tending, we 
 could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We 
 are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was 
 initiated, with the avowed object and confident 
 promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. LTnder 
 the operation of that policy, that agitation has not 
 only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my 
 opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have 
 been reached and passed. A house divided against 
 itself cannot stand. I believe this country cannot 
 endure permanently half slave and half free. I do 
 not expect the Union to be dissolved I do not 
 expect the house to fall but I do expect it will cease 
 to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the 
 other. Either the opponents will arrest the farther 
 spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall 
 rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate 
 extinction, or, its advocates will push it forward till it 
 shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well 
 as new, North as well as South" This speech was 
 interpreted, by the Southerners to mean, " a war of 
 
THE BLACK PARTNERSHIP CONCERN. 67 
 
 sections." Mr Lincoln being a representative man, 
 and claiming to be the standard bearer of the Ee- 
 publican party, lead them to accept it as a standing 
 menace, and to adopt for their motto, "no submission 
 to abolition rule." Lincoln took the alarm, for when 
 charged by the late Judge Douglas, August 21, 1858, 
 at Ottawa, Illinois, with the utterance of the senti 
 ments contained in the above speech, he replied, as 
 recorded on page 77 of his Campaign Book, "When 
 I made my speech at Springfield, of which the Judge 
 complains, and from which he quotes, I really was not 
 thinking of the things he ascribes to me at all, I had 
 no thought in the world that I was doing anything 
 to bring about a war between the free and slave states. 
 I had no thought in the world that I was doing any 
 thing to bring about a political and social equality of 
 the black and white races. It never occurred to me 
 that I was doing anything, or favouring anything, to 
 reduce to a dead uniformity all the local institutions 
 of the various states. But I must say in all fairness to 
 him, if he thinks I am doing something which leads to 
 these bad results, it is none the better I did not mean 
 it. It is just as fatal to the country, if I have any 
 influence in producing it, whether I intend it or not ! 
 The States also which had passed personal Liberty 
 Bills, took alarm, and with dreadful haste, in which 
 Rhode Island led the way, erased the "obnoxious 
 statutes," so called, from the statute book in con 
 nexion with the State legislatures ! In the general 
 consternation and alarm which prevailed for the 
 
68 THE BLACK PAETNEESHIP CONCEEN. 
 
 safety of the Union, the churches, city corporations, 
 and chambers of commerce, united to send their 
 delegates to a Peace Congress which was called at 
 Washington, where Wm. E. Dodge, Esq. of New York, 
 (a naming revivalist), with other delegates, by joint 
 resolution, decreed to offer the slave states all territory 
 south of 36 30 for new slave states, if they would 
 come back into the Union, bury the war hatchet, and 
 smoke the pipe of peace ? And to bring up the rear 
 of the panic-stricken, the government took the alarm, 
 sent for the late Judge Douglas to seek his interposi 
 tion and advice, whilst at the same time the Secretary 
 of State, the Hon. Wm. H. Seward, telegraphed to the 
 Boards of Trade in Chicago and Milwaukie, convey 
 ing the startling announcement, " That heretofore the 
 cry of Union has been raised when there was no 
 danger. The question of slavery will not now be 
 taken into account. We are to save the Union, and 
 then save all that is worth saving." Our Northern 
 people had often performed their antics before the 
 Southerns, and prostrated themselves to pick up the 
 nuts they threw down, in the shape of commercial 
 tariffs -but at this fearful and rugged crisis of our 
 history they performed their antics without the nuts, 
 the Southerns, having withdrawn from the Union 
 menagerie, left them to find their own nuts to crack ! 
 All the energies of what are called mighty spirits 
 amongst Northern Democrats, and the resources of 
 their "great intellects were brought to bear on 
 Southern representatives, but in vain. The South 
 
THE BLACK PARTNERSHIP CONCERN. 69 
 
 had taken its stand for weal or for woe, and in the 
 bloody contest which has followed, it has displayed 
 an energy and skill which has won for its generals 
 and armies the admiration of the world, and since 
 there is more hope of the emancipation of the slave in 
 the separation of the South from the North, than in 
 their re-union and also of the amelioration of his 
 condition, who that is not blind to the signs of the 
 times, can desire success to the Federal arms ? The 
 truth is self-evident, that if the Union had not given 
 slavery a new lease of its life, in the barricades which 
 it interposed for its preservation in the Fugitive Slave 
 Law, Slavery would have been well nigh extinguished 
 without the shedding of blood, or the interruption of 
 commerce, for the same law which operated to send 
 the slaves from the Northern States into Canada, 
 when slave States, and caused their masters to make 
 what they could out of their nimble "chattels 
 personal/ would have had the same effect in the 
 South, but for the vile subserviency of our Northern 
 people, who placed themselves under the Union yoke 
 to obey the powers that be, to hunt up the fugitive, 
 and stand between him and his deliverance thus 
 making them a proverb and a reproach a taunt and 
 a curse to society and the world! And as it was 
 never in the power of the South to preserve slavery, 
 or extend it of itself, how imbecile and foolish it is to 
 make slavery a stalking horse for the subjugation of 
 the South ? Even John Bright has confessed " that 
 but for the secession of the South, nothing but a 
 
70 THE BLACK PARTNERSHIP CONCERN. 
 
 miracle could have hastened the destruction of 
 slavery." If, therefore, our Northern people, or the 
 Pro-Federals in this country, had any regard for 
 freedom, they would have said, "wayward sisters, 
 depart in peace." And there was nothing to have 
 prevented such an arrangement in our Partnership 
 Concern, since, to use the language of the Eev. Dr 
 Guthrie, "there is no Union or partnership which 
 may not be dissolved without crime, but marriage." 
 Such a course would have saved rivers of blood, and 
 prevented an awful waste of property, which, will 
 yield a heavy crop of heart-burnings ; and, also, an 
 accumulation of debt which will ere long send us 
 with a thundering crash into the gulph of financial 
 ruin. Besides, if there had been a particle of that 
 sacred thing called honour, amongst the Northern 
 partners of the Union, they would have withdrawn, or 
 have dissolved partnership ; but, alas, honour, which 
 is said to be known and practised amongst thieves, was 
 not to be found amongst our so-called enlightened 
 statesmen and sagacious wise men ! How much to 
 be deprecated is the course which our Northern 
 people and government have adopted. In their hands 
 what a terrible scourge war has become both to 
 themselves and the South, and to Europe. Who shall 
 bridge the yawning chasm which their resentment 
 has created, or heal the wounds which their war 
 passions have produced! 
 
 " Sic transit gloria mundi." 
 
 Amongst the current news of the day there is a 
 
THE BLACK PARTNERSHIP CONCERN. 71 
 
 paragraph in circulation that a machine has been in 
 vented to be driven by the force of circumstances. Our 
 union in America has often been praised as a machine 
 which has turned every thing into gold, and wrapt men 
 with visions of enchantment and beauty. How strange 
 that it should now turn everything into blood and heaps 
 of blackened ruin. And how desperate the force of 
 circumstances which impel it in such a course as this ! 
 How fearful is the love of country when it leads men to 
 seek to merge all in common ruin, rather than put the 
 curb on the spirit of aggrandisement and conquest. And 
 how rancorous their malignity when, if they cannot 
 continue to get the lion s share of profit out of the 
 wicked compact with the South, the cry goes forth in 
 the spirit of burning revenge, make the habitations of 
 men desolate, lay waste their fruitful fields, burn their 
 populous towns and peaceful villages, and turn their 
 country into a wilderness to be the haunts of \vild 
 beasts and crocodiles ! And yet, in a lecture recently 
 delivered in Hull, we have been gravely informed by 
 the Rev. Newman Hall, that such a war, with all its 
 vast extremes of guilt and cruelty, and unparallelled 
 in the misery which it is producing in both hemi 
 spheres, " is legitimate," because it is a war for 
 empire, is invested with the sanction and gathers 
 force from the " practices of European governments/ 
 and has "philanthropy at the bottom of it!" 
 horror of horrors, to contemplate such frightfnl 
 butcheries of men such diabolical outrages as have 
 been committed in this war ! Surely, if we could get 
 
72 THE BLACK PAETNERSHIP CONCERN. 
 
 the above divine, with his coadjutors, John Bright, 
 Peter Sinclair, and other misguided men, who are the 
 advocates of this war if we could get them to look 
 down into the gulph of ruin into which the nation 
 has been plunged by reckless men that they might 
 get a glimpse of the sepulchral shades of repudiation 
 which lies at the bottom of the dark abyss the 
 fragmentary glories of our grand republic and the 
 skeletons of the men who 
 
 " In blood 
 
 Stept in so far, that should they wade no more, 
 Returning was as tedious as go o er," 
 
 but never did get o er, as they perished in the mad 
 attempt. 
 
