The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-23 00:00:00

MR, SEWARD AT AUBURN.

(From. the New York Times,)

AUBURN, NEW YORK, Monday, Sept. 7.

Secretary Seward, laying aside the duties of the
State Department to attend to the higher duty that
to-morrow engeges the attention of the American
people, came home to Auburn on Saturday last to
cal/2t his vote fur Abteham Lincoln. This evening he
addressed an assemblage of the people of Auburn,
who crowded Corning -hall toover flowing to hear the
views of their illustrious townsman on the issue of
the hour. It has been Mr Seward's wont for many
years to speak in Auburn on the eve of election, and
these free, off-hand speeches to his friends and
neighbours have frequently been found to convey
matters of world-wide importance. The impressive
event in our national history on the very eve of
which the address was delivered gave even more
than wonted importance to the declarations of the
Secretary. It need hardly be added that speaking
to an audience of neighbours and friends, among
whom Mr. Seward has for many years lived, and
with whom acquaintance has ripened into love, he
was heard and followed with rapt attention and
rapturous applause.

Fellow Citizens,—Of course you understand that
I have come to vote. (Cheers and cries of " That's
what we want now.") To vote here for the tenth
time in ten out of the nineteen Presidential elec.
Lions which the people of the United States have
enjoyed. (Applause.) A change or succession in the
executive power of a nation is always vital, sad that
change in our country constitutes a perpetually re.
curring crisis. The elector is mortal. I have come
home to exercise my suffrage as heretofore with the
conviction—which I suppose you all entertain for
yourselves—that this may be my last time. (Cries
of " We hope not," and cheers.) Nations, though
usually leng.lived, are nevertheless mortal. Our
own Republic is now, confessedly, struggling for
life. This therefore may be our last Presidential
election. (Cries of "Not if our votes and arms can
save it," and cheers.) We are only tenants here.
Let us so cast our votes that it the Republic must
perish we shall be able to say that we are innocent.
(Cheers,) That if the Republic must perish we
shall yet be able to say that we have the conscious-
ness of having practised the heroic virtue which is
the duty of the citizen—(applause)—that if the Re.
public must perish we shall be able to say that
our recorded protest will appear conspicuously
above the ruins (cheers), inviting mankind to new
and holier efforts to redeem the cause of freedom
and humanity. (Cheers.) I should be recreant if
I did not confess that I see no hope of safety for the
Union if the people tomorrow should give it over
in trust to the opponents of the present Administra-
tion. (Cries of " We won't do that.") But I do
not forget what I say on the night before the elec.
tion will be heard on the morning after the election,
however it might result; therefore, let no man ex-
pect to hear after an adverse result that I am
despairing, or even despondent. (Cheers.) If
the Opposition prevail, I do not now know, in.
deed, the fountain from which streams of hope can
flow in that disastrous event; but I do know that
God has a thousand ways in saving nations, even
in their extremest peril. (Cheers.) I do know
that nations are born to live, although they
must eventually die ; and I do know that as
my voice in the dark hours of 1861 rang
throughthe world, giving reassurance to the friends
of human progress, so, if utterance shall be left to
me, it will proclaim with even greater earnestness
and energy that this Republic is not altogether lost.
(Vehement applause.) And as I speak, so in that
fearful crisis I trust I shall be able to act. (Cries of
" That's you," and cheers.) But, fellow-citizens, our
thoughts to-night must be concentrated upon the
crisis as it is. Dangers surround us. The civil war
confronts us in the rebel States. Foreign wars loom
over us. On all our coasts and all our borders the
fires of faction send up sulphurous smoke under our
feet. (A Voice—" Yes. Seymour and his friends.")
It would be absurd to say the country is not in a
strait. Only two courses are open before us—the
one is perseverance in our war to suppress the re-
hellion ; the other is abandonment of those efforts.
(Cries of " We'll never abandon them," and cheers.)
hazards attend each ccurse. Are not hazards al ways
