Western Reserve chronicle and weekly transcript of the times. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1854-1855, 1855-02-07
ANTI-SLAVERY LECTURE.
CONFLICT OF NORTHERN AND
SOUTHERN THEORIES OF
MAN AND SOCIETY.
BY HENRY WARD BRECHER.

BY HENRY WARD BRECHER.
The questions which have provoked
discussion among us for fifty years past
have not been questions of fundamental
principles, but of the application of prin-
ciples already ascertained. Our debates
have been between one way of doing a
thing and another way of doing it-be-
tween living well and living better; and so
through, it has been question between
good and better. We have discussed
Policies not Principles. In Europe on
the other hand, life-questions have ag-
itated men. The questions of human
rights, of the true foundations of Gov
eminent, are to-day, in Europe, where
they were with our fathers in 1880.
In this respect there is moral dignity,
and even grandeur, in the struggles, Sc
cretly or openly going on in Italy, Aus
tria, Germany, and France, which new
er can belong to the mere questions OF
mode and manner which occupy us
boundary questions, banks, tariffs, in
ternal Improvements, currency all very
necessary but secondary topics. They
touch nothing deeper than the pocket
In this respect there would be marked
contrast between the subjects which oc-
cupy US, and the grander life-themes
that dignity European thought, were it
not for one subject-.Slavery. That is
the ONLY question in our day and in our
community, full Of UitaI struggles turning
upon fundamental principles.
If Slavery were plantation question,
concerning only the master and the slave
disconnected from us, and isolated -
then, though we should regret it, and
apply moral forces for its ultimate reme-
dy, yet, it would be, { as are questions of
the same kind in India or South Amer
lea, remote, constituting a single ele-
ment in that globe of darkness of which
this world is the core, and which Chris
tianity is yet to shine through and change
to light. But it is not plantation-ques-
ton. 1t is national question. The
disputes implied by the violent relations
between the owner and the chattel may
only morally touch US. But the dis
putes between the masters and the Gov
ernment, and between the Government,
impregnated with Slavery, and the North
ern citizen, these touch US sharply, and
if not wisely met, will yet scourge us
with thornsl
The Southern League of States, have
been held together by the cohesive pow
er of Common Wrong. Their industry,
their policy, their whole interior vital
economy, have been at variance with
the apparent prin,iples of tn cir own
State Governments, and with the Ma
tional Institutions under which they exist.
They have stood upon a narrow basis,
always shaking under them, without
general wealth, without diversified in
dustry. And yet, sincethe year of 1900,
they have steadily prevailed against Rep
resentative New.England and the North.
The South, the truest representation of
Absolutism under republican forms, is
mightier in our National Councils and
Policy to-day than New-England, the
mother and representative of true re-
publicanism and the whole free North.
And now it has come to pass that, in
the good providence of COP, another op-
portunity has been presented to the whole
North to reassert her place and her
influence, and to fill the institutions OF
our country with their original and prop
er blood. l do not desire that she should
arise and put on her beautiful garments,
because she is my mother and your moth
er not because her hills were the first |
my childhood saw, that has never since
beheld any half so dear; nor from any
sordid ambition, that she should be great :
in this worlds greatness; nor from any
profane wish to abstract from the right
full place and influence of any State, or
any section of our whole country. But
think that COP sent New-England to
these shores as his own messenger of
mercy to days and ages, that have yet
far to come ere they are born She
has not yet told this Continent all that
is in her heart. She has sat down like
Pilgrim, and slept in the bow
er by the way, and where she slept she
has left her roll-GoD grant that she |
hath not lost it there while she slumberedl
By all the love that l bear to the cause
Of GoD, and the glory of his Church, by
the yearnings which have for the wei
fare of the human kind, by all the pro-
phetic expectations which | have of the
destiny of this Iland, Gods Almoner of
Liberty to the World, | desire to see Old
New England, and the
affiliated North, rouse up and 10 their
first works.
Is it my excited ear that hears an airy
phantasm whispering? or do | hear a
solemn voice crying out, " Ariss! Shine!
,hy light is come, and the glory Of tile Lord
IS arisen upon thee 20