 Oh, yes ! if we could get the above men to take 
 such a glance, and in such a case they did not ex 
 claim, Citizen soldiers, put up your swords into their 
 scabbards, we would join with the Hon. Edward 
 Everett in the pathetic exclamation, " Throw open 
 your doors, just Bedlam, and send your abused 
 philosophers, princes, and statesmen to their homes ! 
 
 " Cease your dull prate, ye teachers of morals ! 
 There is no crime, there is no barbarism, there is 
 madness." 
 
 Yours for truth as well as liberty, 
 
 J. E. BALME, 
 
 An American Baptist Clergyman. 
 32 Sun Street. 
 
THE TIP OF THE LAST JOINT ; OK, GENTLE 
 MANLY HONOUR AND STANDING. 
 
 TO THE EDITORS OF THE LIVERPOOL MERCURY. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, Thus far our expositions of monstrous 
 falsehoods have referred to others ; in our present 
 communication we propose to examine the delusion 
 into which you have fallen in the use which you have 
 made of the words " Gentlemen of Honour and Stand 
 ing" in your Editorial of June 26, 1863, where you 
 say, "But we must consider it amongst the worst 
 evils of the present civil war that it compels gentle 
 men of honour and standing, like Mr. Adams and Mr. 
 Dudley, to keep such very indifferent company, as 
 that of some of the persons with whom they have re 
 cently been associating ! " 
 
 Some there are who write and speak as if they were 
 influenced by the belief that gentlemanly honour and 
 standing in society, or the world, was only to be found 
 in connection with prelacies and popedoms deacon- 
 ships and bishopricks mitres and crowns ! Will 
 such worldly rank and title operate with greater force 
 on the imagination and affections than the charms of 
 moral goodness ? And since the former are not al 
 ways associated with the latter, there are many lowly 
 
74 THE TIP OF THE LAST JOINT, OR 
 
 cottagers who dwell in the shades of their greatness, 
 endowed with noble qualities of intellect and heart 
 which make them happy and useful, invest them with 
 a dignity, and shed around them a halo of glory 
 which will hand down their names to posterity al 
 though their virtues and deeds may be passed over in 
 silence by the nobles and grandees of this world, find 
 no place on historic page, or in the niche of the 
 temple of fame ! Such have a moral superiority 
 which no mere worldly rank or title can secure or 
 confer on their possessors ! Theirs also is a happi 
 ness which is associated with the perennial spring of 
 contentment, the overflowing consolations of peace, 
 the enheartening visitations of hope, and the joyous 
 prospects of a blessed immortality, where faith ends 
 in sight, and hope terminates in the fulness of fruition ! 
 But whose pen shall describe, or heart conceive, those 
 magnificently glorious results which have flowed from 
 their meek and quiet spirits the uniform consistency 
 of their lives their acts of self-denial and unrequited 
 toil and the triumphs of their faith ! How sublime 
 is such a spectacle ! what a point of communication 
 such a scene opens up to the view of men between 
 heaven and earth ! And how attractive, since here is 
 to be witnessed " the actions of the just, which smell 
 sweet and blossom in the dust ! " 
 
 Others still speak to us of a " gentlemanly honour 
 and standing" that is exclusively worldly. This is 
 based on integrity, civility, and generosity. But for 
 the highest style of " gentlemanly honour and stand- 
 
GENTLEMANLY HONOUR AND STANDING. 7o 
 
 ing" we must look to the Christian, since piety is 
 the crowning link which is essential to form a 
 genuine specimen of " gentlemanly honour and stand 
 ing." 
 
 There are some worldly good men who set a noble 
 example to many who profess to be truly Christian men. 
 But where there is true piety, associated with intel 
 ligence, economy, punctuality, civility, integrity, and 
 generosity, there must be the highest order of " gentle 
 manly honour and standing." The ties of consan 
 guinity, the caprices of fortune, and the genius and 
 skill of men in connection with plodding perseverance, 
 may secure to men, in a worldly sense, " gentlemanly 
 honour and standing." It, however, requires three 
 things to make men of true honour, and the highest 
 order of standing. These are a right principle, a right 
 rule, and a right end. The right principle is the love 
 of God. The right rule is the word of God. And the 
 right end is the glory of God. These alone secure the 
 honour which comes from God invest men with the 
 order of a rank which throws all others into the shade, 
 and makes dim their lustre ; and also confers on them 
 an heirship, and prepares them to enjoy the blissful 
 inheritance of heaven. 
 
 Let us, then, unfurl the roll of American history in 
 search of this "gentlemanly honour and standing," 
 and see if we can find this precious commodity, 
 whether in the worldly or Christian sense, amongst 
 the Fathers and Founders of our country and govern 
 ment. And here are the men, the deed, and the day, 
 
76 THE TIP OF THE LAST JOINT, OR 
 
 on which great stress is laid. The men, Washington, 
 Jefferson, and Madison. The deed, which was said to 
 have made them immortal, the adoption of a basis of 
 constitutional freedom, and the declaration of inde 
 pendence. And the day, which was to be celebrated 
 by bonfires, and fireworks, triumphal arches, the peal 
 of merry bells, and the roar of cannon processions 
 and music orations, and huzzas, henceforth and 
 for ever. If we examine the nature and charac 
 ter of those documents subscribed to, endorsed, and 
 ratified by the men already referred to documents 
 which embodied the deed which they performed to 
 the execution of which they pledged their lives, for 
 tunes, and sacred honour ; and if we consider that 
 these documents guarantee and secure to all men un 
 restricted freedom, irrespective of colour, sex, or age, 
 we may triumphantly ask where is the " tip of the 
 last joint " of that thing which is called " gentlemanly 
 honour and standing ?" When they signed those in 
 struments did they free their slaves ? Or, did they 
 put the negro on an equality with the white man ? 
 
 What does impartial history say ? With a voice 
 like thunder it says, No ! Many, therefore, plead 
 that, as they did not do these things, they did not 
 understand these instruments as including the negro, 
 or, as conscientious men, they would have freed their 
 slaves, and restored the negro to an equality with the 
 white man ; be this as it may, these documents 
 place it beyond a doubt or a peradventure that all 
 were included, without restriction as to race, or dis- 
 
GENTLEMANLY HONOUR AND STANDING. 77 
 
 tinction as to colour ; and therefore it is a monstrous 
 fraud to cover up their delinquencies in the avowal 
 that they proceeded on the basis of making the 
 white people the governing race, and others their 
 inferiors. 
 
