Year: 1862

Cooper Institute, New York. on the evenin:
OF May 18th, to hear Parson Browulow On III


lrreligious Character of the Rebellion. Th


lecture was given before the Young Men
! Christian Association. The Rev. DR.. Hitch
cock presided.


+ Parson Brownlow was received with repeat
ed rounds Of applause. He said that be shoul,
be briefeT than usual of necessity He would
as on all other occasions, make no effort a
display but state facts of which he had per
sonal knowledge, trying to avoid a repetition
OF the speech he delivered at the Academy o
Music on Thursday. For in all his addresses
while he took care to speak to the audience
before him, he spoke also so that when report
ed his friends and enemies iu Dixie should sci
and know that he said nothing against rebel
lion in the North, which he would not say
and had not said, away down in Dixie HI
would say nothing here that be would not say
10 the vilest secessionist which God in bis
providence, his mysterious providence, permit
ted 10 live. Laughter and applause.l He
intended 10 go back among them and take
thousands of copies of his book, and they
should read it, and tremble in their boots as
they read. In presenting a view of their ir-
religion, he would not look al ii through pair
Of jaundiced spectacles, else he should present
a Cotton Minerva. sprung from the brain of
the boastful Jupiter Of the South. Whenever
they looked at anything North they did it
with cotton stalk telescope They had made
IN the South this institution of slavery the oc
casion Of bringing about all this fuss ard all
this devitry. They had done so al the South
He said We of the South he was prepared
to say that they were to blame for the revolu-
ton. A fuss they wanted and fuss they
would have, and he hoped in Gods name they
would have fuss to their hearts content be
fore they got through. While they were all
anxiously watching at the sitting and failure
of the Peace Congress at Washington, did
they not remember dispatch from Pryor,
saying, 3" We can get the Crittenden Com





promise" Judge Douglas overheard Mason
say the same thing. Fourteen Southern Sen
ators, representing seven cotton States took
solemn oaths on the Holy Evangels that they
would support the Constitution of the United
States. During the day these men went thro'
the forms of that support, and at night they
70
Infamous villains ought to have their tongues
cut out by the roots, and be hung on a gallows
as high as Haman. This rebellon-where, in
Gods name, should he begin with its irreli-
gion? Laughter. 1t began with perjury
and stealing. They were going down South
the way Ward's ducks went in the olden time
-hellward. The Unionists would not hear
the secessionists preach or pray, and the seces-
sionists would not hear what they called
Union shrieker preach and pray. The tests
for preaching the Gospel down South we're
Can you lie without any conscientious scru-
pies? Can you drink mean whisky by the
quart? Can YOU boast Of your ability to lead
men on TO victory IN the rebel army? Many
of bis audience were no doubt Episcopalians.
One of their Episcopal Bishops, the Right
Rev. Hon. Major General Leonidas Polk
Ilaughterl. who had cooked hat and epau-
lettes on his shoulders, and sword hanging
by his side, was about in the swamps of Cor
inth, drinking mean whisky by the quart and
taking the name of God in vain-that is what
the rebellion had brought him TO- The Me-
thodist preachers in the South were entitled
to more consideration than those of any other
denomination, for there was more unanimtv
among them They were nearly all, without
any exception, rascals. Great laughter and
applause. They had all pitched in, but when
the other day they held an Annual Conference
fifty miles above where I reside in the town
of Greenville, on the railroad, the venerable
Bishop James Q. Andrews, the man who split
the turkey in two when the General Conference
was held in 1874, presided. know all about
that, for l electioneered hard for him in 1892
They were holding an Annual Conference. and
a faction of preachers, to distinguish them
selves to render themselves more acceptable
TO secession families in which they were board
ing, brought him upon the carpet, he at home
some fifty miles distant, for if he had been
there it would have been about the last thing
they would have done No parliamentary
rules or Bishop Andrews could have choked
him down; when they mounted him, he would
have mounted them, and when Greek met
Greek then came the tug Of war. They de-
nounced bin and his paper, and clamored for
hanging him. aud such clapping as was then
there never was before, and the Bishop enjoyed
it as well as anybody else as well as he had
enjoyed the hosptalities of his house, for he
bad been there many times. Fountain f.
Fitch, an old Presiding Elder Of the Confer
ence, a man who had been in every General
Conference for thirty years. who went to Eu-
rope with Bishop Soule, who had one or two
sons in the rebel arrv vac ChanIain IF n