the load of scorn and contumely already heaped upon them, and humbly
cry, 'More--give us more contempt--our backs are made to bear the
burden!'

God pity such creatures!

And these are the men who advocate a confederation of States with New
England left out to shift for herself! New England left out? Fools! to
think it possible. Knaves! to deem it desirable, if it were possible. As
well banish the Creator from the universe He has made--the sun from the
system he warms and enlightens! Not until you have destroyed the
essence, the inner spirit of the Government which of all the governments
in the world secures 'the greatest good to the greatest number;' not
until Freedom is dead and laid in her final grave; not until the temple
of knowledge is barred and double barred; not until all your common
schools are closed, your free presses manacled, your free Bible
suppressed, your right of free speech and free inquiry smothered to
death; not until your ships have gone down in the waters, and the hammer
rests in your shipyards, and your railroads cease to open a way in the
wilderness made straight for the entrance of the most advanced
civilization; not until the race of Yankee capitalists is extinct, and
enterprise, thrift, industry, nerve, moral courage, the intellectual
conquest of the material world become traditional, will that be
possible. No! I thank God, that the record of New England is so sure and
indelible that nothing can root her out of this land, not even if her
whole geographical area were forever submerged by the waters of the
ocean that girts her round in barren majesty. Ideas, principles, can
never die or be effaced. They shall survive the wreck of matter, and the
final catastrophe of the universe. And her empire is that of ideas.
Small as she is, she wields the power of the very foremost ideas of the
highest civilization of the world. These ideas have at last held at bay
the so long encroaching slave principles which were so strangely left to
grow alongside with them by the early framers of the Government, and who
doubts which is to conquer? The struggle may be a long one, a costly
one, and freedom may at last barely escape with her life. But so sure as
humanity sweeps onward; so sure as the average progress of the race is
never retrograde; so sure as right bears in its bosom the seeds of
eternal life, and wrong the seeds of eternal death; so sure as God sits
on His throne and the heavens do rule,' the free id