 If we cast our eyes on the successive pages of our 
 history in connection with our government from the 
 days of Washington to Lincoln, we find the same 
 betrayal of trust, forfeiture of all claim to respect in 
 the abominable fraud which has been perpetrated on 
 the black man ; and in no one has this been more 
 manifested than in the person of " Honest Abe 
 Lincoln," so called, who disputed the " exclusive 
 right " and " monopoly " of the late Judge Douglas of 
 being on all sides of all questions in a speech which 
 he delivered at Alton, Illinois, Oct. 15, 1858. And 
 that he shared in the supposed blessings of what he 
 called this " High Privilege " is abundantly made 
 manifest in his published speeches, of which we have 
 already given some remarkable specimens, and could 
 give many more, but we will make one or two 
 suffice. In a speech which Lincoln made at Galesburgh, 
 Illinois, Oct. 7, 1858, he said, " I believe that the 
 right of property in a slave is not distinctly affirmed 
 in the Constitution." In another which he delivered 
 at Cincinnati, Ohio, September, 1 859, he said, address 
 ing himself to slaveholders, "When we do, as we say, 
 beat you, you perhaps want to know what we will 
 do with you. I will tell you," said he, " we mean to 
 treat you as near as we possibly can as Washington, 
 
78 THE TIP OF THE LAST JOINT, OE 
 
 Jefferson, and Madison treated yon. We mean to 
 leave you alone, and in no way to interfere with your 
 institution (slavery) to abide by all and every com 
 promise of the constitution." What he meant by 
 this phrase, " all and every compromise of the Con 
 stitution," we learn in his Inaugural Address on the 
 4th of March, 1861, when he said, " There is much 
 controversy about the delivering up of fugitive 
 slaves from service or labour. The rendition clause 
 is as plainly written as any other of its provisions. 
 JSTo person, held to service or labour in one state under 
 the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in con 
 sequence of any law or regulation therein be dis 
 charged from such service or labour, but shall be de 
 livered up on claim of the party to whom such 
 service or labour may be due." "It is scarcely 
 questioned," said Lincoln, " that this provision was 
 intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of 
 what we call fugitive slaves, and the intention of the 
 lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear 
 their support to the whole Constitution, and to this 
 provision as much as any other. To the proposition, 
 therefore, whose cases come within the terms of this 
 clause, shall be delivered up, their oaths are unani 
 mous. Now, if they would make an effort in good 
 temper, could they not, with nearly equal unanimity, 
 frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good 
 that unanimous oath." 
 
 The Constitution, therefore, according to Lincoln, 
 
GENTLEMANLY HONOUR AND STANDING. 79 
 
 does not include property in man, and it does include 
 it! 
 
 When solicited by a convention in Chicago to pro 
 claim emancipation to the slaves on the basis of a 
 military necessity, he replied that "it would be as 
 inoperative as a bull against a comet." About three 
 weeks from that time he issued the proclamation 
 referred to ! 
 
 In an address which he delivered at Ottawa, 
 Illinois, Aug. 21, 1858, Lincoln said, "I think I 
 would not hold one (a slave) in slavery at any rate ; 
 yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce 
 people upon. What next ? Free them, and make 
 them, politically and socially, our equals ? My own 
 feelings will not admit of this ! " 
 
 Again, when addressing the people at Chicago, 
 July 10, 1858, he said, " I have always hated slavery, 
 I think, as much as any abolitionist." Where is the 
 tip of the last joint, of gentlemanly honour and 
 standing in the above ? Has it not disappeared and 
 gone out of sight ? 
 
 We shall mid the same results if we trace the 
 history of the abolitionists. We have seen already in 
 the convention held by them at Albany the ring of 
 metal which they gave in connection with the Union, 
 proclaiming it to be an outrage on civilization, and a 
 curse to be removed. In the letter of Mrs Stowe to 
 Lord Shaftesbury we are informed that all classes of 
 emancipationists stand shoulder to shoulder in the 
 war for the Union, although there has been no change 
 
80 THE TIP OF THE LAST JOINT, OK 
 
 amongst the administrators of the government or the 
 people towards the negro as a man ; and at a large 
 meeting recently held in the Church of the Puritans, 
 one of the principal advocates has avowed that Pre 
 sident Lincoln is the first slave that ought to be 
 emancipated ! Here, again, the " tip of the last joint " 
 of " gentlemanly honour and standing " has gone out 
 of sight. 
 
 In our religious war crusaders we witness the same 
 lamentable results. One moment they cry mightily to 
 God as the author of peace and lover of concord, and 
 the next, use their prayers as a whetstone on which 
 their people may sharpen their war hatchets still 
 to let out deluges of blood 1 In such a war as that, 
 we behold no gentlemanly honour or standing no, 
 not even the " tip of the last joint." 
 
 The blasts of the war trumpet by theEev. Henry Ward 
 Beecher are terrific ! How sadly he has mistaken his 
 vocation. And when the writer penned his glowing 
 tribute to the Rev. M. D. Conway in his book, "American 
 States, Churches, and Slavery," he closed his remarks 
 as follows : " Neither have we seen from Conway 
 any appeals to the material sword. But amidst the 
 general defections that have obtained in the above 
 respect, it is difficult to say who amongst the little 
 band of Christian emancipationists have stood true to 
 their mission of peace and good-will. Since then, 
 Conway has mounted the war horse, blown with 
 all his soul the war trumpet, and urged on the 
 carnival of death ; and is now, as well as Beecher, in 
 
GENTLEMANLY HONOUR AND STANDING. 81 
 
 this country to bespeak your sympathies and co-oper 
 ation in favour of war to the knife and the knife to 
 the handle. From the editor of the Manchester 
 Examiner and Times, who claims to be more Ameri 
 can than Americans, we learn that Conway has 
 been making himself less American than himself and 
 Pro-Federal coadjutors, who he claims to be more 
 American than Americans, in the offer which he 
 made in the name of American abolitionists to Mr. 
 Mason to use their influence to discontinue the war 
 on condition of the * Southerns adopting gradual 
 emancipation for which offer Conway now declares 
 himself to be very penitent and sad, but consoles 
 himself with the thought that no one will be injured 
 by his misguided zeal but himself, although in his 
 letter to Mason he avowed his authority to make his 
 offer in the name of the abolitionists ! ! what 
 " gentlemen of honour and standing." 
 
 And the " last tip of the last joint " of this sacred 
 thing called honour is beginning to disappear amongst 
 the Pro-Federals, not only in claiming the black 
 heritage of guilt in being more American than 
 Americans theoretically, but practically. This is 
 shown in a letter addressed to the Edinburgh Re 
 view, written by Peter Sinclair, Esq., agent to the 
 Union and Emancipation Society in this country. In 
 this letter Mr. Sinclair boldly demands, " What is the 
 issue on the American question?" 
 
 And replying to his own question, he has con 
 fidently asserted that the issue in the present terrible 
 Conflict between the North and the South "is freedom 
 
82 THE TIP OF THE LAST JOINT, OR 
 
 or slavery liberty or despotism remunerated 
 labour, or unrequited toil free school, or no school 
 a bible for all, or no bible for millions !" 
 
 To sustain the above position, he lays mighty 
 emphasis on the following charges, made by John C. 
 Breckenridge, Esq., recently Vice-President of the 
 United States, against the present party in power, 
 whom he designates a " Black Eepublican Party." 
 
 Breckenridge says, 
 
 " I charge that the present and ulterior purposes 
 of the Eepublican party are : 
 
 "1st. To introduce the doctrine of negro equality 
 into American politics, and to make it the ground of 
 positive legislation, hostile to the Southern States. 
 
 " 2nd. To exclude the slave property of the South 
 from the territory of the Union, or which may be 
 hereafter acquired. 
 
 <k 3rd. To prevent the admission in any latitude of 
 another slaveholding state. 
 
 "4th. To repeal the Fugitive Slave Law, and 
 practically refuse to obey the constitution on that 
 subject, 
 
 "oth. To refuse to prevent, or punish by state 
 action the spoliation of slave property ; but, on the 
 contrary, to make it a criminal offence in their 
 citizens to obey the laws of the Union, in so far as 
 they protect property in African slaves. 
 
 " 6th. To t abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. 
 
 " 7th. To abolish it in the forts, arsenals, dockyards, 
 
GENTLEMANLY HONOUR AND STANDING. 83 
 
 and other places in the South, where Congress has 
 exclusive jurisdiction. 
 
 " 8th. To limit, harass, and frown upon the institu 
 tion in every mode of political action, and by every 
 form of public opinion. 
 
 " 9th. And, finally, by the executive, by Congress, 
 by the Postal service, by the Press, and in all other 
 accessible modes, to agitate without ceasing, until the 
 Southern States, without sympathy or brotherhood 
 in the Union, worn down by the unequal struggle, 
 shall be compelled to surrender ignominously and 
 emancipate their slaves." 
 
