Morning journal and courier., 1883-05-31

he steamboat turned the wisdom of the |
fathers Into fooIshness. Slavery became
profitable. Cotton became king. Slavery
demanded room to spread and grow, and the
great Louisiana purchase was made.
Under skillful leadership and with the in
auence of its growing wealth and centralized
power slavery was year BY. year gaining the
ascendency. The nation slowly recovering
from the exhausting struggle of the
and busy in the Development of
its great material resources, found little time
to NEEDLE with merely abstract questions of
right and wrong. The war of 1912 tended
still further to take up its alteration. AT
length Missouri applied for admission and
after the lapse of two hundred years the
ideas of Jamestown and Plymouth met in
conflict and the nation was rocked to its pc
litical foundations by the shock of the fierce
encounter. The result was the most fatal
that can happen in such strugg1es-compro-
mise. That meant time and room for
the evil thing tosstrike its roots frmer and
deeper. The fatal principle was recognized
that slavery was mere question OF latitude,
of geographical position. Everything that
followed was possible after this, was the log
ical outcome of it. Then came the acquisi-
ton of Texas, the Mexican war, the Will
mot proviso, the compromise measures of
1850, the fugitive slave law, the Kansas-Ne-
braska struggle, the blotting out of the COM
promise line and slavery became national
of such portentous success? In q word be-
cause our fathers in the midst of material
growth and prosperity unexampled in history
forgot God and his laws and came to believe
a lie-were led to imagine that a prosperity
built up out of the unpaid toll and cruel suf-
ferings of slaves rested upon the eternal prin-
ciples of right and justice that uphold the
universe.
How else will you account for it +? Slavery
was the tssum of all viliainier," yet it
was rich, respectable, powerful. Il rested
upon principles that violated all law and
made mockery of religion; yet law sup
ported it and religion lent it the aid of its
countenance and responsibility. It doomed
millions of human beings to cruel bondage
in this life, and shut them out from the
knowledge or hope of anything better in the
life beyond. 1t had gagged the pulpit and
violated the freedom of the press and
the right of public petition, yet sub
sarvience to its demands was the one avenue
to place and power. To oppose it was to
surrender all hope of political preference.
Before its influence, patriotism, pity and all
the finer, nobler feelings and instincts of our
nature seemed to perish from out mems
hearts. Like the image of gold on the plain
of Dura, this huge iniquity set up and
all men were called upon to fall down and
worship it. And how our gifted and great
hearted in sorrow and humiliation did grovel
at its feet But in 1859 man in moral stat
ure the peer of any in his century dared to
die in defence of freedom; and
by his death on the gal
lows at Charlestown, Virginia, did more to
make the truths of the sermon on the mount
and the Declaration of Independence reali-
ties in the hearts of men than all the pulpits
and all the statesmen of his time. Brave
old John Brown Connecticut counts him not
the least among her martyrs for liberty.
When the trap fell on that December
morning twenty three years ago, slavery be-
came monstrous anachronism in the United
States. Oh,could he have looked forward a
few years and seen the true reward of all his
toll and suffering
Yet little while and this very field where
the body of the hero swings blackening be-
meath the plying heavens shall echo and re-
echo to the tramp of the marching legions,
and their song of triumph as they sweep on
ward to complete his work shall be
John Browns body lies Wondering in the grave
But his soul goes marching on
Noble old mani If stainless character, if
devotion to duty at whatever cost, if match
less bravery, if a useful life and an heroic
death in the cause of human progress, if
these ever deserve monument. then some
day not far distant Connecticut will honor her
self by erecting monument to one of the
greatest of her children, John Brown, of
Harper's Ferry.
Well, when few months later that same
arrogant power, swollen with false sense of
its own Importance, lifted, it's head against
the nations life it, was but the logical out
come of that sirrepressible conflict" that had
been raging for scores of years.
It took four years of terrible war to burn
out the results of two hundred and forty
years of folly and crime.
It cost millions of treasure and the sacri-
fee of over six hundred thousand men. It
filed the land with suffering and mourning
-
hearts. But standing to-day by the graves
of its dead this great people can say the glo-
rious result worth all the enormous price we
paid for it. We still can say as in 1865
through one of our great poets,
so, beautiful my country. ours once more,
Smoothing thy gold of undissheveled hair,
|: Ger such sweet brows as never other wore,
And letting thy pale lips
Freed from truths full eclipse
The rosy edges Of their smile lay bare,
What words divine of lover of poet
Among the nations, bright beyond compare,
What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee?
We reck not what we gave thee,
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else and we will dare.
1 am not going to picture the events of
those terrible years. I have neither the time
nor the ability for that. The brave deeds of
daring, the enthusiasm, the march, the bat
tle the victory, the defeat, all the pomp,
pride and circumstances of that great war
once a part of your life, 10! they are all
passed away, have become to all save you fos-
SLICED into history.
You shall read in a few musty pages all
that remains of some glorious day whose
hours seemed long eternity of heroic agony
and heroic endeavor. But yet when the
brave doors have been all but forgotten,
thank God, the benefcent results achieved
remain to bless the race I have set my
self a humber task. I want to talk to you
about the part your city took in that strug-
gle and as an ''outside barbarian perhaps,
I can do this more fully and freely than one
of yourselves. Let me say one word by way
of censure, if you please to call it by no harsh
a term, and extremely regret that this the
first city in our State, whose citizens both at
home and in the "high places of the field"
acted SO glorious part in that war, should
have failed to preserve in some easily Access
sible form an enduring memorial of that bit
of history, and although you, my comrades,
are about to crown long years of patient
waiting by the erection of q monument that
shall at once be an honor to the memory of
your dead braves and an ornament to your
beautiful city, still this is not enough.
want your children to the latest
times to learn by heart the story of the
humble man whom the war found in your
workshops and behind your counters, who
went from your midst at the call of duty,
and who in sad, sober earnest sought great
er work for humanity than they in their toll
and suffering ever dreamed of. This story
when rightly told will equal any ever imag-
ined by genius in behalf of chivalry.
Then in the hour of trouble and danger
our country will find in those children in
spired by that story the brave men and noble
women, who like their fathers will see to it
that the republic takes no harm.
The orator eIoquently pictured the gloom
and uncertainty of the early part of the re-
bellion. the splendid outburst of enthusi-
asm and patriotism following and illustra-
tive of New Ravens part in the struggle
spoke of one bank rendering loan of half
million dollars to the government, of Yale's
800 sons who fought for the flag, and paid a
glowing tributeto the deeds of Commodore
Foote and Alfred Fl. Terry, and continuing
said: It (the soldiers monument to be erect
ed here) will bear the names of your citi-
zens who fell wherever the blue tri-vined
standard of our gallant State foated amid the
lurid light of battle, for in nearly every
Connecticut regiment you were reps
resented 1t will tell of Cedar Mountain,
where the scholarly Blake and the gallant
Dutton of the old Fifth Connecticut fell on
the field. and where Capt. Brown, of the
Fourteenth, received his death wound. It
viii tell of James Island, where Capt. Hitch
cock, of the Seventh, was left to die alone
where his brave men were forced to leave
hir, ko1 Of Observation-Disclosures A.