Incident to human policy and human effort ? For my.
self, after examination and consideration, I have
elms to the conclusion that the lesser hazard is found
in the line of perseverance. And, indeed, that is the
only course that affirds assurance of national in.
tegrity, which I need not say is identical with na-
tional independence. (Vociferous cheers.) You have
already testified this is your conviction. (Cheers,
and cries of " We'll do it again tomorrow.") It
remains, then, only for us to reassure each other to-
night, so that we may advance to the polls with
decision, energy, and confidence to. morrow. You
have been surprised by the discovery of treason
lurking throughout the Free States, and even in
secret haunts in our own neighbourhood. You are
astonished at the discovery of a conspiracy of 30,000
men clandestinely armed against the Government
in the Weatern loyal States. You are thunderstruck
with the revelation of concert between Chicago, Lon-
don, and Richmond. (Groans for Northern traitors.)
You are amazed that traitors in Sandusky, invited
by signal lights,attempt murders and robberies from
Canada, and seize a ship of war on Lake Erie, and
deliver the rebel prisoners on Johnson's Island.
(Cries of " They'll need another Perry.") (Cheers.)
You are amazed that domestic traitors prepared the
way for invaders from Canada to rob and murder
the inhabitants of St. Albans. (Groans.) And you
are still more amazed that after all these discoveries
a large class of our own citizens, with alternate ob.
etinacy and levity, still hesitate to give a full and
unreserved support to the military arm of the Go.
vestment. (Cries of " Shame !")
.Let me tell you,
ho ivever, that all this surprise and astonishment is
unreasonable. What we see belongs to the natural
course of events in war, especially in civil war, The
Government must suppress rebellion with all the
agencies of civil and military power. The perform.
ance of that duty stirs up discontent, opposition, re-
sistance. Opposition rises high as Government be-
comes energetic, and opposition thus exalted becomes
faction. Faction in civil war is unmitigated treason.
(Cheers, and cries of " We'll crush it out, or we'll
crush out the traitors l") Every country that has
existed, especially every free country, has passed
through the fiery furnace of civil war. Spanish
America, with all its free States, France, England,
Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland—indeed, civil
war is chronic, and domestic harmony an abnormal
condition in most of those States. No Government
in any of those countries ever was less embarrassed
in civil war by faction than the Government of the
United States during the last three and a half years.
None of those Governments at that same time ever
dealt with domestic faction with so much modera-
tion and humanity as this Government has practised
towards citizens who have aided and abetted, fed
and warmed, clothed and armed its open and de-
fiant enemies. (Cries of " That's so; better if they
had hung Vallandigham and the rest of them," and
cheers.) Not one head has fallen on the judicial
block. Nor need you be alarmed at these demon-
strations of faction. The people of the United
States have had a Christian education, a political
education, a moral 'education, such as Providence
has never before vouchsafed to any nation; and
great as the forces and facilities of faction are, the
repressive and loyal forces possessed by this people
are magnified and multiplied in proportion.
(Cheers.) Yen have been surprised and alarmed
by the discovery of meditated frauds upon the bal-
lot-boxes—(groans for Seymour and his agents)—.
frauds more fraudulent in conception, more wicked
in design than we have before encountered,
(Cheers.) Do not be disheartened, however, by this
discovery; ; still, I say, fraud and treachery, like fac-
tion, are incident to civil war. Bold and inventive
as these fraudulent conspirators are, the nation has
an intellectual education and a moral conscienee
which enable it to detect and baffle them ; and, hap.
pily, the power to suppress insurrection arms the
Government with the means to bring them promptly
to condign punishment. (Cheers.) What remains
for me to say is to warn you against misrepresen-
tations of the issue. There is no question before
you of abandoning the war measures against
slavery and substituting for them a policy of con-
servation or concession to slavery. (Cheers.) Those
measures are a part of the war. (Cheers.) It is ,

