May 4, 1863 — Academy of Music, Philadelphia PA

Said John Keats, in his wonderful poem, “Endymion,” “There is not a more unfortunate end than a failure in a great cause.”

There could scarcely be any stronger proof of the truth of this sentence than is furnished in the gloom falling over this audience and filling every heard with sorrow at the supposition of a failure in the object in which we to-day are engaged. Consider the magnitude of the issue at stake, the extent of the territory endangered. Armies marching and countermarching have left their long trail of blood and flame in graves and trenches filled with the best blood of our land. Mr. Secretary chase said the country is involve din a struggle for national existence It is something more than that. It is something more than a fight for a flag; more than a battle for the Union, simply: more than a contest for subjugation and overthrow. The contest to-day is between intelligence and ignorance; between the nicety and refinement of civilization and the coarseness and uncouthness of barbarism; between aristocracy and democracy; in a word, between liberty and slavery.

Different reasons may be given, different causes assigned by many of the Northern traitors, infinitely meaner than say engaged against us on the battle-field, for they meanly stay at home to stop the Government in its objects. Different reason may be given by these men who are engaged in battle array against the Government, in the South openly engaged in the perils of the field, defending the cause of slavery; but they are fighting for it and staying at home. Slavery is the real cause of the rebellion. Read the record of our history, and we see from the beginning of our Declaration of Independence, how South Carolina, which, with Georgia and Mississippi, compose the main strength of the present Confederacy, demanded that the clause in that document, censuring the mother country from the introduction of slavery, should be stricken out. It was stricken out. How new territory brought into the United States had new States carved out of it, to be made slave Slates in the United States. How we had the Florida war, and the passage of the Missouri Compromise, and the annexation of Texas as a Slave State.

We had the Southern members refusing the entrance of California as a Free State, until nearly all the territory derived from Mexico was turned over to them. Then later we had the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and then when they had gained all that could be gained by compromise, and had established their slave power in the South, and had gained a foothold in the North, did they cease to compromise? They had gained every compromise in favor of slavery; and, what was more important, they had gained time to establish slavocratic ideas in the North; not only in the large cities, but among men who breathed the free air of the mountains of New England, and the various material interests of the North that it was to their advantage to sustain and uphold the South. Secure in this, it tore off line after line of the great charter of freedom, and at last it stood triumphant with its President elected, with the Administration in power sworn to support and sustain African bondage in our midst. When JAMES BUCHANAN was inaugurated, we inaugurated the darkest days of the Republic, darker than even now; for the nation’s honor seemed to be going down to the grave; but now, even in  the carnage and glare of battle, we see it, though pale and wan, perhaps, yet transfigured with the new light of resurrection.

When the found that they had gained all that they could gain by compromise, and that the sentiment of the Northern people had turned against them, they scattered the navy, divided the army, stole the money, and began a war. They had preached disunion in the South for years. Gov. WISE had said in 1856, that if the Republican candidate was elected he would seize the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal and precipitate the South into a war. They proclaimed it in ’59, ’60 and ’61, and when the decision of the Northern people was given against them they brought on the war. Having carried it out and protracted this struggle, there has been a sentiment built up in the North, in the months that have passed, that would stand as a living barrier between them and the spread of the slave power that, having begun a war for slavery, the North would not stop the war nor favor the cause of the war, but would crush them both.

How stand we? We have gained victories! True, we have won battles and carried out campaigns, in some instances at least, to a successful closing: but the simple fact stands on record that we in the North have been overrun with traitors and Rebels who have stood up through the whole length and breadth of the land, giving open aid and encouragement to treason, literally stopping the way of the Government and the Administration, and we have not had power to crash them. These men talk about the legality and unconstitutionality fo the blundering and all that sort of thing of the President, this Administration, and the cabinet. Why, toe hear these men talk one would suppose it was the President, his Cabinet and Administration — in a word, that it was the North — that has begun the war, and the South stood on the side of the Union battling for liberty against the President and his party! Will they remember the single fact that it was that southern despotism that was in power when the Democratic party was at the head of the Government, under the lead of a man from Pennsylvania, who disgraces his native state by living in it? That it was this Democratic party that looked tamely on while Rebellion was festering in the land, and saw Rebel hands seize the property, and heard Rebel cannon sounding against the United States forts, without stretching out a hand in defense of the Nation’s imperiled life?

That same party who talks of expense, expended $32,000,000 of the public money to acquire territory for the South to spread slavery in, and left the nation $70,000,000 in debt. Do they remember there is not a Republican in the land who, as a man, does not enter into the spirit of the the government of the war? And will they remember the other fact, that every Rebel cannon that has been pointed, and every Rebel rifle fired, and every Rebel sword and bayonet driven home, has been by men who, two years before, voted the Breckinridge ticket.