 " Upon the above indictment," says Mr Sinclair, 
 "the slavery party submitted their case to the people, 
 and the people said we want men holding these views 
 to be our governors. By an overwhelming majority 
 the candidate who brought these charges against the 
 Eepublican party was rejected, and a man holding 
 principles including all that was contained in these 
 charges, elected." 
 
 Here is a statement made by Mr Sinclair, that the 
 political creed of President Lincoln included all that 
 was contained in Breckenridge s charges ! 
 
 Let us therefore put President Lincoln on the stand. 
 
 Lincoln, what do you say to the charge of negro 
 equality ? " Not guilty " is the response ! This is 
 corroborated in a speech delivered by him at Quincy, 
 Illinois, Oct. 13, 1858, when Lincoln said, "I am not, 
 nor ever have been, in favour of bringing about in any 
 
84 THE TIP OF THE LAST JOINT, OR 
 
 way the social and political equality of the white and 
 black races ! " 
 
 Is it true that you would prevent new slave states 
 from being admitted into the Union? "Not guilty." 
 This is shewn in his speech made at Freeport, Illinois, 
 August 27, 1858, when Lincoln said, I should be glad 
 to know there would never be another slave state 
 admitted into the Union but I must add, that if 
 slavery shall be kept out of the territories during the 
 territorial existence of any one given territory, and 
 then the people shall, having a fair chance, and a 
 clear field when they come to adopt the Constitution, 
 do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave 
 Constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of 
 the institution among them, I see no alternative, if 
 we own the country, but to admit them into the 
 Union ! 
 
 Is it true that you would repeal the Fugitive Slave 
 Law ? " Not guilty," says Lincoln ! In a speech 
 which he made at Freeport, Illinois, Aug. 27, 1858, 
 Lincoln said, " I have never hesitated to say, and do 
 not now hesitate to say, that I think, under the Con 
 stitution of the United States, the people of the 
 Southern States are entitled to a Congressional 
 Fugitive Slave Law f Is it true that you would 
 abolish slavery in the District of Columbia? "Not 
 guilty," says Lincoln! In a speech reported in the 
 Courier" in May 1860, he said, "he had not studied 
 the subject had no distinctive ideas about it he 
 never thought it worth while to consider it much 
 
GENTLEMANLY HONOUR AND STANDING- 85 
 
 but so far as he had considered it, he should be 
 perhaps in favour of gradual abolition, when the 
 slaveholders of the District "asked for it." And 
 although he has signed a Bill which has been passed 
 in Congress for its abolition since the Disruption- 
 yet, at the period of his election, Lincoln could not be 
 held responsible for entertaining such a sentiment 
 and was therefore " not guilty !" 
 
 As to the charge of anti-slavery agitation, Lin 
 coln again pleads "not guilty." Such an agitation 
 he says in a speech already referred to, "would 
 be fatal to the country " and be " productive of bad 
 results !" Thus we see, that instead of including all 
 that was contained in Breckenridge s charges, it in 
 cluded at that period none of the sentiments contained 
 in those charges ! What a position of " honour and 
 standing " for an agent of an emancipation society ! 
 Who is most to be pitied or prayed for the agent 
 who propagates such statements or the society 
 which employs him ? 
 
 Be this as it may, there cannot be the tip of 
 the last joint of gentlemanly honour or standing in 
 such work ! 
 
 It is most strange that ambassador Adams and 
 Consul Dudley can be "gentlemen of honour and 
 standing," and keep, as the above mentioned editors 
 say, " very indifferent company." We had thought, 
 Mr. Editors, that a man was known by the company 
 which he keeps. And that as he who would be wise 
 must walk with wise men, what must be the charac- 
 
86 THE TIP OF THE LAST JOINT, OR 
 
 ter of those who associate with crimps ? If we stretch 
 out our charitable indulgence to its utmost limits, we 
 cannot say that such connections, when pronounced 
 to be " very indifferent," comport with gentlemanly 
 honour and standing. In such a case, we are sceptical 
 about the existence of the "tip of the last joint!" 
 But methinks I hear those editors whispering to each 
 other the sentiment that those " who live in glass 
 houses must not throw stones." And then comes the 
 startling announcement, that " systems of evil are by 
 no means likely to be uprooted by personal attacks, 
 and we can only attribute the violence of his censure 
 upon the Cheevers, Beechers, and Stowes to the 
 fervour of his zeal in advocating the cause which he 
 has espoused ! " This is certainly very charitable, but 
 whilst the writer disclaims all personal animosity he 
 would claim the right of entertaining what opinions 
 he chooses ; and of expressing them when and where 
 he likes and of calling a spade a spade without ask 
 ing any pardons, or making any apologies ; and as the 
 writer has been wantonly and wickedly assaulted by 
 Federals and pro-federals, on both sides of the water, 
 and false statements put to his account, is it matter of 
 surprise that his virtuous indignation should be 
 aroused and brought into full play, or that he should 
 try to make the sword give a terrible rebound? 
 God forbid that he, or any other man, should lie 
 motionless under the heels of misguided and reckless 
 men until all life is trodden out of them. An open 
 field, and fair play, is all that the writer asks, and 
 
GENTLEMANLY HONOUR AND STANDING. 87 
 
 falling back on his motto nil desperandum auspice deo, 
 onward he is prepared to go forwards, though floods 
 and flames oppose. 
 Yours respectfully, for truth as well as liberty. 
 
 JOSHUA R BALME. 
 
THE LOED MAYOE S BANQUET, LONDON. 
 
 TO THE EDITORS OF THE BELFAST NEWS-LETTER. 
 
 SIR, A terrible indignation has been shewn by those 
 who have blindly embraced the cause of the Federals 
 in this country, against the Lord Mayor of London 
 for extending to Mr. Mason, a Confederate Com 
 missioner, the rights of hospitality. 
 
 " The above act," say these men, " has disgraced the 
 metropolis and country," because Mason is a " slave 
 holder," the author of the " Fugitive Slave Law," and 
 represents a " Government based on slavery." These 
 sins are vile and infamous, and the writer has no 
 cloak to cover them up, or inclination to extenuate 
 them, or connive at them ; but where is the difference 
 in point of principle in the Lord Mayor of London 
 receiving as his guest Mr. Mason and the public re 
 ceptions which these same men have accorded to his 
 Excellency Mr. Adams, Ambassador from our Federal 
 Government, and the representative of a party which 
 has always upheld the Fugitive Slave Law. " Hang 
 Mason, who devised the above infamous law," say 
 these men. On the same rule, they would have to 
 hang up and quarter Ambassador Adams, President 
 Lincoln, ninety-nine hundreds of our clergy, and the 
 
THE LORD MAYOR S BANQUET. 89 
 
 vast multitudes of our " meaner whites, or whiter trash," 
 in the North, who have ratified and endorsed, sanctified 
 and blest, this horrible law, and executed it in our so- 
 called Free States in the North. On page 88 of 
 Lincoln s " Campaign Book," the President says, " I 
 have never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate 
 to say, that I think, under the Constitution of the 
 United States, the people of the Southern States are 
 entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave Law/ If 
 so, what sin was there in Mason supplying the text 
 of it ? The above claim was sustained by Lincoln s 
 perversion of the original draft of the Constitution, to 
 apply it to the Fugitive Slave Law in his inaugural 
 address to the Presidency, and has since been executed 
 under the worst exasperations on the steps of our 
 National Capitol, in full view of his Presidential 
 mansion. 
 
 However sinful or criminal it may be to devise such 
 a law, it is ten thousand times more so to execute it ; 
 and this guilt attaches to our Northern people in 
 America. The above law would have been a dead 
 letter but for them. It still hangs over the people ; 
 and as its enforcement has alone preserved slavery, 
 slave propagandists would have been powerless to 
 preserve or extend the dire and manifold evils of 
 slavery, but for it. 
 