) for the nation in a state of war, and not for the
nation in a future state of peace, that the Govern-
ment is acting, and of course that we a'e voting.
(Applause.) There is no question be you of
changing the object of the war fro .0 :1 e mainte-
nance of the Union to that of abol se-ng slavery.
Slavery is the mainspring of the rebellion. The
Government necessarily strikes it in the very
centre as well asupon every inch of its soil. (Cheers,
and cries of "It's dying out.") In my pour judge
ment the mainspring is already broken, and let the
war end when it will and as it may the fear that
that mainspring will recover its elasticity may give
us at present no uneasiness. (Cheers.) Before
the war slavery had the patronage and countenance
of the United States against the whole world. Its
inherent error, guilt, and danger are now as fully
revealed to the people of the United States as they
have heretofore been to the outside world. Before
the calamitous war in which slavery has plunged
the country shall end it will be even more hateful
to the American people than it already is to
the rest of mankind, while their condemnation of it
will remain unchanged. (Applause.) The Opposi-
tion will not succeed in misleading you, I am sure,
by telling yon that you have a question of imme-
diate peace or war involved in the present issue.
War, and not peace, you have. Already, God
knows, that it is severe and painful enough. If I
could think of taxes iu the face of national death,
I should say that our taxes are heavy enough. If
I could think of personal interests, affections, or
sympathies in the face of an insolent public enemy
in arms, I should say that men enough have been
maimed and slain. But when weshall have said all
these things the actual situation of the country will
still be before us unchanged. It is a state of civil
war and not of peace. (Cheers.) Persons ask me
on every hand, "Is the war to last for ever ? '
" How Yong is the war to last?" I answer, the
war will not last for ever, but it must continue until
we give up the conflict or the enemy give up the
conflict. (Cries of "That's the talk," and cheers.)
Are you prepared to give up the conflict ? (Cries
of No, never I) You say, No, never. Why ? Be.
cause in that case you give up the national life.
(Cheers.) In any and every event the nation must
live ; if you were to give up the national life you
enter in the state of national death. What that
state is, God be thanked, we do not certainly know.
He has mercifully withheld that terrible knowledge
from our keenest search and speculation. Bat we
do know that national death usually consists of
stages. The first is domestic civil war—a civil war
brought home to our own cities, to our own altars,
to our own firesides. We know by the experience
of other countries that, with occasional respites re-
sulting from exhaustion, this aggravated form of
civil war continues until a military despot is wel-
comed to arrest the effusion of blood, to restore tran-
quility and quiet, with the loss of civil, and if need
be, religious liberty. (Cheers.) This is the ter-
rible condition into which you rush to escape
from present civil war. Every one of the sup.
porters of the Administration knows this as well
as I do, and sees it as clearly. In view of calf'.
mities so far transcending those we are now suffer-
ing, of course the Government will not abandon the
conflict until the majority of the people decide that
it shall be abandoned. (Applause, and cries of
"That will never be.") On the other hand, the enemy
will abandon their rebellion just as soon as they
shall have the undoubted assurance that it cannot
prevail. (Cheers.) They will do so for two reasons
—first, no faction can indefinitely:continue a strug.
gle that is hopeless ; secondly, because they give
up no national life, but they, as well as we, save
their own national existence by their defeat and
overthrow (cries of " That's so."), ;and a better nee
tional existence than in their maddest hours of de.
lusion they have ever conceived as the result of their
unlawful enterprise. (Cheers.) Suppose, then, that
the people, as we all agree they will, support the
Administration by their suffrage to-morrow. The
rebels then have the assurance of the American
people, made upon a full rehearsing of the merits of
the controversy, upon appeal and full examination
of results thus far obtained, with the relative forces
of the parties yet remaining in reserve, that the
conthet is not to be abandoned on our part. ("Tre-
mendous cheers.) In all our athletic games, three
times success in five trials gives the victory—two
decisions following each other is t qual to three in
five. You have already abundant evidences of the
exhaustion of the rebels, but net evidence of their
consciousness of that Exhaustion. Those evidences
will appear immediately on the announcement of
the re-election of Abraham Lincoln. (Cheers.) You
would have had those evidences earlier if you had
rendered this verdict sooner. You will have them
all the sooner after the verdict in proportion to the
unanimity and determination with which it is
epoken. (Loud cheers,) The messengers who came
hither from the rebel regions will be different from
those who are now lingering and loitering on the
Canada shores, to aid the Execution of the plot con-
ceived egainst you at Chicago. (Cheers.) The mes-
sengers who came will come, not as those last men-
tioned, with commissions addressed to the pusil-
lanimous and factious minority of the North, but
they will come addressed to Abraham Lincoln, the