Whenever the soldier voted ninety-nine-one-hundredths of them voted on the side of the Union, the Administration and the Government. The speaker said they charged in Connecticut, when she was there, that the Republicans brought home soldiers to vote, and the Democrats could not get home. She accounted for it by the fact that there were so few to get home. Out of those few, three-fifths of them, at least, were on the side of the Government, and the other two-fifths did not need to be brought home, for they had already deserted and ran away before.

They cry about blundering, but do they remember the men they gave us. Of a PATTERSON who allowed the armies of the North to be routed at Bull Run. Of men who sat down two months before Corinth and allowed BEAUREGARD to escape from him and get to Richmond. Of FRANKLIN who never went where he was sent, and always rand to the rear when he heard the sound of the enemy’s cannon. Finally they have us a man, who, if he is not a traitor, is unfortunate in his selection of friends, who waited month after month, with the country looking on in concern, while his army was dying at the rate of four thousand men a month from disease alone, and at last, when the feeling of the country drove him down to Manassas, at the close of the campaign, he found it defended by empty intrenchments with wooden guns. (Derisive laughter, long and continued cheering. Here an individual in the rear of the Academy proposed a cheer for MCCLELLAN, which was received by loud cries of “put him out,” “out with him.”)

MISS DICKINSON stepped to the front of the platform and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, where is to be but one speech here to-night and that is from the platform.”

That man has simply proven his right to be the partner of the man who left his active operations in the field to be carried about by traitors in the North; who, choosing his own path in the Peninsula, in opposition to the plans of the President and the Secretary of War, and his Division commanders — (Here the interruption in the rear of the building grew still greater) — who, after taking his own plans, telegraphed back to Washington for a map of the peninsula, to know what route he should take, and which way he was going. On reaching Yorktown, with 80,000 men, he sat down, week after week, to do what? To attack? Not al all. To settle down, rooted in the mud. Then at the close of six weeks he sent a dispatch to Washington, saying that Yorktown was being evacuated. The enemy were retreating in confusion, and he was about driving them to the wall.

Me marched his army of twenty thousand men into Yorktown, to find it garrisoned by just one single black man. The terrible battle of Williamsburg, which HOOKER and HEINTELMAN fought, which MCCLELLAN, with a reserve of thirty thousand, was but a short distance in the rear, followed. A battle, in which he overlooked those gallant soldiers, and gave all the credit of the victory to his brother-in-law, HANCOCK, who came on the ground just as the battle closed. Then this General sat down listless and idle, until his men died by thousands and tens of thousands, until forty thousand of them were sick, and the camp became one vast hospital. Then followed the disaster in front of Richmond, and he telegraphed for seventy thousand men to increase his armies, and he was removed, and POPE sent to save the army.

What then did he do? Why he gave a new name to a shameful defeat and disgraceful disaster, and called it a change of base of operations. He wone a victory at Antietam, says the sympathizers. Did he? The Southern armies moved twenty miles a day, half fed, half clothed, half clothed as they were, and our armies, splendidly as they were armed, and fed, and clothed, moved just forty miles in seven days. But it was a victory at last, says the traitor. Yet it was a victory, the first and only victory for the Army of the Potomac. A victory won by whom? By BURNSIDE and HOOKER while this man was sitting down, four miles off, with thirty thousand reserves, which he refused to send forward to HOOKER’S assistance. Now he has left the scenes of battle for the company of New York traitors, and spends his time dining and feasting. [She was glad to repeat what she had repeated in New York, that] he was forced to seek a home in that city, for he was too mean for Philadelphia.

When the sympathizers talk of blunderings would it not be well to think of the names the Republicans gave to the war — GREBLE, WINTHROP and ELLSWORTH — of that figure cast in blood against Ball’s Bluff — BAKER, a living monument for all coming time. Of SAXTON and HUNTER, and of the name carried up from the muster roll of the army on earth, to be stamped in characters of light in glory above — MITCHEL; of the Union General from over the sea — SIGEL: and that man who, taking command of the Army in the West, with such feeble military resources, and who was on the point of decisive victory when removed, the man that dared to pronounce in Missouri what the Administration were compelled to do at Washington; who dared to take Liberty s his watch-word and Freedom and Truth as his battle shout; who dared to come out for truth, regardless of this world’s expediency, and hurl a thunderbolt against the foe — the man worthy of his name — a very mountain of freedom — FREMONT.