 The same query with which we commenced may 
 be extended to the different representatives of 
 America, in its application to the Confederate and 
 Federal Governments. The Confederates openly and 
 
90 THE LOED MAYOR S BANQUET. 
 
 boldly seek to build up their Government on slavery. 
 Our Federals represent our Government to be the 
 freest in the world : and yet, from its foundation to 
 the present, the victims of slavery have increased 
 from 647,000 to 4,000,000. One stands out un- 
 blushingly like the libertine ; the other comes up 
 under the garb of a sneaking hypocrite, and has 
 never yet sought to wash its hands of its guilt, de 
 nouncing slavery as a sin, to be taken by the tail and 
 dashed against the wall. And yet, forsooth, the meek 
 reprovers of the Lord Mayor would reject the repre 
 sentatives of the Confederate Government, whilst they 
 fawn upon and flatter, caress and cherish, the repre 
 sentatives of the latter. In the above respects both 
 representatives are on a par ; but these men are not 
 received by civil rulers and magistrates, or the au 
 thorities of city corporations, or their representatives, 
 on the ground of their moral character, or the charac 
 ter of the government or people whom they represent ; 
 but on the basis of their representative character 
 touching the comity of nations in their relationships 
 to each other. Tf any other rule was observed but 
 this, in the present condition of society and the world, 
 how restricted would be the intercourse of nations and 
 men ; but whilst these men have cherished resent 
 ment to the Lord Mayor, and poured on him their 
 reproaches and contempt for making Mr. Mason his 
 guest at one of his banquets, they have subjected 
 themselves to a tenfold greater reproach in the wel 
 come which they have given,. tributes paid, and gifts 
 
THE LORD MAYOR S BANQUET. 91 
 
 bestowed to such persons as Mrs. Harriet Beeclier 
 Stowe, and others, who have come to this country 
 not as the representatives of civil governments, but 
 of the moral character of society, and the sacred prin 
 ciples of freedom. In such a case there must be 
 called into requisition that grand element moral 
 principle, as illustrated in their own experience and 
 example, and in the parties whom they represent, 
 or the cause which both parties profess to cherish 
 and honour, suffers at their hands. Thus immense 
 injury is done, or great good derived. Now what 
 moral principle did Mrs. Beecher Stowe ever repre 
 sent in the cause of freedom, in the mantle of piety 
 which she provides in her Key to Uncle Tom for 
 "lady pious slaveholders," or in the class of men 
 whom she introduces to our notice in the same Key 
 as "Christian slave-traders ;" and yet on one occasion 
 a select circle met in an elegant mansion in the 
 neighbourhood of Headingley, Leeds, where, three or 
 four circle deep, Mrs. Stowe became the cynosure of 
 all eyes, whilst one of those vehement denunciators 
 of the Lord Mayor of London, in the name of the 
 fluttering fashionables of beauty, put a beautiful 
 purse, containing two hundred guineas, into her 
 hands ? There has been the same forgetfulness of 
 principle by these men in their reception of American 
 missionaries and endorsement of the American Board 
 of Missions a society supported by its twin sister, 
 the Turkish Aid Missions, since the latter is only a 
 blind to get aid for the former society a society 
 
92 THE LORD MAYOR S BANQUET. 
 
 which has never rejected those charming specimens 
 ofhumanity, called Christian slaveholders and slave- 
 breeders, as directors and life members never re 
 fused to take unhallowed gains, extracted by the lash 
 of the whip and thumb- screw, from the slave, to send 
 the Gospel to the far-off heathen, etc., etc. ; still the 
 same meek reprovers of the Lord Mayor of London 
 are the chief apologists and warmest defenders of the 
 above Board and their missionaries. They put on 
 " dark spectacles " when those terrible delinquencies 
 are spread before their vision, and stuff their ears with 
 the " cotton " of a false charity whilst Christ s name 
 is blasphemed through their monstrous evil practices, 
 and shout " mad dog," fanatic, fool, madman, to the 
 man who lays them bare ; but when they dwell on 
 the " good they do," they brush away their " specs," 
 and, inspired with the nectar of honeyed delight, 
 point to new translations of the Bible, Arabs con 
 verted, &c., &c. 
 
 Eecently, pulpit, platform, and press, have justly 
 thundered their anathemas against Bishop Colenso 
 for subverting the authority of Jehovah, in connex 
 ion with the historical records of the Bible a man 
 who has laid himself open to the severest censure 
 but scarcely a whisper has been heard concerning the 
 corrupters and deiilers of God s heritage, who have 
 come into your midst, transformed like Satan into 
 angels of light, to tell of the wonderful works they 
 have done in the name of Christ and yet hide the 
 black deeds of shame, in the robbery of Christ s little 
 
THE LOED MAYOR S BANQUET. 93 
 
 ones which has been constantly perpetrated in 
 America, to make up their own salaries, and to 
 furnish them with the machinery of missionary evan 
 gelization! Where is the thunder, lightning and 
 earthquake in the latter case and yet, is it not as 
 dangerous and mischievous to pervert the fellowships 
 of God s family, as it is to destroy the authority of 
 God in his inspired book? 
 
 Eecently there has been a tremendous philippic 
 made by the Eev. Dr Candlish against the advisers of 
 the Queen, for causing to be inscribed a quotation 
 from the Apocrypha on a Highland " Cairn," in 
 honour of the late Prince Albert ; this by the Dr. is 
 considered to be a great insult to " Bible loving Scot 
 land," but it is no insult in the Eev. Dr. and his 
 coadjutors to introduce men who represent Boards of 
 Missions in America, which are a hissing and bye- 
 word, and reproach to civilization, Christianity, and to 
 the age in which we live ! 
 
 The same dishonour is done to the cause of 
 Christ in the introduction of books written by authors 
 who have been the chief instruments of turning our 
 American churches into " synagogues of Satan," by 
 expurgating from the gospel and the churches that 
 supreme love of liberty which in itself constitutes 
 their greatest excellence and glory. In another place 
 we have given an illustration of the above, in the case 
 of the Eev. Dr. Candlish, and "Good, Better, and 
 Best," a book written by the Eev. J. W. Alexander of 
 New York ! 
 
94 THE LOKD MAYOR S BANQUET. 
 
 This is also shown in the introduction given by 
 Professor Smeaton of the New College, Edinburgh, to 
 the " Closer Walk ; or Believer s -Sanctification," 
 written by the Eev. Henry Darling, D.D. of Phila 
 delphia ; a book which discourses sweetly and 
 eloquently on fellowship with Christ, but contains 
 not a syllable about fellowship with Christ s " black 
 little ones" speaks fluently of the saints "meet- 
 ness" for heaven but not a word on the "pious 
 slaveholders" of America, and our "pious negro- 
 haters " so called, being made meet to declare deliver 
 ance to their slaves, or to lift up the negro to an 
 equality with themselves ! And yet, in his prefatory 
 note, Mr. Smeaton asks for Darling s book a kind 
 reception amongst the Christians of this country ! 
 
 The same grievous and lamentable blunder has 
 been made by the Eev. Charles H. Spurgeon, in 
 giving an introduction to a " History of the Transla 
 tion of the Bible " by Mrs H. Conaiit, a History 
 which records the doings and sayings of the " Bible 
 Union," New York a society which has done more 
 than all other societies in its brief history, to propa 
 gate a slave-holding and negro-hating Christianity a 
 society which contains the blackest list of slave 
 holders and pro-slavery divines of any society in 
 America, and amongst its " Black Constellation " of 
 worthies, so called, we find that the Eev. C. H. 
 Spurgeon s name figures conspicuously as a Vice- 
 President ! Moreover, in the above introduction 
 referred to, Mr. Spurgeon has classified the Eev. E. 
 
THE LORD MAYOR S BANQUET. 95 
 
 Fuller of Baltimore, one of the greatest defilers and 
 corrapters of God s heritage in America with his 
 pro-slavery theories and practices, with such men as 
 the Kevs. Daniel Waterland, D.D., Eobert Lowth, 
 D.D., and other great biblical celebrities ! Could 
 they arise from the dead, most assuredly they would 
 protest against the unhallowed association! 
 
