Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1862-03-06

free. Let us be grateful to good Providence
which has established liberty as the rule of our
country beyond the possibility cf a relapse.
For myself, | was one who desired to post
pone or rather hoped altogether to avoid the
collision which has taken place, trusting that
society by degrees would have worked itself
clear by its own innate strength and the virtue
and the resolution Of the community. But
slavery has forced upon us the issue, and has
lifted up its hand TO strike death blow at our
existence as a people. 1t has nvowed itself
desperate and determined enemy of our nation
al life, of our unity as a republic, and hence
forward no man deserves the name OF a states
man who would consent to the introduction of
that element of weakness and division into any
new territory or the admission of another
slave State into the Union. Let us hope rah-
er that the prediction of Washington will prove
true, and that Virginia and Maryland will soon
take their places as free States by the side of
Ohio and Pennsy ylvania
CONCLUSIONS.
Finally, the people of the United States must
this day derive from the example Of Washing
ton, lesson of perseverance. We have been
forced into a strife from which there has been
no safe escape but by the manifestation Of an
immense superiority of strength. The ages
that are to come will hold "a close and severe
reckoning with the men in power to- day on the
methods which they may adopt for solving the
question before them. In the present state of
things, the wort rashness is that which Yields
to compromise from the feyerishress of i'm
patience. All the wise and good of the world
have their eyes upon u.s. All civilized nations
are waiting to see if we shall have the courage
to make it manifest that freedom is the ami
mating principle of our constitution, and the
lite of the nation. But here, too, on this day
we have only to read the counsels OF Washing
ton. When by his will he left swords to his
nephews, he wrote: "These swords are accom-
panied with the injunction not to unsheath
them for the purpose of shedding blood, ex-
cept it be for selfdefence, or in defence of their
country or its rights; and in the latter case to
keep them unsheathed, and prefer falling with
them in their hands to the REIMBURSEMENT
thereof"
The President of the United States has
charged us this day to meet and take counsel
from the Farewell Address of Washington
We charge him in return, by his oath of office,
by his pledges to the country, by the blood that
has been shed and the treasure that has been
expended-by the security of this generation,
by the hopes of the next, by his desire to stand
well with mankind and to be remembered in
honor by future generaions-to take to his
heait this injunction of Washington.
Young men of New York, suffer one word
more, before we part, in grateful memory of
the dead who have died for freedom, for us and
our posterity. Long after the voice which now
addresses you shall he silent in the grave, keep
fresh the glory of Winthrop, of Ellsworth, and
of all others who being like yourselves, in the
flush of youth, went into battle surrounded
with the halo of eternity, and gave their lives
in witness of their sincerilV The whole cOuu-