Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-12-10
Fire Eating Preachers in the S0uih-se-
cession sermons ON ThanksaivlnE.


Fire. Eating Preachers in the sOuth-se-
cessioB Sermons on aHksaivlHE.
Rev. w. T. Leacock, of the Christ tBpis-
copal) Church, delivered lengthy sermon in
New Orleans on Thanksgiving day, and con-
cluded as follows:
In justice to myself I must be permitted
TO make a remark before close. But few
weeks ago, oounseled you, from this place,
TO avoid all precipitatc action; but, SC the
same time, to take determined actioh---s1ch
action only as you felt you could take with
the conscious support Of reason and religion.
] give that counsel still. Bat | am one of
you feel as a Southerner. Southern honor
is my honoH--Southern depreciation is my
degradation. Let no man mistake my
meaning or call my words idle. As South
erner, then, I will speak, and give it as my
firm and unhesiteting belief that nathing is
now left us but secession. do not like the
word, but it is the only one to express my
meaning. We do not secede--our enemies
seeded. We are GA the Constitution-our
enemies are not on She Constitution; aud
our language should be, if you will not go
with us, we Will not go with you. You may
form for yourselves Constitution; but we
will administer among ourselves the Con-
stitution which our fathers have left US.
This should be our language and solemn de-
termination. Such action our honor de-
mands; such action will save the Union, if
any thing can. We have yet friends left us
in the North, but they can not act for us till
we have acted for ourselves; and it would
be as pusillanimous mus to desert our friends
as to cover before our enemies To adj
vance is to secure our rights; to recede, is to
lay our fortunes, our honor, our liberty,
under the feet of our enemies. | know that
tie consequences of such course, unless
guided by discretion, are perilous. But,
peril our fortunes, peril our lives, but come
what may, let us never peril our liberty and,
our honor. l am willing, at the call Of my
honor and my liberty to die freeman; but,
I'll never, no never, live q slave; and the al
tentative now presented by our enemies is
secession or slavery, Let it be liberty or
death
Rev. 3. NJ. Palmer, of the First Presbyte-'
rian Church, in the same city, thus delivered :
himself:
The position of the South is, at this mo-
ment, sublime. If she has grace given her
to know her hour she will save herself the
the country, and theworld. It will involve,
indeed, temporary pTostration and distress;
the dykes of Holland must be cut to save
her from the troops OF Philip. But 1 warn
nay countrymen the historic moment once
passed, never returns. If she will arise in
her majesty, and speak now as with the voice
the curse that is upon her. If she succumbs
now, she transmits that curse az heirloom
| to posterity.
We may, for a. ageneration, enjoy compara-
tive ease, gather up our feet in our beds, and
die in peace; but our children will 90 forth
beggared from the homes of their fathers.
Fishermen will cast their nets where your
proud commercial navy now rides at anchor,
and dry them upon the shore now covered
with your bales of merchandise. Slapped,
| circumvented, undermined, the institutions
| of your soil win be overthrown; and, within
| five and twenty years. the history of st.
| Domingo will be the record of Louisiana.
| 1T dead mems bones can tremble, ours will
move under the muttered curses of sons and
| daughters den0uncing the blindness and
love of ease which have left them an Inherit
| ance of woe.
1 have done my duty under as deep sense
| of responsibility to God and man as | have
ever felt. Under full conviction that the
salvation of the whole country is depending
upon the action Of the South, am impelled
| to deepen the sentiment of resistance in the
| Southern mind, and to, strengthen the cur
rent now flowing toward q union of the
| South in defense Of her chartered rights, 1t
| is a duty which l shall not be recalled to re-
| peat, for such awful junotures do not occur
| twice in century.
Bright and happy days are yet before us;
and before another political earthquake
] shall shake the continent, / hope to be
"where the wicked cease from troubling and
! where the weary are at rest"
| 1t only remains to say, that whatever be
the fortunes of the South, l accept them for
my own. Born upon her soil, of father
thus born before me-from an ancestry that
| yet occupied it while yet it was part Of
| England's possessons-she is in every sense
my mother l shall die upon her bosom
she shall know no peril but it is my peril
no conflict but it is my confiict-and nj
abyss of ruin into which J shall not share
her fall. May the Lord &c ID cover her heat
in this her day of battlei