honoured father of the American nation. (Great apa
plause, and "Three cheers for ' Old Abe.") Their message
will not be conceived in the insolent words, "Your war for
the Union has failed ; desist from arms, and give us, through
negotiation, separate independence." But it will be " Father
Abraham, we have sinned before God and against our
brethren. We repent our error; we disavow and offer up
the traitors who have led us into crime. Extend your pro-
tection over us, and give us once more peace and communion
with you at our altars sad our firesides." (Prolonged and
vehement cheers.) This is the way in which I think the
war is to end. I know that in that way it will end scon. I
know it because few civil wars in which a strong Govern-
ment and people defend themselves with unanimity last so
long as four years ; and it is certain that we are three years
and a half nearer the end of this conflict, if so maintained
than we were when we began. (Cheers) Now, let us take
the other view. Suppose we seek peace under the Council
of Chicago—whether according to the naked and detestable
text of the resolutions, or as evasively interpreted and
glossed by the candidate who stands upon that platform.
(Laughter, and cries of " It's too shaky. He can't stand on
it.") It is to beck peace by conciliating the rebels, and sub-
stituting diplomacy or the arts of statesmanship for the
vigour of war. (A. Voice—" Little Mac for Grant 1" and
laughter.) Adopt that policy, and distraction instantly
seizes the North—courage and new resolution inspire the
South ; your soldiers betrayed at home, either fall in despair
in their trenches, or what would be worse, recoil before the
enemy advancing upon Washington and Cincinnati. Those
persons are mistaken who say that Davis would not nego-
tiate and that he would not grant us an armistice. He
would grant us both at once, and grant them, too, with a
view to an ultimate convention. He can afford to be
very accommodating to a cowardly antagonist, He can
afford to temporise as long as you please. But like any
other belligerent, he will grant you armistice and negotiation
for his own advantage, not for yours; and he will negotiate
not for Union, but for dissolution. I do not argue this
point. Any candid, thoughtful man, of whatever party,
must admit that this view of what the rebels will do is pos-
sible. Most persons will concede that it is eminently pro-
bable. Then I say in regard to the Chicago proposition,
with the King in "Hamlet" :
" Let's further think of this;
Wei 2,11, what convenience, both of time and means,
May fit us to our shape : if this should fail,
And that our drift look through our bad performance,
'Twere better not essayed; therefore this project
Should have a back, or second, that might hold,
If this should blast in proof."
Alas! since this Chicago plan must fail, it has no back or
second. (Cheers and laughter.) When negotiation and all
the arts of statesmanship are exhausted, the navy would be
scattered, withdrawn from the blockade, and the armies
dispersed in their homes, the treasury empty, the national
credit sunk, France and Great Britain will have recognised
the rebels, and even our steadfast friend, the Emperor of
Russia—(cheers)—together with the Sultan of Turkey, the
Pasha of Egypt, and the Emperor of China, will have given
over with pain and mortification the friendly nation that
in a pusillanimous hour delivered itself to self-destruction.
(Cheers.) Fellow-citizens, you are all free and independent
as I am, and you may and must decide the question for j
yourselves. I cannot decide it for you, nor shall you de-
cide it for me. I am not going to surrender to the rebels.
(Cheers.) No I though they extend the desolation of civil
war over the whole land—though they come backed in their ,
unholy quarrel by one of many foreign States. I am not
(Cheers.) t mn of
gnooinegestaoas.urrender now. Therefore I want no armistice,
arms.ant
hwe
ri with
‘‘tt rebels b e
lookedls i in '
before I leaped;" If I could have been ready to surrender
now I should have proposed surrender atthe
..beginning. I
should have accepted terms witbo t waiting for Bull Run—
certainly after Bull Run, I avouldult
first gleam of victory to secure terms
svae availed myself. of the
littleth humiliating as
possible. I should have negotiated after
Orleans, after Murfreesborough, altar
Norfolk,
ercfsaguref of New
An-
tietam, after Vicksburg, after Gettysburg—I ,wasuter
ld have
gone under the pressure of national afilietion, and made

every ee'eat a claim to rebel sympathy and clemency. After
the first Bull Run battle, after the second Bull Run battle,
after Gaines's Mill, after Fredericksburg, after Chancellors-
ville, after the defeat of Banks on the Red River. I am
not going to surrender, now nor never. (Loud cheers.) As
for the arts of statesmanship, I know of none applicable in
this case. The only art of statesmanship that Ido know is
to be faithful to my God and to my country. (Applause.)
I seek to cultivate:charity and prevent war, civil or foreign,
so long as consistent with national justice and honour and
safety it can be prevented ; but when in war to fight with
courage, constancy, and resolution, and thus to save my
country or fall with its defenders. (Tremendous cheers.)
The battle thus waged in this case cannot fail. Even if it
could fail, the field which was lost would for ever be a holy
sepulchre, which would send up through all coming time
inspiration to reanimate and cheer on the friends of pro-
gress, of liberty, of humanity. (Applause.)