 As Mr Spurgeon has frankly avowed in his review 
 of a book written by Mr. Mitchell, a coloured preacher, 
 " that he would fling his most vehement testimony 
 into the hypocritical faces of men-owning professors 
 of Christianity/ by turning to the "Bible Union 
 Quarterly" for November 1859, and February 1860, 
 he will find urgent claims on him for the above kind 
 of work amongst his brother Bible Union Vice- 
 Presidents ! 
 
 But the most ludicrous mistake made by the divines 
 of this country is to be found in the introduction 
 given by the Eev. Thomas Binney, to a book called 
 the "Kifle, Axe, and Saddle Bag," written by a blind 
 preacher, named Milburne ! This is abundantly 
 made manifest in the following story, which the 
 editor of the Eclectic, in the last number of the old 
 series, takes out of the blind preacher s " Saddle Bags " 
 for the benefit of his readers ! The Eev. James 
 Axley, familiarly known as " Old Jimmy," a renowned 
 and redoubtable preacher, of East Tenessee, delivered 
 a discourse one Sabbath Day at a place called Jones- 
 borough. Another preacher was with him, and a 
 double service was held. In the discourse which Mr 
 
96 THE LORD MAYOR S BANQUET. 
 
 Axley delivered, he observed, " It may be a very 
 painful duty, but it is a very solemn one, for a minister 
 of the gospel, to reprove vice, misconduct, and sin, 
 whenever and wherever he sees it that is a duty I am 
 now about to attend to. And now, continued the 
 speaker, pointing with his long finger in the direction 
 indicated, that man sitting out yonder behind the 
 door, who got up and went ont while the brother was 
 preaching, stayed out as long as he wanted to, got 
 his boots full of mud, came back, and stamped the 
 mud off at the door, making all the noise he could, 
 on purpose to disturb the attention of the congrega 
 tion, and then took his seat, that man thinks I mean 
 him. No wonder he does it does not look as if he had 
 been raised in the white settlements, does it, to 
 behave that way at meeting ? Now, my friend, I 
 advise you to learn better manners before you come 
 to church next time : but I don t mean him. And 
 now, again pointing at his mark, that little girl 
 sitting there, about half way in the house, I should 
 judge her to be about sixteen years old that is her 
 with the artificial flowers outside of her bonnet she 
 has a breastpin on too she that was giggling and 
 laughing all the time the brother was preaching, so 
 that the old sisters in the neighbourhood could not 
 hear what he was saying, though they tried to. She 
 thinks I mean her. I am sorry from the bottom of 
 my heart for any parents that have raised a girl to her 
 time of day, and yet have not taught her to behave 
 when she comes to church. Little girl, you have 
 
THE LORD MAYOE S BANQUET. 97 
 
 disgraced your parents as well as yourself. Behave 
 better next time, won t you ? But I don t mean her. 
 Directing his finger to another aim, he said, that 
 man sitting there, that looks as bright and pert as if 
 he was never asleep in his life, and never expected to 
 be but that, just as soon as the brother took his text, 
 laid his head down on the back of the seat in front of 
 him went sound asleep slept the whole time, and 
 snored that man thinks I mean him. My friend, 
 don t you know that the church ain t the place to sleep. 
 If you need rest, why don t you stay at home, take off 
 your clothes, and go to bed that is the place to 
 sleep, and not the church. The next time you have 
 a chance to hear a sermon, I advise you to keep 
 awake. But I don t mean him. Thus did he proceed, 
 pointing out every man, woman, and child, who had 
 in the slightest deviated from a befitting line of 
 conduct, characterising the misdemeanour, and read 
 ing sharp lessons of rebuke. A judge, named White, 
 was sitting all this time at the end of the front seat, 
 just under the speaker, enjoying the old gentleman s 
 disquisition to the last degree, twisting his neck 
 around to notice if the audience relished the " down- 
 comings" as much as he did, rubbing his hands, 
 smiling, chuckling inwardly. Between his teeth and 
 cheek was a monstrous quid of tobacco, which, the 
 better he was pleased, the more he chawed and the 
 more he spat ; and, behold, the floor bare witness to 
 the results. At length the old gentleman straighten 
 ing himself up to his full height, continued with 
 
 D 
 
98 THE LORD MAYOR S BANQUET. 
 
 great gravity, and now I reckon you want to know 
 who I do mean ? I mean that dirty, nasty, filthy 
 tobacco-chewer sitting at the end of that front seat 
 his finger meanwhile pointing true as the needle to 
 the pole see what he has been about look at these 
 puddles on the floor a frog would not get into them. 
 Think of the tails of the sisters dresses being dragged 
 through that muck !" The above preacher reproved 
 sin, whenever and wherever he saw it, marked the 
 slightest deviations, and yet the people he was adress- 
 ing were slaveholders, but the great sin of which they 
 were guilty, in making merchandise of the bodies and 
 souls of their fellow-men the sum of all villanies, 
 which hung like a millstone around their necks, was 
 not discernible to his quick and penetrating eye ! 
 And why ? Because in his estimation it had been 
 transformed into a virtuous, domestic, and patriarchal 
 institution ; so that, whilst he strained at the above 
 gnats, he could swallow a crime as large as a camel ! 
 How strange that a book which recites the above with 
 great gusto and delight, and lifts such a man up as a 
 model of fidelity amongst preachers, is thus introduced 
 to the enlightened and considerate regard of the people 
 of this country ! Such a course discovers an enormous 
 amount of ignorance, or else a terrible connivance at 
 sin ! Some writers have won the sobriquet of being 
 crazy men, for calling attention to the many wide 
 spread and fearful delinquencies that obtain ; but 
 then, nobody ever tried to do his duty without fear or 
 favour, without becoming crazy. If it be a sign 
 
THE LORD MAYOR S BANQUET. 99 
 
 that they have got a "slate off their roof," as someof their 
 "kind friends " have declared, hen 1 , is the intelligible 
 and unmistakeable evidence of it in the clear, ringing 
 and thrilling shout, that with such a Union, such 
 a theology in America, and sucli n mistaken policy as 
 the above, it is a wonder that any decent man retains 
 the shadow of respect towards Christian institutions ! 
 Sad mistakes have been made on this subject. Men 
 have gone to the lives of professors, and seen so much 
 of erroneous practice there, that it has warped their 
 judgments and soured their spirits against Christianity 
 itself. This is however wrong. And "crazy" as we 
 may appear to be in the eyes of bigoted partisans, we 
 must not allow our religious belief to be split up and 
 dashed to pieces on such a rock. 
 Yours for truth as well as liberty, 
 
 JOSHUA K. BALMK 
 
 82 Sun-streot. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 How sickening is the spectacle which America pre 
 sents to the view of men in the terrible war which is 
 now being waged with such deadly strife, producing 
 such terrible results in the awful destruction of human 
 life, the enormous waste of property, and the untold 
 misery which is experienced through the disarrange 
 ment and annihilation of commerce. What a distress 
 ing and harrowing picture of the atrocities and fearful 
 calamities of war are made manifest in the following 
 article, published in the Old Guard, a monthly 
 journal recently established in New York, under the 
 heading 
 
 " HOW WE AEE REVENGING FORT SUMPTER." 
 
 " The reported casualties of this war from its beginning to Jan. 
 1, 1863 : 
 
 Federals, killed 43,874 
 
 wounded - 97,029 
 
 died of disease and wounds - - 250,000 
 
 made prisoners - 68,218 
 
 Total, 459,374 
 
 Confederates, killed - 20,893 
 
 wounded 59,915 
 
 ., died from disease and wounds 120,000 
 
 made prisoners 22,169 
 
 Total, 222,677 
 
CONCLUSION. 101 
 
 They have killed twenty-two thousand eight hundred and 
 seventy-four more of our men than we have of theirs. 
 
 " They have wounded, not mortally, thirty-nine thousand four 
 hundred and fourteen more of our men than we have of theirs. 
 
 " One hundred and fifty thousand more of our men have died 
 of disease and wounds than of theirs. 
 
 "They have made prisoners of forty-six thousand more of our 
 men than we have of theirs. 
 
