Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1867-02-14
a PROPHECY OF RETRIBUTEON
GLOOMY REFLECTIONS.

Il ~AaSSNA MI In AASANeaa
The venerable Nathan Lord, D. D., for Q
third Of a century President of Dartmouth
College, New Hampshire, amid all the
political infatuation and religious fanati-
cism that has surrounded him, and that
compelled him finally to surrender the
position he had so long adorned, adheres
steadfastly to the principles and opinions
that he espoused before the insanity that
now prevails in his section of the country
had become general. The Charleston
Mercury publishes portion of private
letter written by him last month 10 one of
his former pupils, extracts from which we
subioin:
81 do not justify, in point of Christian
principle or common prudence, the methods
by which you sought redress of the wrongs
you have, for more than a generation, re-
ceived from the North. But more blame
ourselves, first, for our denunciation of
slavery itself, in distinction from its abuses,
and then for our "iTepressible conflict"
with it, undertaken npon false moral and
political grounds, aud carried on, hatefully,
as il has been, after a Mahometan fashion
Were the institution nahum an S. and not
Some times a conservative necessity for all
the parties, our method OF overcoming it
has been, from first to last, unworthy of
Christian people. We have done the work.
We have given You dreadful punishment.
But, rs We have done it in unrighteous-
ness, oar retributiOn, some time, somehow,
will come, perhaps to a general dissolution.
yet | dare not speculate about the fu-
ture. | fold my hands, and wait
upon the providence Of God But in the
general and in the long run l see no good
before us. Judgment will come.
81 think thus the rather because seem
to see an approaching catastrophe of all
the nations. The world has grown old in
transgression. From Fast to West the ex-
pertinent of reforming and saving it has
been tried in vain We are the western
most and last; and now that Christianized,
Angto-SaNon republican wisdom has failed,
instead of calling on God for help, we are
calling upon the negro. We look to a
bruuiied, shiflless and liceRtious people to
aid rs in the work of self-government,
which has been impossibleto ourselves, and
which | now believe is impossible on earth.
The demonstration seems now almost
that man can neither govern nor
be governed, nor govern himself. and that
the last failure will somehow prove the
greatest of all. The volcanic throes of the
nations to overtum arbitrary power will
be ultimately Successful Then "liberty,
equality and fraternity" will have ts short
day; and when its Babel seems to be com
pleted, the dream Of earth will vanish.
Here all such prophecying is in vain. | |
find myself almost alone. | sometimes
imagine that I could do more among your |
people, and even among the outcast, suffer |
ing and perishing negroes, than among the |
who have given them a |
boon which they know not how to use, and |
which these boosters never would have |
given them, but 20 make them subzervient |
10 their fanatical enterprises or their lust Of |
power. But my day is past. What can |
one at three score and fifteen do but to re- |
pose, and pirate, and LAMENT |