Would it now be well for them to remember this contrast, and to remember in the East with Democratic Generals we had an unbroken series of disasters, and in the West, where opposition leaders commanded, there was one succession of victory. They had other Generals. Will they call them their representatives. Will they claim the man who said the Rebellion must be crushed, the Douglas Democrat, BURNSIDE? Will they claim the man who said that the Rebellion could not e crushed until the cause, slavery, is removed? No one will disgrace his name by stamping his seal and writing under it BENJAMIN F. BUTLER, to-night. Well, they have [?] of which they complain, the restrictions on free speech and free press.

The simple fact that these men stand up and vent their utterances, is a sufficient refutation of these charges. Have we a Rebellion to-day, or have we not? Are there not men in the North who furnish arms and means to the South, and has the President a right nor not to silence them? These men have no word to say about justice, but justice to Rebels, which would be crowning and throning them. They say nothing of rights but the right of traitors. Every Rebel, indeed, has his right; every man who ahs raised a rifle, or pointed a cannon against the Union, has a Constitutional right to a hater. They complain of the use of the negro; they who will rebel against Union and Constitutional liberty, must expect the slaves will learn the same lesson.

These same men who cry out against the use of the blacks, proclaim for a peace. In New Hampshire they declared for compromise, and in New York the Legislature was besieged by an armed mobs to bring about resolutions favoring peace. IN Harrisburg, on the ejection of a United States Senator, the question narrowed down to the issue between loyalty and money and muscle, and the money and muscle had it; and New Jersey, mean, contemptible, cringing New Jersey, elected MR. WALL to represent her in the United States Sente, a man who never learned how to represent by his four months incarceration in the walls of Fort Lafayette. They tried to carry out the great Western status from the Union, and then these same sympathizers wanted to carry out a little plan of leaving New England out in the cold. A nice little arrangement.

Why New England, gallant liberty-loving New England, with her great heart beating under the granite ribs, would be strong enough to grind them to powder if they attempted to carry out the original plan. In last fall, when the North sat down in sorrow, when the land seemed to be lost in treason, glom was written each face. But from New England the light gleamed. New Hampshire spoke first, Rhode Island answered, and Connecticut sprang into line and the old flag shaken out; [?] and the whole North will follow New England this autumn to victory.  They remember what Mr. IVERSON said, the Confederacy cannot exist without slavery, and strange is it if slavery I the corner stone of Rebellion that they will not remove the corner stone and let the whole edifice topple about their ears.

They say the soldiers will not fight in company with the black men. The soldiers are loyal, and will do anything the Government asks them to do for the country, the Union and the flag. Whey should 200,000 white men go down to their graves in blood, and not have 200,000 black shields put in front of them? Will these men remember that wherever Rebel foes are arrayed against the Union to-night black men and found? In the fortifications around Savannah six thousand black men are found. And will they, too, remember that God. Who put down this poor, down-trodden black race on the one side, and their Anglo-Saxon maser on the other, will, if their freedom is not worked out under white officers, accomplish it by insurrection under their own? [She affirmed that] ABRAHAM LINCOLN and the North were but simply working out God’s plan, and it would be well for all the sympathizers with rebellion to understand that, in opposing the warrior liberty, they were simply striking their puny fists in the face of God Almighty.

They speak of the inhumanity of enlisting negroes. Can anything be more inhuman that the treatment of Union wounded soldiers by Rebels? And when you read the record of the war, crowded as it is with barbarism and atrocities which make the cheek of Christianity grow pale, and you ask, Am I in favor of a slave insurrection; I say, yes! When we are fighting the devil I am glad to hear that a resurrection has broken out in hell. And these slave masters when they, under the lead of the Democratic party, violence and mobs spirit rules, we had, in the National Congress, our Representatives and Senators from the North dishonoring their manhood, going down under the feet of the slave power, had the benches and desks there crimsoned with the blood of the bravest and truest soul, who ever let God’s truth grace his lips.

We have had the brother of the man who was murdered thirty years ago in the Wes for the cause of truth a justice; we had that man stand in the House of Representatives, with his life threatened every day while there, because he dared to stand up and proclaim that slavery, that had killed his brother, was the murdered of the nation’s life.

The Southern people have asserted that they will have no compromise. Will we have separation? Deo we recognize what it would bring upon us? Have we drawn the boundary lines? Then, if we cannot have compromise, and cannot have separation, what is left but subjugation and fighting of this thing out to the bitter end? The trust of the nation is in the God of Battles. HOOKER is across, and the end is nigh. Over the [?] to night come message of a glorious victory. We will triumph and be triumphant forever in the overthrow of the Rebellion and its cause together.

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 5, 1863, p. 8