Year: 1868

THE NEW NATION.


On the evening of January 25th, 1868, Calvin
B. Mcdonald, editor of the Salem (Oregon)
american Unionist, delivered the following ad-
dress, entitled as above, before the Albany (Ore-
gon) Grant Club:


FELLow-CITIzENs Let me ask your attention
to the subject of The New Nation. By this is
meant the American Republic in its condition
after the conquest of rebellion-the glorious
country that we live in, the imperishable land of
the free. We will view it as now uprsen from
baptism of blood and communion of fire, and as
it is to be in all the future, the most stalwart
giant in the family of nations, and the chosen
abode of Universal Freedom. And know that
you will rejoice with me, that its victorious en-
sign, having been swept round and round the
fiery vortex of revolution, is again streaming
aloft in the center of the sky, never more to
droop in dependency, or fade in the furnishing
round of years.


We may refer briefly to the Old Nation, which
began when the Pilgrim Fathers stepped forth
from their illustrious ship upon the frozen verge
of a continent, to create the New Republic, and
which ceased to be when the first rebel gun had
been fred at the Star Of the Vest. The brave
old Argonauts of Plymouth, together with their
infant republic, belong to the archaeology of an
extinct and heroic age; and we shall therefore
leave them to that perpetual fame which has
been established by the eloquence and fancy of
their ilustrious sons, recorded upon the un-
changable rock that marks the place OF their de-
barkation, and upon the other enduring monu-
ments that stand along the highway of their con-
quest. But, before surrendering the venerable
Fathers to the embrace of gray antiquity, let US
acknowledge, reverently, gratefully and proudly,
that the genius of the Purtans is now supreme
ly master of the great American people. Aye
even the beautiful town of Salem, with it's snowy
cottages of domestic happiness, and clustering
belfres of civilization, sitting in the center Of
the valley, like Il silver clasp on the girdle of
Ceres, bears of the most historic names of
Puritanism and the austere divinity of her pros
perity and her glory is she who


Sat Sat on the the n mast Of Of the Ma2aoeer, ,


And as the bold barque bore inland, '''
On crag of the cliff she stood


And she heard the Pilgrims pean
Over the wild waves roll


Shout unto God Thanksgiving,


For Liberty of SOUL"


Then waving wood and heavng main


For Liberty of Soul.


And since then the voices of the Pilgrims have
been heard in the extreme South, under the
palm-trees of the Pacific Isles around the shin
ing portals of the Golden Gate, and away up
ward to the North, where the aurora borealis
reveals the sublime architecture of the frost,
and where the explorer sights by the eternal
compass of the Pole.


We have passed from the iron age of barbar-
Gus oppression to the golden period of universal
liberty. We are new nation, re-created amid
the confagration of war. The more enlightened
of our people realize and accept the new condi-
tion of things and wisely adapt themselves to
it's requirements but the others foolishly at
tempt to proceed under political situation that
is forever obsolete and non-existent. They
might well go t. war with Omnipotence,
Himself. They are like the foolish old woman
who, living upon the sea-shore, used to go out
with her broom, to sweep back the mighty tide.
They are resisting the spirit of more enlight-
ened age and if they keep in their impious
fanatcism, they will be struck down by the iron
hand of Destiny, and will be overrun and crush
ed by the sweeping train of Progress.


The late tremendous the natural per-
atty of great national crime. 1t is not possi-
BILE to violate any of Natures fundamental laws,
physical or social, without suffering the resent
ment of her majesty; and as with individuals,
so with nations. The time for the great conflict
between Freedom and Slavery, Light and Dark
ness had come, and the awful encounter had
been ordained by the majestic cabinet of events ;
and the wisdom and justice of God did not
choose to disturb the natural order Of things.
In the course of its rapid advancement, our
country had arrived at that point where a wicked
and shameful barbarity must be given up to ex-
tirpation, and SO eagerly did selfishness and av-
arice cling to it, that it had to be wrested away
by the mailed and bloody hand of War.
We had fallen behind the rest of the Christian
world, and were hanging on to an institution
which had its origin in the savage states of men,
when the captive became the slave OF his con-
oueror Our crime had become the reproach
and scorn of civilization. Christianity con-
demned it Humanity abhorred it, and at last
God himself thundered upon it with the dread
artillery of civil war. And thus, while the aw-
full guilt of the treason, rebellion and slaughter
belongs to the oppressors and blasphemers
against the God-given rights of man, the just
purpose of Heaven has been accomplished, and
| full attonement has been made to the offended
Divinity of Nature, working through her physi-
| cal, moral and political laws.


| But what an awful libaton of the warm young
blood of our country What vast hecatombs of
heroic manhood and hopeful youth were piled
round the smoking sanguinary altar How the
hoarse ravens flew in swift circles over the har-
yest-felds of death What woful lamentation
in the homes OF the people from the Saco to the
Santee, from the historic landing of Plymouth
to the lonely solitudes of Cape Disappointment
But, after all, it were better that the Carolinas
had become forest of gibbets that every rood
under the dark zone of slavery had been a rebels
sepulchre; that every lazy vulture of the South
| had sat gorged upon a traitors skelton, than
that the liberties of increasing millions should
have been forever crushed beneath the iron heel
of Despotism.


1t matters not, then, who fred the first rebel
lious gun. 1t is not material to know that Ed
ward Rufin and Stonewall Jackson and Wilkes
Booth are banqueting in hell, with vacant seats
reserved for James Buchanan and Jefferson Da-
Wis and Andrew Johnson. The war for perfect
Union and Universal freedom was inevitable,
and had to be.


And now, having advanced a little way by the
clearer light of the new creation, we look at the
deserted auction-block with horror and amaze
ment, as the old Reformers used to shudder at