 " Our total casualties are two hundred and thirty-seven thousand 
 two hundred and ninety-seven more than theirs that is, our 
 casualties have been fourteen thousand more than as much again 
 as theirs. 
 
 "This is the way we have revenged the firing on Fort 
 Sumpter. 
 
 "But this is not all. We have spent almost two thousand 
 millions more of money than they have spent. 
 
 " We have made two hundred thousand of our women widows. 
 
 " We have made one million of children fatherless. 
 
 " We have destroyed the constitution of our country. 
 
 " We have brought the ferocious savagery of war into every 
 corner of society. 
 
 " We have demoralised our pulpits, so that our very religion is 
 a source of immorality and blood. 
 
 "Instead of being servants of Christ our ministers are servants 
 of Satan. 
 
 " The land is full of contractors, thieves, provost marshals, and 
 a thousand other tools of illegal and despotic power, as Egypt was 
 of vermin in the days of the Pharaohs. 
 
 "We are rapidly degenerating in everything that exalts A 
 nation. 
 
 " Our civilization is perishing. 
 
 " We are swiftly drifting into inevitable civil war here in the 
 North. 
 
 " We are turning our homes into charnel houses. 
 
 " There is a corpse in every family. 
 
 "The angel of death sits in every door. 
 
 " The Devil has removed from Tartarus to Washington. 
 
 "We pretend that we are punishing the rebels, but they are 
 punishing us. 
 
102 CONCLUSION. 
 
 "We pretend that we are restoring the Union, but we are 
 destroying it. 
 
 " We pretend that we are enforcing the laws, but we are only 
 catching negroes. 
 
 " That is the way we are revenging Surapter. 
 
 " Selling our souls to the Devil, and taking Lincoln and Go s 
 promise to pay. We have it in greenbacks and biood. 
 
 "That is the way we are revenging Sumpter. " 
 
 As our Northern people have hurled the thunder 
 bolts of war, they have also been made to feel the 
 effects of war. 
 
 With the same measure in which they have tried to 
 meet out destruction to the South, it has been measured 
 back again, pressed down, shaken together, and run 
 ning over with misery, ruin, and woe. 
 
 What a fearful and tremendous responsibility rests 
 on those who instigated President Lincoln and his 
 cabinet to the adoption of war measures for the sub 
 jugation of the South, and also now urge their con 
 tinuance under the strange hallucination that they 
 are fighting for freedom, whilst military despotism is 
 trampling down their own liberties and those of the 
 people under its black hoofs, and engulphing the 
 flower and strength and resources of the nation in the 
 vortex of destruction ! 
 
 How infatuated and blind such parties must be, not 
 to see that the great call in God s providence was for 
 the North to let the South go ! And this is equally 
 manifest in their non-recognition of, and indifference 
 to, the retributive providences of Jehovah, which 
 thunder in their ears the announcement which He 
 
CONCLUSION. 103 
 
 made by the prophet Jeremiah to the Jews, " Ye have 
 not hearkened unto me in proclaiming liberty every 
 one to his brother, and every man to his neighbour, 
 behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, 
 to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine." 
 
 Who does not see that if the " Old Union " had 
 continued in America, the divine throne and govern 
 ment of God must have been subverted. If we 
 believe in the moral government of God, we must 
 admit that He will be supreme in the exercise of His 
 authority over nations and men ; and that whatever 
 nations amongst men oppose his government, He will 
 make it supreme over their wicked governments, as 
 well as His laws and word over the wicked laws and 
 corrupt creeds and blasphemous doctrines taught by 
 men. 
 
 We owe it to his goodness and continued forbear 
 ance that as a nation and people we have not long 
 since been swept away beneath the overrunning flood 
 of His wrath for our accumulated transgressions and 
 sins. We cannot wonder, therefore, that our brother s 
 blood should cry from the ground for vengeance on 
 the oppressors of our fellowmen. Neither do we feel 
 surprised that, when men will plan and scheme to 
 frustrate the purposes of Jehovah, although He may 
 permit it for a season, yet He will ultimately accom 
 plish the overthrow of their schemes and wicked 
 devices, by their own wickedness, and bring the pun 
 ishment on themselves, however formidable the league, 
 or vast their conspiracy. 
 
104 CONCLUSION. 
 
 We cannot therefore pity our Federal administrators 
 in their wicked blundering policy, or bid them God 
 speed, in seeking to restore a Union which has been 
 based on a covenant with death and an agreement 
 with hell in its law of compact, and associated with 
 the foulest conspiracy against human rights, and on 
 the grandest scale the world ever knew. 
 
 In vain do our orators, poets, and philosophers 
 point to our prosperity, and with the magic wands of 
 their enchanting eloquence make men feel their 
 mighty spell as they cause new palaces, cities, and 
 states to flit before their vision. It is here where has 
 been the great mistake. They have interpreted our 
 boundless prosperity as a sign of God s approbation 
 instead of his forbearance ; and, therefore, like 
 Jeshurun of old, they have waxed fat, and kicked 
 against the Almighty and He has brought down His 
 avenging arm on themselves in return. Thus our 
 prosperity has proved a snare, and accelerated our 
 ruin as a nation and people. These retributive 
 scenes have come on us in America at a time when 
 the nations were lulled to sleep on the lap of a false 
 repose concerning the prospects of peace ; whilst phil 
 anthropists and revivalists were taking up the 
 trumpet of fame to proclaim the blessing of peace, 
 and to announce the dawn of a political, as well as a 
 spiritual, millennium amongst men. 
 
 In an able article recently published in the Liver 
 pool Mercury, the editors remark : 
 
 "A few years only have elapsed since the idea of the 
 
CONCLUSION. 105 
 
 Exhibition of all Nations was promulgated, which 
 was to be the golden chain to unite the kindreds of 
 the earth in brotherhood, peace, and love. The palace 
 was built, beautiful in its proportions, fairy-like in its 
 construction. From the frigid to the torrid zone the 
 products of the earth were poured into it, and the 
 many-tongued and diverse-coloured races of men met 
 beneath its glittering roof, apparently forgetful of their 
 jealousies, and happy as a prosperous and united 
 family could be. Oh, thought some, the halcyon 
 days of the world have dawned the panacea for 
 national woe has been discovered. Henceforth the 
 only emulation will surely be that of becoming the 
 best as well as the greatest, and of developing the re 
 sources of every country and clime. The cloudless 
 sun of prosperity has reached its meridian brightness, 
 and far away in human imaginings lie stretched the 
 elysian fields wherein the nations of the world are to 
 roam in amity and friendship. Bright and happy 
 thoughts, yet, alas, illusive and vain ; for ere the last 
 remnant of the world s place of assembly had been 
 removed, the thunders of the Crimean guns dissolved 
 the spell, scattered the illusion, and proved the in 
 sufficiency of such day-dreams to arrest the spirit 
 of aggression, and check the tyranny and power of 
 man. 
 
 " Despite the failure, the experiment has been again 
 tried, but with no better success, for at this moment 
 the vast continent of America is torn by a civil strife 
 which scarcely finds its parallel in the history of the 
 
1 06 CONCLUSION. 
 
 world. Without entering into the merits of the ques 
 tion involved in this struggle, we speak but the feel 
 ings of humanity when we say the heart sickens at 
 the remembrance of the sacrifice of human life by 
 which the war has been characterised. It is esti 
 mated that upwards of 800,000 human beings, com 
 prising the bravest, the noblest, and the best of 
 America s sons, have been immolated to the god of 
 war. The most fertile land beneath high Heaven 
 reeks with human blood ; broken hearts are counted 
 by hundreds of thousands, and the frightful catalogue 
 of widows and orphans affords terrible proof of the 
 devastations of the sword. Nor is this all. The re 
 sources of what might have been the richest country 
 in the world have been drained, and a national debt 
 of ^200,000,000 has been contracted, which, like an 
 incubus, will spread its influence over the land, dis 
 turbing its quietude, arresting its progress, and par 
 alysing its powers." 
 
