Muscatine weekly journal. [volume] (Muscatine, Iowa) 185?-1890, 1860-03-16

fathers undertook great work for themselves,
for us, and for our successors-to erect free
and Federal empire, whose arches shall span
the North American continent, and refec ct the
rays of the sun throughout his whole pa 81 sage
from one to the other of the great oceans.
They erected thirteen of it's columns all at
once. These are standing now, the admiration
of mankind. Their successors added twenty
more; even we who arc here have shaped and
elevated three of that twenty, and all these
areas firm and as steadfast as the first thirteen:
and more will yet be necessary when we shall
have rested from our labors. Some among US
prefer for these columns composite material;
others the pure white marble. Our fathers
and our predecessors differed in the same way
and on the same point. What excavations
should we not all unite in pronouncing on
any statesman who heretofore, from mere
disappointment and disgust at being overruled
in his choice of materials, for any new column
then to be quarried, should have laid violent
hands on the imperfect structure, and brought
it down to the earth, there to remain a wreck,
instead of citadel of world best hopes?
THE UNION.
Iremain now in the opinion 1 have uniformly
expressed here and elsewhere, that these hasty
threats of Disunion are SO unnatural that they
| will find no hand to execute them. We are of one
| race, language, liberty, aad faith engaged, in
deed, in varied industry; but even that industry,
SO diversified, brings US into more ntmste relations
| With each other than any other people, however
homogeneous, and though living under oonsolida-
| ted Government, ever maintained. zs
He strangely, bIindy misunderstands the anat-
omy of the great system, who thinks that it q only
bonds, its strongest igaments are the writ.
ten compact or the multiplied and thoroughly
rsmii ed roads aad thoroughfares Of trades, COM
merce and social intercourse. These strong,
indeed, but its chiefest instruments Of Cohesion
those which render it inseparsble and indivisble-
the millions Of fbers of millions Of contented,
happy human hearts, binding by their affections,
their ambition and their best hopes equally the
high and the low, the rich and the poor, the wise
and the unwise, the learned and the untutored,
even the good and the bad, to aGe'ernment. the
first, the aat and the only such one that has ever
| existed, which takes equal heed always of their
| ants. their wishes and their opinions and ap-
peals to them all Individually, once in year, or
in two years, or at least in four years, for their
expressed consent and renewal, without which it
| must cease. No. 60 where you will, and to what
GLASS you may, with commissions for your fatal
service in one hand, and your bounty counted by
the hun dred or the thousand pieces of silver in the
other, thousand ressters will rise up fer every
| recruit you can engage. On the banks equally of
the st. Lawrence and the Rio Grande, on the At
iantic and the Pacific coasts, on the shores the
Gulf Of Mexico, and in the dolls of the Rocky
Noun aims, among the the fishermen Of the banks
OF Newfoundland, the weavers and spinners of
Massac husetts, the stevedores of New York, the
minera Of Pennsylvania, Pixies Peak and Calfor-
MIA, the wheat-grow Of Indians, the cotton and
the sugar planters On the Mississippi, among the
voluntary citizens from every other land not less
| than the native born, the Christian and the Jew,
among the Indians the prairies, the contsma-
cieus Mormons in the Desert, the Africans free,
the Africans in bondage, the inmates of Hospitals
and Almshouses, and even the criminals in the Pen.
itentiares, rehearse the story CT your wrengs and
their own never so eloquently and never mourn
fully, and appeal to them to rise. They will ask
you, els this all 2" ''Are you more just than
| Washington, wiser than Hamilton, more hu name
than Jefferson ?" Whatnew form Of government or Of
Union have you the power to establish or eveR the
cunning to devise, that will be more just, more
safe, more free, more gentle. more benefceat, or
more glorious than this p And by these simple
heterogeneous you will be silencsd and coun-
| founded
We are perpetually forgetting this subtle and
| complex, yet obvious and natural, mechanism Of
| our Constitution and because we do forget it. we
| are ontlnuaily wondering how it is that Con-
| federacy of 80 and more States, covering regions
so vast, and regulating interests SO various of so
many millions of men, constituted and conditioned
| so adversely, works right on. We are continually
locking to sec itstop and stand STILL and fall sud.
denly into pieces Bat, in truth, it will not stop
1t cannot stop; it was made not to stop, but to
kesp in motion-in motion always, aod without
| FORCE For my own part, this wonderful ma
| chine. when 1t had nswly come from the hands Of
It's almost divine inventors, the admiration of
my earlier years, although it was then imperfectly
| Known abroad, so now, when 1T forms the central
figure in the economy of tbs worlds civliza alton,
and the best sympathies of mankind favor its con-
| tinuanee, expect that it will stand ard work
right on until men shall fear its failure no more
! than We now apprehend that the sun will cease ia
mold Its eternal place in the heavens. 40