Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1863-08-31
MONDAY. AUGUsT 81, 1863.


he replied, my proclamation, setting free
the slaves of the rebel states, was issued near
ly a year ago!" Well said, Mr.. Lincoln
The president must keep his word. The ma
ton must keep its word. There is no going
back from our promises; too many Red sea
waves have closed behind us for that. The
Word is made flesh, and dwells among us.
1t is wonderful to note the growth of that
2 Liberty Tree on which ripened the fruit of
emancipation. 1t was from a seed cast into
the popular heart, and apparently dead, from
which came the harvest. 1t was the inarticu
late cry of great people taking words to it
self and speaking through its official head.
The roots of our institutions were whitening,
were rotting away in the foul air of cor
ruption and oppression and personal ambition,
and there came the radical cry, the cry of
the very roots themselves, for a watering with
the waters OF justice that the tree might not
perish utterly and wither away from the face
of the earth, leaving many peoples without
hope Of refuge or shelter, but might find new
vigor and new life.
Comparatively few have met the vast ice
bergs in mid ocean, fastening on their errands
OF mercy, but pen and pencil have made most
men familiar with them; the splendid things,
''wth all the adoring sympathies of shadow
and OF light" vast masses of diamonds and
emeralds, great fields where roses seem to
blossom, sharppeaks of malachite, and rolling
hills Of pearl, go floating downward, inevita-
bly, downward to the southern seas, with what
blessings of health and GOODNESS we cannot
measure. Moving against wind, against tide,
with foundations in the deep sea, they float on
the under currents of the ocean, and ''woe !''
to the ship that cannot flee out of their fateful
path.
Wind and tide seemed to be strong against
emancipation; the fiuctuating wind of public
opinion veered constantly to the south; the
tide of mems timidty, and sefshness, and
prejudice and passion, beat with wild waves
against the down floating, slow moving splen-
dor, and strove to drive it back. We heard
all the objections and the murmurs the COM
plants OF those who were out of pocket; the
curses of those who hoped to gain political
power by pandering to oppression; the sneers
of white-livered wretches who thought their
white hands maze them gentlemen, and so,
despising labor, stretched those hands forth
to the slave arstocracy, and were ashamed Of
their honest fathers and grandfathers, who
were shoemakers matters, or bakers, black
smiths, or butchers, or of some trade that gave
them an honest living by honest work, and
the murmur of hell grew loud against the
longed-for justice. But emancipation foated
on the deep under-currents of the popular
heart, which these men could not under
stand. 1t foated on the inevitable tide of pro-
gress, and our belmsman took advantage of
The right hour a,aI G----1 ~t-'P ~
state, frelghted with all our destinies, that we
might sail with it into the serene oceans of
peace.
And now there is mutiny in the ship;
there is a STIR among all the hosts of evil,
they are marshalling themselves against JUS
tice; again the murmur of hell rises against
the right; the satanic press hurls its puerile
thunders against the popular will, against the
fair, serene heaven of duty. The great anti
war, southern, copperhead party, with Sey
mour and Wood for its prophets and lead
ers, would fain bind the hands Of the Moses
of this great battle, while pretending to hold
them up; and kill the joshua that the sun
of freedom may sink rapidly to its setting,
and day be lost in the night of barbarism
and slavery. But this shall not be, the red
sea shall be safely passed, the farther shore
already opens to view, the word is ''for-
ward, forward to the promised land of free
DOM"
But when we stand again on firm ground,
when the waves of time close over the pale
corpse, dead for our deliverance; then let US
grid ourselves for forty years wandering in
the desert into which our sin has led us
forth; for so long perchance may be the day
of atonement. A whole generation must pass
before the negro race can emerge from the
degradation into which we have plunged it.
And to the men OF to-day is entrusted the task
of leading it forth to the light, slowly, pain
fully, with many backward steps, with many
murmurngs and lOngings on our part for the
old t1esh-pots of ease and indiffeIe nce Nav
God give tins generation something of His in
finite patience We must remember that this
slavery has poisoned northern hearts; that it
has instilled the prejudice of race into our
very blood; that it has stolen on, like the mi
asma that lies over the dreamy beauty of
those southern lands, floating on the spicy
breath of the jessamines, falling from out
the glorious cup of the magnolia. You can
not see that at its deadly work, the most skiliul
chemist cannot detect it in the air, but he who
slumbers in it sleeps the long sleep of death.
The disease of slavery has been all these
years eating up our national morality. What
stamina think you is left to us? 1t has been
cancer gnawing at our vitals, till the chill
of death has forced us into active treatment
Tor Its destruction. 1t is like scrofula, SOW
ing Its deadly seeds of corruption all through
our system under the smooth blooming skin
digging foul grave; lighting the eye with
the corpse-lights of the churchyard. Have
we not need then in the present critical
position of affairs, when our future HANGS an
the action of the present, when mutinor.
horde waits but presidential crisis tn on
deavor to wreck our ship of state, have wo
MT mood and is If mt time IN taLa o,r