 In our deep emergency as a people, both Northerns 
 and Southerns have courted the favour of England ; 
 and to influence the government and public opinion, 
 one party has reminded you that your destinies as a 
 people were suspended on a thread, and that thread a 
 very tender one, namely cotton and the other that 
 they were bound up by a blade, and that blade a very 
 Blender one, namely, a blade of wheat. When referr 
 ing to the former, Mr. Mann, an eminent citizen of 
 Georgia, said, " With the failure of cotton, England 
 fails. Stop her supply of southern slave grown 
 
CONCLUSION. 107 
 
 cotton, and her factories stop, her commerce stops, the 
 healthful normal circulation of her life blood stops." 
 Again, he says, " In one year from the stoppage of 
 England s supply of southern slave grown cotton, the 
 Chartists would be in all her streets and fields ; 
 revolution would be rampant throughout the island, 
 and nothing that is, would exist. Why, sirs, 
 British lords hold their lands, British bishops their 
 revenues, and Victoria her sceptre, by the grace of 
 cotton as surely as by the grace of God." 
 
 In the above sentiments Senator Wigfall united, 
 saying, " If we stop the supply of cotton for one week, 
 England would be starving. Queen Victoria s crown 
 would not stand on her head one week if the supply 
 of cotton was stopped ; nor would her head stand on 
 her shoulders." 
 
 Vice-President Stephens also said, " There will 
 be revolution in Europe ; there will be starvation 
 there. Our cotton is the element that will do it" 
 When referring to the latter, the Eev. Henry Ward 
 Beecher, in a sermon on Thanksgiving day, Nov. 28, 
 1861, reported in the New York Tribune, said, 
 "Providence in giving us plenty, and ordaining 
 scarcity abroad, had taken the crown from king 
 cotton, and put it on the head of corn. The speaker 
 had gone through the corn fields, and had heard the 
 corn rustling, and he thought it was the wind blow 
 ing through the corn ; but it was God speaking to 
 him, and interpreting to him in a language he now 
 understood, but then did not. And every blade lift- 
 
108 CONCLUSION. 
 
 ing up its head said, " Liberty is coming, Emancipa 
 tion is coming." But how was liberty or emancipa 
 tion to come ? Hear him ! " Now, just when 
 mechanical England would have demanded our ports 
 to .be opened, she needs our corn more than cotton. 
 The scarcity of food in England and France had put 
 them on their good behaviour ; and these two an 
 tagonists, liberty and God, slavery and the devil, were 
 to fight out the matter between themselves." 
 
 Both parties, therefore, profess to hold your destinies 
 in their hands, try to prepossess you in their favour, 
 and lift up the thread and blade in turns as Ward 
 Beecher says, " to put you on your good behaviour ! " 
 
 England, therefore, say the Southerns, is bound to 
 interfere her supply of cotton, her commercial in 
 terests, her existence demands it. England dare not 
 interfere, say the Northerns, for if she do so, bread 
 riots will break out, and the people of this country 
 will be thrown into a state of starvation ! 
 
 One party says, we will compel you to break the 
 peace of nations by the " grace of cotton ! " And the 
 other says, we will compel you to keep the peace by 
 the influence of " king corn ! " According to one, the 
 British lion must wag his tail, and growl defiance to 
 the North, or he must cease to be ! According to the 
 other, if he should do so, the lion must die of hunger. 
 Either way, you have got to die. Therefore, it is not 
 so much our national existence that is imperilled 
 in America as your own ! How monstrous the de 
 lusion ! What a story to tell by a people who were 
 
CONCLUSION. 109 
 
 born to national existence with falsehood on their 
 lips, and the fruit of robbery in their hands ; and who 
 are now undergoing a severe punishment, justly due 
 for the enormous guilt of their crimes ! 
 
 What arrogancy and pride such language discovers ! 
 We are a great people ain t we ! And we can t help 
 thinking that if the interests of this country are in 
 the hands or our American people they are like the 
 interests of freedom in "villainous custody." For it 
 is impossible to "recognise in the corrupt mass of 
 American politicians, North or South, the chosen 
 instruments of the world s regeneration." 
 
 " Whilst the Hon. Gentleman," (Eoebuck), says 
 Bright, " told them that the North was overbearing, 
 he forgot to tell them that its government had hitherto 
 been administered by his friends of the South." This 
 is quite true, but not the whole truth, since that 
 administration was with the consent of the North, and 
 no truth looms up to our view more clearly or distinctly 
 in connexion with the inexorable logic of facts in our 
 American history, than this, that if our Northern 
 people had sought to embody the original charters of 
 her freedom in the spirit of impartial justice to all, 
 irrespective of colour or condition, the Union would 
 long ago have been destroyed, and slavery too. When 
 God created the world, He said, " let there be light ;" 
 but all great parties in America, both North and 
 South, have combined to put down agitation. Peace, 
 peace, shouted the President from his chair of State 
 iii the White House the governors in their annual 
 
110 CONCLUSION. 
 
 messages the judges from their benches the sena 
 tors and legislators from their places in the Halls of 
 Congress the editors from their columns in the 
 newspaper and clergymen from their pulpits ; 
 peace we have had, when there has been no peace, 
 because it has been a false peace ; the first threat 
 of agitation to let in light upon our terrible con 
 dition, used by President Lincoln only as a " catch 
 word," and not intended to be enforced by him, has 
 brought the whole frame work of the Union to the 
 ground, and laid prostrate the " Grand Republic " in 
 ruins ! How insecure were its foundations and rotten 
 its timbers, when a political mountebank brings it 
 down with a word which he utterred as a prediction, 
 and disavowed it as expressing a wish or purpose on 
 the subject of freedom or slavery ! 
 
 How true the words of Bishop M Croskey of the 
 Episcopal Church in the State of Michigan, when he 
 said, " there was less religion and more pretence in 
 the United States of America, than in any country of 
 the world professedly Christian !" 
 
 In an Egyptian legend it is said that every five 
 hundred years Phoenix comes to the altar of the sun, 
 and burns himself to ashes. On the first day after 
 this a worm springs out of the ashes on the second, 
 an unfledged bird and on the third the full-grown 
 Phoenix flies away. Out of the ashes of our revolu 
 tion we shall have not only a new nation in the shape 
 of a worm, but probably many. They may creep the first 
 day, be weak the second, but at last their free pinions will 
 
CONCLUSION. Ill 
 
 strike the air, and brood over the whole land, to be 
 claimed by each and all as the bright heritage of free 
 dom. Thus will the Phoenix of our revolution be prolific, 
 and in her pangs not only give birth to " a new and 
 better order of things," but to a higher and nobler life 
 for her progeny ! The process is trying and severe, 
 but the fiery process was necessary in order to remove 
 the " hindrances to the development of our social, 
 political and spiritual well-being." All hail, therefore, 
 to the new progeny that are to crown with freedom 
 America s destiny. worms, let us see you crawl 
 out to your new life, rise up before the nations 
 full formed and fledged, the marvel of strength 
 and beauty. Then the air will breathe peace, and 
 the different tribes of men will sing the anthem 
 of peace, and no harsh words in the hallelujah 
 chorus of peace will disturb the world s harmony 
 like those which Wendel Phillips, Esq., in his cele 
 brated Abingdon Speech, said, were uttered by the 
 Eev. Moncure D. Conway, " Let the English come on, 
 we will meet them." Neither would the hoarse voice 
 of the auctioneer be heard 
 
 " Going, going, going! 
 Who bids for the mother s care ? 
 
 Who bids for the blue-eyed girl ? 
 Her skin is fail-, and her soft brown hair 
 
 Is guiltless of a curl. 
 
 " Going, gentlemen, going! 
 The child is worth your bids, 
 
1 J 2 CONCLUSION. 
 
 There is a bargain to be gained ; 
 This tiny thing will one day bring 
 A pile of yellow gold." 
 
 All hail the blessed day of freedom. 
 
 JOSHUA R BALME. 
 
 An American Baptist Clergyman. 
 
 32 Sun Street, Liverpool, July 2, 1863. 
 
 
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